Tuesday Night Miracles (13 page)

“What can we do for you?” The girl behind the counter looks as if she’s ten years old. She’s chewing a wad of gum, her hair is in pigtails, and she’s wearing a tight neon-green tank top. Where are the child-labor people?

“How old are you?”

“Excuse me, ma’m?” The girl has leaned across the counter and looks as if she’s about to vault over the top like a gymnast. Talk about defiant.

“You look so young. I’m just curious.”

“I’m seventeen, and I run the desk on weekends. I can also manage the pool, lifeguard, do CPR, operate the defibrillator, and drive my dad’s big Dodge truck.” The little missy has thrown back her shoulders and looks as if she’s going to try and pin Jane to the wall.

Jane goes pale. When was the last time she even talked to anyone under the age of thirty? “Can I take the next class?”

“That would be karate for six-year-olds.”

For God’s sake! Karate for kids barely out of training pants? Jane is almost stumped. “How about the class after that?”

“Spinning in Gym D in thirty minutes. That will be ten bucks, because it’s obvious you’re not a member. Anything else?”

Isn’t she pissy! Jane hesitates. She may as well get it over with. “Do you need any volunteer help this afternoon?”

The girl stifles a tiny laugh. It sounds as if she’s blowing bubbles through her nose, but she manages to say yes, absolutely. There’s a birthday party in the back annex, and the extra helper called in sick. Jane tries not to faint. It’s a party for eight-year-old girls. She closes her eyes, takes her locker key, and wonders if Derrick, via someone he’s met in a back alley, knows anyone who could order a hit on a county psychologist.

What happens next baffles her. The whole world has changed. She has to sign release papers saying she’s not an ax murderer, write down her driver’s license number, and give a brief work history, and then the little kid behind the counter takes her photograph.

“I know, it’s stupid,” the girl says, as she snaps a photo. “People sue each other if they step on dental floss. And I suppose if it was my kid I’d want to know if some weirdo was slicing their birthday cake.”

Jane nods. Has she been living on a different planet?

As she heads to the locker room, she tries to think of the last ridiculous hard thing she had to do that doesn’t include the shoe mess and everything that happened right after it. It’s pretty hard to beat court-ordered anger class and a mug shot. Nothing comes to mind, but the locker room is a pit hole. There are towels and mothers chasing kids and open locker doors and a group shower that’s full of giggling girls. Jane gets out of there as quickly as possible.

At least Spinning class looks somewhat normal. The bikes are a bit outdated, but the instructor looks as if he could beat Lance Armstrong. His legs are an amazing distraction, and Jane lunges into the class ride as if she’s on fire.

Is this what she’s supposed to do? Go for it? Work out the angry tension? Watch this guy’s legs? She decides that she simply is not going to worry about it. She’s at the YWCA. She’s going to help at a birthday party. She’s pedaling hard. She’s not yelling at anybody. She’s following directions, which might actually be the point of the whole exercise, now that she thinks about it.

The class ends in forty-five minutes, and Jane and everyone else is absolutely dripping with sweat. She wipes off her seat, thanks Mr. Beautiful, and is about to head to the shower when she wonders if that’s a good idea. What happens at a little girl’s birthday party? Will she really have to do something?

She takes a fast shower, so that she looks halfway normal even if she’s at a stinky YWCA. She’s thrilled when she gets into the locker room and there are only a few grown women in the shower. So far, so good. There’s at least thirty minutes left before this birthday party, so she decides to walk around.

The YWCA is huge. There are people everywhere. Apparently these places have become the social center of the universe. Kids could be doing worse things. When she bends to read the bulletin board, she sees that there are volunteer notices posted everywhere. After-school care, nurse on duty, coaches, Big Brothers & Big Sisters programs. Jane had no idea.

She strolls toward the annex, where the birthday party is scheduled to be held, and is almost run over by a pack of screaming girls. It looks as if a United Nations bus has unloaded. It’s a rainbow of nationalities tearing past her and there they go—right into the birthday-party room.

“Oh, no!”

