Better With You Here (9781609417819) Page 8

  “It’s funny,” she says. “I totally understand what you’re saying about our apartment, and wanting something better. But for me, for right now…Living there is kind of an adventure, isn’t it?”

  “You know, I never thought about it that way.” I raise my glass again. “To adventures.” She laughs and repeats the toast.

  We like the pad thai and the yam neua, which turns out to be salad topped with spicy meat, but not the other dishes, so Haley has the waiter take them away. As she picks the peanuts out of her noodles and I devour the last of the salad, Haley tells me about her plans. “I don’t need to work, but I want to. You know? I don’t want to be dependent on Dave for the rest of my life.”

  I nod. I know exactly what she means.

  “But I feel like, the whole time I lived with him, it crippled me, in a way. Do you know what I mean? While I was there with Dave, being his wife and taking care of our house and our child, everyone else was out learning to do new things and…how to take care of themselves. And there I was, learning nothing but how Dave wanted the housekeeper to shine his shoes.”

  “Right.” Of course, I never had a housekeeper, and Mike never wore shoes that needed shining. But I totally relate to the feeling of stagnation she’s describing. I was lucky I decided to work part-time, near the end of our marriage, and that Mike didn’t put up too much of a fight over it. Otherwise I’d probably still be looking for full-time work now. And I definitely wouldn’t have learned the few computer skills I have.

  “What kind of job are you looking for?” I ask.

  “I don’t know yet. There’s not much I’m qualified to do.” She sighs. “If I could get paid to volunteer at fund-raisers, I could probably manage that.” She smiles wanly at me, and I smile back, as if I have some idea of what volunteers do at fund-raisers. “But I’ll find something,” she continues. “It doesn’t really matter what it is. I’m sure I can learn to do any basic job. I’m not totally incompetent.”

  “Of course not,” I say. I can totally picture her as a secretary or some kind of analyst. She said she went to college in El Paso for a couple of years, so I say, “You could always go back to school, too.”

  “That’s right.” Her face brightens. “I could.”

  “To possibilities,” I say, raising my second Thai Tiger.

  Haley lifts her second candy-colored cocktail and says, “To endless possibilities.”

  After dinner, on the way back to the car, we pass a gallery that was closed when we first drove by but is now apparently open. Its doors are swung wide to the evening’s random October balminess and webbed with Christmas lights.

  “They’re having an opening!” Haley says. “Should we check it out?”

  I’ve never been to a gallery opening before, but I don’t say no. I follow Haley through the door and accept the folded piece of paper handed to me by a bearded man who points us to a table covered in glasses of red and white wine. I take red and Haley takes white, and we move into an unoccupied space in front of a painting on the wall. Except it’s not a painting. It’s a rusted metal box, open to a scene of puppets or dolls in a jumble of wires and gears.

  “Hmm,” says Haley.

  “Interesting,” I say.

  The next piece is another jumble of wires and household items, this time with half a dirty baby doll poking out of the middle.

  “Reminds me of giving birth to Alex,” I whisper.

  Haley giggles, and we move to the next piece. They’re all similar, and none of them are attractive in the least. But it’s fun to look at them. We are, as Haley said, having an adventure. I feel like I’m at a costume party. Because here, right now, no one knows that I’m Alex and Lucia’s mom. Or Mike’s ex-wife. I could be anyone: a woman who’s happily married, a woman who never married, a woman who used to be a man. I can be, simply, Natasha.

  Alex

  Come on, Alex!” my dad says. “Your sister’s doing better than you, and she’s a girl!”

  “Mike, that’s not nice,” says Missy.

  I hate when we go to Missy’s house and dad makes us play outside with him and Missy and Shepherd. They always want to play catch, and I hate playing catch. I’m good at the Super Bullet Balls video game, but I can’t throw real footballs good, and Dad always wants me to throw real footballs. When I try to catch them, they burn my hands.

  Missy always has a little blue football that she throws with Shepherd and Lucia. That one’s soft and squishy, not hard and scrapey like the brown football Dad uses.

