The e-mail waiting for me was sent only minutes ago.
It was great seeing you today.
This time I don’t reply right away.
We’re friends. Friends who meet for coffee. I probably won’t get together with him again. It was kind of boring, actually. All he did was talk about himself. I still don’t get what would make him want to walk away from his life. That’s not something a lot of people say, period, much less to a stranger. What the hell.
Thanks for the coffee, I write back.
In two weeks we’ve met for coffee four times. I guess that’s a lot, but it doesn’t feel like it. In between we e-mail. Simple stuff. Like what’s going on, what our days are filled with. He’s becoming a close friend.
On our fifth meeting I switch to chai tea latte.
“Lemme ask you something. Do you tell your wife about me?” I ask him.
He hands me my drink and settles into his chair. It’s the same table we always get.
“Do I tell my wife about you?”
“Yeah. Do you?”
He finger combs his hair. “It doesn’t really come up. I mean, you know.”
He brushes the crumbs of his coffee cake off the table.
“Why?” he asks. “Do you tell your husband?”
“It doesn’t come up.”
“There you go.”
We’re friends. Guilty friends who have nothing to feel guilty about. We meet at Starbucks. We e-mail. We talk about our kids. Books. Movies. What’s so wrong about that? So why haven’t we mentioned one another to our spouses?
“Hey, by the way, any chance you all would want to adopt a kitten?” I ask.
“A kitten?” He smiles. I get the feeling he’s glad for the subject change.
“A cuddly, orange-and-white little ball of fur …”
He laughs. “Laying it on a bit thick, aren’t you?”
“She’s so cute you can’t believe it. Lexi would flip over her.”
I said the magic words.
“So unfair.” He smiles again. “Little girls and fluffy animals. Nice touch. Why don’t you guys keep it if she’s so damn cute?”
“Bob’s allergic. Cammy came home with her the other night. We’ve been feeding her with an eyedropper, she’s that small. The kids are heartbroken we can’t keep her, but …”
“Bob’s allergic,” he says.
“I’ve tried everyone I know.”
“Maybe Bob’s conveniently allergic,” he says.
But I can tell he’s seriously considering it.
“If she doesn’t work out I can take her back,” I tell him. “I could find her another place, I guess.”
“I thought you tried everyone you knew.”
“That’s true,” I say. “But I don’t want to put you on the spot.”
“You know what? It’s your lucky day. I’ll take her.”
Bob will be relieved—he thinks I’m conspiring to keep the kitten, but I wouldn’t do that to him. Not with him sneezing and tearing up all the time. He’s been getting an angry rash on his arm. The kids will just have to deal with it.
I jump up to hug Craig without a thought. He seems surprised. He smiles but is definitely surprised.
“Thank you thank you thank you,” I say.
He’s awkward. He shifts in his chair.
“So, what else is new?” he finally asks.
I wonder what he’ll tell his wife about the kitten. Where it came from. I wonder what I’ll tell Bob and Cammy. Shoot. What do I tell Bob? I’ll just tell him I found a family who wanted a kitten. Simple. But then he’ll ask who they are and how I know them and I’m back to square one. Shoot! I should’ve thought this through. Why didn’t I think this through? Okay, calm down. You’re thinking it through now, so calm down. I’ll just tell him I met someone at Starbucks—which is true, technically—and we got to talking and somehow the kitten came up and voilà I found a home. Bob won’t ask what we were talking about. Home free. Done.
