Brownie Points (6 page)

Michelle rang a crystal bell, signaling it was time to start the game.

“How’d it go?” Barb asked as I returned from my corner.

“That woman is out of her mind,” I said without filtering.

“You should’ve seen her before the Paxil,” she said with a wink as we walked to our tables of four.

My neighbor from across the street, Marni, was sporting so many pearls it almost looked as if she were wearing a housewife costume. In a flash she gave me a moment of hope that there was more to her than met the eye. When she helped Michelle and reached for coffee cups, she revealed a small tattoo of a cute yellow chick on her lower back that appeared to have writing beneath it. Intrigued, I tried to read it, but when her arms came down, so did the curtain.

Bunco was—as Michelle had explained—a ridiculously easy dice game that women used as an excuse to get together. Though it was a game of chance, I did notice Val trying to increase her odds of rolling “two-sies” by rolling faster. It made sense. The more often she rolled the dice the better her chances of getting the combinations she needed. “So, how are you finding Utopia?” Val asked, her eyes focused intensely on the dice.

“It’s great,” I lied.

“It’s a perfect place to raise kids,” she said as if it were a fact rather than her opinion.

“In many ways,” I replied, but she did not press further.

“And your husband is the new fire captain.”

I nodded and smiled. “Yes, he’s very excited about the position.”

“He must be,” she said.

“What about you, Val? What do you do?” I asked.

“What
doesn’t
Val do?” Stacey answered for her. “She’s the room mom in all four of her children’s classes, runs the hospital auxiliary and heads the CC&Rs committee.”

Val gave a slight laugh that suggested she was both pleased with the public relations while also a bit contemptuous of Stacey’s idol worship. “My kids are a full-time job.”

“Totally,” Stacey said, nodding emphatically.

Ellie Post, not wanting to let too long go by before she fanned Val with her verbal palm leaf, said, “There’s so much we can give them at this age.”

“Absolutely,” I said, but must not have been entirely convincing because Ellie told me, “We’ve got the rest of our lives to do our own thing.” They all nodded.

I agreed that mothers had their hands full raising children, and that in doing so their time was invested well. But these women seemed to jump on the evangelical bandwagon so quickly without any regard for how I might have felt about the issue. It was as if they wanted to make their positions known before I had any time to establish mine.

“Oh,” I said. “I kind of feel like doing our own thing
is
giving something to the kids.”
Shut up, Lisa. Don’t think you’re going to end the Mommy Wars with an argument they’ve already heard and rejected.
“I mean, I totally want to be there for my children, but I want them to see me doing other things too.”
Olive branch, think olive branch.
“Like you, Val. I’m sure your kids think it’s great that you run that hospital auxiliary.”

“Oh, please,” Val dismissed. “The head of plastic surgery is retiring next year and if I don’t do my time at the hospital, Blake will never get the gig. That’s how that damn hospital gets half its volunteer hours, all of us wives jockeying for our husbands. Between the charity events and parties at the house, I feel like I earn most of his salary.” The others giggled knowingly.

I wondered who jockeyed for the female doctors. There were women physicians at Los Corderos General, weren’t there? There weren’t any women firefighters, I realized. Instead, I said, “Well, it’s good that the hospital gets such great support from the community.”

Val dismissed my comment with a shrug. “Michelle says you do ceramics.”

“Sculpture, actually,” I said.

“We’re always looking for raffle prizes for the auxiliary events,” Val said as Stacey and Ellie nodded at what a great idea it was to give away my nonexistent glazed fruit bowls. “Like you said, it’s for a good cause.”

Your husband’s career advancement?

“Totally,” Ellie agreed.

“It’ll give you great exposure if you decide you want to sell your pottery someday,” Val said. “I know I’m always looking for artsy little gifts.”

“Who isn’t?” asked Stacey.

“I actually do sell my sculptures,” I said. “I got a pretty good write-up on the last —”

“Bunco!” someone at the next table shouted.

My last show did get a good write-up in the
Examiner
, but the reality was I was never going to achieve the level of success I’d hoped to when I quit my job in advertising so many years ago. I sometimes wonder if Jason resents — or at least regrets — encouraging me to pursue sculpting full time. Though neither of us ever said it aloud, we both hoped that I would become the next big thing in the art world. I wasn’t even the next little thing. If I’d gone virtually unnoticed in San Francisco, I was guaranteed invisibility out here. I had ten years to make a successful career and never did. Now it was Jason’s turn to launch his career in a big way.

