Other People's Houses(12)

Frances’s kids were old enough that she’d stopped crab walking. But occasionally she would scan, pausing as she waited for one or the other of them to appear, or bend to look under the structure, hunting for their shoes. When she had other people’s kids, too, as now, she was more watchful. Losing her own child would be bad enough, losing someone else’s would be a disaster.

Ava appeared next to her, ostentatiously carrying a textbook. She sat down, opened the book to a section on homeostasis, and did a little mime of running her finger down the page to the appropriate sentence.

“So,” said Frances, “homeostasis, eh?”

“Yup,” replied her daughter.

“Maintaining balance, right?”

“Yup.”

“A pendulum swinging will eventually come to rest in the middle?”

Ava sighed. “That’s not a perfect metaphor because homeostasis is about balance between oppositional forces, which keep pushing. A pendulum rests because it’s run out of energy to swing.”

Frances nodded. “Just checking.”

“You wondered if you’d forgotten the meaning of homeostasis?”

“No, just wondered if we were still talking.”

Ava smiled a very small smile. “Oh, we’ll always be talking, Mom. I’ll push from one side, you’ll push from the other. You know.”

Frances put her arm around her daughter and gave her a squeeze. “I know you have homework, baby. But the littler kids need to run about a bit, OK?”

Ava nodded. “I don’t know why I get so cranky with you. I’m just so tired after school, and so wound up from being nice all day.” She laughed at herself. “Not that I’m all that nice at school, I must admit.” Just then Lally appeared and tugged at her sister. “Will you chase me?” Ava started to frown, then suddenly nodded and got to her feet, turning to Frances. “Balance, right?”

Frances nodded, watching Ava tear away after her little sister, who was instantly hysterical with delight.





Six.


Michael was satisfyingly appalled when Frances told him the news that evening.

“He was going down on her? Before nine in the morning? Jesus.”

She nodded, not sure if it was the cheating or the earliness of the hour that bothered him, but then Lally came in. It was after dinner, she’d had her bath and was supposed to be brushing her teeth. To be fair, she did have a toothbrush in her hand.

“Do I have to brush my teeth?” She sounded like she’d maybe identified a loophole in the toothbrushing law, and was ready to exploit it.

“Yes, you do.” Frances was firm.

“What’s up, Lal?” Michael was sitting in the big, comfy chair in their bedroom, his laptop open on his lap. Multitasking, as usual, although the news about Anne had almost made him close his computer.

The little girl turned to him and stuck out her arm. “There’s a hair on my toothbrush.” She pulled out her new strategy. “It seems unsantiary . . .”

“You mean unsanitary?” She nodded, because that was what she’d said. Michael took the toothbrush from her, removed the hair, and handed it back. “It’s fine now. Was it your hair?”

She shrugged, turning to go, her tiny little form in elephant pajamas almost too cute to bear. “I think it might have been Jack’s.” Jack was one of their dogs.

“Was he using your brush?” Michael was joking, of course. The dog had his own brush, one of those items that mysteriously turned up in drawers whenever Frances was looking for something else, but which couldn’t be found twice a year when she remembered you were supposed to brush the dogs’ teeth. In the same class were things like chargers for SLR cameras, passport photos you hadn’t sent in with the application yet, kitchen implements used only at Thanksgiving, and those tiny screwdrivers for fixing eyeglasses. Frances dubbed the whole class “occultatum,” after the Latin word for hidden. This coinage made her feel slightly pretentious, but she enjoyed muttering it when she pulled open drawer after drawer looking for something.

Lally was losing interest. “No, but I think Milo was combing his hair with it. I’m not sure. Something.”

Frances tried for clarification. “Milo was combing his own hair, or Jack’s fur?”

Lally just shrugged again and wandered out. Frances turned to her husband. “Did you understand that?”

He shrugged just as his daughter had and turned back to his screen. Then he remembered what they’d been talking about and looked up again. “No, really, right there in the front room? Visible from the street?”

Frances made a face. “No. They were on the floor, not hovering in midair. The only reason I saw them was because I walked into the actual house.”

“For the toilet roll tubes?”

“Yes. At first I thought it was Charlie . . .”

Her husband laughed. “You thought Anne and Charlie were having interesting sex on the floor of their living room at nine in the morning?”

Frances pulled off her boots and started taking off her clothes. “OK, maybe that isn’t very likely, but it is the first assumption you make when you see a married friend having sex on the floor.”

“Oh, I know that’s what I think every time. Have you ever seen anyone else having sex on the floor? Is this what you get up to while I’m at work?”