“I don’t like boys,” Bud said matter-of-factly.
Chase drove through the light. “Well, I mean they are kind of gross, uncouth and disrespectful until they…” She stopped herself.
“And they smell bad.”
Chase scrambled for some male attribute that she could sell to Bud. It wasn’t forthcoming. “Some of them will grow up to be firemen and police officers, that’s got to count for something.”
“It’s all good,” Bud said. They had pulled into the school.
“So…I mean it’s okay with everyone?” Chase said.
“The school is not gender-biased. Each student is encouraged to choose a partner most in keeping with his or her current life views and perception. Melinda is adamant about each student exploring and thus forming his or her personality. I only have until I’m eight. One kid is bringing his border collie, which I think is a unique choice. The dog has a tuxedo, and I guess she’s a good dancer. Collins is taking Judy. They’re both wearing suits.”
“I see.” She sounded just like Gitana, but Bud kept chattering on about personality forming and kids bringing their dogs as dates and that Collins was certain she was gay and this personality-forming-by-the-time-you’re-eight-years-old thing and calling the principal by her first name. Chase checked the queue. She had six cars and at an estimated time of two minutes for drop-off that gave her twelve minutes. She would start small.
“So you guys always call the principal by her first name?”
“Melinda prefers it that way. She says that a center for learning should not be a totalitarian regime but rather an egalitarian society where each person receives according to his or her needs.”
“That sounds like Marx’s Communist Manifesto,” Chase said.
“It has vestiges,” Bud replied.
“Have you read it?”
“Last summer. He made some valid points, but I am rather fond of my private property.”
They were down to three cars. “Now what’s this thing about your personality being formed by the time you’re eight?” Chase’s mind raced. Could that be true? Did they have only two more years to make sure Bud turned out to be a normal, decent, tax-paying citizen who was driven to get her Ph.D. at an early age and make a distinguished career for herself and win the Nobel Peace Prize or a Pulitzer or both?
“It’s a psychological fact. Our personality, the one that will be ours for life, is created from the time we are born until the age of eight. That’s why early childhood development is so imperative for the creation of a well-adjusted human being.”
Chase’s brain took off on two tangents simultaneously. First, had there been any traumatic experiences to date that had malformed or maladjusted Bud’s personality? And second, what had been her own transformative experiences? Because she’d turned out to be neurotic on many levels, and she didn’t want Bud to have any of her phobias—excessive hand sanitizer usage, debit machine performance anxiety, burying roadkill and risk management strategies, just to name a few.
She gave further thought to her phobias. The world was a germy place, debit machines meant spending and excessive spending was a bad thing. Burying roadkill was simply giving the dead dignity, and as long as Bud didn’t grow up to be a mortician that was not a bad thing. Risk management was the basis of the insurance industry, so it was a viable pursuit as long as Bud didn’t grow up to be an insurance salesperson. She meant no offense to those professions. She just couldn’t see Bud doing them.
Bud scrutinized Chase’s face and appeared to ascertain the current neurosis Chase was experiencing. “If you were worried that you’ve done anything to make me weird—you haven’t.” She quickly kissed Chase’s cheek and popped out of the car. Summer and Collins were waiting for her. Bud took Summer’s hand as they went up the stairs to the front door of the school. Chase’s mind went into overdrive when she saw that. Could you be gay at six? Was Bud gay? Should the school be egalitarian? And what about the dog going to the dance as someone’s date? That was going too far. Anyone could see that.
She glanced at the dashboard. It was ten to eight. Her board meeting at the Institute was at nine thirty. She had to talk to Gitana and not on the phone. This warranted a face-to-facer. She’d go to the Blooming Orchid nursery and tell Gitana all this stuff. Gitana was the voice of reason. She could sort this mess out. She would know what to do.