“That was a quick round,” Val said. Women began getting up, smoothing their unwrinkled skirts with manicured hands, and moving to other tables. I looked around to see if there was a rhyme or reason to the rotation.

“We stay here,” Val said. “Looks like Marni and Michelle are headed our way. Let’s kick their butts, shall we?”

“Hello ladies, have a seat,” Val said.

When Michelle asked how Logan and Maya found their first few days at school, Val lifted her eyebrow. “Maya has a brother?”

“A twin,” I said. “Logan. He’s, um —”
the other black kid at school
— “quite similar looking.”

“Hmmm.” Val pondered and looked at the others to see if they knew Logan. “Does he play soccer?”

“That’s the one with the kicking, right?” I said lightly, trying to dismiss the whole topic of which sports my son played. Before discovering his passion for fencing, Logan dabbled in modern dance, jazz and tap. If anyone got kicked it was quite by accident.

Ever the hostess, Michelle interjected, “Marni makes documentary films, Lisa. You two probably have a lot in common, being artists and all.”

“Really?” Marni said, smiling for the first time. “What do you do?”

“Mostly I do sculptures with junk, but sometimes if I get a wild idea, I’ll run with that too. Last year I made a love seat from tires.”

“That doesn’t sound very comfortable,” Val said.

Oh yes, great goddess of making people feel comfortable.

“I removed the wheel so the hard material isn’t part of it,” I explained, not because I thought she cared, but because I was nervous. “I cut the tire into strips of rubber, then laid them over a couch frame I built. In the end it was really comfortable, and pretty cool looking, if I do say so.”

“I saw something like that once,” Marni said.

“You did?” I fretted. “Where did you see it?” Here I was condemning Utopia’s cookie cutter architecture and carbon copy decorating while all the while I was making furniture sold at IKEA!

“Some gallery in the city,” she said.

“San Francisco?!” I asked, somewhat urgently. “Was it the Four Circles Gallery by any chance?”

“I can’t remember the name, but it was a cute little place near the Castro District. They had all kinds of life-size statues made out of —” Marni paused as the light bulb lit. “Made out of scrap metal. Is that your stuff?!”

“Yes,” I said, nearly collapsing with relief. “Yes, that’s my stuff. I can’t believe it! What are the odds?”

“You did a fencer, right?” Marni asked. “He had a shield made from a garbage can lid and a sword made from pipe, right?”

“Now I have died and gone to Utopia!” I said. “I can’t tell you how many people I’ve ever met who’ve seen my stuff. Actually, I can. It’s zero.”

“None who’d tell you about it, anyway,” Val interjected.

In my mind, I heard the sound a video game makes when the game’s over. I looked over at the two other tables and envied the good time those women seemed to be having. Ellie and Stacey joined Mindy and Sophia, who were relaxed and laughing. Cara, Olivia, Anna and Barb seemed to be having a similarly pleasant exchange. I wondered if I was I stuck with Val as a partner the entire evening. “So, what kind of documentary films do you make?” I asked Marni.

“We’re working on one about this, um, commune up in the mountains. They’re sort of naturalists, survivalists.”

“That’s interesting,” I said. “Is it a religious group?”

Marni smirked. “Oh no, they’re quite secular.”

Bored with talk of Marni’s secular naturalists, Val jumped in. “Did you hear about Olivia’s royal disaster of a birthday party for Max? Apparently they brought in horses to have a jousting match, which is an even bigger violation of the CC&Rs than that ridiculous castle she created on her front lawn. Anyway, before it started, one of the horses took a huge dump in their backyard.” Val was oblivious to the fact that everyone looked horrified by her gleeful report. “So then that half-wit boy of hers picks up a pile off poo and throws it at Craig Emmens. Before you know it there’s a shit fight among the boys and some little sissy starts crying because his new shirt got soiled.”

After a moment of silence that seemed like an eternity, Marni shrugged. “I’d cry too. Who wants shit thrown at them?”

I could have wept with gratitude when Michelle agreed. “She should enroll those boys at Mr. Benjamin’s.”

