The Stud Book (22 page)

“Mom!” Arena looked appalled. Her mom had taught her to be kind. They served men like that food at the mission. She said, “You don’t know his story.”

“I’m old enough to know a few things.” Sure, it was wrong to turn a man into a symbol, but this was about saving her daughter. “You need to rethink your actions.”

Arena said, “Kids like to have something to buy. Makes ’em feel street-smart.”

Nyla sputtered. She could hardly hold back her fury. “Does that man look ‘street-smart’? Does he look any kind of smart?” She tried to pace her words. She squinted through the muddy windshield and said, “You think you’re doing kids a favor?”

The windshield cleaner only made the smudges worse. Arena said, “Mom, are you still using water for wiper solution?”

“Solution. Ha,” Nyla said. “That’s a euphemism for poison. It doesn’t solve anything. Put enough ‘solution’ in the groundwater and we’ll all have liver cancer.”

Arena ran a finger over the glass from the inside. “Can you even see?”

“Ignore the windshield.” This was her baby girl! What about all she’d done—the breast-feeding, the co-sleeping, the family camping trips, the day trips to the mountains? “You need to take this seriously.”

Arena said, “It’s not serious. It’s a game, Mom. I’ve got more at home. A whole box.”

Nyla said, “A
box
?”

Arena fiddled with the car’s stereo. She picked up something she found on the dash—a seashell or a rock. Nyla’s car was cluttered with nature brought inside.

Nyla said, “Meth in a box?” It sounded so corporate. Drugs had come a long way since Nyla was in high school, since Dulcet was expelled. Those days looked innocent, back when the focus was on homegrown pot and magic mushrooms that popped up in local parks.

Arena looked at her mother, and her mouth opened. “Meth? That’s what they told you?”

Nyla nodded.

“Crystal meth?” Arena asked again.

Yes. Arena was being expelled from high school for selling crystal meth. Her daughter! Her good, quiet, thoughtful girl. A student had turned over evidence to a school security guard. He’d pointed Arena out and said she sold him the powder. Nyla had to meet with the guard, the principal, and the police. The wipers slapped the windshield, moving lines of mud across and back.

Arena said, “Mom. It was Crystal Light, not crystal meth.”

“What do you mean?” Nyla’s voice quavered. She drove a little slower, easing her foot off the pedal.

“Crystal Light? A drink mix, like Kool-Aid for grown-ups.” Arena quoted a slogan older than she was: “I believe in Crystal Light because I believe in me.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“YouTube.”

The car ahead of them showed only red taillights haloed by rain, and Nyla almost ran into it—had to put the brakes on fast. Then the line started moving again.

Nyla took a yoga breath, then said, “You’re telling me you sold kids Crystal Light, the drink mix?” She let this new version of the story sink in.

Arena nodded her head the same way she’d been doing her whole life, yes, like a child. Yes to all those questions over the years: Did Santa bring you something nice? Do you want a tuna sandwich? You mean you didn’t sell children hard drugs?

Yes, yes, yes. Nodding, nodding.

“The student had powder. Did you tell him what it was?”

Arena said, “Mom, it was in a Crystal Light stick. It was a package.”

Nyla was so relieved, she felt half-sick. She asked, “You didn’t fold it inside a bindle?”

“A what?”

“You know, a paper wrap? You take a square and fold it in half, and make triangle, then fold the ends in—”

“You sure know a lot about drugs, Mom. But no, no ‘bindle’ or whatever.” Arena picked at the car’s threadbare roof liner.

Nyla had to check one more time. “It definitely wasn’t crystal meth, then?”

She needed a meditation tape! She was ready to laugh and vomit at the same time. Her body didn’t know what to do with the chemical systems of alarm, how to turn it around so quickly—on a dime, as the saying goes.
On a dime bag
, she thought.

