Friday
.
I
’ve picked up the phone to call Chantal a dozen times. I know she’d have good advice, but I don’t want her to know. It’s happening. Again. My mother is sending away another guy.
I imagine her telling her parents at the dinner table, after they’ve talked through their workday and asked Chantal about the last day of school. When Chantal says, “Jillian’s Dad Three took off,” her mother would say, “Poor Jillian. Not again.” I know her mom mostly likes me, but she also sees me as a charity case. When Chantal and I were the same size, she’d buy extra jeans and shirts and claim that she couldn’t take them back.
We don’t have dinner conversations at our house. At our house eating happens at kitchen counters, in front of the TV, or standing up because the last chair is already taken. Dinner at my house is a pot of goulash—pasta, ground meat, and sauce—and mismatched bowls and plates with plastic forks if there aren’t any clean metal ones. Or cereal. Or pancakes. Or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
My mom and Dad 3 don’t talk about their work, because they don’t have work, they have jobs. A job is a place where you report and put in your time until it’s over. Work, my life management teacher explained, is when your brain is engaged and the effort has a reward that has meaning beyond a paycheck.
One night Dad 3 told us, after a few beers, that no one in his family had ever gone to college. “I’d be real honored to help pay to get you there,” he said. “’Cause, let’s face it, that’s what you do for family.” My mom teared up and said that karma was what had brought them together.
But what will happen now that Dad 3 is leaving? Chances are my mother will go after him for child support for baby Ollie. Chances are he’ll move on to another woman, another child, and he’ll decide all he can afford to pay is what the law requires. And that will never be enough for a university education.
I try to stop that thought right there. I try to remember that Parker is coming over and he likes me enough to take my brothers and me out for ice cream. I need to make a good first impression so I shove the toys into the closet, run the vacuum cleaner, make sure the boys take baths, and that they put on clean underwear.
The Effects of Chocolate
.
M
y pointer finger hovers above Jillian’s doorbell. I’m not sure I’m going to ace this test. But one thing I (as top student) battle and overcome successfully is test fear. I press the button, hold my breath, and wait for Jillian to open the door.
“Chantal!” She smiles, reaches out to hug me. Clearly this test is multiple-choice. Or true-false.
“Surprise!” I lift the shoebox lid. The aroma of chocolate slips between us. She stares at the cookies. The chocolate chocolate calls her, begs her to taste. As the first bite dissolves in her mouth I watch her shock give way to gratitude.
Oh Nigella, thank you.
“Oh … these are good. Wow. They taste. Homemade.” She eats more sugar than I’ve seen her consume in the last three months. Success. One hundred percent. A-plus. Finally, she speaks. “I stopped by your house. I tried to call you.”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
“Wow. Wow.” She hesitates, as if she’s not sure what to do with me.
“Wow is right.” I nod my head. Something is wrong.
“Hey … come in,” she says. As we walk through the living room and into the kitchen I tell Jillian I’ve never seen her house this clean.
The Double Minor and Ollie are down for a nap and she’s paying the Hat Trick to do extra chores. She warns me not to open any closet doors. I notice she’s wearing shiny eye shadow and one of the tight T-shirts her Vancouver cousin sent her. We sit at the counter stools in the kitchen, drinking tall glasses of reduced-calorie iced tea.
“So, what’s up?” I reach into the box for a cookie.
She hesitates before she confesses, “I didn’t know you were coming over. Parker …”
I almost choke as I realize, now, that the cookies aren’t about alleviating Jillian’s suffering. They’re here to fix mine. And even with their molten chocolate lake and half-kilo of chips, they will not win Jillian back. She attempts to assure me that going for ice cream is not a real date. She even offers the ultimate insult to a dateless friend. “You can come, too. I mean, it’s like a friend thing anyway.”
“You, Parker, and me?”
“The boys are coming, too.”
I spew chocolate crumbs across the counter. “Parker knows he’s taking six boys under eight to get ice cream? He’s agreed to it?”
She nods. “I know. Weird, huh?”
We chew awkwardly.
I consider the clues: the clean house, the eye shadow, the T-shirt, and the way she half-whispers his name as if it’s a secret password to another life. I evaluate potential courses of action: tell Jillian to choose between Parker and my cookies and me, or accept that the three of us will be a triangle. Parker or no Parker, my life is, now, officially, different. I don’t need this kind of transformation. I wonder if I will ever make cookies again.
“Your mother baked these?”
“My mother?”
