In the Unlikely Event... (2 page)

“Okay, let’s go,” Chase said. She kissed Gitana and then kissed the top of Bud’s head, which made no sense since they were riding into town together. Bud smiled.

They crept down the road in the Mini Cooper, carefully avoiding the crevasses that the spring rains had carved and the summer heat had baked. What dirt was left on the road was a series of ruts and rocks. Driving down the roller-coaster ride of baked dirt could upset your coffee cup, your stomach and everything in the car that wasn’t strapped down. Plastic grocery bags filled with food had to be tied and wedged together to prevent a tumbling of goods all over the backseat. The Mini Cooper shifted from side to side as Chase attempted to keep her wheels out of the ruts. It was like keeping a rollercoaster cart on the rails.

“I’ve been lobbying the state government in your name for a rescindment order of the private road clause as it was not grandfathered in,” Bud said.

“Fuck!” Chase said when the Mini Cooper bottomed out.

“Double fuck,” Bud said, looking smug.

“Don’t say that.”

“I only say it when we’re together. It’s like a bonding thing.” She leaned against Chase.

She looked at Bud. “Are you playing me?”

“Actually, I’m not. I know Collins’s mom has been telling you things about how children’s affections change and they don’t want their parents to fawn over them.” She stopped and glanced at Chase.

“Yes,” Chase said, awaiting the blow.

“But…” Bud looked uncertain. “This has to be our secret.”

Chase, despite being a serious advocate of two hands on the wheel, brought up her right hand. “I swear.” They weren’t on the county road yet, so she figured it was only a minor infraction.

“I like when you fawn over me.”

“I don’t fawn exactly, do I? I mean that would be kind of gross.”

“I think you mentally fawn and it sends out vibes.” Bud smiled.

“Maybe a little. Is that all right?”

“Sure.”

“Really?” Chase was ecstatic.

“Really,” Bud said, kissing Chase’s cheek now that the car had stopped rocking from the road and they were at the stop sign. “Just don’t do it in front of my peers.”

“I won’t.”

Bud leaned against her.

They drove in companionable silence until they hit the freeway. Bud pointed to the cottonwood trees that lined the valley that followed Old Route 66 and the freeway. “The leaves are starting to turn. Maybe we could go hiking in the Jemez and look at the colors. I have grown a half an inch.”

“I’ve never said anything about your height.”

“No, but don’t think that I didn’t hear you tell people that you had to wait until my legs grew longer before we could go hiking.” Bud was smaller than her peers, but Gitana was petite. Bud looked a lot like her mother, almond eyes, dark shoulder-length hair, full lips and a turned-up nose. Chase resembled a Scandinavian nanny with her blue eyes, lanky frame and long blond hair. Meeting other parents always entailed a certain amount of explanation.

“All right, maybe I did. Why are you so interested in the changing of the leaves?”

“I want to take some photographs. Stella gave me one of her old surveillance cameras. It’s digital. Her version of ‘old’ is by no means Paleolithic.”

This was true. Stella was Bud’s Private Investigator Grandmother, a title that Chase only used when she was irritated with her mother. The arrival of Bud had quelled the ongoing feud between mother and daughter over Chase’s decision to be a writer of lesbian fiction instead of a Newbery Award-winning writer. Now their mutual adoration and protection of Bud made them staunch allies.

“Now you want to be a photographer?” Chase glanced at the speedometer. She was only going fifty-seven. Shit, she was going to have to go around the slowpoke in the middle lane.

Bud noticed. “You have to or we’ll be queued up for miles at school.”

“I know.” Chase studied her options, decided it was safe and passed.

“See, no problem.”

“So about the dance thing…” Chase wavered.

“Yes?” Bud prodded. “You always give it away that something is distressing you by using the gestural ellipsis.”

“A what?”

“Like in fiction when a person starts to say something and then stops and the writer uses an ellipsis,” Bud said.

“Oh.”

“What were you going to ask?” Bud said.

“Who are you going to the dance with? Have you picked someone out?” Chase blurted as if saying it quick would make her seem less like an overprotective meddler. This was another one of the disturbingly progressive things Bud’s school did—Decisional Socialization based on the theories of some whacko named R.U. Barffield.

“I have.”

“Who?” Chase asked. She’d Facebook the little urchin for signs of being a sociopath.

“I’m taking Summer,” Bud said, looking out the window. “She wants to wear a dress.” She said it like it was a confession—a character flaw. Chase didn’t know if it was about going to the dance with Summer or Summer wearing a dress.

“What are you going to wear?” Chase inquired, keeping her voice level and tension free.

“My tux, and in case you were wondering, this isn’t a butch-femme thing. It’s what we like to wear. I respect Summer’s choice of feminine garb, and she said I look nice in my tux.”

“When did she see it?”

“The night she slept over.”

Chase thought about the sleepover, trying to remember how much supervision she’d given them. She hadn’t known about the clothes changing. “So the tux thing was like playing dress up?”

Bud furrowed her brow in that what-are-you-talking-about-dumbass way she used when exposed to inanity. “Dress up? We needed to ascertain how the tux would look in such circumstances, and I wanted Summer’s opinion.” She stared at Chase.

They entered the city limits proper, and Chase figured she had twelve minutes to suss up this dance thing or the discussion would be closed forever, because reopening it later would be construed as over-parenting by both Bud and Gitana. “So…”

Bud interjected. “Do you realize that you overuse the word ‘so’? You start a lot of sentences with it. If Stella notices you will be issued a citation.”

