Annika lifted her sunglasses and peered under them. “Will you stop staring at all my figure flaws, please?”
“What flaws?”
“You can’t fool me,” said Annika, stretching, smiling. “You know you’re checking out the damage.” She flipped on her side and pointed behind her. “Look! I have mommy butt!”
“Your butt is totally the same.” It wasn’t, but it was still a butt to envy.
“I’ll take your word for it.” Annika sank back into the lounge chair. “If you’re going to do it, you gotta do it now, honey. You’re thirty-nine.”
“So you keep reminding me.”
“Your eggs have wrinkles.”
“I earned every one of them.”
“The rates of mental retardation and autism increase as a mother gets older.”
“La la la. I can’t hear you.”
“You’ll be close to sixty when your kid goes to college.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
“I’m just laying out the facts.”
“You want facts? The fact is that every time I think about having a baby, one of Ward’s kids does something odious or perplexing, and then I get all confused. This has been happening for years, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Devin is graduating now, right? In three months he’ll be off to college. So that’s at least one less deterrent to procreation.”
“True.”
“Look at you. You’re not even thinking about having a kid, you’re thinking about doing a kid.”
Lu popped a cherry into her mouth, plucking the stem from between her teeth. “He’s not that much younger.”
“Just ten or fifteen years.” She stirred her drink. “I’ve got some wrinkle cream if you want it. What’s his name, anyway?”
“Mr. Tasty Pants.”
“Uh-huh. And what about the Happy Husband?”
“Ward’s fabulous. He’s marvelous. Nothing wrong with Ward.”
“Okay, then. What’s wrong with you?”
Lu turned the corner and ran, the same route she’d been running since she’d quit smoking—for good this time. Nothing’s wrong, Lu told herself silently. Nothing serious, life threatening, or soul scorching, anyway. Even marrying into Ward’s tribe had proven less traumatic than it looked from the outside, mostly, sort of, at least relative to her own chaotic youth that included stints as stepdaughter, half-sister, and loony tune. But she’d beaten it, done better, at least a little. They’d muddled through the drama of the first years of blended family life and had reached some sort of stasis: The boys achieved the ability to reason, the ex was down to only periodic fits of idiocy, and Lu had gotten used to living in a one-and-a-half-bath Chicago bungalow the size of an Easy-Bake oven. One adapts, one adjusts, life settles like a handful of feathers tossed to the wind—scattered but restful. So why would she want to stir everything up again with a baby, a helpless baby, an autistic, head-banging baby born of her old and shriveled eggs? Where was the wisdom in that?
She turned up the volume on her radio, picked up the pace. She’d heard somewhere that musical choices were pretty much set in stone by the time you hit age thirty-five, but Lu was determined to stay open-minded even on this small level. The pop station blared some rock-rap hybrid whose hook was “Shut up! Shuuuuut up!” She remembered the first time she’d yelled at the kids—well, not the kids, but the kid, Britt, the mouthy one. They were in the car on the way home from another tense meal in which Ward had tried to force Devin to eat something more substantial than a few crackers, Ollie bursting into tears when Ward scolded him for offering to eat Devin’s food for him. Britt, who had the unenviable job of blowing off steam for the rest of them, cataloged a litany of random complaints on the way home, from his stupid fricking teachers to his stupid fricking mother to the stupid fricking window that was fricking broken and couldn’t they just fricking fix it already? And Lu felt the heat rising from her rumbling belly, in which her cheese-laden meal was already padding a fifteen-pound weight gain that would take her thirteen months to lose, and she turned around and screamed, “Shut up!” to Britt, who was so surprised that he actually did.
So many ways to count progress.
Anyway, after all that drama, maybe it was regular old five-year itch that filled her head with obscenities about this golden boy, that set her hands to twitching whenever she saw a plump vein rising on the surface of his forearm. The late thirties sexual peak, the perimenopause her mother insisted was right outside the door, if not actually in the house.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a hulking black Ford Explorer inching up behind her. Her stomach did a little dance of apprehension the way it had ever since she’d turned twelve and realized the world was full of people with questionable intentions. She turned her head slightly just in time to observe the purple missile propelled in her direction, just in time to jump back. The water balloon exploded at her feet, missing her by a yard.