She must see the look of incredulity on my face. “What was I thinking? Farmers’ market, right? Your mom’s allergic to fat and calories.”
“Yeah, out to lunch on that one.” I avoid eye contact and start in on my third cookie. Now I can’t tell her I baked them. It will reveal my desperation.
We hear Ollie babbling through the baby monitor, and Jillian checks the clock again. She notes that Parker is supposed to be here in five minutes and she smoothes her T-shirt, fluffs her hair. She doesn’t mention the irony of filling a baby bottle as part of date preparation.
“At least he’s cute.” I sweep chocolate crumbs from the counter into my hand.
She sets down the can of formula, turns to me.
“At least he’s cute? Parker? What are you trying to say?”
“Jillian.” I wave a cookie in the air to subtly remind her of my loyalty and friendship. “Parker dumped Annelise because he wanted to be free for the summer and then,
the same day,
he brings Will to meet us at the lake? Doesn’t that sound … calculated? Something’s not adding up.”
We hear Ollie throwing his board books and teddy bears from his crib. In less than two minutes he’ll be screaming.
“I guess. Or maybe he’s liked me for a long time, but he’s now got up the courage to act. Maybe Will’s strange behavior has been masking his keenness for you.”
“His keenness.” She makes me laugh even when we’re in a quasi-argument.
She screws the top onto Ollie’s bottle. “They discovered they like us, two cute and smart girls. Isn’t that even a little bit plausible?” Baby Ollie is punctual. His screams vibrate through the monitor. Jillian rolls her eyes. “I’ve got to get him before he finds a way to climb out of his crib.”
Scientists have proven that chocolate affects your brain function. This much chocolate must be having a major impact on me. “Let me do it,” I say, reaching for the bottle.
“Chantal, he needs his diaper changed.”
“I can do it.” I free the bottle from her hand. “And you can go with Parker.”
“What? First you bring cookies and now you’re going to change a diaper?” Her skepticism is far too visible. “And you
want
me to go out with the best friend of your sworn enemy?”
“You need to know if Parker’s the real macaroni and the only way you’ll know that is to go out with him.” And I’ll never win in a debate with Jillian, she’s that good.
“Chantal, you’re mad.” She’s got that concerned look on her face. I wonder if she thinks I’m angry or crazy.
Ollie’s screams reach a new decibel level.
“I’ll stay home with the boys.”
“Stay home with the boys?” Jillian’s expression changes to dismay. “No. No. You don’t have to. I mean … you’re not really …”
“Capable?”
“I wasn’t going to say that. But, you’ve never watched them alone.”
I remind her that the boys will lose it if they have to watch her shut the door behind her. My child psychology impresses her enough that she grabs her purse, zips up her hoodie, and walks out the door. The boys still scream, of course, because they’re hungry and I’m only a notch above incompetent. But I have a secret weapon: Totally Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Falling
.
P
arker swings his key chain, catches it, swings it, and catches it as he walks up the driveway. He smiles a Prince Charming sort of smile, doesn’t break eye contact. This is something new for me. Mom’s boyfriends always seem to be staring at her body parts instead of her eyes.
“Hey.” I meet him halfway up the driveway. “It’s just us. Chantal is babysitting the boys.”
“Really?” His eyes telegraph that it’s great. “Not that I didn’t want to hang out with the boys, but now, I get you all to myself.”
“Um …” All to himself? Is that a pickup line?
“So … what would you like to do?” He swings his car keys, catches them.
“Drive.”
“Just drive?”
“Yeah.” I hope I sound enthusiastic because my stomach twists as I get into the car. I have never been in a car with a guy, alone. Much less a guy like Parker.
“Where do you want to go?” Parker slips the key into the ignition, presses the clutch, and eases the gearshift into first.
“Anywhere.” I wish I hadn’t looked out the window at our house. I see what he must have seen when he pulled up—a landfill of toys. I
want to haul it all into the backyard, wipe away the evidence of my responsibilities. The ones that are going to escalate when Dad 3 moves out.
Parker heads toward Airport Road where the houses thin out and the world becomes less complicated.
Now it’s like I’m in a bathtub, floating, the only place I’ve ever been left alone for more than fifteen minutes. I lean back, stare into the sky through the open sunroof. It’s all evergreen branches and thin clouds, a hue of blue happiness. The radio is a background beat, easy rock, the only music station in the mountains. I’m thinking about Chantal saying I need to find out if Parker is the real deal. I steal a look at him.