In addition to being a private investigator, Chase’s mother was also part of the Lynne Truss Grammar Society, and she’d created her own division of the Overused Word Choices, which issued citations for such offences.

“I’ll work on it.”

“You have until Thanksgiving to break it.”

Chase nodded and glanced down at the dashboard clock. She had ten minutes now. “Isn’t there a boy you want to go with?” Chase couldn’t believe that came out of her mouth. She studied the stoplight at Tramway. She didn’t want to meet Bud’s eye.

Bud appeared to be transfixed watching a pack of riders speeding down the bike path that lined both sides of Tramway.

This was not how Chase envisioned having the sex talk. In her mind, they’d sit down over coffee—Bud would be old enough to drink coffee—and they would have a reasonable discussion about sexual persuasion and how Bud felt and what genetics provided. Chase was of the “made” not “choice” school of thought, so in her mind Bud had a fifty-fifty. She hadn’t thought they would be having “The Discussion” when Bud was six and going to second grade.

“I don’t like boys,” Bud said matter-of-factly.

Chase drove through the light. “Well, I mean they are kind of gross, uncouth and disrespectful until they…” She stopped herself.

“And they smell bad.”

Chase scrambled for some male attribute that she could sell to Bud. It wasn’t forthcoming. “Some of them will grow up to be firemen and police officers, that’s got to count for something.”

“It’s all good,” Bud said. They had pulled into the school.

“So…I mean it’s okay with everyone?” Chase said.

“The school is not gender-biased. Each student is encouraged to choose a partner most in keeping with his or her current life views and perception. Melinda is adamant about each student exploring and thus forming his or her personality. I only have until I’m eight. One kid is bringing his border collie, which I think is a unique choice. The dog has a tuxedo, and I guess she’s a good dancer. Collins is taking Judy. They’re both wearing suits.”

“I see.” She sounded just like Gitana, but Bud kept chattering on about personality forming and kids bringing their dogs as dates and that Collins was certain she was gay and this personality-forming-by-the-time-you’re-eight-years-old thing and calling the principal by her first name. Chase checked the queue. She had six cars and at an estimated time of two minutes for drop-off that gave her twelve minutes. She would start small.

“So you guys always call the principal by her first name?”

“Melinda prefers it that way. She says that a center for learning should not be a totalitarian regime but rather an egalitarian society where each person receives according to his or her needs.”

“That sounds like Marx’s
Communist Manifesto
,” Chase said.

“It has vestiges,” Bud replied.

“Have you read it?”

“Last summer. He made some valid points, but I am rather fond of my private property.”

They were down to three cars. “Now what’s this thing about your personality being formed by the time you’re eight?” Chase’s mind raced. Could that be true? Did they have only two more years to make sure Bud turned out to be a normal, decent, tax-paying citizen who was driven to get her Ph.D. at an early age and make a distinguished career for herself and win the Nobel Peace Prize or a Pulitzer or both?

“It’s a psychological fact. Our personality, the one that will be ours for life, is created from the time we are born until the age of eight. That’s why early childhood development is so imperative for the creation of a well-adjusted human being.”

Chase’s brain took off on two tangents simultaneously. First, had there been any traumatic experiences to date that had malformed or maladjusted Bud’s personality? And second, what had been her own transformative experiences? Because she’d turned out to be neurotic on many levels, and she didn’t want Bud to have any of her phobias—excessive hand sanitizer usage, debit machine performance anxiety, burying roadkill and risk management strategies, just to name a few.

She gave further thought to her phobias. The world was a germy place, debit machines meant spending and excessive spending was a bad thing. Burying roadkill was simply giving the dead dignity, and as long as Bud didn’t grow up to be a mortician that was not a bad thing. Risk management was the basis of the insurance industry, so it was a viable pursuit as long as Bud didn’t grow up to be an insurance salesperson. She meant no offense to those professions. She just couldn’t see Bud doing them.

Bud scrutinized Chase’s face and appeared to ascertain the current neurosis Chase was experiencing. “If you were worried that you’ve done anything to make me weird—you haven’t.” She quickly kissed Chase’s cheek and popped out of the car. Summer and Collins were waiting for her. Bud took Summer’s hand as they went up the stairs to the front door of the school. Chase’s mind went into overdrive when she saw that. Could you be gay at six? Was Bud gay? Should the school be egalitarian? And what about the dog going to the dance as someone’s date? That was going too far. Anyone could see that.

She glanced at the dashboard. It was ten to eight. Her board meeting at the Institute was at nine thirty. She had to talk to Gitana and not on the phone. This warranted a face-to-facer. She’d go to the Blooming Orchid nursery and tell Gitana all this stuff. Gitana was the voice of reason. She could sort this mess out. She would know what to do.

Chase sent gravel flying as she pulled into the nursery’s parking lot. Under normal circumstances, she would have made note of how spiffed up the place looked with its new sage green paint job with the giant purple and white orchids painted on the front and around one side, but she’d worked herself into such a panic that she left the Mini Cooper running and the car door wide open as she ran inside. Nora, who was Gitana’s right-hand woman, was coming out of the nursery office when Chase almost floored her, which would have been an accomplishment because Nora was built like a rich guy’s bodyguard. “Where’s Gitana?”

“In her office like she usually is.”