Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige (3 page)

He nodded, and for a second I saw a flash of his smile. Mike’s smile was something that you noticed most when looking at his— or his sons’—childhood pictures. It was a clear, sweet symmetrical smile without any impishness or mischievousness. It had a purity to it that almost seemed incongruous on an adult face. As Mike didn’t have a trace of the glad-handing salesman in his personality—he was an economist—he had no idea of its potential power, so he never smiled for effect. It appeared only when he felt good about something . . . hence I didn’t see that smile much anymore.

“I have to admit,” he said, “that I am glad that he’s not marrying someone who is going to have to take on a lot of debt to finance her education.”

“My sense is that her parents have a ton of money.”

“I don’t know about that,” he said.

He was lying. Of course he knew. He would have made it his business to find out.

Mike didn’t worship money, but it interested him. It interested him a lot. He was interested in people’s attitude toward money, how they had earned it, how they spent it, what role it played in their lives. He was suspicious of people who lived on inherited wealth and contemptuous of those who lived on credit cards. One of his complaints about me—and this one had been valid—was that I had never fully appreciated how much security and comfort he’d provided for our family.

I had no idea how to make amends for that now.

“We didn’t say anything to Jeremy,” Mike continued, “but Claudia thinks we should give the two of them an engagement party. Some of the Selwyn families, some of the neighbors—our old neighbors, that is, people like that.”

“What a great idea.” Jeremy had gone to Selwyn Hall, a private Episcopal school near the grounds of the National Cathedral,
and I hadn’t seen much of those families since he’d graduated from high school.

I like giving parties. I don’t get rattled by all the last-minute stuff you have to do for a big party. I don’t care a lot about the napkin colors, the platter garnishes, and the centerpieces, but I do care about the food being good and people having a good time. The old house had been great for parties. The rooms were big, parking was easy, and I’d had so much storage space that I could keep lots of things on hand. I wasn’t sure how I would manage in the new one. If we could count on good weather, then—

“So,” Mike continued, “as soon as Jeremy settles things with Cami, Claudia will be in touch with the Zander-Browns about setting a date.”

Oh.
Oh
. The “we” of this party wasn’t Mike and me, but Mike and the lady friend.

“She has a big house,” Mike explained a little awkwardly. “She can accommodate a crowd, and you and I are both in smaller places now and . . .” His voice trailed off.

If Mike had really thought that he or I or the two of us together should have hosted this party, we would have figured something out, renting space in a hotel or a restaurant if necessary. But apparently Claudia’s having the party at her house had seemed right to him, and so I was going to be a guest at my son’s engagement party.

Suddenly the party seemed like a bad idea. “I’m not sure that it will work. Cami and Jeremy are going to be so busy this fall with their medical-school applications and interviews. How are they going to come back here just for a party?”

“It might not work,” Mike said evenly, “but let’s not give up before we start.”

There was the “we” again, the “we” that didn’t include me.

It was time to stop thinking of Claudia Postlewaite as “Claudia the lady friend.” She wasn’t a joke. She was a real person, much
more a part of Mike’s life than I’d realized. If she was a part of Mike’s life, then she was a part of the boys’ lives . . . and therefore also part of mine.

More than anything else, I wanted my family to be a family. Yes, Mike and I were divorced, and yes, we’d been really angry with each other, but the four of us were still a family, a “two-household family” was our term for it. I was never, not ever, going to think of us as a “broken home.”

So I took a breath. “I’m sure Jeremy would appreciate the opportunity to celebrate with the families of his high-school friends.”

Mike looked at me suspiciously. “Appreciate the opportunity to celebrate” was not the way I normally talk, but it was the best I could do on such short notice.

He was still standing at the foot of the three steps that lead up to the narrow front porch. If we had been at the old house, he would have long since been inside. “Would you like to come in?” I asked. “See the house?”

“If you’ve got time.”

“Of course.” It might be small, but I was proud of my new house. I wanted him to see it. Zack’s friends had been over the day before to help me unpack. Because they were all from the theater-tech crowd, they had arranged the first floor like an artful stage set, pots of ivy accenting displays of my grandmother’s Swedish dishes. I’d never had such accessorized decor before.

It had been unfair of me to be annoyed with Mike for saying that the house was hard to find because he had, in fact, been speaking the God’s truth. The house was nearly impossible to find.

I had left the city and moved into Arlington County, the first suburb into Virginia, across the Potomac River. The county’s roads were a hodgepodge of eighteenth-century farm lanes, Civil War military roads, and post-World War II developments, twisting
around the county’s hilly topography. Furthermore, the excellent schools in the northern part of the county made it a very desirable place to live, so every side yard that had been zoned as a buildable lot had sprouted a McMansion, and whenever a small house went on the market, a developer pushed out its side walls and tore off the roof, adding massive master suites, second-floor laundry rooms, and family rooms with coffered ceilings.

