Better With You Here (9781609417819) Read online

  Except I want more out of life than what Sara has. I don’t want to struggle so hard or to live in these apartments forever. Maybe if I hurry up and get my certification…

  Even if I didn’t need Mike’s money, there’d be no way to avoid dealing with him. I could never get out of the visitations, because the kids would miss him.

  I wonder how Angelica feels about her father disappearing. Does she even understand it?

  Jared is trying to climb onto the bottom of the little yellow slide. His coordination isn’t the greatest, and he ends up falling on the ground. A long, slow wail emerges from his mouth, like a train whistle. But there are no tears in his eyes. He hasn’t yet decided whether the fall’s worth crying over.

  “Jared!” gasps Haley. She jumps up to get him, but my daughter’s first on the scene. Lucia runs right up to Jared and hauls him to his feet. “Come here, baby. Did you hurt yourself? No, you’re okay. You’re okay.” Lucia gives him a hug and presses her cheek to the top of Jared’s little blond head. He looks astounded, but then he turns to face Lucia and opens his arms. She grabs him, lifts him off the ground, and sets him on the edge of the slide. I can’t help but laugh. Sara and Haley laugh, too.

  “Like mother, like daughter,” Haley says.

  Funny. Is that how I look? Is Lucia mimicking me? I feel a mixture of bashfulness and pride swell in my chest. Lucia stands next to the slide and tries to engage Jared in a game of patty-cake. After a few minutes, Monique abandons her swing and runs over to join the game, leaving Alex and Angelica to push Baby Junior back and forth between them.

  I feel like someone’s missing. Oh. “Should we have picked up Tiffany from Geronima’s apartment?” I ask the others.

  Sara shakes her head. “Gero wouldn’t let you. She doesn’t let that girl out of her sight.”

  “Really?”

  Haley nods. “A couple of weeks ago, I went over and asked if Tiffany could come to Earth Foods with us. I thought she’d enjoy seeing all the different organic pumpkins they have. But Geronima wouldn’t let her go. She says she worries too much when Tiffany’s gone.”

  So our Geronima’s a control freak. She’ll watch everyone else’s kids but won’t let anyone watch hers. I can relate to that, actually. I’m still surprised that I let her watch my kids without having a panic attack over it.

  It’s near seven now and getting dark, but none of us makes a move to leave. The park’s well lit, and there don’t seem to be any mosquitoes here, despite Haley’s fears. Our kids are winding down, rocking slowly on the swings or digging idly in the gravel with twigs. But our bodyguards have endless energy and keep jumping, shooting, free-throwing away. Sara’s just told us something very interesting, and no one wants to stop the conversation at this point.

  “Wait, wait,” says Haley. “You’re going to work now? After we leave the park?”

  “Mm-hmm,” says Sara. “That’s why I wanted to bring my brats here and get them good and worn out—so they’ll go to sleep as soon as they get to Geronima’s and stay asleep till I get home.”

  “What time do you get home?” Haley asks.

  “Two-thirty, usually. I’m scheduled to work nine to two tonight,” Sara says.

  “Is it one of those twenty-four-hour restaurants?” Haley asks.

  “Not exactly,” says Sara. There’s a pregnant pause, during which it becomes evident that Haley and I are waiting for her to tell more. “I’m a cocktail waitress,” she says. Then, mumbling, “At my cousin’s strip club.”

  “What?” Haley gasps. “Wha-a-a-at,” is what she actually says, in a long, breathy whisper. You’d think Sara had just said she was a secret agent. Haley sounds more intrigued than put off.

  I’m curious, too. I don’t want to be nosy, but I’ll listen if Sara wants to tell us more.

  “You work at a men’s club?” Haley has scooted to the edge of her bench and is leaning as far forward as possible with her eyes open wide in big blue circles.

  Sara studies Haley’s reaction for a while, then laughs. “It’s not like you’re thinking—not some super-sexy place. It’s just a junky little club by the airport.”

  “Do you dance?” Haley asks. She’s like a child, being so curious. No mental filter that keeps her from blurting out personal questions. But that is a good one. Is Sara a waitress or a dancer? I like her, and I don’t want to judge her, but I don’t want my kids hanging around with a stripper either.

