Other People's Houses(61)

A young man stepped out of her way, and then, a moment later, appeared around the corner of an aisle. He cleared his throat, and Frances looked up at him. Oh, for fuck’s sake.

“Don’t I know you?” he asked, half frowning. He knew her face was familiar, but these days his sadness was confusing him; he often forgot what he was doing, or where he should be. Not a student, too old for that. Another teacher?

Ava was looking from her mother to this totally hot guy, and for a split second wanted to giggle. Like her mom would know him. But still, maybe if she did . . . Ava grinned at the young man, and he smiled absently back, noticing the teen for the first time, and therefore starting to run through his rolodex of students. Maybe this woman who seemed so familiar was just a mom he’d seen at the art college.

But Frances was now literally backing away, shaking her head gently. “No, I don’t think we know each other, sorry.” Ava hadn’t seen his face the other day; she had no reason to learn who he was now.

But Ava hadn’t turned, and the guy was insistent. “No, I’m sure I’ve seen you before. I’m Richard Seitz. I’m a teacher at Otis?”

“The art school?” Ava had taken over the conversation. Frances had started to sweat, and now she took her daughter’s sleeve and literally tugged.

“Come on, Ava, we’ve got stuff to get.” She turned back to Richard and her expression suddenly said, Look, go the fuck away, we definitely know each other and either you’re pretending not to know me, in which case I will fuck you up if you continue this charade, or you really have forgotten me, in which case you’re in worse shape than I thought.

He stepped back. “Sorry, my mistake.”

“I’ve sometimes thought about going to art school, and that’s a good one, right?” Oh my God, Frances thought, Ava’s flirting with this guy because, let’s face it, he’s cute and closer to her age than he is to Anne’s, but there is simply no way this is happening.

Richard was still not getting it. “It is. I’d be happy to show you around sometime, if you like. We have open houses all the time.” He pulled out his wallet. “I’ll give you my card, you can e-mail me.”

That’s when Frances turned to look at him with an expression of extremely explicit warning and Richard suddenly remembered who she was, where he’d seen her, and why she was tugging her cute little daughter away from him down the clay aisle.



* * *



? ? ?

Ava was pissed. “Why wouldn’t you let me talk to that guy?” She was sitting in the front seat, the art store bag on her lap, clearly simmering.

“He was too old for you,” Frances replied, eyeing the ice cream store across the street. She wanted a milkshake so badly, no wonder she was overweight. She ate whenever she felt bad, which was more frequently than you might think. Also when she felt good. And sad. And angry. OK, she ate whenever she fucking felt like it, and having run through the familiar “I want to eat that, no, you’re too fat, no, I’m a feminist and I reject your body-shaming bullshit, but what about your health, what about my health, like you care about my health, you just want me to conform to some cultural norm, I’m talking about a milkshake and I’m a grown-ass lady and fuck you” thing, she suddenly turned the car off and got out. It was more than a milkshake, it was a political stand, and she was going to add malt. Ava didn’t move, so Frances leaned down to the window.

“Do you want ice cream?”

“He wasn’t too old for me, one. And two, ew, he was like thirty—you shouldn’t even be thinking about him like that—and I was only asking about school. I thought you wanted me to go to college?” Ava went to open the car door and Frances stepped back to put money in the meter.

“I do want you to go to college, but I didn’t want you talking to some strange guy in an art store. He’d be asking you to pose nude next.”

“Which would have been reasonable if he’s an artist, right?” Ava wasn’t as mad now, because ice cream, and because she was finding this conversation amusing.

They entered the store, with its high ceilings and metal tables and chairs and familiar faces.

“Chocolate malted?” The guy at the counter had seen Frances so many times, and she never wavered. She didn’t let him down and nodded. Unbeknownst to her they called her Mommy Malted. Not that she would have cared. “And for you?” The guy looked at Ava, and his expression altered, subtly. Not so subtly that Frances missed it, and it struck her that the days when she got that “Hey, I see you, attractive young woman” look, were long gone. She got friendly, she got recognition, eventually, but she no longer got physical awareness. She didn’t mind, although she knew many women who hated it, who hated becoming slowly invisible, fading away. Like Marty McFly in his family photo.

“I’ll get a shake, too, but cookies and cream, please.” Then Ava smiled at him, the smile that said, “Hey, attractive young man, I see you and I see you seeing me and it’s nice that we see each other, ciao babe.” Then they turned away to wait. So much communication, so little time. Ava turned her back on the cashier and spoke again to her mother.

“Like, if he’s an artist and wants to draw me that’s a different getting nude than any other kind, right?”

Frances shook her head, looking at the cakes and cookies in the case. There was a blue velvet cake that perplexed her, even as she wanted to try it. “No, and you know it. You’re fourteen. You shouldn’t even be thinking of getting nude.” She paused, struggling to be honest. “Actually, that’s not true. At fourteen you probably will be thinking about it a lot, but you shouldn’t be doing it.” She wrestled a little more, thinking back to her own teen years, her virginity lost at fifteen, quite happily, with a fellow fifteen-year-old she still knew on Facebook, and whose two sons were around the same age as Ava. “Or at least, not with a man twice your age.”