First Comes Love (3 page)

“I'm not sure, Frederick. I'll ask Jack that question later when we Skype—which we do every day—and get back to you tomorrow,” I say.

Because after all, it is
way
tougher to answer a yes-no question about lion spotting than it is to manufacture an entire transcontinental relationship.

A barrage of frantic questions ensues about whether Jack has had any run-ins with tigers or alligators, hippos or monkeys. First graders love a good tangent. So do I, actually, and as tempting as it is to keep talking about my do-gooding beau, I know it's time to take control of the situation and actually teach.

T
HE REST OF
the day hums along smoothly, as I memorize my students' names and get to know their personalities. I even mostly manage to forget about Will until Edie loses her bottom left front tooth while eating her carrots and hummus at snack time. She's already missing her bottom right, yet she is as jubilant as a tooth virgin as her classmates gather around to examine the bloody trophy. A veteran at loose and missing teeth, both in the actual pulling and in the recovery and storage, I help her rinse out the gap in her gum, then clean the tiny tooth, stowing it safely in one of the Ziploc baggies that I keep in my desk for such occasions. I pull out a pink Post-it note from another drawer and write “for the Tooth Fairy,” then draw a heart and slide the note into the baggie, sealing it.

“What do you think she'll bring you?” I ask, gazing down at my plump heart, then looking right into Edie's pretty eyes.

“Same thing she brought me for this tooth,” Edie says, pointing to the inside of her mouth as she thrusts her tongue into the hole. Her voice is low and raspy—the kind that will one day drive guys crazy.

“And what was that?” I ask, wondering about her mother's voice, knowing that I'll be unable to resist gathering intelligence all year long. I have already asked several questions about her little brother, learning that Owen's nickname is O, that he has an airplane-motif bedroom, and that he “goes to time-out a lot.”

“She brought me a dollar coin,” Edie replies, which gives me a fresh pang, along with a wave of disappointment that I can't paint Will and Andrea as overindulgent parents. Most Buckhead tooth fairies
vastly
overpay, but a dollar coin is both an appropriate amount and more satisfying than a crumpled bill.
Damn
.

As I hand the baggie to Edie, I regret my heart on the Post-it, worried that her parents will read into the artwork. But it is too late for a re-do, as Edie is already gripping it with a proud smile. She then marches over to her cubby and stows it in the back pocket of her monogrammed pink butterfly backpack. I tell myself that it's no big deal, that Andrea and Will are likely too busy and too happy to scrutinize something so trivial. More important, I tell myself that I am a good teacher and a good person—and that sweet Edie deserves that heart even though her father shattered mine.

“W
ell, today sucked,” Josie announces as she waltzes into my kitchen and interrupts a rare moment of peace.

It is Thursday, my one day off every week, and I've just parked Harper in front of the television so I can go through my email. In other words, I don't want company, and if my sister had, say, phoned first, I would have told her as much.

“Oh, hi, Kimmy,” I say over my shoulder, referencing the annoying neighbor on
Full House
who regularly barged into the Tanner house without knocking.

Josie, who still watches reruns of the show, a sign of her overall maturity, laughs and says, “Do you really expect me to ring the doorbell of my childhood home?”

I resist the urge to say
yes because it's no longer your home,
Nolan and I bought it, fair and square
—or I could point out that my husband and I need privacy and could have been having sex in the foyer, at least theoretically. Instead I take the high ground and leave it as a rhetorical question while I continue to click through my inbox.

“I mean—it
really
sucked,” Josie adds, hovering over me.

“What happened?” I ask, remembering that today was her first day of school, and positive that her answer involves her ex-boyfriend Will or his wife or their daughter, who was assigned to Josie's class. She has talked about little else since receiving the class roster this summer, pretending to be outraged by circumstances that I know, deep down, delight her. Josie relishes drama that involves her stable of men, past or present.

She sighs, leaning on my desk. “Where do I begin?” she says, as I eye her scuffed gold flats and remind her that we are a shoeless-indoors household.

“C'mon, Mere,” she says as if this is the first time we've had this discussion. “You act as if I just walked through a field of feces. You really need to take some medicine for your OCD—I hear Zoloft is good for that.”