My house, a little nineteenth-century farmhouse, had been destined for such remodeling, but the small creek that ran along the back edge of the oddly shaped lot was part of the Potomac River watershed. The neighbors joined with environmentalists to raise enough of a ruckus that the developer gave up with his grandiose plans. He installed central air-conditioning, refurbished the kitchens and bathrooms, and hoped that someone on the planet still wanted to live in a small house.

The house itself was white and L-shaped. From the covered front porch, which was just big enough for a porch swing, you walked directly into the living room, the long end of the L. On the far wall was a fireplace positioned between a pair of built-in bookcases. The kitchen and dining room formed the short end of the L, and the stairs were in the middle of the house. Upstairs were three small bedrooms and one bathroom. The basement, which was going to be Zack’s territory, had a bedroom, a bathroom, and a dark narrow space, which the realtor called a “family room,” and it would have been if your family consisted of hobbits.

I had no garage, no first-floor powder room. There was no room for a table in the kitchen, and I had one-fifth of the counter space that I had had in the old house. I would have to use my dining room for dining and my living room for living. People were going to have to walk either upstairs or down when they had to pee. But it was a sturdy, practical little house, and that seemed right for me.

It didn’t take long to show Mike around. He did not, as I expected him to, comment on how small the house was or how few bathrooms there were. He praised the work the builder had done. He admired how fresh everything seemed, how nicely arranged the rooms were. I tried not to take that as a criticism of the old house, which had been neither fresh nor nicely arranged. I tried really hard.

He lingered longest in the kitchen. The salmon was coming to room temperature on a white platter. The ginger cookies were cooling on wire racks, and nothing smells as enticing as a fresh ginger cookie.

Mike missed my cooking. Just as I’d gotten used to not worrying about bills for health insurance or car repairs, he’d assumed that all families sat down every night to a perfectly sautéed trout fillet with a citrus sauce or a golden-brown roasted chicken, its cavity stuffed with lemon slices and heads of papery garlic. I’m not the Martha Stewart perfect homemaker. I do not care about presentation or display. I never do any crafts, and I don’t care what laundry detergent I use. But I love to cook, and because I understand the science behind cooking—I know what happens to the bonds of a coiled protein molecule when it is exposed to heat, air, or acid—I’m very good.

In the three years since he had left, I’d often invited Mike to stay for dinner. His relationship with Zack continued to be problematic, and the best way for the two of them to see each other was at the house. Mike had also come for all the holidays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter, and I’d sent him back to his Capitol Hill condominium with lots of leftovers.

I could have invited him for dinner today. There was enough salmon for all four of us. But everything seemed different now. This had never been his house; he had not painted this dining room. Furthermore, he’d had lunch with a person who was going
to give a party for my son. We were starting to build separate lives.

So I offered him a cookie.

She first praised Jeremy, saying how much they liked and admired him. Then she spoke about being eager to meet me, hoping that Zack and I could join them for a weekend at their place on Long Island this fall, possibly Columbus Day. She also hoped that I would understand that she couldn’t be firm about the day. She still had two children at home, and she wanted to wait until after she got their school calendars before making too definite a commitment.

It was a perfect letter, flattering without being effusive, politely formal but with the right down-to-earth touch about the school calendars.

I’m suspicious of people who can write perfect letters. It gives them a weapon the rest of us don’t have. Furthermore, I’ve never had much luck with girls who have pretty handwriting and nice stationery. I was never a part of the giggling cluster that gathered around the most popular girl’s locker.

But Rose Zander-Brown and I weren’t girls. We were two women, two mothers, and the stakes weren’t what we were going to wear to the dance Friday night, but the most precious thing ever, our children.

I’m not one to “borrow trouble.” My normal workday is full of plenty all on its own, but occasionally I’ll start my shift with a bad feeling about a piece of equipment.
You’re not going to work right today, are you?
I wasn’t always right, but considering that I’d had no evidence for my suspicion, it was surprising how often I was. I had that feeling now. I fingered the letter; the paper was soft with a feathered edge and a roughened pebbly surface.
What kind of trouble are you going to cause me?

It didn’t answer.

Each year the Entrance has a theme. It’s supposed to be top secret. Maybe some of the moms who were at the school all the time knew what it was, but I wasn’t one of them. So as soon as Zack got home from school the Tuesday after Labor Day, I asked him about it.

“We kept it simple,” he answered and flipped up one of the straps of his backpack. Pinned to it was a round, white, political-campaign-style button;
SENIOR YEAR: ALL TOO BRIEF
.

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“We ran in in our underwear.”

I love high-school kids. “Good thing you wear boxers, not briefs.”

He grinned. “A surprising number of girls seem to too.”

“I bet that was a disappointment.”

“Yeah, and then Mr. G. said that all the girls had to wear something on top, even the ones who don’t usually wear bras. The debate team tried to argue that that was sexist, but it was a no-go.”