by Jess Riley
“Bastards, all of them! Is there anything I can do?”
Natalie sighed. “Go back in time and make him a dentist? You’re sweet, but there’s not much to do until we hear the decision, other than watch me become a total insecure, penny-pinching nag who ruins her marriage.”
“You’re not a nag. And your marriage is not being ruined. Anybody would feel a little stressed in your shoes.”
“And poor and ugly, but at least they’d know why it suddenly smelled like Fritos. Anyway. Let’s talk about something nicer.”
Harper laughed sympathetically. “Stop it!”
“Tell me a little known fact. Something about our industrial food system, but nothing that will make me want to stop eating Culver’s butter burgers.”
“Did you watch that video I emailed you?”
“Nope! Stop! Never mind! Tell me about your pretend boyfriend instead.”
Harper smiled. “Aw, he’s the best boyfriend ever! You know who I think he kind of looks like? The carpenters on Cupcake Wars.”
“Both of them?”
“Well, they look a lot alike. Are they twins?”
“I don’t think I could date a guy if he were a twin.”
“Oh, I totally could. Anyway, I didn’t see him today because my Tuesday/Thursday class, Trends in Food, doesn’t start until 9:40.”
“Sorry to interrupt, but … Trends in Food? What do you learn in there?”
“I was hoping they’d explain our national obsession with bacon, but they don’t. We did get to watch Food, Inc, because Darla is kind of the black sheep of the R.D. program.”
“I still think it’s weird that you’re on a first-name basis with your professor, but go on. Pretend boyfriend.”
“Okay, so yesterday morning, we pulled up to the light at the same time. And he looked amazing, like always, but when he smiled at me, he was wearing those plastic, white vampire teeth! Like the kind you wear at Halloween.” He hadn’t done any weird gestures to match the theme, only smiled nonchalantly. She almost didn’t notice them, but when she did, she laughed and clapped with childlike enthusiasm.
Natalie let out an envious garble. “You get all the cute crazy people!”
“I know! But tomorrow I’ll really be ready for him.”
“Will you be topless?”
“No. And now I’m not going to tell you.”
PART TWO
Zach
THAT FRIDAY MORNING the girl in the Kia Rio smiled at him in a pair of black-framed glasses complete with bushy eyebrows, big fake nose, and push broom mustache. She even had a cigar (!), which she wiggled at the corner of her crooked, silly smile, à la Groucho Marx. He’d laughed out loud, because it was so much better than his Friday idea (a wide-brimmed sombrero Josh had picked up in Cabo last spring, along with a memorable case of travelers’ diarrhea). And like every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning, he turned right and she turned left, taking a piece of the sun with her.
It was becoming a game of chicken, almost. He’d concluded long ago that she had to be single. Right? Because the idea that she might be married made him feel clammy and nauseous. This reaction surprised him, because now it was clear that she was becoming more to him than a quirky, innocent little diversion. He found himself thinking of her at odd times in the course of most days: wondering if she was allergic to anything and if so, was it an inconvenient or life-threatening allergy? Like, ragweed or bee stings? What were her favorite TV shows, and did she hide her eyes during scary movies? Who was the last person she’d gone to a movie with? If he said, Tina, you fat lard! Come get some dinner! would she laugh and answer, But my lips hurt real bad! Had she ever had her heart broken? Had she ever broken a bone? Did she prefer The Beatles to The Stones, The Avett Brothers to The Lumineers? Would she laugh when he danced funny late at night in the kitchen? Would he ever get the chance to say to her, “You look so pretty in that dress”?
He was idealizing her already, he knew. His stomach getting twisty at the mere thought of her. And he remembered all too well what happened when you did that. Andrea Wallace was what happened. Don’t get your hopes up, he thought, surprised by the sudden melancholy filling his heart.
Maybe it was best if they didn’t meet. Maybe they’d only disappoint each other.