I cut her off, wondering if she somehow knows I
am
taking Zoloft. It would be just like her to snoop through my medicine cabinet. “First of all, you absolutely
could
have unwittingly stepped in something that isn't welcome in rooms in which we live and eat. Besides, it's our house and our rule. So…
there
.”

She stares at me a beat, then haphazardly kicks off her flats, one sliding under my chair. “Just so you know, I read an etiquette column that said it's the ‘height of tacky to invite people into your home and then require that they remove anything other than their coat,' ” Josie says, making air quotes as I picture her Googling the query and memorizing the answer that suits her while ignoring all other opinions, such as the ones that point out just how filthy a practice it is to wear shoes indoors.

“Well, I didn't ‘invite you into my home,' now, did I?” I say, making air quotes back.

I know there is a fifty-fifty chance that she will turn and storm out, and I'm okay with those odds. But because Josie's skin has always been selectively thin, and she clearly is in need of some kind of free therapy, she simply shrugs and goes for the last word. “Well, I think I may have a foot fungus. Don't say I didn't warn you.”

“We'll take our chances,” I say, then cut to the chase. The sooner I let her obsess over Will, the sooner she will be on her way to her happy hour or whatever mindless activity she has planned from here. “So what's she like? Will's kid?”

“Her name is Edie. Short for Eden. Andrea's maiden name,” she says, pausing for effect as she walks barefoot over to the refrigerator, then opens the door. “And as much as I'd love to tell you she is a precocious brat…I actually really like her. She is sweet, engaging, and generally adorable.”

“That's great,” I say.

“
Great?
It's far from great. It's painful. A daily reminder of what I don't have,” she says, as she plucks one of Nolan's Bud Lights from the bottom shelf, then twists off the top and takes a long drink. “And I bet you anything that Mrs. Will Carlisle volunteers to be room mom. You watch.”

“You're the teacher. Don't you get to pick your own room mom?” I say, as I RSVP no to an Evite for a birthday party at one of those inflatable play venues where kids are more likely to get a concussion or skin disease than they are to actually have fun.

“Ultimately. But it's based on volunteers. Which mother checks the little box on the form I sent home. So if she's the only volunteer…” Josie sighs, leaving her sentence unfinished.

“First of all, you'll get at least five volunteers,” I say, thinking of all the eager-beaver mothers of children in Harper's preschool class. “And even if you don't, you could just ask another mother and hope it doesn't get back to Andrea.”

Despite Josie's insistence that teaching is one of the most emotionally, physically, and mentally draining professions, I always feel like I'm missing something. I just don't see her job as all that complicated, at least not in comparison to the politics and pressures at my law firm, and especially given her twelve weeks of vacation every year.

“Oh, it would get back to her,” she says. “That kind of thing always gets back.”

I nod, granting her this much. Mothers always talk. In fact, unless Will's wife is amazingly tactful or shockingly in the dark about her husband's past, I feel sure that half the moms have already heard the gossip about their child's first-grade teacher. “Well, I
told
you that you should have intervened,” I say, remembering how I scripted the phone call with her headmaster boss weeks ago, requesting that said child be moved to another first-grade classroom due to a “personal situation.”

“By the time I got the class list, it was too late,” she says. “It had already gone out to the parents.”

“So?” I say.

“So they would know that I made the switch.”

“So?” I say again.

Josie stares at me, then takes a long drink of beer. “So the opposite of love is indifference. And switching a kid out of my class is not an indifferent move.”

“Well, neither is stalking,” I say at my own peril. “And that's never stopped you.”

Josie grins, apparently wearing stalking as some sort of badge of honor. “I haven't stalked Will in years. Until recent developments. Besides, you can't really count an innocent drive-by as stalking. It's not like I egged his house. I just wanted to see where they lived.”

“Right,” I say, thinking that Will and his wife might not characterize the late-night maneuver as entirely innocent. Creepily worrisome is probably closer to the mark.

“Did I tell you what she drives?” Josie asks with a note of glee.

“You mentioned a minivan,” I say, thinking that her victory is pretty hollow. “Maybe it's
his
car,” I add.

“Nope. It had a College of Charleston bumper sticker,” she says. “Her school. Her car. Please shoot me if I ever drive a minivan.”