Chapter Two—Explanations
Chase sent gravel flying as she pulled into the nursery’s parking lot. Under normal circumstances, she would have made note of how spiffed up the place looked with its new sage green paint job with the giant purple and white orchids painted on the front and around one side, but she’d worked herself into such a panic that she left the Mini Cooper running and the car door wide open as she ran inside. Nora, who was Gitana’s right-hand woman, was coming out of the nursery office when Chase almost floored her, which would have been an accomplishment because Nora was built like a rich guy’s bodyguard. “Where’s Gitana?”
“In her office like she usually is.”
“Right.” She ran down the hall.
“Chase?”
Chase turned to look at her.
“Is Bud all right?”
“Yes, well…” She didn’t want to start her diatribe here.
“Jacinda and Stella?”
“As far as I know.”
“Has there been a nuclear attack in Albuquerque we need to know about so we can begin evacuating?”
“Not that I am aware of.”
Nora glanced out the open door. “Would you like me to turn your car off?”
Chase followed Nora’s gaze and saw the car. “Uh, yeah, that would be great,” she said and ran into Gitana’s office.
The awareness of reality Nora had attempted to instill in Chase evaporated the instant Chase saw Gitana at her desk with stacks of pink invoices, references guides, catalogs and her laptop. The disarray added to Chase’s high alert stress level.
“Bud is gay. The school is communist, and a kid is bringing his dog as a date to the dance. What the fuck! We’ve got to move to the Midwest—it’s too crazy here,” she blurted, trying to catch her breath.
Gitana adopted her patient face. “Chase, let’s go through your concerns issue by issue, okay?” She pointed to the chair in the corner where Nora sat when they were doing consultations on business matters.
“That’s Nora’s chair.”
“Nora won’t mind.”
Chase sat down.
“Let’s start at the top. How old is Bud?”
“Six, but her entire personality will be formed by the time she’s eight.”
“Who told you that?” Gitana said, folding her hands on the desktop.
This was a new gesture of hers, Chase noted. She resembled a guidance counselor patiently dealing with an overwrought child. Thank goodness she had an appointment with her therapist Dr. Robicheck so they could discuss these new developments in Chase’s life.
“Bud did on the way to school.”
“Bud?”
Chase furrowed her brow. Didn’t she just say that? Bud, six, personality, was this part of the hand-folding thing? Why ask obvious questions when an obvious crisis was at hand?
“Are you sure she’s not yanking your chain?” Gitana asked.
She thought about it. Chain yanking seemed to be a new family sport. “Hold on.” Chase whipped out her BlackBerry and Googled it.
Gitana waited, shuffling papers.
Chase pulled up Wikipedia and scrolled through the pages. “Nope, she is spot-on—Jung says eight.”
“I don’t think we’ve done anything horrid. Besides Bud is smart—she pretty much knows who she is and what she wants to do with her life.”
“She has read most of the major philosophers,” Chase admitted.
“If anything we take her guidance,” Gitana said.
Chase contemplated this. It was true. Usually either Donna or Bud came up with the solutions to difficult situations. “What about the gay
thing?”
“How did you ascertain this?”
“She’s taking Summer to the dance, and she held her hand going into school today. I’d say that was an overt indication,” Chase said.
“Did she grab her ass or do anything else sexually suggestive?” Gitana was now tapping her pen—a Montblanc that Chase had given her for her birthday last year. It was a lovely pen, sleek, silver and black. This pen tapping was another new gesture.
“She’s six!”
“My point exactly.” Gitana raised her eyebrows.
This, at least, was an old familiar gesture, Chase thought.
“Chase, little girls have these infatuations with each other—it’s perfectly normal, and it doesn’t make them gay.”
“But what if she turns out gay because of us?” Chase was back at her BlackBerry. Surely, there was something with statistics about gay kids with gay parents versus having straight parents.
“Will you put that thing down and look at me?”
There was something more—what was it? She enlarged the image size. How had she ever lived without a BlackBerry? Life must have been archaic.
“Chase!”
“Huh?”
