Brownie Points (5 page)

“He didn’t leap,” I snapped. “He lunged.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you should’ve made that distinction for them. I’m sure it would’ve made all the difference in the world.”

“What’s wrong with you?! Who cares what that Jim McDoyle thinks?”

“He doesn’t even try to blend in, baby. He could save himself a lot of hassles if he learned to assess what’s going on before … before leaping, lunging, whatever.”

“This is your big hope for our son?” I asked. “That he blends?”

“If it keeps him from getting his ass kicked, then yes, I want him to blend.”

I thought about a painting class I took in college to meet my fine arts requirement. Our professor raved about a classmate’s ability to blend color. I don’t know if everyone actually agreed, but they all nodded approvingly at the canvas as I thought it was a pity that one could no longer see where one image stopped and another began. For me, blending always meant losing individual identity for the sake of the big picture. It wasn’t at all beautiful to me. It was the terrifying prospect of disappearing. That semester I discovered a passion for creating sculpture from junkyard salvage. I could create something beautiful from garbage, while still never losing site of what each piece was originally. Blending was fine for some, but for people like Logan and me, it was a sacrifice of self.

Jason drifted elsewhere too, certainly not remembering my painting class.

Returning us both to the present, I told him, “I don’t want Logan to think we expect him to act like those boys.” I reached for his hand before continuing. “If we tell Logan we want him to blend, he’ll still get his ass kicked, only this time, it’ll be us doing it.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Lisa. That boy needs to learn how to fight. Once the other kids see they can’t push him around, they’ll back off. That’s how it works.”

“Why does he have to change?” I protested. “They’re the ones with the problem.”

“Fine,” Jason snapped. “I’ll take Logan to Dempsey’s Gym and you go to McDoyle’s house and do some little sensitivity workshop with the boys. Good luck with that.”

Chapter Four

September

By the middle of the month, the house looked almost lived in. The furniture was in place, paintings hung on the walls and my favorite pieces were displayed. What looked so cute and funky in our place in San Francisco was dwarfed in our Utopian home, though. The shabby chic couch and love seats covered with multi-colored knotty silk ribbon looked like doll furniture in our cavernous family room. End tables looked like thread spools. Paintings that had been real attention-grabbers in the old place looked like postage stamps on an oversized package. The only thing that seemed to fill the new space well was the six-foot sculpture of a butler that stood on the foyer. Junky Jeeves’ head was made from a car differential with eyes I made from small medical lamps. Finding scrap metal for his eyelids was easy, but wiring the eyeballs to light up was tougher. I placed a row of screws over our butler’s eyes which gave him stern looking brows, then used a small circuit board from an old computer as his mouth. What I loved was that the outside circuits were red and the rest was white so it looked like lips surrounding teeth. I made his body from the usual car parts, compressed springboards and miscellaneous scrap metal.

As I stood in the family room assessing its look, Logan came to my side and read my thoughts. “Our stuff doesn’t work here.”

“We’ll make it work,” I assured him.

Jason and Maya sat in front of our new television, which fit the room quite well since we bought it for the house. It was nearly a movie theater-size flat screen. Jason hooked up surround-sound so loud that we could feel the room shake during movies. If we ever rented
Jurassic Park
or
Night at the Museum,
we’d surely lose a few glasses.

Logan surveyed the room and shook his head with dismay. “Nothing fits right, Mom.”

“We’ll get some trees and more chairs and fill the space up.”

“That’s not going to work,” he said.

Maya and Jason burst into laughter over something on the television. Didn’t they notice how strange our home looked? Didn’t it bother them?

“We need new furniture for this space,” he said, scanning the room again.

“I know,” I said, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I promise you, Logan, we’ll make this place feel like home.”

Logan used his hands to create a frame and held it over the fireplace. “What do you think of something cozy like Grandma Zoë’s hexagon quilt?”

Ah yes, the acid trip quilt, as my father called it, because my mother sewed the entire thing by hand while on one very long LSD trip. According to who you believed, it took anywhere from six days to six months to make it. I’ll give her this: She didn’t miss a stitch and it is
unique
. At first glance it simply looks like a random pattern of colorful patches, but if you stare at it for a while it becomes Madonna and Child. Not Mary and Jesus, but the Material Girl and Baby Lourdes as they appeared on the cover of
Vanity Fair
.

Returning to Logan, I asked, “Not a mirror? I always like mirrors over a mantle.”

“For what, to open up the room?” Logan snorted. “Please, we need to soften the space, not make it look even bigger.”

I stood back and absorbed what he was saying. “Maybe you’re right.”

“And can we get a little color, puh-lease?” Logan asked, more animated than he’d been. “It looks so much like a hospital in here that I almost grabbed a scalpel and removed Maya’s spleen today.”

I laughed. “Logan, do the kids at school appreciate your sense of humor?”

“Oh yeah, totally, Mom,” Logan said, dripping with sarcasm. “When they jump on you and start punching, it’s their special little way of saying we love your sense of humor.”

Oblivious to our conversation, our counterparts erupted in laughter. “No way!” Jason bellowed. “No way she’s going to eat that! I don’t care how much money they give her, that girl is not gonna put maggots in her mouth.”

“I am so barfing!” Maya screamed. “If she eats bugs I am going to completely vomit my whole dinner out on the floor.”

Logan rolled his eyes. Under his breath, he muttered, “And
she’s
the popular one.”

™˜

The following evening it was time for Michelle’s monthly Bunco game. There was something intimidating about walking into a group of women who all knew each other. Being the new kid on the block may have been easy for Maya, but I feared my fate would be similar to Logan’s. Grown women don’t throw punches, though. They’re much worse.