Arena said, “No, Mom. They put it in their water. I bought a box of six. They buy it for a dollar a pack. There’s fruit punch, lemonade, caffeine flavor—”

Nyla cut in, “Caffeine isn’t a flavor, honey.”

Arena said, “Whatever. Energy flavor, then. There’s one for your skin. Every jock with acne bought it. Are you crying, Mom?”

“I’m not,” Nyla said. But she ran a finger under one eye, then the other. She said, “Crystal Light is a corporate product with artificial sweetener, artificial color, artificial flavor, and way too much packaging.” Her voice was shaky. Nyla was dizzy with relief, afraid to give in to this new and improved version of events.

Arena said, “Not at all, Mom. They have real sugar in some of them. Studies show women who drink Crystal Light drink twenty percent more water on average.”

Nyla said, “You’re quoting ads as truth?” This wasn’t how she raised her children. She wiped her eyes again.

Arena looked the other way when she said, “I am.”

Nyla added, “They drink chemicals.”

Arena said, “You
are
crying. Mom?”

Nyla’s nose had started to run. She said, “Did you tell Mrs. Cherryholmes it was Crystal Light?”

“I thought she knew.”

“Well, Crystal Light’s not exactly high crime.” Nyla tried to
quit being so emotional about it. She couldn’t stop her voice from quavering.

“They don’t like us selling anything at school. And I sold packets individually, or whatever. Where it says ‘Not for individual sale’ on the side?”

Her darling child!

Nyla exhaled. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand. She took another deep breath, started to laugh, then choked up again, and felt herself lost in an emotion between elated and crushed, and that’s what it meant to have children: happiness tempered with terror, panic laced with love. “We’ll clear it up.” She gave two more squirts from her water-filled windshield cleaner reservoir and left muddy rivulets down the glass.

Arena nodded.

Outside the car it was dark, raining, and cold, but in the car she felt close to her strange, quiet girl. She missed Celestial, who had always been so ready to tell Nyla everything, who thought out loud and asked questions. But maybe now, with Celeste at Brown, she and Arena would learn to talk. This problem with school could be a catalyst.

Arena asked, “Mom, what do you think happens when we die?”

“You’re not going to die. You’re just expelled.” Nyla was happy.

“We’ll all die. What happens then?”

“I have no idea.” A strange question. Nyla kept her eyes on the sea of orange and red taillights in the stop-and-go traffic, each light haloed by rain.

Arena said, “I met this cool guy?”

Nyla froze. This was it—the moment of mother-daughter bonding she had hoped for. Nyla had to be careful not to scare her shy daughter away.

“Let me show you a picture.” Arena dug in her backpack. Nyla held her breath, ready to see what kind of man or boy Arena took an interest in, ready for any clue to her daughter’s internal life. Arena pulled out her worn copy of
Red Azalea
. She leafed through it. There between the pages she found a photo. “Here.”

In the dark car it was hard to see what Arena held. Nyla tried to catch a glimpse as they passed under streetlights. “What’s that?”

The photo looked like twin taillights in the rain.

“It’s him,” Arena said, “and me. We share the same energy field.”

Nyla looked again. She looked closely. She gave her daughter her full attention, forgot to brake, the taillights brightened, and she saw her daughter’s head jerk forward then back as they slammed into the rear of the car ahead of them.

B
en couldn’t stop to check his makeup; he was late for an underwriters powwow where they’d hash out details on tricky loans. Early that morning, Sarah had worked on his face, using a tube shaped like a bullet casing or a lipstick container, only the makeup inside was pale green. She tapped green dots under his eyes then across the cracked bridge of his nose. “Green covers bruises,” she said, leaning so close her breath beat against his lips.

A temp passed Ben in the wide corridor of their office, arms full of folders. She eyeballed him up and down. “Nice look!”

Was that ironic or sincere? He was wearing Dockers and a button-down, along with his smashed nose. Maybe that auburn-haired, ponytail-swinging temp could tell he was hidden under an oil-free coat of beige? The temp was young and thin, and slung her files like she had no investment in any of this.

