Glitter and Glue (16 page)

“ ‘Artemis was the daughter of Zeus,’ ” I read, stunned, gratified. “ ‘Artemis assisted her mother in the birth of her little brother.’ ”

“That’s revolting,” Milly says, making me laugh by choosing the most regal adjective available. “I felt that!” she says. “I felt your laugh.” She scrunches down so her head is lower on my stomach, her arms resting on my thighs like I’m a chaise longue.

I take a drink of water.

“Whoa. I heard that. I heard your swallow.”

“Me next!” Martin squeals.

Milly turns her head around and looks up at me seriously. “You know the one thing you don’t have in common with the emu?”

“The one thing? What is the one thing I do not have in common with the emu?”

“Your Adam’s apple doesn’t stick out.”

“Right,” I say. “Because I’m a girl. Only boys have Adam’s apples.”

“And snakes. Snakes have Adam’s apples. I’ve seen pictures. They have a big bump right here.” Milly touches her throat.

“I don’t think that’s an Adam’s apple. Adam’s apples have something to do with your voice and your vocal cords, and, you know, snakes don’t talk. That big bump is probably a rat or a mouse—”

“Eww,” they both say.

“
Eww
is right. They swallow stuff whole.”

“Why don’t snakes chew?”

“They don’t have enough teeth?” I venture. “I’m not sure. I don’t know a lot about snakes. Maybe Evan knows—”

“He has a
massive
Adam’s apple,” Martin announces, his emphasis on
massive
making “Adam’s apple” seem like a euphemism.

“Oh, really?” I ask, chuckling.

“I felt you laugh,” Milly says. “Do it again.”

“Make me laugh again.”

“How?”

“Tell me more about Evan’s
massive Adam’s apple
.”

I don’t know what happened tonight. I don’t know if Milly regrets falling apart on the paddleboat or if this break-and-mend routine is the best she can do, but she came over to Martin’s bed. She let me hold her. I can still feel her weight against my chest, and it makes me impatient to be a mother.

After three months of soap operas, at least thirty crosswords, two dinners, and half a game of chess, Evan finally asks me to do something off-campus. He wants to show me the Three Sisters, “a brilliant rock formation” in the Blue Mountains.

“Sounds great. I’ll get a roll of film.”

“My mate Thomas is coming, if you want to bring your friend Tracy.”

“Sure.” Is this some sort of double date?

On Saturday morning, Tracy and I hustle out to the driveway in our Reebok aerobic shoes to meet Thomas, who is leaning against his Corolla. He’s tall and lean, his pants cinched by a belt clipped on its tightest hole. There’s thick white sunblock under his eyes and his teeth are begging for orthodontia. This is not a double date.

After an hour-and-a-half drive, we arrive at the head of the Prince Henry trail and set out single file. “This is a proper bush-walk,” Evan says. He moves with authority here, spinning around to point out various
flora
and
fauna
, terms he uses without irony. The Great Outdoors is clearly his psychic home.

Forty-five minutes later, we can no longer see Evan and Thomas on the turns or hear their voices in front of us, but we don’t care. We just keep gabbing about how out of shape we are and how we need to do sit-ups and leg lifts every day, or at least three times a week, and then walk two miles on the weekend
mornings, or at least one mile at a fast pace. We’ve had this conversation many times, but we don’t acknowledge that as we make our serious plans for This Time. After we exhaust the topic of Diet & Exercise, we flip to another section of the women’s magazine that is our lives: Relationships.

We analyze the couple Tracy works for—their marriage and how tired they always seem, except when they get the grog going, and then they are red-cheeked and jolly and seem to like each other much more. Neither of us is going to be like that when we get married. No way. We’re going to slow-dance in the kitchen and make out on the sofa. We’re going to be in love, even doing dishes, even in the middle of the day, and stay in love! Not like her parents, who divorced, and not like my parents, who are basically like an older sister and her wacky kid brother.

Tracy checks her watch. We’ve been walking for two hours in one direction, so she thinks maybe we’re not doing a loop, as suspected, but rather going up and back, which seems deranged. Who seriously walks for four hours?

We trudge on. Finally, around hour three, we see Evan and Thomas sitting on a bald patch above the trail, eating hunks of ham off the tips of their pocketknives.

“Great, huh?” Evan calls down to us, referring to the valley behind us, which is preposterously lush.

“Beautiful,” I say.

“You see the koalas back there?” Thomas asks.

“And potoroos?” Evan adds.

“No, neither,” we say together as we climb up the hill and sit down to snack on what doesn’t seem like nearly enough food, pretending we’re not
totally knackered
and dreaming of helicopter pickups.

“Is this a loop?” I ask hopefully.

Evan shakes his head. “No … when we’re ready, we just turn around and take the same trail back.”

Oh.

I’m ready.

“Cool.”

“Whenever,” Tracy says, making eyes at me.

As we sit, definitely longer than Thomas and Evan need to, a snippet of conversation floats up from the trail below us.

“Is that an American?” Tracy asks, tilting her head.

