“I don’t have to tell you.” He couldn’t see it in the dark, but I was smirking.
“Gabriel asked me to find out.”
“Yeah? I hope the suspense is killing him.”
“You have a bad attitude about this,” Ryan said. “Isn’t the goal to get them back together? I mean look at them.” He gestured to where they were both bent over Cameron’s bag of treats, exclaiming over the treasures. “Don’t you just want things to go back the way they were?”
“You’re such a girl,” I said.
“Fuck you.”
“It’s not such a bad insult. Go ahead, call me a girl. I don’t mind.”
“Wouldn’t kill you to be a little more girly,” he muttered and stalked away.
I turned back to the others and, in the weird orange glow of a house’s Halloween pumpkin lights, I watched as Gabriel said good night to Melanie. He hugged her, and—for just a moment—her body melted into his and she let her forehead drop onto his shoulder. He held her close with real tenderness and didn’t seem in any hurry to end the embrace, but then she suddenly twisted away from him and busied herself adjusting Cameron’s Harry Potter glasses. She didn’t look up again, not even when he walked away.
They all left, and Mel and I continued on with the three kids. My mother had stayed back at the house to hand out candy, and my father had vanished into his study right after dinner.
“You okay?” I asked Melanie as Nicole marched the two boys up to another house.
She shrugged silently, her mouth drooping, and I realized how close she was to crying, so I left her alone. She made a big fuss over the kids’ candy when they rejoined us, and that seemed to steady her.
“No one knows what Noah is,” Cameron told me as we walked on to the next house, loudly enough for Noah to hear.
“That’s because his costume’s so original,” I said quickly.
“Yeah,” Nicole said. “Unlike yours, Cameron. I’ve seen like twenty other Harry Potters.”
“Shut up!” Cameron said.
“It’s true.”
“Well, at least people know who I am.”
Noah tugged at my hand. “I want to go home,” he said in a small voice.
“Already? I thought we’d still do a few more blocks.”
“No one knows who I am,” he said and his voice broke. “I feel stupid.”
“I love your costume,” I said. “You are so obviously a coach. If other people don’t get that, it’s because they’re stupid, not because it’s a bad costume.”
“I wish I was Harry Potter like Cameron.”
“I like your costume better.”
“Come on,” Nicole said, pulling on his other arm. “Let’s go do this house, Noey. They have Twizzlers.”
“I can’t eat Twizzlers,” Noah said. “They’re not GF.”
“Oh, sorry. We’ll see if they have something else.”
He let her lead him up the path to inevitable disappointment.
The next morning, Noah couldn’t find the baseball cap Coach Andrew had lent him. He ran frantically around the house searching for it. “I had it when I came home from trick-or-treating,” he said. “But now I can’t find it anywhere.” His face was taut with anxiety. “Is he going to be mad? Do you think he’ll tell me I can’t be his assistant coach anymore?”
“I don’t think so. But you should have been more careful.”
“He’s going to kill me,” he said, and was inconsolable for the rest of the morning. He was a knot of misery when I dropped him off at school. I watched him drag himself slowly inside. I had driven halfway home when I pulled a sudden U-turn at an intersection. A car coming toward me honked and I just waved cheerfully at the driver with deliberate obtuseness.
I made my way back to school and parked on the street outside, since parents were still dropping kids off, then walked through the courtyard, sidestepping the roughly ten million small children who were making their way to their classrooms.
Andrew’s office door was open a few inches, so I stuck my head in. “You got a second?”
He was sitting at his computer, but he gestured me in. “Yeah. Not much more, though.”
“I’ll be fast.” I came inside. “I think Noah lost your baseball cap.”
“Oh.” If he was annoyed, he hid it well. “It’s okay. I’ve got more.”
“I just wanted you to know that I’m getting you another one, so you wouldn’t be mad at Noah. He’s kind of worried about it.”
“I wouldn’t get mad at a six-year-old kid for losing something.”