She whipped the headphones from her ears and watched as the Explorer drove away, the boys inside it screaming with high school hilarity. Forgetting that people had questionable intentions, forgetting that she was thirty-nine years old, a woman, and alone, she screamed, “You missed, you stupid morons! You little shits missed me!”
The truck shrieked to a halt in the middle of the next block, and Lu’s heart leapt up and cowered in her throat. Would they get out of the car? Would they beat her up? Kidnap her for kicks? They idled there a moment, the truck’s engine rumbling like some great, dark animal loosed from the deepest caves. Then the driver stepped on the gas, and the truck disappeared in a cloud of exhaust.
“Hmmm . . . ,” said the man, inspecting some molding in the front room, trying to look as though he knew what he was doing. “Hmmm . . .”
The man wasn’t thrilled with the house, Lu could tell. And though she couldn’t really blame him—the house was a squat little wreck crouched on a stamp-size swatch of brown grass—she blamed him nonetheless, because he was making her work harder than she wanted to and because she would rather be sashaying around modest condos, Mr. Tasty Pants in tow.
The woman sucked on her own lips nervously. “Well, honey? What do you think?”
“Hmmm . . .”
Lu gave up and sat on the couch. For the life of her, she could not remember their names, kept thinking of them, insultingly, as Mr. and Mrs. Mister. What was worse was that she knew the woman, had seen her at one of Glynn’s stupid bunko parties, parties she attended only out of a wish for more company, or rather, company more like Lu herself—a few fellow anthropologists trying to blend in with someone else’s family, trying to dissect and understand its particular culture, trying to shape and influence without inciting the tribe to riot.
In this case, it had been explained to Lu in the car, the tribe had been left at home. “They don’t want to move,” the woman said. “Neither of them, though Dawn isn’t making as big a deal of it as I thought she would.”
“Are you kidding?” the man said. “Every time I come downstairs for breakfast she’s shooting daggers at me. That kid has some attitude.” Ah, the stepfather, Lu thought.
The woman blinked as if she had just gotten a faceful of cobweb. “She’s been better lately.”
“Come on.”
“She has! She took out the garbage this morning!”
Mr. Mister turned around to look at his wife in the backseat. “You always defend her.”
In the rearview mirror, Lu could see Mrs. Mister’s cheeks growing red and hivey. “And you always defend Sloane. She’s not perfect, you know.”
Lu turned the corner carefully, hand over hand. Stepmother.
The man was cool. “I never said she was perfect.”
“You act like it,” the woman said, her voice cracking. “You always yell at Dawn more.”
“Give me a break,” said the man, turning to face forward again.
The woman crossed her arms and glared out the window for the rest of the trip.
Now, in the squat
wreck of the house she knew they’d never buy, Lu wondered how this family could possibly function split down the middle the way it was. What were the odds of divorce in a second marriage? Sixty percent? Eighty? One thousand?
“I’m sorry,” said the man, standing up straight. “I don’t think this is going to work for us.”
“Right,” Lu said. “Let’s move on, shall we?”
Vamoose the Wonder Dog—Moose for short—bonked Lu’s legs with his nose as if he were some sort of living metronome while Lu chopped vegetables for a salad. Moose, they discovered soon upon adopting him, loved tomatoes, cherry being a particular favorite. He tucked the tomatoes into his cheeks like a squirrel and toted them around for a while before finally settling somewhere to bite down.
Lu dropped a cherry tomato to the floor, where it was soon sucked into the corgi’s mobile lips, sticking out like a tumor. “You’re a strange dog, Moose,” she told him. The dog did not appear too concerned about this. He gave her leg another nudge and sprawled out in a sunspot.