  We’re in Missy’s backyard. Shepherd started hitting Lucia with the blue football, so he lost his privileges, and now all three of them are sitting on the swing set watching Dad throw the ball at me. I miss, and it rolls all the way to the fence. Lucia runs and picks it up and throws it back at my dad. It hits the ground, but my dad says, “Good hustle, Lucy!”

  My dad throws the ball at me again, and this time I do catch it, but it burns my fingers, like always, so I drop it. I pick it up real quick and get ready to throw it back to him, lining up my pinkie on the fourth thing like he showed me. But he’s not there anymore. He walked over to Missy and started talking to her. I hear him say, “…never takes them outside, even.” I know he’s talking about Mom, because he always says that about her—that she doesn’t take us outside enough and that’s why I’m not good at sports.

  Missy doesn’t say anything, but she looks at me and smiles.

  Shepherd runs up and grabs my dad’s leg. Dad picks him up and swings him and says, “Hey, tiger!” I hate Shepherd. He’s a brat.

  Lucia goes, “Alex! Alex! Over here!”

  She wants me to throw the football to her. I throw it far away so she has to run.

  Missy made cupcakes again. But this time I can’t have one, because I didn’t finish my brussels sprouts. I’m not going to eat them, because they look like they have worms inside. There’s a picture in my textbook that shows a caterpillar coming out of a ball of leaves that looks just like a brussels sprout. I guess the ones Dad and Missy and Lucia are eating don’t have bugs in them, because they’re not saying anything, but what if there’re only worms in a few of them and I get one of the ones with a worm?

  After the cupcakes Missy takes Shepherd and Lucia to the living room to watch America’s Funniest Home Videos, and Dad says for me to come with him to the garage.

  We go outside. There’s a bunch of little bugs flying around the garage light. Some of them touch Dad’s hair when he opens the door.

  I wait for him to turn on the lights inside the garage before I follow him in there. The garage is really dark at night, even darker than the room we sleep in when we spend the night here.

  Dad gets the air pump and starts pumping up the basketball that got popped last time we were here. He asks if I want to help, so I push the pump a few times. It’s really hard and hurts my hand, but I keep doing it.

  “Alex,” my dad says, “how’s it been going at your mother’s?”

  “Good,” I say.

  “That’s good,” he says.

  We work on the ball some more, until it’s almost all the way full. Then Dad puts it down and looks in the corner at some tools, like he’s trying to decide about what to work on next. He says, “I’ve been thinking.”

  I wait to see if he’s going to tell me what he’s been thinking about or if he’s just talking to himself, like he always used to do in the garage at our old house.

  He says, “I’ve been missing you a lot. And I’ve been thinking…How would you like to live with me?”

  I don’t know what he means. Does he mean all the time and then visiting Mom on some Saturdays and Sundays, like the opposite of what we do now? And does he mean with Lucia or by myself?

  Maybe Mom told him what I said about the cupcakes, the other day when I said I wanted to live with Dad and Missy. Would she do that? She hates to talk to my dad on the phone, and they usually just talk about what time they’re going to pick us up, or else they argue. But maybe she got mad after I sai
d that and told Dad that I want to go live with him.

  I shouldn’t have even said that, because they’re only going to give me cupcakes if I eat vegetables first, and Missy cooks freaky vegetables sometimes. Mom knows which vegetables I like.

  Dad says, “You don’t have to tell me now, but I’d like you to think about it, okay?”

  I nod my head so he knows that I’m paying attention. He doesn’t like it when I don’t pay attention. Some of the same bugs from outside came inside with us, and now they’re flying around the light that hangs down from the ceiling. The light makes a buzzing noise, and I wonder if that’s why the bugs like it, because it sounds like them.

  My dad walks around and messes with the tools that are hanging on the tool thing. He says, “What with everything that’s been going on with you lately…”

  And that’s all. He doesn’t say anything after that. I guess he means when I peed my pants.

  Either that or he’s talking about me and Lucia sleeping in bunk beds at Mom’s, with the night-light on. He always tells Mom stuff about having a boy and a girl in the same room, and about me being too big to be afraid of the dark. We’re not allowed to have a night-light in our room here.

