Roll with the Punches (51 page)

Blanche Lamarck, tiny and graying, got up to throw her coffee cup away and leaned in to whisper to Alice as she passed. "This committee will live forever. Years of weekly meetings. Run while you can." Then Blanche raised her voice to the group. "You know, I think Alice would be a perfect division representative to the new Campus Safety Committee." She whispered again, "Meets once a semester. Still gets you brownie points."

Alice said, "Absolutely! Sounds great! Thanks! Ooops! Must run! Dental appointment." Then she backed out the door and sprinted down the hall, her book bag and purse flying behind her. After years of ducking campus-wide involvement of all stripes on any of her three campuses, she’d managed to collect a monologue AND a committee this afternoon. Forget finding the dean. She was heading home.

The earth-tone campus was almost bare of people under a cool, cloudy March sky. It resembled a huge concrete block city, built by a giant concrete child. Today these blocks were heavier and duller than usual, ready for their weekend nap. Alice usually loved the feel of college campuses, but her mind was elsewhere today.

Money and tenure and monologues and mortgages. Money and tenure and monologues and mortgages. Money and tenure and monologues and mortgages. Crap. Mortgage payments on her new Lakebrook home were way too steep for her present hourly wages, even working at three schools. Her savings would be gone soon, unless Dirk started paying his share of child support and she got this full-time job.

A long shot.

She shuddered, picturing the alternative: she and her three loud kids crammed into a tiny apartment in a seedy low-rent district miles away, with no TV or computer. No ballet or braces. Her kids, uprooted from their school friends, would become vandals or salesmen. Ungraceful ones with underbites. Full-time community college instructor openings were rare, but her seniority gave her a good shot at Blanche's job. And one thing she knew: she just had to have it, despite the required beige attire and endless meetings. And reading to the world about Venus Cloacina during a hiring process would simply be suicide.

She’d reached the edge of the parking lot. She was about to turn back toward the mail room and shove the
Venus Monologue
DVD and script in Maya's mailbox with a conciliatory note. But then she saw someone leaning against her gold Honda Odyssey. Students? Hanging around her car? Doing what? She marched over and found two Vietnamese men there. One tall, one short. The usual suspects. She sighed.

"Teacher, we bring homework for you." The taller one, Luu Huynh (which rhymed with queen) held out a sheaf of papers. He had been a soldier in Viet Nam before the fall of Saigon in 1975 and still held himself like one. Probably over fifty, but looking forty, he wore a black leather jacket and had a lot of collar-length black hair and fancy reflective sunglasses, which he now lowered. Saucy brown eyes laughed at her and his long black mustache quivered like he knew a joke she didn't.

Her eyes narrowed. "Why weren't you guys in class? You'll never accomplish anything if you mess around like this." She stopped and reworded to match their comprehension level. "You both need to come to class every time, okay? You learn English faster, better when you come to class."

The shorter student, Van Tran, grinned and nodded. But then he nodded at everything. Eight years in a jungle prison after the war had made no dent in his good nature. Round features were rare among the Vietnamese, especially on an ex-army officer, but Van's round face made him look like a little kid, except for the graying hair and hairy mole on his cheek.

Luu, on the other hand, sometimes seemed to understand every nuance of her speech. Now he grinned widely, and the creases that fanned from the corners of his eyes got deeper, as did a couple of long laugh lines connecting the ends of his mustache with his chin, like parentheses. Unfortunately, one of these ended in another nasty chin mole with its own evil sprout of black hair. Strong cologne and smoker's breath kept Alice at a distance.

"How did you know which car is mine?" she asked, getting out her key.

"We know you, Teacher. We follow you and look her car, Teacher," Luu smiled.

"Thanks. You mean your car."

"Not my car, Teacher." Luu shook his head at her car. "I not like minivan."

"No, it's my car, but you say your car to me." At their blank look, she sighed and bent to put their papers in her bag. "Well, have a good weekend, guys. And come to class on Monday. That's an order, army men." She started to pick up her book bag, but Luu bent over and got there first and hefted it into the car. The blast of bad cologne sent her back a step and she lost her balance. He immediately caught her arm with a steadying hand. A nice-looking hand, tan and long-fingered. With a gold band. A bolt of something warm shot up her arm.