The back door flew open and Devin ambled in. “Hey,” he said to Lu. He stooped to pat the dog. “What’s up, Moose Man?” The dog’s tail thumped, but he didn’t bother to stand. He was like that. His name, Vamoose, was born of the fact that the dog was the polar opposite of the term, ever present and everywhere, always underfoot. When they presented the dog to Ward, Ward took one look and said, “This dog thinks it’s all about him.” Lu had replied, “Well, it is, isn’t it?”
“How was your last day?” Lu asked Devin.
“Boring,” said Devin. “Hours of saying good-bye to teachers you didn’t like in the first place.”
Lu grabbed a carrot and peeled it, shooting orange ribbons into the salad and onto the counter. “You never have to go to that school again. Can you even believe it?”
Devin scratched Moose’s belly, and the dog did a yoga stretch in response. “Yes and no,” he said. “It’s weird. Like, I don’t know.”
Lately, Devin had been trying something new: conversation. So far, he wasn’t so great at it, and Lu wasn’t at all used to it, but it was an improvement over the era that Lu now referred to as the Grunting Years.
“Yeah,” Lu said. “It is weird. You want to leave a place for just about ever, and then, when you can, you’re not sure if you’re ready to go.” She plucked a stray string of carrot from the countertop, trying to think of what else to say.
“Here’s something that should cheer you up,” Devin said, somehow understanding that she needed cheering. “I broke up with Ashleigh.”
“You did? Really?”
Devin smirked. “Don’t look so sad.”
“Sorry,” Lu said. “What happened?”
“She was getting on my nerves. Acting all weird and shit. Uh, sorry. I mean, and stuff.”
“It’s okay. I’ve heard worse. How was she acting weird?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. She just was. And it was getting old, you know?” Devin sat cross-legged on the floor and ruffled Vamoose’s ears. “I told her that since I’m going to college in a few months, I didn’t want to be tied down to one girl or whatever. I want to have fun this summer.”
“Really,” said Lu. “How many girls do you plan on having fun with?”
“Ha, ha,” Devin said, looking up at Lu out of the corners of his eyes. “Hundreds, probably.”
“How did she take that news?”
“What do you think?” Devin said, disarming her completely with a rare grin. “She was weird about it.”
Lu nodded. “A lot of people are weird.” The way Devin sat made his long, gangly limbs look smaller, and she could see the sweet, glossy curls on the top of his head. Without thinking, she added, “Everything’s weird.”
“What do you mean?”
Lu hadn’t expected the question and scrambled for an appropriate answer. “Well, you’re an adult now, right? Having fun with hundreds of girls. Going off to college. Reminds me how old I am. Except I don’t feel old. I feel the same as I did when I was a kid. Like you. I feel young. See? Weird.”
“You’re not that old,” Devin told her, scratching the dog under the chin. “It’s not like you’re fifty or something.”
She didn’t say that fifty sounded pretty youthful to her these days. “True. It’s not like I’m fifty.”
Devin kept going. “And except for the ones under your eyes, you hardly have any wrinkles.”
“Gee, thanks, Dev,” she said far more forcefully than she intended, almost a shout. “I guess it’s time for the Botox.”
Britt appeared in the doorway. “Time for the Clorox?”
“We’re all looking a little dingy,” Lu said. She watched Devin for signs of annoyance, but he continued to pet the dog as if she’d never raised her voice.
Her saucy middle stepson sprawled in a kitchen chair. “So. What are we talking about?”
There was a brief silence before Devin said, “We were talking about you. We were wondering how many weeks it’s been since you’ve been thrown out of class or off a team or something. We’re thinking of calling the doctor. We’re thinking of having it classified as a true miracle.”
“Really?” said Britt, trilling the “r.” “I think it’s a miracle that none of my teachers or coaches are assholes this year.”
“Britt,” said Lu.
“I’m just expressing myself.”
“But Ollie’s not even here to correct you. Where’s the fun?”
“Ollie doesn’t care anymore,” Britt said. He was wearing his hair longish and shaggy now, like a yearbook picture from the 1970s. He loved to make phone calls with Lu in earshot, just so that she could hear him say: “You’re the girl of my dreams, and I want my future to include you.” If Lu hadn’t known him, if he wasn’t only sixteen, she might have believed he’d gotten permanent makeup tattooed on his eyelids and lips. He was that pretty.