“I get mad at him all the time for losing stuff.”
“That’s different—you’re his mom.”
“He loses everything,” I said. “He’s so spacey.”
“I was like that when I was his age. My mother was always threatening to staple things to me.” He got up from his desk. He was wearing shorts and a zip-up sweatshirt. It was a slightly dorky outfit.
“My dad’s like that too,” I said. “He’ll put something down and won’t ever remember where.”
“Maybe it’s a guy thing.”
“It’s a wonder that your gender rules the world.”
“And yet we do.”
“Yeah, and look what a great job you’re doing.” I stood there for a moment, listening to the noise of the kids out in the courtyard, oddly reluctant to leave. “So if you see Noah today, just tell him I talked to you, okay? And I promise you that by this time tomorrow you’ll be wearing your brand-new USC Trojans cap.”
“Oof,” he said. “That better have been an innocent mistake.”
I smiled sweetly at him, deliberately tormenting him. “Oh, I’m sorry—I just thought you might want to wear something from a good school.”
He waved a finger at me. “Watch it, uh… Noah’s mom.”
“You still don’t remember my name, do you?”
“I know who you are,” he said defensively. “That’s what matters. I mean, I could pick you out of a crowd of mothers, even without the tie-dyed hair—”
I opened my eyes wide in horror. “Tie-dyed? Tie-dyed?”
“But there’s something about your first name. It’s impossible to remember.”
“You’re blaming my name?” I said. “Not your memory, but my name?”
“It’s just not memorable.”
“And I suppose Andrew is?”
“You remembered it.”
“Because I’m a caring person who takes the time to learn people’s names,” I said airily. I turned to go. Then I turned back. “Oh, wait. About your hat size: am I correct in noting that your head is extremely big and swollen?”
“Sure, criticize other people’s heads, girl with the tie-dyed hair.”
I was laughing as I left his office.
I got to the UCLA student union store as soon as it opened and spent an hour sorting through the baseball caps. I couldn’t find the exact one Andrew had lent Noah, so I just picked out the one I liked best and sent it with Noah to school the following morning in a bag marked Give to Coach Andrew. I thought about hand-delivering it, but I felt a little funny about dropping by his office two days in a row.
He was busy talking to a parent after practice on Wednesday, so in the car on the way home I asked Noah if he thought Coach Andrew liked the cap we’d given him.
Noah wasn’t helpful. “I don’t know. I guess.”
“Did he say anything to you about it?”
He shrugged. “I think maybe he said thanks.”
“Anything else?”
“No. Oh, he did say I should tell you we’re playing an away game on Friday.”
“Yeah? Where? Do I pick you up there?”
“I don’t know. Can we go get ice cream?”
An e-mail to Andrew Fulton scored some more helpful answers to my questions. He said I could pick Noah up at the other school at five on Friday.
That freed up the whole afternoon, so I went with an old high-school friend to see a movie at the Third Street Prom
enade. It ran long, over two hours, and as soon as it was over I dashed to the parking garage feeling a little panicky. The school was in Culver City and I’d only make it there on time if I didn’t hit any traffic.
It was after 4:30 on a Friday afternoon. Of course I hit traffic. Tons of it.
I was horribly late. The sun had set and it was getting cold by the time I finally drove into the school’s lot. The one lone parking guard left informed me that the school’s basketball court was outside, around the back of the school. I ran around the building and felt awful when I saw that there were only two people left waiting there: Andrew and Noah. And Noah didn’t have a sweatshirt.
He hurled himself at me. “Where were you?” he sobbed. “Everyone else got picked up ages ago!”
“I’m sorry!” I appealed to Andrew. “I didn’t realize how far this was and the traffic—”
“It happens,” he said brusquely. “I’ve got to run. I’m late for an appointment. Bye, Noah. Thanks for your help.”
“We lost!” Noah wailed.