“Put that thing down before I confiscate it.”
“You wouldn’t.” Chase clutched it to her chest.
“Then put it down and listen to me.”
Chase quickly bookmarked the website and slipped the BlackBerry into her pocket. Nobody was takin’ nothing. Her psyche did a mental head swivel.
“We have agreed on the philosophy that gay people are not made as in the inculcated sense, right?”
Chase nodded and then sprang to her feet. “She has a fifty-fifty chance or maybe more. What if Bud’s freaky-rocket-scientist-genius sperm donor is gay?”
Gitana raised her eyebrows. “And what if he’s not and what if Bud didn’t get it from me? What would that make her?”
“Straight. It’s going to be really hard for me to let her date boys.”
“I know. It’s going to be hard for you to let her date anyone.”
Chase let out a heavy sigh and studied her thumb. She wanted to bite the cuticle bad, but she controlled herself, pulling out her now constant companion—a cuticle cutter. She trimmed it so the excess skin would be surgically removed and wouldn’t tear and bleed.
“You know, that is a rather disconcerting habit,” Gitana said, pointing at the cuticle cutter.
“I only do it in front of people I know and love.” Chase sat back down.
“Why are you so concerned that she might turn out gay?”
“Because people will think we brainwashed her.”
“What people?”
Chase thought for a moment. She scrambled. “The Religious Right…Dr. Laura and Pat Robertson and the PTA.”
“Do we know any of those people?”
“Well, not directly, exactly. But they could know us.”
“And if the United States ever got taken over by the right wing and a totalitarian regime ensued and they were going to round up the PLUs and put us in camps, what would we do?”
“We would take Bud and all our friends and family and the fur kids, of course, and make a run for the Canadian border and head for Saltzspring Island where all the hippie draft dodgers went to avoid the Vietnam War. We would bring medical supplies, bottled water, duct tape, Vaseline…”
Gitana put her hand up. “In other words, we have a plan.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, now what’s wrong with the school? Remember how you tortured the poor postal worker by sending for all those school catalogs so you could research every aspect school?
“I gave her a big tip,” Chase said.
“That’s not the point. The point is you did an astonishing amount of research and the academy is the best place on the planet for Bud right now. Why do you think the school is Communist?”
“I swear Bud was spouting stuff straight out of the Communist Manifesto—that to-each-according-to-their-needs stuff.”
Gitana did look concerned. “Has she read the Manifesto?”
Chase gave her the what-do-you-think look.
“Never mind.” Gitana rubbed her temples. “Explain to me the context of the conversation and then I’ll tell you if it’s Commie or not.”
Chase searched her verbatim file. It was sketchy. She’d discovered that the minute a conversation went Code Red chunks of conversation evaporated. She needed to train herself to freak after the fact so as not to impair her fact gathering. Facts were ammo—shit, she used the word “fact” three times in one inner diatribe. Good thing she didn’t have an inner editor complete with red pencil. “Can I paraphrase?”
Gitana looked skeptical. “If you have to. I would prefer the straight version—not the amped-up this-is-the-end-of-the-world version.”
“I’ll give it my best effort.”
“Shoot.”
“She was referring to how the school was not a totalitarian regime, but an egalitarian society and then she spouted the ‘according to the need’ thing.”
Gitana tapped her pen again. “I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Do you want her getting her knuckles smacked with the ruler by a passive-aggressive nun like we did?”
Chase was mortified. She’d gone to Saint Mary’s Catholic School and was well aware of the evils of ruler smacking. “Well, no.”
“Then egalitarian is an improvement.”
Chase frowned. “I guess.”
Nora brought in Chase’s keys. “Does Lacey have a GPS tracking device on your car?”
“What?”
“She just called me because she wanted to know if you were here or if it was only your car on the premises.”
“Why would my car and not my person be here?”
“I could have driven it because something was wrong with the Land Rover,” Gitana said.