“Haven’t you noticed, Lu,” Britt added, “that Ollie’s too into his Game Boy to tell on me? I’m beginning to think he doesn’t love me anymore.”
“News, bro,” said Devin. “Nobody does.”
“That’s cold,” Britt said, teeth flashing.
“Cold but true,” Devin said. “You’ve got a face only a stepmother could love.”
“You sure? I wonder what Ashleigh would say if I called her. I think she’s hot for me.”
“She’s hot for herself,” said Devin. “Then again, so are you. Maybe you’re the perfect couple.”
Britt balled up a napkin and threw it. “Are we having dinner sometime this century?”
“No,” said Lu. “Why would we do that? Besides, you have to go pick up Ollie at school.”
“What?”
“You promised,” said Lu.
“Why would anyone want to join the chess club, anyway?”
Lu shrugged. “Maybe he’s looking to get thrown out of it.”
“You know, you were always too smart for your own good.” Britt pulled a banana from the fruit basket and his keys from his pocket. “I’ll be back with the little darling in a few minutes. Don’t eat real food without me.” With the banana, he saluted his brother, Lu. Then he was out the back door.
Devin stood up, and the dog put on his wounded face. “I’m going to go call Shoop. See if he wants to go to a movie later.”
“Devin,” Lu said.
He turned. “Yeah?”
“Sorry about before.”
“Huh?” he said.
“About raising my voice. The crack about the Botox?”
“Oh, that. Whatever.” He fished a string of carrot from the salad and popped it into his mouth. At Lu’s feet, Moose’s eyeballs rolled back in their sockets like a shark’s. Then he bit down into his cherry tomato, splashing the juice on Lu’s feet.
She wanted to say: Thank you for talking to me. Or, Thank you for not being so angry today. Or maybe, Thank you for growing up. But of course she couldn’t say any of it. It was too strange, the boys in her kitchen, or rather, her in the boys??
? kitchen, and then her increasingly elaborate fantasies about another boy that took her to a world where kitchens didn’t matter.
She settled for this: “I’m glad you cut Ashleigh loose. Nothing against her, really, but I thought you could do better. Not looking forward to explaining that one to Moira, though. Moira’s not the understanding type.”
Devin smiled, not as big as before, but still. “Good luck. I wouldn’t want to be you.”
Her husband turned to take her hand as they made their way up the bleachers, his eyes warm and crinkled just a bit around the corners. She saw the appraising looks he got from the other women, the ones who admired his full head of curly hair and still-muscular body, all the things they wished their men had held on to a little longer. Just the night before, they’d made love not once but twice, something they hadn’t done for a long time, something that made her feel exhausted and happy and guilty all at once, wondering where her appetite had come from. Lu squeezed his hand and berated herself for her own greed, for being such a man about things, for wanting her cake with a piece of Mr. Tasty Pants on the side.
Lu wished she were a man, because then she wouldn’t have made the mistake of wearing hose; according to this audience, only old women wore hose. That’s what Devin’s mother was wearing, hose and a butter-colored linen suit. With the red hair and the red shoes, she looked like a big chicken.
“Hello, Alan,” Lu said. “Hello, Beatrix. I love your suit.”
Beatrix smiled and shielded her eyes from the imaginary sun glare as Lu and Ward sat behind her.
Ward shook Alan’s hand and then reached for his sons, who happened to be spending that week with their mother. “Hey, sport,” Ward said to Britt.
“Sport,” said Britt, smiling wickedly. No matter what the situation, Britt was always smiling wickedly. “I’m so not a ‘sport.’”
“What are you, then?”
“I’m a soccer god.”
“Right. I’ll remember that. Hey, Ollie, are you with us?”
Ollie took one hand off his Game Boy to wave at his dad but didn’t look up. Ollie rarely looked at his dad too much around his mother, because it made Beatrix testy.