Further Joy (5 page)

“You know where the iron is,” she said.

Kim hoped Franklin didn't lump her in with these other women. She didn't know why she would care, but she did. She was running her eyes over the sprawled sections of newspaper on the kitchen counter. They were full of the same stories that were always in newspapers. Unemployment was down, but not enough. A species of warbler had gone extinct. The
smell of the women and the coffee and the lemons on an empty stomach was making her a little sick.

“I wonder, Mom, if you could spare one of your gang.” Franklin's hair was messy by design and there was a scuff of acne along the curve of his jaw. “There's an extra-credit thing I need to do. It's on the Gauguin exhibit at the Art Institute. It's a two-man deal, though.”

“At the Art Institute?” Rita said.

“I'm supposed to go with someone and then interview them about the exhibits. Anybody except a classmate. There's a whole list of questions, then I'm supposed to think of my own follow-up questions based on the answers to the first questions. It can't be a classmate, though. It has to be, like, a member of the public.”

Rita's face was resigned, faintly amused. “Let me guess. Today is the last day you can do it.” She looked around at the other women as if for sympathy. “I can always tell the last day something can be done, because that's the day he'll mention he needs to do it. I thought we talked about you having a schedule,” she told Franklin. “Writing it all down.”

He nodded, but he was in the middle of slurping more of his lemonade. When he came up for air, he shuddered, as if he'd done a shot of whiskey.

“And what about school?” Rita asked Franklin.

“This is the morning the class meets. You can miss a class meeting if you're doing the extra credit.”

“What class is it for?”

“The Politics of the Image. I've got an atrocious grade in there, so I could use the points. I mean it's really alarming, how low my average is. The teacher says it's sad, because my insights are of uncommon quality.”

“The Politics of the Image?” said Rita. “When I was your age, they called it Art Class.”

“You're the one who put me in this school. None of the names make sense. We talk about Freud in Civics.”

It seemed it was Rita's turn to talk again, but she only shook her head. The air conditioner kicked on. The woman named Teresa or maybe Tessa slipped a thin sweater off the back of her chair and hung it on her shoulders.

“Education first,” said Franklin. “That's what I've always heard.”

Rita was looking at Franklin with a face Kim guessed was tough love. “You should have planned this out ahead of time,” she said. “You always do this. You always want people to change plans around you. You always want to get bailed out.”

“I planned to plan ahead, but that plan fell through. Kind of like with your pear butter.” Franklin shifted around inside his shirt. “I just need someone to respond to art. It's not a terrible thing to ask. It's not breaking rocks in the sun.”

Everyone was quiet. Kim could tell Rita's friends wouldn't get involved. The etiquette was to mind your own business when someone else's kid was being difficult, to not say a word. An airplane could be heard passing over the house. The coffeemaker made a gentle gurgling noise.

“We should all get going,” Rita said. “Us to the mall and you to school. Manage your schedule better next time.”

Franklin exhaled dramatically. He was standing still, his eyes wide, and Kim thought he was trying to look toward her. He was looking at the area of her knees, his face stiff and apprehensive. He let his eyes flash up to her face for only a second. “If no one wants to go, no one wants to go,” he said. “I can't force anyone.” He waited a beat. When no one spoke up his shoulders went slack and his head slumped forward onto his chest. He started fishing around in his pants pocket for something. Rita had opened a drawer and pulled out a little accordion folder where she kept her coupons organized, and was flipping through it with a fingernail.

“I'll do it,” Kim said. She pushed the newspaper into a pile and pushed it away from her. “I'll be the subject.”

The kitchen went silent again. Kim could feel the skewering looks of the women in the room. At this point she was enjoying them. She'd broken the noninterference code, compromised the unified front.

The look Rita rested on Kim was one of tart curiosity. Kim didn't look away from it. Rita still had her fingers in her coupon book. She cleared her throat, and quickly enough she was smiling again. There was something brave in her smile nowadays.

“All right then,” she said. “I guess that's settled.” She pulled what she needed out of the coupon book and placed it back in the drawer, which she closed very softly. Then she reached for her purse and gave the contents a shake. “Franklin, it looks like you're going to slide by again.” She removed her wallet from her purse and found some cash. “Take this,” she said to him. “If Kim's giving up her day for you, you can at least buy her lunch.”

“That's not necessary,” Kim said, but Franklin was already accepting the bills and stuffing them into one of his pockets.

The rest of the women were gathering up their phones and sunglasses. “We could try Barbette for lunch,” one of them offered uncertainly. “They're supposed to have really good soups.” Franklin smirked at Kim and returned to his lemonade, sniffing it and adding more sugar.

“Isn't Gauguin the one that molested all those island girls?” Rita asked.

“That's what they say,” said Kim.

“In Tahiti or whatever. That's him, right? He was always having his way with the natives.”

“There was so much molesting going on in those days,” said Kim. “Hardly seems fair to keep bringing it up.”

She excused herself and went upstairs, her blood quickening with escape. She couldn't be around Rita's new friends another minute. She reached the landing without a backward glance and strode down the hallway. The second floor of the house was a whole different kingdom. It smelled different up here, like brand-new furniture, like bamboo.

In the shower she rubbed herself up with gel, breathing the steam. She soaped her thighs, her shoulders, massaged the back of her neck. Kim still liked her body. Her lips were plump and her legs were firm and shapely. Her skin was soft enough. A stranger would never have guessed that she'd used up more than half of her thirties.

She stayed in the shower long after she'd rinsed off, enjoying the warmth, and then she stepped out onto a plush teal rug, water streaming off her. The mirror and fixtures were fogged. She wrapped a towel around herself and wandered into the closet connected to the guest bathroom, dripping on the carpet among a hundred dresses, many with their tags still on. This
was Rita's runoff area, for the clothes that wouldn't fit in her primary closet. Kim thought of her own cramped bedroom closet back in Galesburg, her bulky coats and worn sundresses. She couldn't have fit another hanger in there, yet she didn't own one article of clothing she still liked.