Jane presses her nose against the door and sees streaks of color dashing everywhere. There must be fifteen little girls running around. There’s a woman standing in the middle of the room motioning to her to come in. There are a few seconds when Jane is tempted to run like hell. She’ll fail the damn class and go to jail and make Derrick sell the house so they can leave town. Dr. Bayer is absolutely out of her mind!

Before she can turn and run three more girls come running behind her, push the door, and Jane stumbles into the room.

It is absolute chaos, and everyone but Jane appears to be having the time of their lives. There are games and candy and a mini-basketball hoop, and the woman in charge—Sherrie, a tall, smiling, totally confident middle-aged party queen—acts as if she can walk on water. No matter what happens, what gets spilled, this woman turns it into something fun. Jane feels as if she’s there to attend the party, instead of being an adult who’s there to lend a hand.

Jane scoops up cake, manages to throw some balls, wipes a few faces, and the entire time she also wants to run screaming from the room. How do people do this?

The party lasts ninety long minutes, and finally Sherrie blows a whistle. There’s a collective groan from all the wild little girls, but they obey what must be a “Get out of here” command. They drop their hands, grab their goodie bags, and start walking out the door.

All but one girl.

Jane is standing by the door with her hands at her sides, praying that she can leave, too, when the little girl comes up to her, takes her hand, and says, “You are so pretty.”

“Th-thank you,” she stutters, her heart all but stopping.

“Lady,” the little girl says, latching on to her hand. “Could you be my mommy?”

Jane can barely think to talk. “Don’t you have a mommy?”

The little girl shakes her head. “She left.”

Just then Sherrie scoops the little girl up in her arms and waltzes her out the door while throwing Jane a big thanks.

The house is quiet and empty when Jane gets home. She showers again to get the cake out of her hair, the chocolate milk off her legs, and the fingerprints of the little girl off her hand.

But the hot water doesn’t take care of everything. No matter what Jane does, she can’t forget what it felt like to hold the soft, warm hand of that dark-eyed little girl.

The Blue Dot

Suicide is something that has never entered Grace Collins’s mind. She definitely thought of trying to get other people to do it, but she’s never once, even when the divorce was swallowing her alive, thought of it for herself, even in passing.

Tonight Grace wonders what it would be like to throw herself in front of a fast-moving train. She is thinking about this as she sits in her car outside an art gallery two miles from her house. The art galley that is hosting a singles-night exhibition, complete with wine, toothpicks with cheese stuck on the end, a live jazz quartet, and presumably dozens of other people who have been ordered by their anger-management facilitator to go to the damn thing.

Grace is slumped down in the seat of her car in the parking lot of the gallery. She has on the best two-piece suit she owns; nylons, for God’s sake; a low-cut blouse that shows off what she thinks is her best asset—her cleavage—and a sweet pair of black pumps that she wore to the last office Christmas party.

And she hates herself.

“I am a miserable failure,” she whispers into her hands. “Look what’s become of me.”

She knows that she’s not supposed to be angry, but right this second she’s angry at that damn Dr. Bayer. Her latest assignment has almost thrown her off the cliff:

Your assignment this time is to find a singles event and attend it. It can be anything. Don’t worry about it but go. Have fun. Look around. See what happens. Then you can tell me all about it
.

When she finally got up the courage to open the envelope and read the assignment, Grace was afraid to move. A singles event? Like what? Bingo? A bar scene? Dance class? An online dating service? She dropped her face into her hands and had to struggle not to bite her fingers.

Shit!

This has become Grace’s new favorite word. She says it all the time when she’s alone. And she said it when she started her online search for singles events, which got her nowhere. Square dancing or bingo or slutting around in bars seemed to be the biggest things going. What was the point of this assignment again?

Then Grace would remember class and that woman Jane with the attitude and Leah’s bruised face and Kit’s cowboy boots and she would start looking for a singles event all over again. Attending a singles event had to be better than sitting in class—maybe.

More shit.

She also had to find something she could do on a night when she knew for certain Kelli would be busy. Kelli would laugh for a year if she knew about the class and the assignment. Her big break came when Kelli asked if she could have a sleepover on Saturday night. Grace said yes so fast that Kelli looked at her sideways.