  “No. Hell no,” says Sara. “I don’t dance. I just serve drinks. I wouldn’t take my clothes off for those losers if they paid me a million dollars.”

  Well, that’s a relief. I guess.

  Haley sighs, though, as if the answer disappoints her. “Well, if it’s your cousin’s club, do you have any say in who gets picked to dance there? I mean, are there auditions? Do you get to watch them?”

  Sara raises an eyebrow at her. “Why do you ask? You looking for a job?”

  I can tell by Sara’s tone that she’s teasing, but Haley blushes red, all over her cheeks. “No. I’m just…I’ve never met anyone who’s been to a men’s club.”

  “Really?” I say. “Your ex never went?”

  Haley considers the question, then blushes again. “If he did, he never told me.” She looks like a little girl, with her red face and her eyes standing out so blue. “Did yours ever go?”

  “Once in a while,” I say. “For bachelor parties.”

  “And he told you about them afterward?”

  “Sometimes,” I say. “The first few times, yes. Then I quit asking.”

  Sara leans back on our bench. “I don’t get to pick the dancers. My cousin owns the place, but that doesn’t mean I run anything. I just do my shifts and go home.”

  “Does he pay you well?” Haley says.

  “No. But I get decent tips. Not as much as I want, but it’s more than I could make at any other job. I do pretty good, considering how I didn’t finish school.” She turns and grins at Haley then. Changes the subject. “I’d invite you to come see it, but you’d have to sit in my section and order a lot of drinks.”

  “They let women go there?” Haley asks.

  “Of course. Women go in all the time.”

  “Really?” Haley says.

  “Well, not all the time. But they do go. Once in a while. Mostly with their boyfriends.”

  Haley’s back to her rapid-fire questioning. She can’t resist. “What do the women customers do? Just watch? Or do they get up and dance, too?”

  Sara laughs. “No, they don’t get up and dance. But they will pay for lap dances sometimes, when their boyfriends want them to.”

  “What do the dancers wear?”

  Sara shrugs. “Just whatever. Mostly dresses. The stretchy kind, so they can take them off easy.”

  “What do they wear underneath, though?”

  “Underwear,” says Sara, matter-of-factly. I see that she’s teasing Haley more, enjoying withholding the information. She’s like a teenager torturing her younger sister. After a moment she relents and expounds, “They have to wear G-strings. Sometimes they’ll have on a colored bra, and sometimes no bra.”

  “I can’t even imagine,” Haley breathes.

  “Sure you can,” says Sara. “Just think of a bunch of skanky hos wiggling like worms so they can get a few dollars for drugs. Then imagine a bunch of dumb-asses watching them and touching themselves under the table.” As if to punctuate Sara’s words, one of the boys on the basketball court yells “Whoo!”

  Haley grimaces. “Really? They touch themselves while they watch?”

  Sara laughs. “No, not really. They probably want to, but they just sit there, mostly. Most of them just sit and watch. Some walk up to the stage and tip dollars to the girls. Then there’ll be a few paying for lap dances. They stay pretty quiet, unless there’s a bachelor party. Or unless they’re drunken idiots.”

  “Are there a lot of drunks?” Haley asks.

  “Not a lot,” says Sara. “There’s a two-drink minimum, and the cheap-ass
es just drink the minimum, as slow as they can. Some try to show off by buying a bunch of drinks and tipping big. Usually those types can hold their liquor. But once in a while we will get a drunk. Like, there’s this one guy who comes in after work, sits down, and gets totally trashed on the cheapest beer. Once he’s drunk, he starts with the lap dances. He’ll pick out a girl and, while she’s grinding on him, tell her she reminds him of his ex-wife, except that she seems nice and his ex-wife is a bitch.”

  My nose wrinkles in disgust. “I wonder what his ex-wife would say if she could see that.”

  “Here’s the funny thing, though: He picks a different dancer every time. Blond, brunette, short, tall, big boobs, little boobs. He’s bought lap dances from every chick there. One of the girls, Lisa, told me he took a dancer home one night. You know, one of the dancers who turns tricks on the side. A hooker.” Haley gasps at this, but Sara keeps going. “The hooker chick told Lisa that this guy paid her up front, but then, once they got in bed together, he started talking about his ex-wife again. And then he started crying. So she had to get up and leave him there. And we didn’t see him at the club anymore after that.”

