Melanie looked slightly horrified but thanked her and climbed up. Once she was seated, her knees were at the same level as the others’ shoulders. She was too high to reach the food, so I offered the muffin plate up to her but she shook her head at it.
Too bad for her: my muffin—carrot? zucchini? apple? I wasn’t sure—was delicious, moist and warm.
Meanwhile, the conversation we’d interrupted was resumed. Carol Lynn said, “I hear all the sixth-grade girls have huge crushes on him.”
Tanya was punching away at her BlackBerry but she looked up briefly. “Is that true, Maria? Are the sixth-grade girls all in love with Coach Andrew?”
That caught my interest.
“Only the ones who’ve started puberty,” Maria said with a laugh. “But forget about them—I could name a dozen mothers who’ve invented reasons to go see him in his office. And not just the ones who are divorced, either.” She tossed her gorgeous mane of highlighted hair. “Which doesn’t leave any space for those of us who are.”
“What happened to that coach they had last year?” I asked. “The woman?”
“Coach Brianna? She got ‘married,’ ” Maria said, raising her fingers to make quotation marks, which confused me until Carol Lynn explained with a simple “Same-sex union.”
“Her wife moved up north,” Maria said. “So they lost Brianna. That’s why they pulled Andrew out of the computer lab—he was really hired to teach computers and manage the school network, you know, but then they needed someone to do PE and he took over there.”
“Maybe it won’t be permanent, then,” I said.
“God, I hope he stays,” Maria said. “My kids love him. Doesn’t yours?”
“No,” I said. “And neither do I.”
“Why not?” asked Carol Lynn.
I didn’t want to launch into the whole story. “I just don’t think he’s a good coach. Noah hates PE now.”
There was a short pause.
“Noah’s on the small side for his age, isn’t he?” Maria said then, meaningfully.
“Yeah, he’s a runt.”
She gave a little nod as if something had been explained but all she said was, “He’s cute.” She crossed her legs, which were sleek in a pair of dark-rinse jeans, and leaned back into the cushions, eyeing me. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but everyone in our class is dying to know your story. You know, because you look so young.”
“I’m not as young as I look.”
“Really?” She narrowed her eyes. “So how old are you?”
“Thirty-seven.”
Melanie said, “Don’t listen to her. She’s twenty-five.”
“And Noah’s, what, six?” Maria said. Doing the math in her head, counting back the way people did.
“Something like that.” I knew my son’s age, but this woman with her perfectly dyed and styled long blond hair and smoothly unmoving skin unsettled me, and that made me turn on my indifferent-mother act.
“So you had him pretty young.”
“Right,” I said. “He was just a baby.”
“Good choice. The older ones hurt more coming out.” Maria turned to Tanya. “Should we start? Are we still waiting for anyone?”
Tanya glanced at her watch. “Marley said she would try to come—”
“My son’s in the same grade as her daughter,” Melanie said. I winced.
“Did she happen to mention to you if she’s coming or not?” Tanya asked her, a bit too politely.
Mel flushed. “I don’t really know her that well.”
Tanya didn’t seem surprised. “I’ll try her cell, just in case she’s on her way.” She picked up her phone again.
I reached for another muffin and looked up to discover they were all watching me. Maria said, “Oh, god, girls, remember when we were in our twenties and could eat like that without gaining a pound?”
“Your metabolism just stops when you turn forty,” Carol Lynn said. She raked her fingers through her two-toned hair. “Nothing will budge that extra inch around my waist. It showed up the week I turned forty and I’ll never lose it. I do an hour of Pilates every day and play tennis or run four times a week—and it’s still there.” What was she talking about? What extra inch? The woman was one narrow slab of hard muscle.
Tanya lowered her phone, and Melanie said, “Did you reach her?”
“I got her assistant. Marley won’t be able to make it but she’s really sorry and said we should sign her up to donate whatever we need to the event.” She dropped the BlackBerry on the coffee table and pulled a notebook off of the stack in front of her. “Let’s get down to business.”
The Autumn Festival was an annual Fenwick School event, a purely celebratory family party with bounce houses, cotton candy, sno-cone and popcorn machines, and carnival-type games. Later in the year there would be a serious fund-raiser, but the goal of this one wasn’t to make money, just to have fun and make the kids feel enthusiastic about being back at school. Costs were covered by the Parent Association, which made me wonder how much my parents donated in addition to paying Noah’s hefty tuition, but it wasn’t the kind of thing I thought about for long.
The Event Hospitality Committee, I learned, was responsible for supplying lunch that day (hot dogs, hamburgers, and chips) and drinks (soda and water) and for serving them. By the time the meeting ended about an hour later, various exciting topics, like whether or not we should have tofu hot dogs and whether Heinz really was the best ketchup, had been debated and hastily resolved, since time was running short: the festival was only two weeks away.
As we got up to leave, Linda begged us all to take some food home. The pastries had hardly been touched. I would have been more than happy to score some of those carrot muffins, but Melanie cut me off with a shake of her head and a “Thanks, but we better not.”
“Why couldn’t we take any food?” I asked her when we’d left.
“I didn’t want them to think we were pigs.”