  Dad gets up and rubs his hand in my hair, the same way he always does with Shepherd. Then he walks to the door, and I have to hurry to catch up with him if I don’t want to get left in the dark.

  Natasha

  The unseasonable warmth has lasted all weekend, which is good, since I have to stand outside waiting for Mike to get here, and, like always, he arrives ten minutes later than he said he would.

  He opens one of the back doors of his car, and both kids scoot out of it. Lucia immediately launches into a story about a squirrel she saw through the window during the ride. I listen and express the appropriate amount of shock and awe at the fact that the squirrel had a white stripe on his back. Meanwhile Mike opens the trunk and pulls out the kids’ backpacks. He doesn’t listen to Lucia’s story at all. I wonder if he’s relieved to be giving them back to me, these noisy kids whose stories he never hears.

  I hold in the words I want to say, the criticisms I’d like to make. Hold my tongue until he’s gone and Lucia’s waving good-bye at his taillights. Then I turn to the kids. “Well, let’s get upstairs and get cracking on that homework.” Alex makes a face, so I add, “And let’s talk about Halloween, too. It’s coming up, and we need to figure out what you guys are going to be.”

  This is how we spend every first and third Sunday evening—hurrying to make sure Alex’s homework is done, because Mike never even thinks about it. As the kids trudge up the hall behind me, I remember Alex’s words from the other day, about wanting to live with his dad.

  Of course he wants that sometimes. Who wouldn’t want to live in a land of no obligations, where homework doesn’t exist and cupcakes are plentiful and free?

  Alex says, “I finished all my homework already. Dad showed me a shortcut for the multiplication.”

  “He did?” I couldn’t be more surprised if Alex had told me his dad grew wings and flew away.

  “Yeah. Can we play outside?” That’s another first. Alex never wants to play outside now that the pool is closed.

  “What do you want to play?” I ask him. There isn’t much room in the apartment’s courtyard. But I could sit in the barbecue area and watch them play tag or hide-and-seek, I guess.

  He hikes his backpack higher on his shoulder. “I don’t know. Do we have a football?” Behind him Lucia echoes, “Yeah! Football!”

  “Where’s Mr. Beary?” I ask her as I unlock our door and mentally search our apartment for a football, or any kind of ball.

  “In my backpack.”

  Once we’re all inside, I tell Alex, “I don’t think we have a football, baby. We’ll have to get one this weekend. Do you still want to—”

  There’s a knock at the door, which I’ve already closed and locked. I peek through the peephole. It’s Sara. With all three of her kids. I open the door and say, “Hey.”

  “Hey,” she says. “I came by to see if y’all want to go to the park. I have to take these brats out and let them run around before they drive me crazy.”

  I see what she means. Junior and Monique are chasing each other in a circle behind their mother. Angelica, however, is as still and quiet as always. “Umm,” I say. It is a convenient coincidence that she came by with that suggestion just now, and the weather’s nice, but…“I don’t know. You mean the park across the street, right? Is it safe over there?”

  Sara scoffs, as if it’s a silly question. “Yeah. It’s totally safe.”

  “Okay. Hold on. Let me just…Y’all come in.” They all crowd into the doorway and remain near it—Sara doesn’t let the kids sit down, citing their dirty feet—and I run to my bedroom to throw on tennis shoes. And…I’ll leave my purse here, just in case. Keys in my pocket. And my phone, just in case. What else? Sunscreen for the kids? No, it’ll be dark in an hour.

  Back in the living room, an idea strikes me. “Hey, should we invite Haley and Jared?” I’m asking because yesterday, when I was finishing up the laundry I never did on Friday night, I ran into Geronima, who apparently heard that Haley and I had dinner together. She went on and on about how nice it was that Haley and I were becoming friends, because Haley was having such a rough time on her own and needed to make friends, et cetera, et cetera. I’m sure she was exaggerating a little, just being a busybody in the way older women like to be, but it stuck in my head. Imagining Haley in her apartment right now, probably just sitting there with Jared, makes me wonder aloud if we should invite her along.