I used to pull the minivan into the driveway at the end of the day and the kids would pile out, usually one or two of the neighbors’ kids would be in the mix, and pour in through the backdoor and they’d scatter. Some to the fridge for after-school snacks. Me unloading groceries or picking up jackets tossed in the direction of the hooks by the door, some to the downstairs computer, others to the one upstairs. This afternoon I’m like a football player—I go wide and pass them as they dump backpacks and take off boots—I race to the kitchen computer to check my in-box. It’s like beat-the-clock because no sooner do I open his e-mail than I hear:
“Aw, Mo-om, I need to use the computer” and “Mo-om,” (always in a drawn-out whine) “how long are you going to be on? I’ve got to send in my essay” and my personal favorite “Mo-om? Is dinner going to be ready soon? I’m starving.” I hate that one on many different levels. One: it’s passive-aggressive. If you want me off the computer just say so. Two: it reminds me of Mrs. Cleaver. Like I’m not supposed to have friends I want to be in touch with … I’m just supposed to cook and clean and see to everyone else’s needs. And three: coming from three kids who can easily find a snack for themselves … well, that just gets my goat. When I was growing up my mother taught me how to make dinner and clean up and do laundry and a million other things my kids don’t have a clue about. I know, I know, I’m to blame. Now I realize how smart it was for our mothers to do this, not because it’s sharing the workload (many times I feel like it would take far less time if I just did it myself without having to walk someone through it), but because it creates self-sufficiency. When I tell my kids to set the table I watch while they open the wrong cabinets for dishes and glasses like they’re in an unfamiliar kitchen.
“Excuse me, I will be on the computer for a few more minutes,” I say. “What about Dad’s computer? Go up and wait for that one and I’ll let you know when I’m off. Or better yet, find some other homework you can do.”
“What’s for dinner?” Jamie asks.
“Oh, fine.” I get up and fish past several not quite entirely sealed bags of questionably edible frozen vegetables for a box of chicken fingers.
Five minutes in the microwave and we’re about to sit down.
“Andrew, call your sister.”
“I’m here, I’m here,” Cammy says. Cammy plops down while tightening the strings of her hoodie until she resembles a police sketch. Of course, her sweatshirt is black. Of course, her skirt, baggy to the point of almost slipping off her hips, is black and full of pockets and zippers like cargo shorts. The hem, if you could call it that, is ragged from dragging on the ground nearly every day. She wears it so often there’s no turnaround time to wash it and anyway she should do her own laundry, so I figure she’ll be forced to when maggots hatch from the accumulated dirt.
“What happened to the whole organic raw thing?” she asks.
I poke her back with one hand, set a plate down in front of Jamie with the other. “If you want ketchup it’s on the top shelf in the fridge.”
“Eat your peas,” I say to Andrew. “Jamie, stop pushing them over and under the rim of your plate. I know you’re trying to hide them. I’m not blind.”
“Did you know Helen Keller wasn’t really blind?” Jamie says.
You’ve stirred me awake, Craig said.
“Mom, did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Did you know Helen Keller wasn’t really blind?”
“She could read if she put the book right next to her eyes,” says Jamie. “Mom, Andrew just kicked me under the table. He did it again. Andrew, cut it out.”
Then Andrew, “Did Dad bring home the new sneakers? The Z110s? Mom?”
“Huh? Oh, no. I don’t think so. Check the front hall closet after dinner.”
“Can I be excused?” Cammy asks, but clearly it’s said sarcastically since she’s already up and scraping her plate into the disposal side of the sink.
“You didn’t eat anything,” I say.
“You didn’t get me any B
oca Burgers,” she says. “You get the boys all that free-range chicken, but you don’t get me Boca Burgers. They’re both in the frozen-foods section, you know. I’m outta here.”
“Did you know penguins barf their food so their kids can eat it?” Jamie asks.
I watch Cammy plug up her ears with the white iPod buds on her way out of the kitchen and part of me wants to stop time here to keep the future from slapping us in the face. Something’s in the air, like the way you can smell Halloween approaching.
“Mom, Andrew kicked me again.”
CAMMY
Samantha spoils the boys. It’s so obvious it’s sick.
Ricky came home from school with me yesterday and Samantha practically wet her pants she was so happy to see him. She thinks he’s better than Monica. Then again she’d think Hitler was better than Monica. She’s always liked Ricky. Even after he got a tattoo of a celtic cross he keeps calling an Ankh like that makes it cooler. She’d freak if she knew about my tattoo but it’s not like I wear frigging ponytails anymore so there’s no way she’ll see it on the back of my neck. It’s small. A nautical star. Ricky smirked and said it’s what lame sailors used to get and the bald tattoo guy with an ear lobe stretcher said yeah, genius, ‘cause it means you’re trying to find your way home safely from a long journey, get it? and that shut Ricky up. I started regretting the whole thing when he wiped an alcohol pad on my neck. I sweated bullets and since the air conditioner vents were pointed right at me the sweat made my skin cold. I knew if I backed out Ricky’d never let me hear the end of it but man I wanted to. If I ever smell rubbing alcohol again I’ll barf.