He drives with his hand at the top of the steering wheel, his muscles perfectly sculpted in a tight T-shirt. My unfolding heart floats.
I should be talking, I guess, about people at school and classes and summer plans, but I’m not. All I think is,
thank you for rescuing me
, and any girl knows words like that will scare a guy off as fast as
I come from very reproductive genes
.
We drive twelve miles along Airport Road to a break in the trees. Here, at Twelve Mile Flats, we park in the open field that stretches into mud in the summer, floods with glacier water in the spring, and is buried in snow, of course, every winter.
Parker hangs his left arm out the window, his sunglasses set in his blond tips, and his eyes on mine. He is gorgeous, an undiscovered movie star. Would it be seductive for me to add a layer of lip gloss? “Have you been out here snowmobiling?” he asks.
“Snowmobiling? No.” Wouldn’t he know that? I’m not part of the party group.
“No, huh? We get a bonfire going and we drag race down the flats. It’s great.”
“Sounds like fun.” I am tempted, but I don’t go into my Cinderella
story—that the only drag racing I’ve witnessed is my half-brothers on their sleds—because, again, no guy wants to hear all your problems on the first date.
This is a date, isn’t it? And it could be the first of a few dates or many, maybe a whole summer of bonfires with s’mores and the stars, someone playing the guitar. “The sky would be incredible,” I say more to myself than to him.
“You should come out sometime … you know … with everyone. You have to experience it. Just once anyway.” He sucks in his breath a little as if he’s worried he assumed that we’d have a sometime.
I like that he’s nervous. And that he wants to include me.
“Man, what is it like with all those brothers?”
“You don’t really want to know.”
“Hey, look.” Parker points at a hawk flying. We watch it swoop down and when it lifts again, a mouse dangles from its talons. “Cool, eh?” Does he watch
National Geographic,
too?
“Tell me about you,” I say. “What do you do besides study physics with Will, snowmobile, and drive your car?” And date Annelise.
He gives me the CliffsNotes version of two parents, three astonishingly successful older brothers, and a grandma and grandpa out east. He loves the mountains, he says, even the snow. The summary? A life that is uncomplicated. We don’t have that in common. I wish I hadn’t asked.
Fallout
.
Y
ou do what you have to for friends, but sometimes it’s too much.
Inside of fifteen minutes of Jillian leaving, the Hat Trick and Double Minor masticated through two dozen of my secret weapon cookies. Then they devised a plan to find their favorite toys—which turned out to be at the back of every closet in the house.
Around then, the chocolate high crashed. Any ideas of playing duck, duck, goose or tic-tac-toe or having family fun time quickly disappeared. I had to confiscate every electronic gaming device the Hat Trick owned before they realized I was serious when I said they could not use Stevie as a rock in their made-up game of “boulder toss.” Things were beginning to calm down until I found them using Josh as a human shield. Eventually I ordered them to brush their teeth and get into bed. It’s only 7 P.M., an hour earlier than their usual bedtime.
Now, baby Ollie is heavy on my lap and my right leg has fallen asleep, but his eyes are drooping. He’s drunk on the fourth bottle of formula or exhausted from my inadequate care. I need to wait it out. My whole life. Wait it out.
Twenty minutes pass with me lost in my thoughts of revenge against Parker for taking Jillian away. I memorize the scratches on the table, the whorls in Ollie’s hair.
“More crackers?” Stevie tugs on my arm. He’s out of bed. I look down. His pajama pants are soaked.
But he’s wearing a nighttime diaper.
I want to say, “Change your own pants,” but I’m not a mean babysitter.
“Wait,” I say. “I’ll put Ollie to bed and then we’ll clean you up.” I scoot back from the table. Ollie’s eyelids flutter. I slide on my socks toward the stairs. Until I hit a puddle.
My sock is soaked. Who peed this much? No. The puddle is a lake. And the lake is at the end of a river that slides down the stairs. It must start in the bathroom where a tap is open and a sink is stoppered.
I hear it then, laughter, the Hat Trick doubled over and high-fiving each other. Josh and Stevie slosh through the puddle. Ollie squirms, his peaceful face scrunches.
This is what happens when I don’t pay attention. I simply go along until some catastrophe hits. Crud. I am not a disaster specialist; I freak out when I stub my toe and it bleeds. Here, I’ve got six kids, one flood. This is too much. Far too much.
I want to leave baby Ollie in his crib. Leave a package of crackers on the table and walk out the door. I am an only child.