“Are you forgetting that
I
drive a minivan?” I say, wondering if she's intentionally
trying
to offend me—or if it just comes that naturally to her.

“How could I forget such a thing?” she says. “No offense. I mean—you and I are clearly very different.”

“Clearly,” I say, marveling that we actually share the same parents and upbringing. In the next instant, I think of the only other person in the world who shared our genes and childhood. I glance at the clock—5:50—an ingrained habit whenever I remember my brother. For a long time, Daniel was my very first thought of the day, even before my eyes opened or my head lifted from the pillow. Now, all these years later, I sometimes make it until midmorning—or even later in the day—though I'm never quite sure if this is a sign of progress or a source of guilt. To mitigate the latter, I clear my throat and say his name aloud. “I bet Daniel would have driven a minivan.”

Josie's face clouds the way it always does when I mention our brother. Then she shakes her head and says, “Hell, no. Surgeons don't drive minivans.”

“Practical ones with small children do,” I reply, thinking there are few things in life as satisfying as that little button that automatically opens a sliding door before you buckle or unbuckle your helpless offspring.

“Practical ones with small children
and
taste…do
not,
” she says.

“Thank you very little,” I say with a glare.

“You're welcome,” she says with a smile, confirming my constant suspicion that on some level, she enjoys conflict, especially conflict with me.

I push my luck. “Speaking of Daniel, Mom called yesterday….”

“Daniel and Mom are interchangeable now?”

“Can I finish?”

She shrugs, then corrects me the way she would her students. “Yes, you
may
finish.”

“She was talking about the fifteen-year anniversary,” I begin, choosing my words carefully, and feeling resentful for having to do so. If I could change one thing about Josie—and there are many,
many
things I'd change—it would be the way she has handled our loss of Daniel. The impenetrable wall she's built around him and his memory.

“Anniversary?” she says, picking up her beer, then putting it back on the counter without taking a sip. “I'd hardly call it an anniversary.”

“It actually
is
an anniversary.”

She shakes her head. “Anniversaries connote celebration. Years you've been married…good stuff…not accidents and
death
.”

It is the most she's said about Daniel in ages, and in some sick way, the words
accidents
and
death,
spoken aloud, feel like a small victory to me. “An anniversary is the date on which something occurred in the past. Good or bad,” I say, keeping my voice soft. I almost stand up to put my arm around her, but we aren't a hugging family. At least we haven't been in years. So I stay put at my desk and watch her from a comfortable distance.

Josie swallows, staring down at her toes, painted a bright orange hue. I remember the time I told her that people with chubby toes should stick to neutral polish. It was a little rude, I guess, but I'd only been kidding. She still freaked, then stated for the record that she'd rather have chubby toes than stubby legs, and I swear her toes have been neon ever since.

When she doesn't look back up, I say her name. “Josie? Did you hear what I said?”

She says yeah, she heard me.

“So Mom wants us to do something. The three of us. Maybe even invite Dad.”

“She'd have to talk to him first,” Josie snaps. “Besides, he has a new girlfriend.”

“He does?” I ask, feeling a stab of resentment, but also jealousy that she has a closer relationship with our father. “Since when?”

“Since…I don't know…months ago.”

“Do I know her?” I ask, thinking they can't be that serious—there was no sign of her on Facebook and it was something his girlfriends always did: post photos, often on trips or at his Lake Burton house, then tag him so they show up in his feed.

She shrugs and says, “Her name's Marcia….She's a court reporter.” She then proceeds to type on an imaginary keyboard as I picture a girl with a lot of cleavage and red acrylic nails.

“How old is she?”

“Why do you always ask that?”

“Why not?”

“I don't know…mid-forties…divorced…two sons….So what does Mom have in mind for this awkward ‘anniversary,' anyway? A fancy dinner? A little spin with the Ouija board?”

“Josie!” I cringe.

“What?” she asks. “You know Mom believes in that weird shit.”

“She doesn't believe in
Ouija
boards….She believes in
signs.
”

“Well, it's ridiculous. There are no
signs
. Daniel's not making rainbows appear or dropping pennies on the sidewalk,” Josie says with a disdainful look on her face. “And you still haven't answered my question. What does she have in mind to commemorate the anniversary of a tragic car accident?”