There was something deeply incongruous about Marni. I always pictured a documentary filmmaker as someone who wore torn camouflage pants, a ribbed undershirt and Doc Martins. It almost seemed as though Marni was purposely trying to soften her image with all the pearls and the sensible shoes. Every time she spoke, she had such a hard edge, though. And what was with the tattoo?

“My God, Val, where do you draw the line, anyway? Ellie turned her front lawn into the National Cemetery on Memorial Day weekend and you didn’t say a word,” Marni reminded her.

“That was done tastefully,” Val replied coolly.

Michelle looked down, trying not to laugh. “Tastefully?!” Marni returned. “She put forty little white crosses on her lawn. I thought it was Klan homecoming week.”

“Her display was patriotic,” Val said with the utmost seriousness. “Olivia’s was a self-serving, self-aggrandizing shrine to narcissism, glorifying nothing but herself and her Tasmanian devil child.”

Oh my God! I thought that too,
I thought better of saying aloud. You know, I could actually like Val Monroe if I wasn’t so scared of her.

During a break from the game, I devoured Anna Dowell’s spinach dip and learned that Val and Olivia were once best of friends. Barb told me that both were among the first families to move to Utopia when it opened its angel-capped gates three years ago. Olivia was even part of the original CC&Rs Gestapo, but the two became bitter rivals when Kendrick and Max competed for the presidency of Cordero Elementary. “Olivia got upset because Val gave kids chocolate cupcakes with the words ‘Vote Monroe’ written in icing,” Barb whispered while refilling my wine glass. I couldn’t say I blamed her. Giving kids cupcakes was an obvious bribe. “Well, that wasn’t the end of it,” Barb continued in a hushed tone.

Mindy Pritsky joined the conversation, checking over both shoulders before chiming in. “There were emails, anonymous fliers, and
someone
hung a sheet with Kendrick’s picture on the west wall of the school, full-on Ayatollah style.”

“So, who won, who won the election?” I asked.

“There’s the other issue,” Barb explained. “Kendrick ended up winning, and when the principal refused to do a recount with witnesses, Olivia accused her of fixing the vote.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Oh no she is not,” Mindy said. “I thought it was a ridiculous accusation too, but the principal came back from Thanksgiving break with a lot brighter looking eyes if you catch my drift.”

I didn’t. “I don’t.”

“Kendrick’s father is a plastic surgeon,” she explained.

I paused for a moment to absorb this. “You think the elementary school principal fixed the election for a lid lift?”

Upon further consideration, this seemed to fit the social landscape quite well. When Jason and I went to see the middle school principal after the incident with Max, she assured us that the school would investigate, suspend the boys and hold a sensitivity workshop. She said all the right words, but I couldn’t help notice her staring at Jason admiringly throughout the meeting. Finally, she asked how Jason managed to keep his teeth so white. Was it Crest Strips? Or did he do the blue laser treatment?

Back at the Bunco game, Mindy concluded, “All I’m saying is that the elementary school principal took ten years off her face over one short holiday.” She nodded her head toward Val and Olivia. “Those two still haven’t gotten over it.”

Michelle changed the subject, asking if I’d given any more thought to Maya joining the Girl Scout troop.

“It’s a great resume builder,” said Mindy. “Colleges are all about community service these days.”

Colleges?!

“Colleges?!” snapped Val who overheard us, and injected herself into the discussion. “I’ve told you a thousand times that none of that even counts until next year.”

It doesn’t count?

Val explained. “You need to keep these kids fresh and hungry for community service so they don’t go into freshman year in high school so burnt out they can’t stand the sight of one more crack baby who needs rocking.”

“Unbelievable,” Barb retorted, shaking her head with disgust.

“Yeah,” Michelle said. “There aren’t any crack babies here.”

Chapter Five

On the day of Maya’s first Girl Scout meeting, I’d planned to help Michelle with a craft called the “Family Crest” collage. The girls were to use magazine and newspaper images to communicate their family values. The troop supplied paint, glitter and trimmings because no family crest would be complete without rhinestones.

I called Michelle with desperation in my voice. “Can Logan hang out at the Girl Scout meeting today? I’ve got to run to the city this afternoon to pick up my tire couch. Long story, but I need to get it today, so I need to leave in a few minutes to beat traffic.”