“You should have told me that before I ate three muffins in front of everyone.”
We got in the car and she said, “So what did you think? That was kind of fun, wasn’t it?”
“Well, it was better than taking Noah to have his blood tested… but not by much.”
“Really? I thought they were nice.”
“They were scary,” I said. “So blond and blow-dried and Botoxy—”
“Linda wasn’t blond.” She carefully aimed the car out onto the road. Melanie was a painfully cautious driver. “Don’t be so judgmental. Maria has a kid in your class. How lucky is that? Now you’ll have someone to say hi to and sit with at class parties and stuff.”
“Oh, yeah!” I said. “I can already tell that we’re going to be BFFs!”
“Didn’t you think she was beautiful? Maria?”
I rolled my eyes. “Who even knows what she really looks like? She’s had so much work done.”
“I think she looks great.”
“You’re prettier,” I said. “By far.”
“No, I’m not. Did you see how thin they all were?”
“For god’s sake, Mel, don’t admire them for that.”
“I wish I could lose five pounds,” she said, glancing down at her stomach, which barely curved above her seat belt. “Just five pounds. That’s all.”
I let out a strangled moan. “Stop. Thinness isn’t a goal. Or a virtue. Or a sign of beauty. It’s just thinness.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re thin.”
“Not as thin as those women,” I said. “But you don’t hear me complaining about it.”
“It’s the kids’ fault. I had a flat stomach before I had them.”
“Yeah. They really weren’t worth it, were they?”
“Shut up,” she said, but at least it got her off the subject.
5.
My mother had been dragging me to the Autumn Festival every year for as long as I could remember. The only time I missed it was the fall of my freshman year of college. But since I got pregna
nt later that year and moved back home that summer, I was around for the next festival—only that time I had an infant Noah with me.
I didn’t want to go that year, but Mom insisted.
Her smile was a little brittle that day, but she held her head high. My teenage pregnancy gave her something to be strong about, and she liked to be strong. As soon as we arrived, she snatched Noah out of my arms and carried him around the entire field, introducing him to all her fellow board members and declaring over and over again that the whole family was deliriously happy to have him in our lives. While she showed him off like Baby Simba, I found a place to sit in the shade and thought about how I was right back where I’d started, living in my parents’ house and going to the Autumn Festival because my mother wanted me to—the things I thought I’d left behind forever when I went off to college. And I had only myself to blame.
It helped when she brought Noah back to me to nurse. Holding him helped it all make a little more sense, or at least made making sense irrelevant.
The festival was always held on the high school PE field—not the football field or the baseball diamond, of course, because those were sacred to their sports. Fenwick was huge, three schools (primary, middle, and high) spread out on one campus, having patiently and gradually bought up any available neighboring land over the previous few decades. It was an institution on the Westside of LA, beloved by the several generations of residents who’d gone there and hated by everyone who lived nearby who couldn’t afford its outrageous tuition or whose kids had been rejected, but who still had to deal with the insane amount of traffic it generated during pickup and drop-off.
Disgruntled neighbors weren’t invited to the Autumn Festival: it was only for members of the school community. In addition to the bounce houses, mountain climbing wall, and petting zoo, there were several carnival-type games, usually manned by faculty members. I still remembered my childhood thrill at seeing the usually conservatively dressed faculty in jeans and T-shirts. Except for Louis Wilson, who of course always still wore a jacket and tie, merely switching his usual formal wool for some light, linen-y fabric, which in his universe probably counted as wildly casual, verging on indecent.
The morning of this year’s festival, Mom and Noah and I were all ready to leave the house at 10:30, but when Mom called to Dad to come join us, he came downstairs still in his pajamas.
“You’re not ready?” Mom said.
He looked blank. “For what?”
“The Autumn Festival! I’ve told you five times already.” She sounded exactly like I did when I was exasperated with Noah.
“Oh, is that today? I forgot.” My father sighed. “I was looking forward to a quiet morning. I have that article to write…”
My mother said wearily, “You want to stay home?”
His face lit up. “Do you mind?”
“I don’t suppose you’d let me skip it?” I said.
She didn’t even bother answering, just gave me a gentle push in the direction of the garage. And the truth was that now that Noah was a student at Fenwick he got totally excited about going to the festival, so I had to go for his sake, anyway.
As we started to get into Mom’s car, I asked her if I could drive.
She warily handed me the keys and got into the passenger seat.
There wasn’t a lot of traffic on Sunset because it was Sunday morning.
“You’re going a little fast,” my mother said about a mile into the drive.
I accelerated.
“Seriously, Rickie,” my mother said. “Slow down.”
I darted into the left lane to pass a car.
“Slow down,” Mom said sharply. “It’s not funny.”
I nodded and sped up a little bit more, whipping through an intersection before passing another car by moving to the right.
I stole a glance at my mother. Her face was taut with anger but this time she kept her lips tightly pressed together and remained silent.
The light ahead was turning yellow. I slowed to a stop at the intersection and when it turned green again I went through at a reasonable speed, which I maintained all the way to the school. My mother didn’t say anything for the rest of the drive, but when we had parked and were getting Noah out of the backseat, she held her hand out to me.