At work he typed:
Girl who refers to herself in the third person when nervous
She was the kind of girl who covered her mouth when she laughed
Elegant cheekbones, vulnerable nose
Most beautiful girl in the whole wide world puke blergh vomit staaaaaaaale-assmotherfucking garbage.
He closed out the file and pulled up the UW website again, clicked over to the graduate studies page, and finally to English (MA). He really didn’t need to read the letter that began “Dear prospective student …” because he’d read it a thousand times before. He skimmed the application and started to think—really think—about asking certain people to write letters of recommendation on his behalf. There was also the Graduate Record Exam, which cost $175. He created an online GRE account and downloaded the PowerPrep software.
He started to feel overwhelmed and he wondered how he’d pay for graduate school, how he’d juggle classes and homework with his day job, what he’d even do with a Master’s Degree other than join the stampede of other MFA applicants for adjunct professorships at public universities across the nation … but then he remembered the jigsaw puzzle he’d worked on with his mother one rainy day when he was home sick from school. He’d been six or seven, and the puzzle was a three-dimensional 132-piece replica of the U.S. Capitol. He remembered his mounting frustration as he struggled to assemble it, culminating in his tearful demolition of the entire senate wing. Tiny gray and white pieces scattered across the living room carpet, landing in potted plants and rolling under the couch. His mother had calmed him down, and after a milk and cookies break, they tried again. “Don’t let it overwhelm you,” she said patiently, clicking a piece in the house chamber. “Take it one bit at a time. Individually, they don’t amount to much, but when you get them together, you really have something!”
“Like a painting?”
She nodded, smiling. “Exactly like that, sweetie. Every time I sit down at my easel, I start with a blank canvas, and one brushstroke. And then another and another, and before you know it—”
“You have a room full of beautiful pictures!”
At the time, their living room walls were covered by his mother’s paintings: mostly portraits of women in all shapes and sizes and colors breast-feeding their children, but also a large, prominently displayed nude of him as an uncircumcised infant that had embarrassed him terribly in high school. But the memory made him miss her so deeply it felt like he’d swallowed a brick. She’d retired from teaching high school art two years ago and now lived in Santa Fe with three other women who were also visual artists—sculptors, painters, paper-makers. They fussed over him like aunts, sending him care packages of homemade granola and terry cloth body warmers filled with rice and spices that made the apartment smell like rice pudding after you pulled them from the microwave. Josh took a particular liking to one of the beanbag-like body warmers, and after a long day laying cement pavers in someone’s new patio, he’d watch TV with it draped across his shoulders like a cozy snake puppet.
After he downloaded the PowerPrep software, Zach clicked over to KAYAK.COM to investigate the price of airfare from Milwaukee to Santa Fe. It was nearly summer already in the desert; flying there in May would feel like time-traveling into the future. But a roundtrip ticket was reasonable. He’d call her tonight, see what she had planned. Maybe it was a cliché, to fly in for Mother’s Day, but who cared anyway.
Harper
HARPER WAVED WHEN she saw Natalie and the kids on the playground at Menominee Park. Her youngest, Sasha, was riding a metal bumblebee on a thick metal spring so vigorously she was nearly giving herself whiplash, her fine brown hair flying back and forth, back and forth. Sasha turned two last January; her
brother Brandon was four, and they’d recently given him the nickname “Last Word Brandon,” because already he insisted on having the last word in nearly every conversation. The eldest, Quinn, was a serious six; she worried about everything and anyone, so sensitive she teared up the minute life got remotely sad or frustrating. Harper wanted to hug them all, all the time. She sometimes had to remind herself to stop smelling their heads when they played Don’t Break the Ice! together.
Today Natalie looked like she’d been crying, her eyes puffy and red.
“What happened? What’s wrong?”
“Brian lost his job.” Natalie didn’t cry; she just stated it as fact. Cold, hard fact. “They laid everyone in his department off this morning.”