“Why didn’t she call me? Not that I would have answered. Being a Luddite does have its advantages.”
“Everyone knows you can’t live without your BlackBerry,” Gitana said, pointing to the bulge in Chase’s pants.
Chase smirked at her. “I could just be happy to see you.”
Nora and Gitana stared at her.
“What?”
“Sexual innuendo isn’t really your gig,” Nora replied.
“I am capable of change.” Chase checked her call log. Lacey had called seven times. She checked the sound profile. The ringer was off. Odd things happened to her phone. Perhaps her pants had a mind of their own. “Next question, why didn’t she call you?”
“Because Gitana’s phone is in an undisclosed location,” Nora replied.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Lacey calls a lot. I keep Gitana’s phone so that her unhealthy Catholic guilt complex won’t kick in because she doesn’t know that she is getting Lacey’s call. I hit ‘Ignore’ unless it comes up as you or Bud, in which case I come and get her.”
“I always wondered why I get sent to voice mail and then like two minutes later you call me back,” Chase said.
Chase fixed her ringer. Stuff seemed to happen when she stuck her phone in her pocket. Gitana had bought her a nice holder, but Chase was a BlackBerry closet case. She didn’t want people to see her phone attached to her belt like she thought she was all that. It had proved a pleasant surprise that the phone was thin enough to fit in her front pocket along with her super thin wallet, because she did not do purses. However, the pocket thing did have odd effects on the BlackBerry’s keyboard. Sometimes she pulled it out of her pocket to discover a new language on the screen, one without vowels. “But why is she calling all the time, anyhow?”
“To find out where you are,” Nora said.
“So let me get this straight, she called your phone because I wasn’t answering, and Gitana never answers, but somehow she knows my car is here.”
“Yep,” Nora said.
“Can you buy those GPS thingy-jiggers for real?” Chase asked. “I t
hought it was like a thriller novel kind of thing—possible but imaginary.”
“Actually, they are available for public purchase,” Eliza said as she entered the office. She was Nora’s girlfriend and head of the botanicals. “Lacey just called me.” She held up her phone to demonstrate the point.
“What the hell does she want?” Chase said, exasperated.
“You, obviously,” Gitana said.
“And why is she calling Eliza now?”
“Because it appears Nora was noncommittal in her response. I agreed to ascertain your whereabouts, and I want you to know that Lacey used more swear words in one sentence than I have ever heard in my entire life. It was a linguistic marvel.” Eliza pushed her red-framed glasses up her slim nose.
Besides being Nora’s girlfriend and head of botanicals, the woman was brilliant. Chase made it a point for Bud to spend time with Eliza whenever Bud was at the nursery. At first Eliza wasn’t comfortable with Bud because she claimed to be awkward with children. Then she figured out she had another creepy-weird-smart kindred spirit on her hands. They were best buds—no pun intended, as Eliza would say.
“Did you discover what the problem was?” Gitana said.
Chase was still trying to figure out the GPS thingy-jigger. She glanced at Nora. “Where would you put something like that?”
“We’ll look under the car,” Nora said.
“I’m quoting. She said you’re seriously late for the super-serious board meeting and that you had better get your ass, followed by sixteen—I counted—expletive-deletives, to the meeting before she is forced to do something serious,” Eliza said.
“Would that include firing you?” Gitana said.
“I wish. I’ve been trying to extricate myself from the Institute ever since Lacey first got the idea, and it hasn’t worked yet.”
“You should buy her a thesaurus because she seriously needs another word for serious,” Eliza said.
“And tell her to stop swearing around Bud,” Gitana said, rapidly tapping her pen now.
Everyone rolled their eyes in universal acknowledgment of that never happening.
Gitana shrugged. “We can at least try.”
“Okay, well, I better go,” Chase said reluctantly. “If she calls any more people, my mother will use her APD influence and get a missing person’s bulletin going.” Chase’s mother, Stella, had friends in high places.
In the Unlikely Event... Page 2