Oh, God. First she was noticing men’s rings, and now she had tingles with a student? Good grief. She stared at the hand for a split second before he dropped it. They both laughed. Funny. That type of communication required no grammar at all.

The guys waved happily as she took off for home, her arm replaying that warm bolt from Luu's grip. Must have been static electricity. Or arthritis. Surely not menopause. Was she that old? Ack! Going southbound on the 405 freeway, she made a long mental list of things to do instead of reading a monologue on stage in mid-April: Celebrate two kids' birthdays, write and grade seventy-two mid-terms, ninety-four essays, and forty-one book reports, go on a Boy Scout campout, help with two PTA functions, re-grout the bathroom tile, mend her window screens.

The Odyssey headed into a well-manicured suburban area of Orange County. The sky was gray and a light mist spritzed down. Eucalyptus trees and jacarandas were swaying like Alice's grandmother in a Baptist church. The homes here were in shades of Boringest Beige, Octogenarian Gray, and Illegally Poached Ivory. Alice had a momentary flash of Dirk coming up with these terms when they'd first moved into this conservative town. But then the lead curtain crashed down on her shoulders again, the one that had settled there almost two years ago when Dirk, a university professor, had gone off with a twenty-three-year-old psychology graduate student who never wore makeup. Or a bra, according to some sources.

Now, thanks to him, Alice lived a cliché. She parked in her carport and grabbed her school bag. Rats. The dreaded DVD and script were poking out the top of it. Well, she'd return them to Maya via campus mail on Monday. Inside her beige townhouse, the phone message light blinked. She pushed the button.

Her heart leapt just a little at Dirk’s familiar voice. "Sorry, Alice. I'm busy all this month and next. Conferences, symposia. Can't take the kids until May.” BEEP.

Her heart got real and sat down again. Asshole. The kids would be bummed not to spend the promised spring vacation with their dad. The house suddenly felt dead empty. This was her worst time of day, when she came home alone and wanted to slap Dirk silly for leaving her. She dialed her brother Billy in his faculty office in Oregon.

"Lonely?” he said. “Blaming everything on yourself again, Alice?"

Alice leashed Grammarcy, her eight-pound black poodle, and took the dog outside. "Yeah. If I'd just been little and cute, I'd be married to a doctor now. An orthopedist in Beverly Hills who'd spend his lunches with me. We'd have perfect kids."

"Hey, if I'd been perfect, I'd have married Ashley Judd.”

"It was bad for years. Why'd I stick it out so long?" Grammarcy, checking her pee-mail in every bush, pulled Alice along.

"You tell me.”

"Because I needed a man. I figured no other guy would willingly be climbed on, pooped on and barfed on by three snotty kids. Dirk sure didn't put up with it much.”

Grammarcy barked furiously at a passing dog.

"Grammarcy, quiet. And then there's my waist.”

"And don't forget Cleveland.”

"Hey! My butt was only the size of Oahu then,” she laughed. “The expansion to Cleveland proportions is new. Why does everyone think my butt is at the bottom of all my problems anyway?"

He snorted. "You said you stuck it out for a long time.”

She tried not to laugh.

"And Oahu's bigger," Billy went on, "So when are you going to get back up on the horse and—"

"Billy, stop! I'm not discussing this with you." Alice said. Grammarcy saw another dog and wrapped the leash around Alice's legs, barking madly.

"Alice?"

"When my kids go off to college, my house is clean, and I lose twenty-five pounds. About 2020, give or take.”

"Come on, Alice. You’re too young to stay alone forever."

Alice was in the middle of some East Coast swing-type dance moves with her leash. Those East Coast swing lessons had been such fun with Dirk before the kids came along.

"Look," Alice said. "The kids will scare away anyone who comes to the house now. If not, the mess will. It looks like Grandma's house."

"Ack! Not Grandma's! They had to dig her place out with a backhoe. Do you have possums nesting in the family room yet?"

"Probably. Under all the piles. Piles of boring papers to correct, humiliating monologues to rehearse, bills to pay, laundry to put away. Oh, and stinky piles of dirty dishes and old memories of Dirk."

"Memories, shmemories," Billy said. "You gotta toss the piles out wholesale.”

