Today Will Be Different(7)

“Here?” I said.

“You need to find the item number and cross-reference it with her name,” said another young mom.

I went to Japan once and our guide claimed that to them, all Americans looked alike. At the time, I thought, Oh, you’re just saying that about us because that’s what we say about you. But beholding this array of young, glowing, physically fit moms, it occurred to me that Fumiko might not have been messing with me after all.

“Got ridiculous?” said the first young mom.

A young dad (because there’s always one dad) held up a folder. “Victory is mine!”

“You won a latte, you won a latte,” singsonged the first or the second or the third or the fourth mom.

Put these parents in a room with clerical work and zero supervision, and they start acting like the deranged winners in an Indian casino ad.

“You donated a hand-drawn portrait of the winning bidder in the style of Looper Wash,” said one, finally acknowledging my existence.

“That’s you?” asked another.

Like ostriches, they all stopped and cocked their heads at me.

“I heard you went here,” said one, taking me in.

“Timby’s mom,” said another, the expert.

Seattle is short on star power. A past-her-prime animator and a Seahawks doctor make me and Joe the Galer Street equivalent of Posh and Becks.

“I’m a Vivian,” said one.

“You’re totally a Fern,” corrected another.

“What are you doing now?” one flat-out asked me.

“I’m writing a memoir,” I said, heat weirdly building in my cheeks. “A graphic memoir.” It was none of their business, but I kept going. “I have an advance from a publisher and everything.”

The ostriches smiled inscrutably.

On the table, a ring of keys. Each key had one of those color-coded rubber jobs around the top. In my life I’d bought a hundred of the damned things but had always given up because who can put them on without bending a nail? Also on the ring, a neat fan of bar-code tags from Breathe Hot Yoga, Core de Ballet, Spin Cycle… And in a personal touch, this young, fit mom had attached a lanyard with her child’s name in baby blocks.

I turned my head sideways. What was the name?

D-E-L-P-H-I-N-E.

I froze.

“Yoo-hoo!” called a young mom.

“You forgot to put a dollar value as to what it’s worth,” said another.

“What what’s worth?” I said, snapping to.

“Your auction item,” put in another. “For tax purposes.”

“Oh. I don’t know.”

“We need to put down something,” said the first young mom.

“It’s just a few hours of my time.” My breath had become stuck. Why did I have to see those goddamned keys?

“What’s your time worth?” This was the young dad, wresting control.

“Literally?” I said. “Per hour?”

Did he mean the hours I spent lying in bed vowing to change? The hours shopping for organizers that forever remained in the bags? The hours researching mindfulness classes, signing up for them, going so far as parking outside art-gallery-yoga-studios and watching the well-intentioned students file in, only to lose my nerve and peel out? The hours planning to eat dinner as a family, just to end up hunched in front of our screens, every man for himself? The hours steeped in shame that I had no excuse for any of it?

And then, squeals.

The first-graders had burst onto the lawn wearing butterfly wings shellacked with colorful bits of tissue paper. The young moms (and the one dad) turned their backs to me and basked in the slipstream of their children’s spontaneity and delight. The energy in the room shifted from bubbly conviviality to hushed reverence. All the choices these young moms (and the one dad) had agonized over—to work or not work, to marry young or keep looking, to have a kid now or see the world first—had led to hard decisions. And with decisions come regrets. And sleepless nights, and recriminations, and fights with their husbands (and the one wife), and whacked-out calls to the doctor for pills. The “catatonic vision of frozen terror” the poet had called these moments of existential doubt, or certainty, it was hard to know which. But seeing their children now, in this instant, these parents knew in their teeth that their decisions had been the right ones.

So, with a perfectly timed cough, I grabbed that young mom’s ring of keys, dropped them in my purse, and slipped out.

That’s right, I stole them.





Timby was lying on a cot in a corner of the office looking, to my trained eye, pretty darned pleased with himself.

“Get up,” I said. “I’m officially sick of this BS.”

On the downside, I’d said that. On the upside, it was so unnecessarily nasty that Lila and the other administrators pretended not to hear. Timby darkened and followed me out.

I waited until we were standing at the car. “We’re going straight to the doctor’s. And you’d better pray there’s really something wrong with you.”

“Can’t we just go home?”

“So you can drink ginger ale and watch Doctor Who? No. I refuse to reward you any more for faking stomachaches. We’re going to the doctor and straight back to school.” I leaned in close. “And for all I know, it’s time for you to get a shot.”