  Sara doesn’t seem to think it’s such a good idea, though. She doesn’t say anything at first.

  I say, “Unless you don’t want to. We don’t have to.”

  She says, “No, go ahead. Invite her.”

  I pull my phone from my pocket and make the call. Haley says yes, thanks, so we all go into the hall and wait for them to come down.

  The thing that makes me nervous about this park, I admit, is the basketball courts. They’re always filled with teenage boys, and teenage boys sometimes make me nervous. Especially big groups of them in less affluent neighborhoods. There, I’ve said it. I’m a horrible person.

  I wonder if Haley feels the same way. I see her glancing at the court as we settle ourselves on the benches near the playground. There’s a group of five or six boys playing there now, wearing undershirts and baggy shorts. They yell at each other in English and Spanish. “No way, man! Hey, mamón!”

  “I hope we aren’t stepping on anybody’s turf,” I say. It’s a lame joke, I know.

  Sara says, “What, you mean those guys? No, they’re cool. That one in the red is my mom’s cousin’s boy. They won’t mess with us.” As if on cue, the boy in red turns and, seeing us there, waves. Sara waves back. “They won’t let anybody else mess with us either.”

  It’s settled, then. We have the whole playground to ourselves, plus our own personal bodyguards. I sit back on the bench and relax as Alex and Lucia run to join Sara’s kids at the swings.

  “Okay, Jared, remember to be careful,” Haley’s saying. She’s produced a spray bottle from the tote bag at her side and is spraying her hands with it, then wiping them on Jared’s tiny, pale arms.

  “What’s that?” Sara asks.

  “Mosquito spray,” says Haley. “Do you want some?”

  Sara shakes her head, looking bemused. Haley finishes her son’s rubdown, then reties the laces on each of his shoes. “I wish I’d brought your hat,” she says to him. “Okay, you’re set. Stay where I can see you, though. Stay right here on this thing. But don’t go up the slide.” Obviously reluctant, she lets him go, and I can’t help but think, No adventuring for Jared.

  “How old is he?” Sara asks.

  “Three,” says Haley.

  “Really? I thought he was older than that. Baby Junior’s three, and Jared’s way bigger than him.”

  Haley gives a little frown. “He’ll b
e four next month.” She sounds like this fact makes her sad, or maybe like she can’t believe it.

  “How come you don’t have him in pre-K?” Sara asks.

  Haley frowns harder. “I think he’s still too young. And…I haven’t decided what school he’s attending yet.”

  Sara looks at me and raises her eyebrows.

  I should’ve realized that Sara and Haley might not immediately become friends. But I didn’t expect the conversation between them to be this awkward either. I try to change the subject to something they’ll have in common. “So did y’all have a good weekend, with your kids at their dads’?”

  Sara snorts at this. “My kids never go to their dad’s.”

  “Really?” I say.

  “Nope.” She turns and yells an order at Angelica to keep her brother away from the mud. Then she says, “Once in a while, Monique and Baby Junior’s dad will come get them and take them to the flea market, or to his nephews’ birthdays or something. Angelica’s dad, I haven’t seen since before she was born.”

  Great. I found an even more awkward subject to introduce.

  Haley stops monitoring Jared’s every move for a moment, turning to ask Sara, “Well, why don’t you take them to court? At least take Monique and Baby Junior’s father, and make him have regularly scheduled visitations?”

  Sara lets out a short, bitter laugh. “Why? So I can have him in my face all the time, telling me what to do? I like it this way. He minds his own business, I mind my own business, everything’s fine.”

  I suspect she’s being a little more cavalier than she really feels. But she makes an interesting point. How would I feel if Mike stopped taking his weekends with Alex and Lucia? No more parking-lot handoffs. No more stressful phone calls. I’d never have to speak to him again. I’d have more time to do fun things with the kids, instead of just homework and errands.

  And it’d be nice if I could afford to turn down Mike’s child support, instead of haggling for it in the courts. You have to admire Sara, at least a little, for being so independent. She obviously makes less money than I do and has more kids, but she’s getting the job done, with no complaints.