I felt a bit guilty leaving Logan that evening since he was sick and stayed home from school that day. He did seem much better by the afternoon, and Jason assured me he would take good care of our son while I played dice with the Utopian housewives. I thought about bailing out at the last minute, but Bunco required a group divisible by four players.

“Play nice with the ladies,” Jason teased as he walked me to the garage. It was easy for him to be flippant about forging friendships when his job provided a built-in fraternity. In the two weeks we had lived in Los Corderos, Jason had been invited to join the department bowling team, went to poker night at Jim’s house and spoke at a City Council meeting. Not that testifying about public funding for fire prevention was some big social brouhaha, but it gave him exposure to interesting people who were passionate about issues and public affairs. I was invited to the dice game only because Wendy McFarlane’s mother broke her hip.

When I entered Michelle’s house, it was like a tsunami of color coordination. I was nearly knocked off my feet by the wave of hunter green and wheat that started in the family room and built in intensity through the hallway and foyer. The dark wood trim and almond plush carpet gave the home the feel of an overpriced men’s clothing store. As I made my way into the family room, I noticed that the wallpaper on the lower half of the family room walls was the same paisley pattern as the window valences. It was also the very same paisley pattern that our next door neighbor used. Our neighbor went one step further and used the pattern to cover her side tables and make a puffy frame for her family portrait. It made me wonder if there was a secret Utopia fabric warehouse where this stuff was sold by the mile. Then I remembered where I saw the pattern. It was in the swatch book that Maya and Logan brought down from the bedroom on our first day in Utopia. It was called “Crazy for Paisley,” which prompted the kids to come up with silly names for the others, like “Just Ducky” for the mallard print and “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Marble!” for the faux finish.

“I’m so glad you made it,” Michelle said warmly, instantly filling me with guilt for my unkind thoughts about her décor. I was going to stop being such a judgmental bitch. So what if not everyone had the same taste as me? Wasn’t my whole beef with Utopia that it was more homogenized than whole milk?

“Thanks for inviting me,” I said. Michelle wore an oversized white cotton button-down shirt tied in a knot at the bottom. Her pants were soft denim Capris that looked both comfortable and pulled-together. I suddenly felt like I should have put a bit more thought into my outfit.

As we walked through the gauntlet of family photos, I heard snippets of women’s voices.

“She’s got dance and soccer on Mondays and Wednesdays, and art and karate on the other days until softball starts,” one said.

“How’s it going with Pristine’s new show-and-tell coach?” another asked.

Then a voice of reason. “Isn’t all of this stressful for a kid?”

“That’s why we do yoga on Sunday nights,” explained the first woman, who turned out to be the infamous Val Monroe.

My instinct was to about-face and run for the door, but I couldn’t bear to hurt Michelle’s feelings. She was indeed ditsy with her fruit cleanses and
American Idol
birthday parties, but she started to win me over when she appreciated my ill-conceived broken-glass vases. When she clapped wildly for Maya singing at Ashley’s party, she had me. We’d never be best friends, but she was a decent person, and there was no need to be rude to her just because her life was perfect and mine was quickly spiraling down the crapper.

When I saw the other women, I realized I definitely should have made more of an effort to look good. Olivia traded in her queen costume for a floral Ann Taylor skirt, cream twin set and pearls. Several adopted a similar look. Then there was Val’s group, the Junta Moms, who appeared to have been lifted from the pages of a Lilly Pulitzer catalog. They showcased their oh-so-whimsical nature with pants trimmed with striped and polka-dotted ribbon that was also used for their tops. One mother added a matching headband that was not only covered in ribbon, but had loopy bows crowning it as well. She looked as if a gift table had exploded on her.
Kindness, kindness, Lisa.
A very nice gift table. The only other person in a t-shirt was Stacey, who sported a rhinestone-encrusted sage green “Flow” tank top from the Answer store.

Before the game began, I discreetly pulled Olivia aside, hoping we could put our heads together and stop Max’s bullying of Logan. I decided the best approach was diplomacy rather than accusing her vile son of being the warmongering jackass he undoubtedly was. Instead, I told her I wanted to discuss the “tension” between our boys. As we walked off to a corner of the room, I overheard Barb encouraging Michelle to stop smelling the brownies she baked and just eat one already. Michelle opened her eyes and looked peaceful holding the brownie under her nose. “I have eaten a cookie in my mind,” she told the women. “I am now full and satisfied.”

“About the boys,” I broached with Olivia.

“Don’t they just grow up so quickly?” she said, nodding sweetly. “Jim and I were looking at photos and we were amazed at how big they’ve gotten. How did it happen?”

“You fed them,” I clipped. “About the tension between our sons, I was hoping we could put our heads together and come up with some—”

Olivia stopped me with a crossing guard gesture. “Lisa, I love these ladies like my very own sorority sisters, but where we part company is that I do not micromanage my boys’ lives. We don’t need to call for a parent summit every time there’s an unkind word between them. Whatever
tension
our boys are having will work itself out.”

Clearly she did not understand the seriousness of the problem. “Max is hitting Logan at school,” I explained.

“Then Logan should hit him right back!” Olivia demanded. “Good and hard too. You need to trust me on this one, honey. I have three boys and this is what they do. They beat each other within inches of their lives, then they’re best friends the next day. It’s healthy for them to get all that testosterone out of their systems. It’s no good if they get all clogged up.”

My mouth moved, but no words came out immediately. Finally, I managed to speak. “I don’t want your son unclogging himself on mine.”

She laughed. Olivia McDoyle actually laughed. Not a Cruella de Vil evil cackle, but an honest-to-goodness amused, albeit somewhat condescending, chuckle. “Lisa, try not to worry so much. What doesn’t kill them makes them stronger,” she said, holding my shoulder as if she were dispensing words of wise consolation.