“Unfortunately, that also happens. Good-bye.” Clipboard and net bag in hand, Andrew sprinted toward the parking lot.
“Why did you have to be so late?” Noah said as we gathered up his backpack and headed toward the car. “You ruin everything. Don’t ever be late again.”
“I’ll try not to be.”
“That’s what you always say about everything. That you’ll ‘try.’ That’s your way of not really promising.”
I sighed. He had a point.
By the time we actually got home, it was dark and Melanie was on her way out the door. She was meeting Carol Lynn’s cousin at the Grove—her first date since she and Gabriel had separated.
“It’ll be a mob scene there,” my mother warned.
“I know,” Melanie said. “But he said he wanted to go somewhere quintessentially LA and I panicked. I couldn’t think of anything else.”
“The traffic will be horrific at this hour on a Friday.”
“I’m leaving myself two hours to get there. I’ll probably be early, but I don’t mind wasting time there.”
“Yeah and I know how,” I said. “But Nicole does not need another American Girl doll.”
Melanie smiled sheepishly. “Not another doll, but maybe a little nineteen-forties pajama set? They’re so cute, Rickie, you wouldn’t believe it.”
I rolled my eyes. “Just don’t have a bunch of American Girl bags in your hands when you meet up with him, okay? He’ll run away screaming.”
“Actually, I think she should,” Mom said. “If he’s a good guy, he’ll be thrilled she has kids.”
“God, Mom, you so don’t know what it’s like to have a kid when you’re dating.”
“Maybe not,” she said, “but I did date a man who already had a daughter and from the very beginning I considered her a wonderful bonus.” She touched the back of Mel’s hand lightly.
“You were always so nice to me,” Melanie said. “I always get mad when people say stepmothers are evil. And now, letting me live with you…”
Oh, for god’s sake, now the two of them were hugging each other. It was enough to make you puke. I left the kitchen, the odd man out as always.
I never understood why Melanie adored my mother so much. Melanie’s own mom was a lot more hands-off, which I thought would be kind of nice in a mother. Mom had told me that back when Dad and Colleen first got divorced, Colleen spent all her time either working at her nursing job or taking care of little Melanie. She never went out, never had fun, never dated, and looked older than she was. But once Melanie went off to college, Colleen had some kind of midlife rebirth. She dyed her gray hair brown, joined a health club and lost twenty pounds, started wearing tight, youthful clothing, and signed up for every online dating site she could. Her life became a whirlwind of social engagements and trips to exotic places.
Melanie always joked about how busy her mother was and how she had to schedule an appointment just to see her, but I think it genuinely hurt her feelings that Colleen had so little interest in her own grandchildren. She never babysat for Nicole and Cameron, and when she came by to see them, she was usually in a rush, on her way to doing something else.
My mother had her own theory about it all. “She sacrificed too much early on,” she said to me once. “She did the martyr thing after the divorce, and once she didn’t have to take care of Melanie, it was like a spring that had been wound too tight. She just popped, went the other way.”
“I think it’s good she’s learned to enjoy herself,” I said. “Seems healthy.”
“Yes, well, believe me, I expected to be doing a bit more of that myself at this stage in my life,” Mom said, a little acidly.
“Feel free to do whatever you want. No one’s stopping you.”
“No one except the three generations of Allens living under this roof who all expect me to cook dinner and keep the fridge stocked and the house clean,” she said.
I waited up for Melanie, who got back from her date around eleven-thirty.
“Well?” I said.
“Well, what?” She dropped her bags on a chair. Predictably, they were from the American Girl store and Pottery Barn Kids.
“How was he?”
“Okay. Cute in kind of a metrosexual way.” She wrinkled her nose. “But he wore a ton of cologne. Do guys really think women like that? Do you know any woman who does?”
“No,” I said, but I suspected her of looking for reasons to reject him, and that one seemed pretty flimsy to me. “So are you going to see him again?”