So yesterday. Ricky and I hung out in the living room for some reason. I can’t remember why but we did. When I kicked the boys out she came in all steamed and asked to have a word with me. Out in the hall she’s all about not wanting the boys to see inappropriate behavior. What a joke! If she only knew.
Before Monica, my mom’d be pissed because Ricky doesn’t do the whole act like, Hi Mrs. Friedman how are you today isn’t your dress lovely my how clean the house looks. That’s why she hates Monica. Then I don’t know what happened but all the sudden she’s smiley and patting him on the back and all hi, sweetie. To his face she’s all, Oh, Ricky, how are you and Oh, Ricky, why don’t you and Cammy come hang out here in the kitchen and keep me company while I make dinner. Yeah, right. I’d rather stick my fingers into a juicer.
They think me and Ricky are like boyfriend-girlfriend. It’s so fucking hilarious. Like we’d ever be boyfriend-girlfriend. Ricky looks at me like I’m his sister and plus now he’s always talking about how hot Monica is and how he could get into her pants if he really wanted to. I tell him yeah so go for it if you’re so hot for her and he makes up something stupid like I will when the time’s right. What a joke. Anyway, they think we’re hooking up because Ricky’s tattoo is a star with the letter R twisted into the letter C in the middle. They think it’s like a heart with initials plussed together but it’s our symbol. We designed it when we were thinking of starting a group. The beauty is it’s our initials but it really stands for Rage Company. Like whatever we all do in the world, we’re still raging against something. Sometimes we’ll see someone who looks like he’d get it and we joke around like oh, yeah, let’s recruit him into RC but we’re too lazy to do anything about it. Also I think it’d be queer to have a group. It feels too yearbooky.
I feel like—we both feel like we’re in a chain gang and whenever anybody else in our family does something we’re dragged along like it or not. We’re locked in with no fucking choice. Except now I have a choice and fuck it I’m taking it. Who wouldn’t? It’s like this escape hatch I never really thought about but now it’s time for me to take it. Ricky calls it a do-over. Once I talk to my birth mother I’ll be able to decide who I want to live with and it’ll be like so frigging easy. Finally, things will be easy. I can be whatever I want to be without thinking this little Friedman clique is looking down on me or feeling sorry for me like oh poor Cammy she’s not one of us you know so be extra nice so she doesn’t notice. Their faces stretched into smiles. Smiles or psycho frowns when I’ve done something wrong again. When I need to earn their trust back.
Ricky says Monica’s RC material and we both laugh because it’s so gay to have this little club, like we’re in a tree house deciding whether to let the rope ladder down for someone else to climb up but that’s exactly what he wants to do. It’s his way of getting me to share her with him and I hate that. Plus, the minute Monica finds out about RC she’ll bail. She already thinks everyone here is like five years old. Today she said, “Oh, my God I don’t know how you haven’t blown your brains out yet, this place is so fucking soul crushing.”
She says stuff like that. Soul crushing. And the minute she said it I felt stupid that I haven’t said the same thing out loud because I’ve thought it a million times but once she said it all I could do is say I know, right? Totally. So I look like I’m trying to copy her yet again, which is exactly what Samantha thinks I’m doing. I heard her talking to Bob about it … they think Monica’s bad news and that she’s leading me down the wrong path. But then Samantha told him she thought I was already on that path when Monica came along and I wanted to say hell yeah I was because the only thing worse than Monica thinking I’m copying her is Samantha and Bob thinking I’m copying her. Then again, maybe the wrong path is the right path, didn’t they ever stop to consider that? Maybe it’s good to rage, to get it out and not keep it all bottled up inside so everyone thinks you’re happy and shiny.