“Give me the keys,” she said. I handed them to her. She threw them into her purse and walked away from me.
Once we reached the field, she transformed back into her usual outgoing self, hailing and kissing tons of people and gaily introducing Noah to anyone who might, by some crazy chance, not be aware that her grandson now attended the school where she’d been on the board for well over a decade.
Noah barely acknowledged the people he was introduced to, sometimes nodding briefly, sometimes just staring off into space, occasionally picking his nose before I could stop him. I didn’t enjoy the social stuff any more than he did, although I like to think I smiled a little more and picked my nose a lot less. When I felt we had paid our dues, I told Mom we were going to go check out the fun stuff and let Noah pull me across the grass toward the carnival games.
“Oh, hey, Rickie!”
I turned. It was Maria Dellaventura, wearing a lacy tank top and skinny jeans with high spike heels, and flanked by two boys the same age as Noah.
I could tell they were the same age because they were a head taller than him.
Plus I recognized them from his class: one was her son, the other his good friend.
“Hi, Noah,” she said, smiling down at him. “Austin and Oliver are going to go try the Velcro wall. You want to join them?”
“No,” he said, staring shyly down at the grass. Good thing, too—if he hadn’t, he might have seen the two boys rolling their eyes at each other. Unfortunately, I saw it. I felt my whole body tighten up.
“You sure?” Maria said brightly, as if the boys were the three best friends in the world. “I hear it’s really fun.”
Noah just shook his head and clutched my hand tightly.
“You guys go on ahead,” she said to the two similarly blond, tall, and stocky kids. “I’ll find you later.” They raced off. She turned back to me. “When are you doing your food shift?”
I looked at my watch. “Half an hour.”
“I’m doing the desserts booth later.” She put a hand on her concave stomach. “I’m dreading it—being around all that sweet stuff kills me. I can’t resist it.”
I was tempted to roll my eyes and say “Oh, please!” but I refrained.
She turned to Noah. “Are you going to help your mom when she’s working?”
“I don’t know,” he said and pushed his body against my side. He often did that when he felt uneasy, like he needed to anchor himself against me.
“Austin never helps me,” she said, “but Eloise likes to get back there and hand the food out. I don’t know where she is right now—she went running off with a group of girls. Probably to giggle about the boys. It starts early,” she added in a low voice to me.
“Oh,” I said intelligently.
A short pause. “Well, I guess I should go talk to people.” She sighed. “It always feels like work, you know?”
“Yeah.” God, I was a brilliant conversationalist.
“Plus,” she said, “I wore these stupid shoes. I don’t know what I was thinking, spike heels on grass? But I was rushing and trying to get the kids ready and”—she raised her foot and looked ruefully down at it—“I’ve destroyed them. And I sink like two inches every time I take a step.” She put her foot back down and glanced at my cruddy old Vans. “You were much smarter.”
“I guess. It’s hot, though.” I was wearing a long-sleeved black top and the sun was crazy bright. “I should have worn something lighter.”
“It was cold this morning,” she said sympathetically. “Hard to know how to dress.” She turned to Noah. “Listen, if you change your mind, sweetie, feel free to join Austin and Oliver. I’m sure they’d like another pal with them.”
I didn’
t get why she kept pushing it. Austin and Oliver clearly didn’t want to play with Noah, and he clearly didn’t want to play with them. But I guess she meant well. “Thanks,” I said. “We’ll see you later.”
“Bye, Rickie,” she said and moved past us, weaving unevenly as her heels got sucked into the muddy grass.
All around us kids were running and playing together, the girls grabbing each other and giggling as they moved around in small groups, the boys shoving each other and shouting. But Noah stayed close to my side, holding my hand even though he was getting a little old to do that in public. I thought about making him let go, but when I looked down and saw how closed and nervous his face looked, I squeezed his hand tightly instead. He had been so excited about coming—the reality couldn’t possibly be living up to his expectations.
Reality never lived up to Noah’s expectations.
“Look!” he said with sudden energy, pointing to the dunk tank, the carnival-type game where, if you throw a ball hard enough against the target, whoever’s sitting out on the platform gets dropped into a vat of water. “Isn’t that Coach Andrew?”
I squinted up at the figure sitting on the plastic seat about five feet off the ground. “Looks like him.”
“It would be really funny to see him get dunked.”
“I agree,” I said. “Let’s go watch. Hey, maybe we could even dunk him ourselves.”
“That’d be awesome!” He raced ahead and got in line behind a bunch of relatively tall girls who were giggling and whispering to each other.
Coach Andrew sat squarely on the little bench, wearing a baseball cap, sunglasses, a UCLA T-shirt, and a pair of cargo shorts. His bare calves showed, tanned and muscular, above equally bare feet. He was calling down to the tween girl in a miniskirt and tank top who was about to throw a ball. “Come on, Angelica! You can do it. I know you’ve got a good arm—I’ve seen it in action!”
Angelica blushed and threw and missed the target by a foot.
The other girls burst out laughing, more in delight than derision. Each of them tried in turn. They all failed to hit the target but lingered nearby, whispering and eyeing Andrew’s bare legs with prepubescent delight.