Brownie Points (16 page)

What was the deal with this place? Could you only live in Utopia if you were in an utter state of denial about your kids?

I was still smarting from Val’s reaction to our phone conversation about the cuts on Bianca’s leg. I had rehearsed my approach three or four times after consulting a website on cutting and self-mutilation. I knew it would be tough for Val to hear, but also felt that Bianca deserved expedient adult intervention. Val snapped when I broached the topic a few days earlier. “I think your time would be better spent paying attention to your own back yard,” she said.

“Meaning what?” I asked, grasping at the hope that she meant my azaleas.

“Meaning that if anyone’s child needs psychiatric assistance, it’s yours. And will you please stop leaving your garage door open all day?! People move here because it’s clean. Every time I drive by that junkyard you call an art studio, I feel like I’m watching a rerun of
Sanford and Son
!”

“Val, your daughter has a serious problem,” I said, unlocking my jaw. Despite her hideous mother, Bianca was a good kid and one of Maya’s and Logan’s best friends.

“
Your
child has a very serious problem, Lisa Taylor,” Val swiped. “I suggest you take care of your own before sticking your nose into my business.” Then she hung up. She simply hung up the phone and ended the discussion about her daughter taking a razor blade to her flesh and cutting into her leg for the satisfaction it delivered. I hoped she would continue the discussion with her husband after she had some time to let the idea settle in. Somehow I doubted it.

Later that afternoon, I found myself staring out the window, wondering what Jorge and Finn were up to for the evening. They were probably at Susan’s annual tree-trimming party, or at a gallery opening somewhere. Meanwhile, the streets of Utopia were still. Even the leaves dared not rustle.

An hour later, that all changed. As the sky turned from periwinkle to twinkling black, limousines began pulling up to the front of Marni’s house. Painfully sexy women poured out in droves wearing clinging gowns and stilt-like heels. I sank my head onto the couch armrest by the window and watched as Marni’s door continued opening and closing, setting free waves of jazz music and soprano laughter.

I must have fallen asleep there because when Jason came home, he woke me with his voice. “Spying on Marni again?”

Okay, I admit, I’d peeked at her house more than I should have. Jason teased that I had a crush on her, but the truth was that she intrigued me in a completely nonsexual way. She was such an enigma with her Junior League look, snappy mouth and constant flow of female production assistants coming and going at all hours. I understood why she felt she needed to lay low about her orientation in a place like Utopia, but I wish there was some way to tell her that I knew. Not only did I know, but I was thrilled that Logan was not the only gay person in town.

“These can’t all be production assistants,” I said.

He joined me at the window, “Whew-whee, look at that one.”

“I know,” I said. “She’s definitely not embracing the butch look, is she?”

“Are you still on that, baby?”

“Yes, Mr. Denial, I am. I think it’s pretty clear that Marni is a total lipstick lesbian.”

“That woman’s no lesbian of any kind, I’m telling you,” Jason said, his eyes following the parade of sleek beauties.
“Yeah, right,” I snorted. “And your gay-dar is a real work of precision engineering.”

Chapter Sixteen

By winter break from school, Logan had sunk into a depression like I’d never seen before. To get out of school, Logan claimed he had the avian flu, restless leg syndrome and the blues. The third diagnosis was most accurate. Maya said the boys at school went from calling him Froot Loops to the Girl Scout Reject, which stung far more than the cereal reference. Ever since the tooth kicking incident, Max McDoyle’s posse stepped up their verbal harassment, which seemed to have longer-lasting effects than the hitting.

When I called the principal to enlist his help, he immediately turned the conversation around to Logan’s slipping grades. “I agree Logan needs help with school,” Mr. Albany said. “His teachers say he’s sullen and unresponsive and has failed his last few tests in every subject. I know both he and Maya scored exceptionally high on the GATE test, but I do not have to let him into that program, you know? I’ve kept other kids out for being lazy.”

“Logan is not lazy. He hates coming to school because he’s been bullied several times and no one seems to be doing anything to protect him.”

“Mrs. Taylor, that is not true,” he said. “All of the students were required to sign a Peace Pledge at the beginning of the year.”

I sighed as I hung up the phone. Whatever happened to this being the most wonderful time of the year?

™˜

After a few days of watching our son sulk around the house like Droopalong Dog, Jason suggested we take a family day trip to San Francisco. “See if you can get tickets to the Nut Buster, and afterward we can go skating or something at the Embarcadero,” he said. I called Jorge, who was not only available that day, but said Finn had a connection at the San Francisco Ballet who could get us in to that afternoon’s performance. Apparently, the Niners quietly included ballet as an integral part of their fitness training. This deal also included ticket reciprocity so brawny men could get into the ballet at any time, and swans never had to miss the home team in the playoffs.

“Just call me your Sugar Plum Fairy Godmother,” Jorge said into the phone.

My heart lifted at the thought of escaping Utopia for the day, but Logan seemed less than excited. “Whatever,” he said when I bubbled over with our plans. His spirits picked up, however, when we neared San Francisco and the skyline beckoned to us like Oz.

There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home,
I said silently. I clammed up partly because I didn’t want to let on how much I detested Utopia, and partly because no one else but Jorge enjoyed quoting the
Wizard of Oz
with me. In college, he wrote a paper for an English class about the life lessons and practical wisdom of the classic film that seemed very deep to us at twenty-one. Now, it was just fun to quote lines and recall some of his heady theories from his term paper.