Ricky doesn’t know about Will. I mean, I don’t think he knows about Will. He wouldn’t care anyway, since he doesn’t like me like me but still, I kinda don’t want him to find out. And that’s fine with Will. In the beginning, when we were at the parking lot one night with a bunch of Paul’s friends, Will came over and asked if I wanted to go for a walk. I get so embarrassed when I think about it now because right when he came over to ask me I felt like I was going to pass out like one of those screaming Beatle fans. Will’s hot, if you don’t look too hard at his skin. He has burns on sixty percent of his body and part of them come up his neck to his jaw. It looks like he was dropped into a vat of acid if you see him in the daytime but at night you can hardly see. He’s never said what happened but Ricky told me his father set fire to his house with his mom and him still in it—he locked them in and took off right after he lit the match to the gasoline. Will got kicked out of school last year but he kept a lot of his friends because he’s like the ringleader next to Paul.
Anyway, he came over to ask me to go for a walk and I’m such a frigging dork I thought it was going to be like a stupid Disney movie … us walking and maybe holding hands and yeah I guess making out or something. I was such a baby. We got behind the 7-Eleven and that’s when he unzipped his pants. It’s totally not sex or anything so I don’t know why I thought it was like the biggest deal but I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do so he had to tell me. He was nice about it that night—his voice was softer than it is when he’s talking with Paul and the group. Plus, if you look past the burns he’s hot now that he’s grown out his hair. Monica’s been drooling over him since she got here and I couldn’t wait to tell her we hooked up so I did what he said and I guess it wasn’t so bad after all. Except it was embarrassing when we were going back around the building and I barely touched his hand and he whipped it away from me and walked faster back to Paul. At the time I thought maybe it was his reaction when something surprised him because of the fire but then I realized it’s because he wants to keep it quiet. He’s not the type to brag. I didn’t know where to stand once we got back to everyone—Ricky wasn’t there that night and Monica was grounded so it was people I don’t normally hang out with and I felt like a sore thumb. So I went inside the store and got a Snapple to get the taste out of my mouth and then I walked home. I think Will was surprised to see me go or he probably didn’t see me because it was dark because when I said see ya he looked away. What
ever.
I told Monica about it but it felt weird to tell Ricky so I didn’t.
My mom would freak if she knew. She thinks I’m five. She’d totally freak and then she’d find a way to talk about her mother and I’d end up feeling like a shithead again so forget that. Like I’d ever tell her anyway.
Zoey said nothing’s come in the mail yet and I trust her since she knows she’s getting my iPod once she hands it over when it does get here, that goddamn letter. Actually she only thinks she’s getting my iPod. I’m giving her my Shuffle but whatever. Ricky said that if it doesn’t come by the end of the week he’ll call the agency and say he’s my father Bob and that we were under the gun to get to the bottom of things because of the medical emergency and maybe they could just tell us over the phone. I know for a fact that we covered all our bases with the paperwork because the Web sites for this stuff had legal pdf forms that most agencies require and we filled them out perfectly, following the examples they give you.
I feel like I’m holding on until I find all this out and maybe I’m getting my hopes up like Ricky says but I can’t help it. It’s like it’s out of my control. I can’t wait until this goddamn letter comes! The only thing that worries me, other than Zoey missing the letter and Samantha and Bob finding it, is whether they’ve found a way to see into my documents on the family computer. My dad’s computer is locked so I had no choice—I had to use the family one. It’s not like my mom knows a lot about computers but still … lately she’s been on it like 24/7 and I’m starting to freak out that she’s tracking me. All of a sudden she’s obsessed with the computer and she’s a total bitch if I’m on it. There’s no way she knows what I’ve been doing because I wipe my footprints off the hard drive and even if there’s some hidden file that I don’t know about I guarantee she wouldn’t know how to uncover it. She’s like Amish with computers. She hurries off when she sees me coming and it makes me sick to my stomach for some reason but I really don’t think she even knows about Google Desktop so I think I’m okay.