He didn’t have time to talk, not even with a sexy, ironic temp who knew how to sling files. It was his first day back.

He’d sat on the edge of the bathtub at home while Sarah leaned over him; her nightshirt hung low, all cleavage and freckled skin. She’d put her tongue to the corner of her lips and tapped the green
makeup with a fingertip. Her eyes scanned Ben’s face, looking everywhere except back into his eyes.

The beauty of Sarah was she knew how to take charge.

She patted a cool liquid foundation over the green dots and used her second finger to work the makeup down and out, toward his ears. She found a fat brush in her bag of tricks and swirled it in a plastic dish. “Setting powder,” she said, and gave the brush two good raps against the porcelain sink. He could still feel that brush coming at him with its crazy tickle, obnoxious and soft and sexy at the same time.

He’d watched this routine his whole life; now he was an insider, brought in on the makeup ritual.

“Powder makes it so it won’t travel,” Sarah said. “Longer coverage.”

“How long?”

Sarah shrugged. He lost heart, and said, “I don’t know about this.”

“Think of it as war paint.” She dropped the tube of concealer in his blazer pocket.

Wearing the face Sarah made him, he walked with long strides down the open corridor between cubicles and saw his meeting, already started, through a conference room window at the far end of the offices. People were seated around a rectangular table, trapped in the soundproofed capsule of office space.

Ben nodded through the window at his coworkers and offered what he hoped was an enthusiastic, warm yet professional expression. It was hard to look friendly with a smashed face. He felt the warrior paint of his makeup where it lay heavy on his skin. Would it crease?

His boss, Trisha, swiveled and turned a lever. The white blinds tipped. The room was cut off, his smile wasted on the dusty contours of louvered blinds. Had she done that on purpose?

Her timing was precise.

Not one person in the office had welcomed him back yet after his bloody nose vacation. He’d expected to groan at an office card on his desk, or to crowd in the break room for well-wishes and cheap cake. He didn’t want the card or the cake, but he wanted the connection a card could stand for. They circulated cards with every birthday, new baby, divorce, promotion, and vasectomy.

But apparently not for a crash in the john.

They acted like it didn’t happen.

That’d be fine, except it did happen, and it felt weird to leave so much unsaid. Could he be on the verge of losing his job and everybody knew but him? Or had somebody seen him with his pants down, nose pouring blood, blacked out? He had given them reason to look away, and here they were, still looking away.

What if there were pictures? Oh, God. Totally possible. Everybody had a camera phone. There could even be a camera hidden in the bathroom, some kind of corporate Homeland Security.

He’d Google it. Key words:
bathroom, underwriter, nosebleed, cock
.

He’d run
jacking off
through YouTube. How many videos would that call up? His palms started to sweat at the thought. His neck tightened.

He opened the conference room door. His coworkers were deep in discussion, a file on the table. Most people who worked at that level of the bank’s mortgage lending office were women, and the women were all divorced single moms, high school educated, who’d climbed the ladder from claims processor on up. This was their ceiling.

Management was all the same kind of tall, large-knuckled men. There were three managers with corner offices on that floor. Ben was tall, but apparently not tall enough.

He’d drifted into the pink-collar ghetto.

He found a chair, and kept a wary eye to see if anyone noticed his makeover. The underwriters didn’t look up from their pages. The only other man in the meeting pushed a credit report, bank statements, and a home appraisal toward Ben, without looking at him.

Trisha was assessing the file. She said, “So we’ve got low income going on.…”

“But trending upward,” the man said, and he raised a finger toward the ceiling. “And job stability.” That man was very small, with narrow bones and compact ears. He’d never be management.

Ben scanned the credit report. The primary borrower worked in a munitions storage facility in eastern Oregon, not far from where Ben grew up. The borrowers were a couple, a man and a woman. The wife, the secondary signatory on the loan app, was in nuclear waste containment.