“Oh, no! I’m so sorry.” Harper followed Natalie to a nearby bench where they sat and watched the kids, who were climbing and running and playing with sweet, carefree intemperance, completely oblivious to the adult drama unfolding on the periphery of their fun.
“He’s finished in two weeks, and they offered a severance package, but … this is really scary.” Her voice had grown tight, her expression despondent.
Harper placed a concerned hand on Natalie’s forearm. “He can apply for unemployment, right?” she asked softly.
“Yeah, but it’s like fifty cents a day. We have to tighten our belts, and I need to start looking for a job. I’ve been out of the game for so long I don’t even know where to begin.” Natalie had a degree in zoology; sometimes when she told people this they laughed and replied, “So you went to college to find a husband? I thought girls stopped doing that in the 1970s.”
“I’ll help you. Tell me what you need. Babysitting when you go on interviews, I can bring over some healthy dinners, help you update your resume, anything.”
“Do you have a trunkful of money?”
“Just a trunkful of reusable shopping bags. Do you need any canvas totes?”
“No, thanks.” Natalie sighed. “Brian’s already looking for something new, but it’s like a career desert out there. There’s nothing in his field around here.” At that point Quinn wandered over, sniffling, giant tears rolling down her cheeks.
“What’s wrong, honey? What happened?”
“I— I— I fell and twisted my arm at the bot— bottom of the sli-hide.” Her voice hitched in the most heartbreaking way.
“Let me take a look.” Natalie pushed her daughter’s sleeve up and examined her forearm. Nothing obviously bruised, scraped, or twisted; she kissed it. “We’ll keep an eye on it.” She wiped Quinn’s cheeks with a Kleenex, stood and hollered for the others. “Kids, we’re going to get a move on.”
Sasha ignored her and continued her intense, head-flailing Valkyrie ride on the bumblebee. She already had a move on, and appeared completely uninterested in a different one. Brandon also ignored her and climbed up the slide again.
“I need to put some kind of resume together, do some research,” Natalie said to Harper, still distracted. There was a small yet clear note of panic lining her voice, something Harper had never heard from Natalie before. “I can’t stop thinking about all the stuff I have to do. I’ll have to learn about extreme couponing. Oh my God, and I need to cancel cable and the land line and stop the retirement and college investments and—”
“Let me take the kids tomorrow for a few hours. Give you time to work on things.”
Natalie’s worried expression melted into stark gratitude. “Will you? Oh, thank you, thank you. What time are you thinking? You can take my car, because it’s got the car seats.”
Harper had never spent time alone with all three of Natalie’s children together before. But really—how hard could it be?
Zach
“ALL RIGHT, SPILL IT,” Cindy said, blowing on a steaming chunk of dumpling, “You’ve been acting weird since yesterday.”
“No, I haven’t.” He and Cindy had ordered Chinese take-out for lunch, and the front office now smelled of egg rolls, duck sauce, and MSG.
“Zachary, don’t make me sing that Miranda Lambert song to you.”
He felt a warm blush begin to mount his neck. “It’s no big deal. There was this girl I was sort of interested in, and it turns out she’s married with three kids.”
“Um, how did you not know she was married with kids before?”
“I don’t really know her.” By now his entire face was hot. He poked at his rice with a chopstick. “I’ve never actually talked to her.”
“Explain.”
Zach paused before mumbling, “It’s so stupid.”
“Explain.”
It all came out in a rush. “I see her every day at the same stoplight. It’s no big deal, she’s just pretty, and we always smiled at each other. Like I said, no big deal.”
He’d stopped at Pick ’n Save for lunch, to load up at the salad bar because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten something green. While he piled chopped veggies and spinach and shredded cheddar in his plastic clamshell, he saw her—her!—out of the corner of his eye, pushing a shopping cart through the produce section. It was one of those carts with the big plastic car attachment, to trick your kid into thinking that being strapped into a slow-moving fake race car was more fun than sprinting down the bulk food aisle, lifting every lever within reach to let a rain of nuts and lentils and candies skitter across the shiny tile floor.