Staying in Galesburg had never been the plan, of course, and she thought about this often now—just how she'd wound up where she was. When she'd graduated, the part-time position she'd taken as a senior in college had been offered to her full time. She could still remember how grateful she'd been. She'd wanted money, not more loans. She'd wanted aimless weekends and a little cash to spend, not more Sundays of homework. Her job as an assistant became a job as an adviser. She went as far, those first couple years, as sending off for the grad school applications. Places like Arizona, Oregon. She felt herself envying the professors on campus, with their consuming research, with their peculiar, prized minds. But then she was moved laterally and promoted; she decided to buy a new car, and take a trip to Italy. She was administrating the honors program now, a position of accomplishment. The higher-ups loved her. She had great insurance and a retirement account and summers off. For the last sixteen semesters she'd been making sure all the hottest shots at the school—so many twenty-year-olds with cutesy snow hats and ear buds hanging down their shoulders and knobby knees and cheery jewelry—had the ducks of their futures in a row. The years were coming and going, the seasons slipping past.

She tightened the towel around herself and sat down in a rustic ladderback chair that Rita had, for some reason, put in the bathroom. When Kim had first started visiting her, in her new neighborhood, they had laughed at the fact that Rita had started playing bridge and had joined a book club. They'd laughed at the invitations Rita received to attend Tupperware parties and lingerie parties and other types of parties that weren't really parties. Now Rita didn't make excuses. Now these women were simply her friends. These women were fast becoming her
old
friends. Rita had had Franklin young, a surprise, but becoming a mother hadn't changed her. It was being around these other mothers, all of them kept women, that had made her different.

Kim got dressed and brushed her teeth and went back down to the kitchen. She entered the walk-in pantry and surveyed a row of cereal boxes, each a version of granola. There was a case of pomegranate juice, unopened bottles of vinegar and marmalade and steak sauce and brown mustard. There was an entire shelf of whole bean coffee. Kim heard footsteps and turned to see Franklin leaning in the doorway of the pantry.

“You're already getting dirty,” he said.

Kim looked at him neutrally. He'd changed his shirt to a yellow polo. His eyelashes were long and thick like a girl's.

“It's like they say how once you're born, each minute brings you closer to death. After you shower, every minute brings you closer to being filthy. It's exhausting to think about.”

“Unless you like to shower,” Kim said. “Unless that's a highlight of your day.”

She brushed past Franklin, getting out of the pantry, and sat at the table. He followed her over. He picked up the soda Kim had left before and drank half of it down with a series of hard glugs. The clouds were clearing off and the sunshine was softening, a reasonable springtime sky prevailing.

“You had me worried there for a minute,” Franklin said.

“How's that?”

“When I brought up the museum.”

Kim's bare feet were cold on the tile. She pulled them up under her on the chair.

“I knew you didn't want to go to the mall,” Franklin continued. “It's funny, I outgrew hanging out at the mall right around the same time my mom got back into it. We just missed each other. Of course, she prefers the outlet mall and I always went to the proper mall.”

“So is there really a Gauguin assignment?” Kim said. “Or did you make that up?”

“Oh, the assignment exists. It's just a matter of getting ourselves to do it.” Franklin's lemonade was still sitting out on the counter, and now he dumped it down the sink. He opened a drawer and found some kind of protein bar, which he ripped open and took a chewy bite of. Kim could
smell him now, a combination of ordinary scents—clean laundry, lotion, unwashed hair.

“Do you ever miss your old house?” Kim asked him.

“All the time,” said Franklin. He was chewing with effort.

“I can't get used to this one. I've been here twice now and it still feels like a bed-and-breakfast.”

“You can get off by yourself in this house. That's the silver lining. You don't know anyone else is home.”

Kim felt her stomach growl. She wasn't going to do anything about it.

“I feel sorry for men who have to live in houses like this,” she said. “It's a big dollhouse. I feel sorry for you and your dad.”

“Well, sometimes I go weeks without a Dad sighting. He lives at hotels. Not that I don't like the guy. Not that I'm complaining or anything. Somebody's got to bring home the bacon.”

“It can't be good for a man's soul to have a cutesy mailbox.”

Franklin craned his neck, as if to look out at the mailbox. It couldn't be seen from where they were sitting.

“Do
you
have a job?” Kim asked.

“Yeah, right. Me with a name tag, speaking to customers.”

“So what do you do with your time? I'm sure they're big on extracurricular activities at that school of yours.”

“My time?” Franklin took a moment. “I guess I lose track of it quite a bit.”

“No volunteering with the poor? No socializing?”

“I steal mail sometimes. Speaking of cute mailboxes. That's something I used to do. That's pretty much the opposite of volunteering with the poor, huh?” Franklin gave up on his protein bar, or maybe he was only taking a break. He set it on a paper towel on the counter. “It's not like I
never
make friends. Girls seem to like me okay. A couple of them.” He lowered his eyes, which were a wan green. Kim could hear the ticking of clocks from other rooms, all slightly off rhythm with each other.

“Full disclosure, I'm suspended right now. From school. My mom doesn't know. I had my dad talk to the Assistant Dean of Studies and sign
the papers and he promised he wouldn't tell her. I'm suspended this whole week.” Franklin produced a chuckle that didn't make it past his throat. “Dr. Crantz told me the suspension would be in my file forever and I told him it was important to me to have an interesting file. He didn't think that was humorous. I told him I wanted my file to be a fun read. I think I saw somebody say that in a movie once. It was pretty lucky I got to say it in real life.”