"The piles may go, but the memories won't budge. There're too many. Damn that asshole, dumping me into this rough dating market. Ugh. Dating is so impersonal. Whenever I'm anywhere near an eligible man, I feel like there's a barcode stuck on my back, a defective one.”

"Has Evan been taping messages to your back again?" Billy laughed.

"No, it's just the prospect of all those rejections. All that awkwardness.”

He laughed. "You need a fresh outlook, Al. Try some BrainClean. Remember? My patented invention. Wipes away unwanted memories in twenty seconds! Keeps them safe for two weeks for that final wallow, then sends them to hell! Call now and get two bottles for one low price of $9.95. And that's not all! Call in the next fifteen minutes and we'll personally send a nearly qualified medical technician to your house to perform a frontal lobotomy for you right on your own kitchen table! Absolutely free! You'll never remember anything again! Payment required before surgery. Batteries not included. Brain disposal $55,000. Side effects may include large cavities in skull, better social life, divorce. Lobotomy not applicable to residents of North Dakota, Washington, D.C., and Arkansas. Consult your girlfriend before use."

Alice hooted with laughter as Grammarcy barked and pulled the leash again. Step-together-step, twirl, and Alice stepped under the leash, right into a pile of dog poop.

*
      
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*

Alice sat on her bed in her sweats grading papers. In the background, a TV cooking show featured a lot of cute banter from a chatty blond female and her almost-handsome chef friend preparing stuffed eggplant in a homey kitchen.

Her brother's question came back to her as she went over her day. No, she couldn't picture herself seriously dating either Joe with the goofy hair and Birkenstocks or obnoxious, married Luu with the smoker's breath. But the discussion with Joe had pointed up her dearth of knowledge of current terminology and technology for the whole, er—sex act. Were there refresher courses? It had been a long time since her crazy college days.

And romance novels didn't help, discussing the whole thing in terms of his “male member,” and her “pleasure bud.” The governess and the duke never mentioned the best positions to maximize her orgasms or drive him crazy. Cosmopolitan probably did better than that, but if Alice ever bought an issue, her eleven-year-old daughter Kate would surely find it. At forty-one, Alice felt twice as prudish as her mother had ever been, despite having lived through women's lib, the seventies, some one-night stands, two serious boyfriends, and a fifteen-year marriage. Or maybe because of the marriage.

She looked around the room at the piles of Dirk's old magazines, papers and college notebooks and the kids' schoolwork. Damn Dirk. Thoughts of him made her stomach hurt. Her mother swore by warm milk for stomachaches. Grandma had prescribed graham crackers. Her sister used Elavil for everything. But Alice meditated.

She lay back, closed her eyes and took three deep breaths. Her own sweet little meditation house appeared with its giant sofa facing a huge bay window. Outside, the wide wrap-around porch full of rocking chairs overlooked a giant rose garden and green lawn spreading down to the Potomac. The Grand Tetons rose snowy and purple on the left, and the Pacific Ocean stretched away to the right, palm trees swaying in the breeze. The porch was always stocked with trays of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and lemonade, served by young Hawaiian beefcake in grass skirts and smiles.

But today, the porch suddenly rose up to become a high circus stage, and the roses became thousands of rowdy, tough onlookers, cigarettes hanging from their rose petal lips, thorny tattoos on their hammy arms. She was up there discussing calla lily pollination on her tiny shrinking platform as the restless rose crowd grumbled vengefully at her about some unknown plant crime. Eating salad? They started flinging mirrors and avocadoes at her. These crashed green and silver around her while the circus elephants, horses and poodles performing on three revolving stages grew larger, changed hue, and went berserk. Dodging avocados and glass, she was suddenly attacked by a legion of wicked black Indian goddesses riding menacing blue animals, wielding huge, serrated swords and five-foot-long phalluses right at her. Caught between a particularly nasty mastodon and a ferocious indigo poodle, Alice tripped over a large phallus and fell headfirst into the angry mass of thorny-armed rose people, who pushed her, bumping and sliding, slashed and bleeding, down the hill toward the violently rushing waters of the evil river.

Alice awoke, gasping for breath. She ran to the kitchen to find her favorite drug. None behind the school lunch tickets or in the vegetable drawer under the moldy carrots. And Evan had evidently raided her desk drawer. But the secret pocket in the clothes hamper held pay dirt. Score!