Three small children hung like monkeys on the cart; one was crying, another was red-faced and screaming, and while he watched, the third (and smallest) pulled away from her hand and took off running toward the vitamins and supplements, a look of unbridled, somewhat demented glee on her adorable face.
She’s got kids? He’d watched the entire spectacle with a spoonful of peas in-hand, and only snapped out of his trance when an older man waiting impatiently behind him actually reached over to take the spoon from his hand.
He finished his story and popped the final bite of an egg roll into his mouth. “And that, children, is the true meaning of Christmas.”
Cindy clucked her tongue. “Well, I am glad you’re at least thinking of dating again. The longer you wait, the harder it’ll be to wash the bachelor stink off.”
He frowned.
“Anyway, you’re missing a crucial thing to consider,” Cindy added. “What if she’s divorced? Would you date a single mom with three kids?”
“I guess it depends on the person and the situation.”
“Did you see a ring?”
He had not seen a ring, now that she mentioned it. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t married. Cindy didn’t wear her wedding and engagement rings for weeks when she was pregnant because her fingers were too bloated. He began to feel hopeful again, but if his optimism had started as a plump, Mylar balloon bopping around the ceiling, it was now at a crinkly waist-level, drifting languidly from corner to corner.
What would he do the next morning he saw her on the corner of Franklin and Elm?
Harper
AFTER SHE DROPPED the kids back at Natalie’s, Harper returned to Pick ’n Save alone later that afternoon to buy the ingredients she still needed to make a batch of loaded miso soup (requested by Dick and Sally Westfield). Her phone rang while she was filling a plastic bag with shiitake mushrooms. Natalie.
“I wanted to thank you again for taking the kids for me this morning. You are a saint, the best friend ever, and you can borrow my second-hand Coach bag any time you go somewhere fancy. Also, I hope they haven’t scared you away, because I might need you to do it again next week. Brian has a job interview Thursday morning, and I’m going to a job fair thingy with my new-fangled resume. In return, I’ll help you move the next time you need help. Well, Brian will help you move, and I’ll roll glasses in bubble wrap and gossip and call for pizza.”
Harper smiled and twisted a green tie around the bag of mushrooms before placing them in her basket. “Of course I’ll watch them. But we might just hang at your house while you’re gone.”
“Yes! I will leave you with a bowl of homemade Che
x Mix and a stack of Dora videos.”
“I almost forgot! Did I tell you what Brandon said to me?”
“Oh God, I hope it was things like, ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘Why don’t you win Candyland for a change?’”
Harper laughed. “No, he said, ‘What’s squishier, your boobs or your tummy?’”
Natalie groaned. “This is one of those parenting moments where I should feel embarrassed, but it’s too funny. Remember last week when I finally got my hair cut after like, nine months? And he said, ‘Mommy, I love you. Especially now that you got your hair cut.’”
“I should never have taken them to IHOP for breakfast. I had no idea a four-year-old could eat that many pancakes!”
“Yeah, my kids are a little like the Gremlins. Never feed them after midnight, and never give them a fourth pancake at IHOP.” She chuckled. “Now you know why Brian and I never take all three of them together in public when we’re alone.”
The produce misters came on, and Harper stepped back from the drifting spray. “You don’t?”
“No way! Sasha’s basically a portable tornado, so if Brian takes Quinn and Brandon, I’ll take her, or vice versa. Tag team effort.”
“Remember when IHOP had big blue roofs and called itself the ‘International House of Pancakes?’ I hope that in ten years things start to cater to our nostalgia a bit more.”
“Oh my God, yes! And remember Bob’s Big Boy?”
“I think Michigan got them all in the divorce.”
“Huh. Well, it makes you wonder. Like, will Red Robin still be around when my kids are older? And what about the Golden Corral?”
“I hope so,” Harper said. “Places like that are the reason I have so many clients.”
“You’re awful sometimes. It makes you much more tolerable.”