“Mom, you don’t even know where I’m going to sleep over.”

“I’m having a hot flash, sweetie. Take advantage of it.”

“Something is wrong with you.”

“No kidding. Where are you wanting to sleep?” Grace is never sure if she wants to hear the answer to that question.

“Karen asked me to hang with the girls and sleep over so she and Jack can stay out really late.”

Grace is baffled. Had Karen said anything about babysitting? Grace had been imagining a cocaine binge at a pimp’s house. What else was she missing? She waved Kelli off with her left hand and a shake of her head, threw her a kiss, and grabbed the newspaper. That’s where she found the art-singles thing. And that’s why she’s now hiding halfway under her steering wheel, watching people walk into the gallery.

She looks up through the windshield at the lovely night sky and wishes she were up there floating through the stars, maybe touching the moon—anywhere but sitting in her car with tight nylons making it hard for her to breathe. She closes her eyes, turns her head to the right, and sees a woman sitting alone in the next car over.

Grace watches her for a moment, and the woman doesn’t move. Finally she scoots her head back and does exactly the same thing that Grace has been doing. Grace laughs. The woman hears her through the open window and turns. The woman smiles.

Grace knows that if she doesn’t go in now she will never go in. Is this really so hard?
Seriously, Grace, get thy ass moving
.

She looks at the woman, points her thumb toward the gallery, and mouths, “Should we go in?” The woman opens her car door, grabs a lovely beaded black purse, walks around the front of Grace’s car, and leans down to the open window.

“I can’t believe I’m even here.”

“I’m not really here,” Grace says. “I’ve left my body. I’ve been invaded by something evil that brought me here.”

The woman, who is absolutely lovely and probably also in her fifties, is wearing designer jeans, a crisp white shirt, and a very hip suit jacket. She’s fairly short and has let her chin-length hair go gray but has it styled so that it all but floats around her lovely face. She’s also laughing so hard she begs Grace to get out of the car and walk in with her so she can use the restroom.

“There’s wine,” Grace says, reluctantly getting out of the car. “That’s something.”

By the time they get to the door, Grace has learned all about her newly divorced friend Bonnie. Bonnie has also learned about her not so newly divorced friend Grace, or so she thinks. Grace wasn’t about to reveal the true reason she’s there. Instead of eating pieces of bluefish sashimi, she wanted to be home in her old bathrobe eating popcorn on the couch.

There are about sixty women at the event, and maybe twenty men. Grace feels like an idiot, walking around with her orange nametag and a plastic glass. The women are eyeing the single men as if they are hungry dogs. And Grace has an alarming desire to go poke all of them in the eye with her toothpick.

Bonnie looks equally disgusted. “Is it just me, or do you feel like you’re in the middle of a cattle auction?”

“I’m an old cow being led to slaughter.”

“Should we get the hell out of here?”

Grace has to think for a minute before she answers. The assignment was to go to a singles event. She’s done that. Is there something else she doesn’t get about this?

Bonnie seems like a lot of fun. Kelli’s gone for the night. Grace doesn’t work the next day until the afternoon. She decides that, no matter where she is, she’s at a singles event.

“Let’s get the hell out of here.”

They both grab one more glass of wine before they leave, drink it before they exit the gallery, and run to their cars giggling like grade school girls.

“That was fun,” Grace says. “Now what?”

Bonnie tells Grace that she knows a little joint about a mile away that’s quiet, has some live music, and she’s never seen a guy in there who wears short pants and white socks.

“Hurry!” Grace shouts. “I’ve never heard of such a thing!”

The next three hours are a blur that Grace will find hard to remember, mostly because she simply had a good time and because they never really bothered to talk much about men—new men, that is. Both women ran through the details of their failed marriages quickly and leapt into a running conversation about themselves.

“I should never have married him in the first place,” Bonnie shared, moving her wineglass in small circles. “I was sort of pressured by his parents, by my parents, by the notion that at twenty-three I was getting to be over-the-hill.”