  “Did she keep the money?” Haley asks.

  “Of course. She was a total skank,” says Sara. She smirks at the memory, then adds, “But Lisa, the one who told me the story, wasn’t a hooker or a drug addict. She was actually cool. A mom, like me.”

  I hear Lucia tell Jared, “Go to sleep. Have sweet dreams.” Jared and Baby Junior are lying in the pebbles, mothered by Lucia and Monique. Monique says, “Hurry up and go to sleep. Mama’s tired.”

  That seems like a pretty clear cue for us to gather our kids and go home. Well, except for Sara, who has to go to work now.

  “Tell Geronima I said hi,” I say to her as we stand at the crosswalk waiting for the light to change.

  “All right,” she says. She’s not smiling anymore. Now that Haley’s back is turned, Sara’s lost the mischievous twinkle, the above-it-all swagger, and looks tired. Resigned.

  She was putting on an act, for Haley’s entertainment. Or for herself. Acting like her job is amusing, something she does for kicks, and not an unpleasant obligation for which she has to leave her kids at night.

  I don’t know if I could do what Sara does. Thank God I don’t have to find out.

  Alex

  Yesterday was raining, but today it’s not, and Mom says we can go to the park again. I already finished my homework. I asked her if Angelica and them are going, and she said yes. I’m putting my comics in my backpack to take with me. I’m taking my Venoms and some of the X-Mens, too. She might like those better, because they have more girls. Girls don’t like it when movies and TV shows only have boys in them. That’s why Mom and Dad used to fight when we went to the movies. That, and Dad didn’t want Mom to put butter on her popcorn.

  If I get married when I grow up, I won’t care if my wife puts butter on her popcorn. It tastes better like that. But I’ll probably get candy instead. Also, I probably won’t get married. Mom said it’s not easy to stay married, and that’s why people get divorced sometimes. I just want to be by myself so I can do what I want and not have to argue about it with my wife.

  I hope Angelica likes the Venoms, even though they don’t have a lot of girls.

  Mom says it’s good for me and Lucia to get exercise, but we only go to the park if the other moms say they can go, too. They like to sit on the benches and talk a lot. That’s what they’re doing right now.

  Lucia and them are playing a stupid game. They’re pretending the jungle gym is a house and they’re grown-ups and Baby Junior’s their baby. Lucia said Jared was the daddy, so she’s the mommy and they’re married. Then Monique said Jared would be her boyfriend. They don’t know anything. They’re pretending they’re cooking dinner. Jared’s only allowed to eat the fruit his mom brought. But I see him eating Lucia’s goldfish crackers, too.

  Me and Angelica are sitting on the swings, and she’s reading the comics I brought. When she reads, she sticks a piece of her hair in her mouth and chews on the end. When she finishes the Amazing Spider-Man, I say, “Do you like it?”

  She says, “It’s okay.”

  We swing on the swings for a little while. Then she says, “Give me another one.” I give her my oldest X-Man. She puts a piece of hair in her mouth and starts reading.

  Now we’re being spies. We went behind the swings, to the trees. Then we went around on the other side of the bushes. Now we’re behind the benches, where our moms can’t see us.

  My mom is talking about my dad. She says, “So we went for about three months before Mike gave it up. But by that time, I was over it, too. All we ever did was repeat the same things over and over, in different ways. I’d say, ‘Mike never helps me around the house.’ And then she’d tell me, ‘Can you look at Mike and tell him how you feel using “I” language?’ And then I’d say, ‘Mike, I feel tired and pissed off when I have to clean the house all by my damned self.’”

  The other ladies laugh. Angelica’s mom says, “That sounds stupid as hell.”

  My mom says, “It was. We never solved anything. After a while I felt like we were just there to give her the hundred dollars per hour.”

  I don’t know who she’s talking about. Maybe a lawyer or a judge. I know lawyers charge a lot of money.