I listen with a rising thrill, like a raffle official is calling numbers and my ticket is a one-for-one match. “That is two Americans!” I work myself up to my feet. “Did he just say
lacrosse
?”

A couple of guys reach the clearing below.

“Hey, hi! Are you talking about lacrosse?” I call down, startling them.

“Oh, hello up there. Yeah, we were.”

Tracy and I shuffle down the hill, my muscles already bundling, to introduce ourselves.

“I’m Walker, and this is Trey.”

Evan and Thomas stand and wave.

I tell them my dad played at the University of Maryland and, after college, brought a team to Australia for an exhibition tour. They think this is very cool, and I knew they would, which is why I led with it. Then the four of us dig around for every sliver of common ground. University of Virginia, Richmond Spiders, Baltimore. We talk faster and louder as we connect, each point of contact like a shot of espresso.

Evan, who looks small next to Walker, is ready to get moving again. None of this means jack to him. But I am so full of the sounds of home, my brothers, my dad, that I can’t bear to walk away, so I stretch it out, drinking in a little more Americanness
until Walker tells us he’s having a party next weekend and we should come.

Of course we should!

“You, too!” he says to Evan and Thomas.

“Thanks, mate,” Evan says.

We’re all in.

Tracy and I move twice as fast on the way back, caffeinated by the brush with home. On the ride home to Lewiston, I stare at the back of Evan’s head, his ponytail, his boots on the dash, cross-examining my interest in him.

Do I like him–like him or is he just the only boy in reach, like the guy at the office who seems like The One during the off-site Lotus 1-2-3 training, but then, when you bump into him over the weekend, with his conscientious friend, safe car, and ham slabs, you wonder what the shit you were thinking? Am I so ravenous I mistook a cracker for a banquet?

The day before the American’s party, the kids and I hit the park.

Martin attacks the swings while Milly and some girl dash around collecting things to organize: leaves, tiny flowers, pebbles. It’s distinctly satisfying to see them play, like watching dogs hurtle across a beach.

In my book, Ántonia is growing up, wearing heels, trailing a pack of girls to the dancing tents that pop up outside town. Her English is excellent; she can read and write and talk to anyone about anything. She’s well known and well liked. But for all her years in America, she is becoming more bohemian, not less. She cooks her mother’s recipes, prefers the old music, doesn’t seriously consider American suitors. Even if she never again feels her native soil push up between her toes, her emotional return to her country is inevitable. People don’t separate from the motherland. Not really.

After an hour, Martin flops over my knees, communicating his total exhaustion. I’m good to go.

“Milly!” I call, lifting a hand to flag her down. She’s arranging a dozen leaves from largest to smallest. “Come on! Time to go!”

She doesn’t hear me, or doesn’t want to.

“Milly!”

Nothing.

“Amelia Tanner, let’s get a move on! Time to go!”

Milly’s new friend points over at me. “Amelia, your mum’s calling you.”

Milly’s head jerks up. I expect her to recoil at the girl’s egregious error, or burst into tears, but she does neither. She smiles and says, “Thanks,” and runs right for me, letting the fiction stand.

We can barely look at each other when she reaches us, but for effect, I put my hands on her shoulders. “You hungry? Your brother tells me he is STARVING.”

“Yeah, for sure.”

If she wants to let some girl think I’m her mother, I say,
Go right ahead
. Her motherlessness need not figure into every interaction, at least not ostensibly. And anyway, kids do this all the time, even kids whose mothers are alive. The first time I pretended someone else was my mother was on Halloween night in sixth grade.

Allison, Barb, and I were going as Snap, Crackle, and Pop in costumes made for us by Allison’s mom, who loved to sew. She didn’t use patterns or need directions. She made it up as she went along, a Rice Krispies box her only guide.

I was Snap, so I got the striped hat and the white kerchief tied roundly at my neck. Allison’s mom rubbed red lipstick in circles on our cheeks and pinned our hats into our hair. She tied and retied the sashes at our waists until we looked exactly like the cartoons in the commercials. Then she took our pictures—together, separately—until every flash on her cube was shot. She even made us matching candy bags with the leftover fabric. I held up the pillowcase my mom had given me, and we all laughed.

While she was showing us the outfit she made for Allison’s sister, the doorbell rang.

“Oh, girls, I bet that’s a trick-or-treater!”

“I’ll get it,” I volunteered.

When I got downstairs and opened the door, a deliveryman held out an overnight box. “Can you give this to your mom?”

I hesitated, only for a moment, and then accepted the package. “Sure.”

“Great costume.”

“Thanks!” I said, riding a wave of pride. “My mom made it—from scratch!”

I closed the door and headed back upstairs, relieved that Allison hadn’t overheard me owning her mom. I didn’t know what I would have said if she had. I wouldn’t have told the truth, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t have said I wanted to pretend I had a different mom, a zippy mom, the kind who worked all week on my Halloween costume, who set aside a whole day to help me become someone adorable and snappy, who used up all her expensive flashbulbs on me and my friends, instead of a relentless pragmatist who gave me a ratty pillowcase to hold my treats along with a warning about how long I would be grounded if I wasn’t
in this house by nine
P.M.
and not one minute later
.