“We are going to do
some
Christmas shopping while we’re here, right?” Maya asked.

“Yeah, after we go skating, we can pick up a few must-haves, can’t we?” Logan asked eagerly.

I looked at Jason, who shrugged as if to say,
It
is
the holidays.

“All right,” I said.

My children erupted into cheers, which was enough to make me feel like whatever we bought that day would be money well spent.

When we arrived at the Civic Center, I noticed that Jorge was sans Finn. He assured me that everything was okay, but that his partner wanted to attend the team holiday party while he was still on the roster. Of course, alumni were always welcome, but there was something special about everything in his last season as an official Forty-Niner.

By the time Clara and the Nutcracker were twirling about, Logan and Maya were entranced by the magic onstage. I was flanked by my two favorite men, Jason and Jorge, who each had a hand on one of my thighs. As soon as Jorge caught a glimpse of Jason’s flirty move, he followed suit, kneading my knee dramatically, growling and mouthing,
You hot bitch
.

Before we made it to the skating rink, a young man on a bike zipped past me and snatched my purse. “What?” I blurted, stunned and not entirely sure of what had just happened.

“Oh my God, Mom, that dude in the hoodie just took your purse,” shouted Maya.

“Get him!” Jorge shrieked. “Purse snatcher! Stop that man in the Roxy eggplant hoodie!”

Jason began chasing him, but a man with wheels will always outpace one on foot, so he lost him when the purse snatcher turned the corner.

“I can’t believe I got mugged,” I said, dejected, as we sat filling out forms at the police station.

“Technically, it wasn’t a mugging, Li-li,” Jorge corrected as Logan and Maya checked out the Most Wanted list on the station lobby wall.

“Yeah, there needs to be some sort of conversation for it to be a mugging,” Jason added. “Like, gimme your money or I’ll blow your head off. This guy just snatched.”

I looked incredulously at Jason, but Jorge came to his defense. “He’s right, Li-li, you got totally gypped. I got mugged last week and not only did we have the most delightful conversation, but the darling took me out for cocktails afterward.”

On the drive home, I couldn’t help but feel a bit betrayed by my city. Here I was taking the kids to San Francisco to give them an afternoon of culture and fun, and this is what I got in return? Logically, I knew that one bad experience didn’t make the city any less of a wonderful place. I’d lived there my entire adult life and nothing like this had ever happened before. Emotionally, I just wanted to curl up and cry. Not only had I left my heart in San Francisco, now I’d left my purse there too.

™˜

I may have been too quick to dismiss Michelle as a ditz. The more I got to know her, the more I realized she was an evil genius. Well, maybe not an evil genius, but she certainly knew how to time her requests so I could not say no.

“I can’t believe I’m on probation, Lisa,” Michelle said as I helped her fix her lawn display. Some neighborhood kids repositioned Prancer so it looked as if he was mounting Rudolph. “I’ve been a Girl Scout since Daisies in kindergarten and now they’re threatening to kick me out.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I feel like this is all my fault.”

“No, no, of course it isn’t,” she assured. “By the way, we need another sub for Bunco next week. I know you hate it, but I’ve called absolutely everyone else, and no one’s available to sub. I’d hate to have to cancel.”

So there I was, quickly, reluctantly becoming a regular at these monthly games. I knew there would be hard feelings between Olivia and Val because the McDoyle “living nativity” scene had just been condemned, not by the CC&Rs Committee but by the Board of Health. Of course, Val was the one who’d placed the complaint, and frankly I can’t say I blamed her. Not only was the manger stinky, but the whole concept seemed rather cruel.

Our savvy Bunco hostess, Cara, suggested we skip the dice game and go straight to the gift exchange. Rolling dice left too much time for discussion, which could lead to trouble during this season of comfort and joy.

Within minutes of our arrival, we were seated on Cara’s paisley sectional, picking numbers from a Santa hat. I was pleasantly surprised to see that my kitchen clock was a hit with the group. I made it by setting the clock face in a large jar lid, then mounting it onto the center of an old-fashioned toaster. I then clustered a few dozen pieces of silverware on the face of the toaster. After it was “stolen” a few times, my clock ultimately wound up with Val Monroe. “This is really very clever,” she said.

Maybe she isn’t so bad after all.

Eyeing it carefully, she continued, “It’ll make a cute door prize for the Cardiology Wing fundraiser.”

Bitch.

As we were leaving the party, I kept a close eye on Val so I could discreetly slip an article on teen self-mutilation into her purse. She had cornered Marni and started interrogating her in hushed tones. “I saw it on his cell phone bill,” she said, inches from Marni’s face.

“Why don’t you ask him then?” Marni replied.

“I’m asking you,” Val said through gritted teeth. “Why is my husband calling you so often? Why is he calling you
at all
?”

“And I’m telling you, you need to talk to your husband about it,” Marni said defiantly. There was no way that Marni was having foot enhancement surgery, but even less way she was having an affair with Dr. Beast. Why, then, was he calling her from his cell phone?

“What the hell are you doing, Lisa?!” Val snapped when she saw me. “Why are you digging through my purse?!”

“I’m, I’m not digging through —”