  Jared’s mom says, “Well, there are good ones. I love mine.”

  “How often do you go?” my mom says.

  “Every week, for the last three years, up until recently. Now I only call him when I need something.”

  Angelica’s mom says, “Girl, what in the world are you talking about every week?”

  Jared’s mom says, “I don’t know. Lots of things. My fears. Issues with my parents. Things that happened with my friends.”

  “And after three years he still couldn’t fix you?” Angelica’s mom says.

  They all laugh. Jared’s mom says, “That’s not very nice, Sara.” Then she says, “He usually just prescribes the drugs now. Maybe he did give up on fixing me.”

  Angelica’s mom says, “Well, if y’all wanna give me a hundred bucks an hour, I’ll listen to your problems all day long.”

  “Let’s go back,” I whisper to Angelica. I’m scared my mom might say more stuff about my dad and Angelica will hear it.

  “What happened to your dad?” I ask her when she’s finished with the third X-Man. We’re back on the swings.

  “I don’t know,” she says.

  “Did your mom divorce him?”

  She shakes her head. “They weren’t married. I never saw him.”

  I say, “Not even when you were little?”

  She shrugs her shoulders. “Maybe one time. I think he had black hair and green eyes. And he was tall.”

  I say, “Did he have dark brown skin? You’re darker than me.” I hold my arm next to hers. But she just looks at the dirt and kicks it with her foot. She’s sad, I think.

  I wish I hadn’t asked her. Yesterday, at school, Ms. Hubacek asked if our dads could volunteer to make the haunted house for the Harvest Festival. Some of the kids raised their hands, but me and Devonique didn’t. I told her, “How come you don’t raise your hand, Big Mouth?” I said that because she called me “Kinderbaby” at lunch, and I know she hates it when I call her “Big Mouth.” She didn’t say anything. I was thinking her parents were divorced, like mine, but maybe her dad never married her mom either.

  If I had a kid like Devonique, I probably wouldn’t want to be her dad.

  But if I had a kid like Angelica, I don’t think I’d leave. I would try to see her on the first and third weekend of every month, like my dad does with me.

  “Maybe he didn’t want to leave, but he had to,” I tell Angelica.

  She looks up at me. “You mean because he fought with my mom too much?”

  I say, “No, maybe he had to leave to do something important. Like for his job.”

  She thinks about my idea. Then she says, “Maybe he had to do a miss
ion.”

  “Yeah. I bet that’s why,” I say.

  After a while I’m tired of just sitting down, so I say, “You want to see how high I can push you?”

  She says, “Yeah. Then I’ll try to push you higher.”

  Maybe someday Angelica’s dad will finish his mission and come back to see her. That’d be good. I’d be proud if my dad was doing something like that.

  But I’m glad he’s not. I’d be really sad if we didn’t see him every first and third weekend.

  Natasha

  I was supposed to have another early dinner with Kate tonight, at Chick-n-Bix again. But I think I’m going to call and cancel on her, right after I finish this brief. That’ll give her plenty of time to rearrange her plans.

  It’s not that I don’t like her anymore, or that she’s boring…No, that’s it. She’s boring lately. All our conversations are nothing but gossip about the women in my old neighborhood. And the longer I go without seeing those people, the less I care. Plus, I imagine her having dinner with the rest of them at the Chick-n-Bix up there and gossiping with them about me. What would she say? That’s right, Natasha’s still divorced. Still a single mom. Poor thing.

  It’s the fourth Friday of the month, so Haley and I have our kids. And Sara always has hers, of course. Maybe the three of us can get together in one of our apartments. Didn’t Geronima say something about dinner? Or we could rent a movie. I’ll call them after I call Kate.

  All of a sudden, I’m looking forward to my weekend with the kids. It’ll be fun. Yes, we’ll do laundry and take the Blazer for an oil change. But I’m also going to make sure we do at least one fun thing each day, starting tonight.

  When I tell the kids we’re going to Geronima’s for dinner, Lucia says, “Yay!” and Alex asks, “Is Angelica going to be there?” He and Angelica have been getting close, I notice. But I don’t think they like each other in a romantic way. They’re still too young for that, thank gosh.