“I don’t know.” She yawned. “He was fine, but he wasn’t Gabriel and I’m not sure I’m ready to be with someone who’s not Gabriel.”
“Then maybe you should be with Gabriel.”
“He hurt me so much,” she said and her voice broke, so I dropped the subject and busied myself poking through the bags to see what she had gotten her kids.
10.
Oh, good, you came!” Maria said when she opened her front door to us the following morning.
“Noah’s so happy you invited him,” I said.
He hip-checked me angrily. “Don’t say that, Mom! It’s embarrassing.”
Maria laughed. “The kids are all out back. They’re just running around now, but we have a special guest coming soon who’s going to organize some sports.”
“Sounds great,” I lied. I gave Noah a little nudge. “Go on back, Noey.”
“You have to come with me.” He took my hand and dragged me toward the back of the house, past some moms who were sitting talking in the family room and who didn’t even bother to greet us.
It was going to be a long morning.
Maria’s backyard was incredible. There was a fenced-off pool, a large grassy area, an enormous play structure, and a small basketball court. It was total kid paradise.
A bunch of boys were already chasing each other around on the grass and some other mothers were standing around a table of food and drinks that was set up in the shade. They seemed comfortable together, talking and laughing and poking through the snacks. The boys all seemed pretty comfortable together too.
I wondered what it would be like to show up at a school party and know everyone, to feel like I fit in—like Noah fit in—to not always be pressing our noses up against the glass gawking at the insiders.
Noah was still clutching my arm as we halted uncertainly on the edge of the grassy area.
“Look, there’s Austin.” I pointed across the yard. “Why don’t you go say happy birthday?”
“Come with me.”
“I’m not coming with you. There are no mothers over there, just kids.”
“I want to stay with you.”
“Noah, it’s stupid to come to a birthday party and cling to me. The point is for you to hang out with your friends.”
He glanced at the boys out on the yard. “They’re not my friends.”
“Noah—”
“They’re not not my friends,” he said quic
kly. “They’re not the bad boys or anything. But I don’t—”
“Want me to ask Austin to come over?” I hadn’t heard Maria come up behind us. “Would that help, Noah?” she asked, bending down a little toward him. “If Austin came and got you?”
“No,” Noah said and I could feel the panic trembling in his body as he pushed it hard against mine. This was what fun little birthday parties did to him. “Don’t do that. I’m fine.”
“It’s okay,” I said to Maria. “He just needs to warm up.”
“Well, let me know if I can do anything to help.” She crossed over to the other women, who greeted her with quips and smiles.
I thought about how much I didn’t want to go over and talk to those mothers who knew and liked one another much more than they knew or liked me. It made me feel less impatient with Noah. He was in exactly the same place I was.
I hugged him against my side. “You and I can just hang out together for a little while,” I said. “You hungry?”
“A little. Is there anything here I can eat?”
I moved us closer to the table and pretended to be so busy scanning its contents and describing them to my son that I couldn’t possibly make eye contact with anyone standing around it. “There are grapes. And some chips. That’s about it.” There was tons of other food, of course—mini bagels, and pita bread, and crunchy Chinese noodle things—but Noah couldn’t eat any of that.
“I’m okay,” he said.
We stood there for a while, watching everyone else have fun. I checked my watch a few times and wondered at what point we could leave without seeming too rude. Maybe I could say I had a headache? Or that Noah did?
From far away inside the house a doorbell rang, and Maria ran inside.
A moment later she reappeared at the back door. “Look, everyone!” she called loudly, and the kids and mothers all turned. “It’s Coach Andrew! He’s here to play some games!”
Sure enough, there was Andrew Fulton, wearing sweatpants, a whistle, and, I realized—with a sense of pride that was totally out of proportion to what was inspiring it—the baseball cap we had given him. He was also carrying an enormous mesh bag of balls and had a bunch of plastic cones and rubber baseball plates under his arm.