Odd Mom Out (23 page)

I hand the invitation back to Eva. “It’s just a scrapbooking party,” I say.

“Who is giving it?” she asks, peering at the invite and then exclaiming, “Oh! Diane Hale. Ben’s mom.”

“Do I know the Hales?”

“You should. Ben’s only like the second most popular kid in fourth grade. Behind Jemma, of course. Which makes him the most popular boy, which means this is a really really cool thing.”

“Eva, you fill my heart with absolute terror.”

“Mom, this is
big.
”

“It’s a
scrapbooking
party.” I make a cutting motion with my hand. “I’ve got to make things with construction paper.”

“And you’re so artistic.”

“If you weren’t my daughter, I wouldn’t like you.”

Eva just laughs and plops down on the couch with her binder and homework. “But you need me, Mom. You need someone to keep you grounded in reality.”

I shoot her a look of disbelief. “You’re representing reality?”

“Mom, I’m just trying to help you.” She gives me a long-suffering look. “You do need help, you know.”

Not this again. No more “make Mom over” plans. “Why? What’s wrong with me?”

“Just forget it. You’re getting upset,” she answers, picking up her pencil.

“I’m not upset.”

“Well, you will be. You always get upset when I tell you these things.”

“What things?”

Eva sighs and touches the sharp pencil tip to the pad of her finger. “That it’s not normal to be alone. That you need to get married, and I need a dad.” Her shoulders lift and fall as she catches my expression. “See? Now you’re mad.”

Whose child is this? How can she be so blasted conservative? What 1950s happy homemaker drug was plopped into her baby food? “I’m not mad.”

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah. Whatever.”

“I’m not, and I’m trying very hard to be the mom you want me to be, but sometimes your expectations are a little unrealistic. Not every mom—not even the moms that stay home—makes Toll House cookies every afternoon. And not every mom—not even moms like Taylor Young—devote every moment to domestic activity.”

Eva just hunches over her open notebook, working away. She doesn’t even bother to look at me.

“Eva, I’m more normal than you think.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Cutting my hair and marrying me off wouldn’t change who I am, nor will it turn me into a committee-loving parent-meeting-attending mom. It’s just not my thing.”

She finally looks up. “So you’re not going to go?”

“To the scrapbooking party?” My brow creases. “No.”

“And the field trip?”

I look at her pinched expression for a long moment. She’s the most exhausting child I’ve ever met. “Yes,” I say, sighing. “Yes, I’ll sign up to go. I’d love to go.”

Her gaze meets mine and holds.

“I can’t wait to go,” I add. “It’s going to be fun.”

“Okay, Mom. That’s enough.”

Checking my smile, I head to the studio to get back to work.

The next day, I send in the parent sign-up form for the field trip and forget about it, which isn’t difficult with my long, demanding workdays and Eva’s unusual behavior.

Eva’s always been a big reader, and I’m used to seeing her curled up with a book, used to her taking notes. But this week, she’s practically locked herself in her room, and whenever I catch her unawares, she’s reading and note taking and using a highlighter.

At first I thought it was a paper she was writing for class, but when I ask her Friday morning about what she was reading, she answers with a vague, “It’s just something I’m interested in.”

I finish her lunch, close the paper lunch bag by folding the top over. “It’s not a book report?”

She looks up at me and smiles. “No.”

I put her sack lunch by her backpack. “So what is it for?”

“To help me learn.”

“Learn what?”

Eva shrugs, closes the book, and slides the notebook on top, concealing the cover. “How to do things better,” she answers even as the phone rings.

I want to continue the conversation, but Eva’s heading to her room as I pick up the phone. It’s Taylor Young. She’s calling to see if I could cover for another mom who was to work in the class today but now has a conflict.

“I’m sorry, Taylor, but I can’t,” I answer, glancing at my watch, thinking I’ve got to get Eva out the door before she misses her bus. “Fridays are really difficult, and today I’ve got client meetings—”

“It’d only be for an hour and a half.”

“I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

There’s a moment of silence, and then Taylor says very flatly, “I’ve already called everyone else. You were my last resort. But fine. I’ll do it. I always end up doing it anyway.”

She hangs up, a loud, decisive click in my ear, and although I feel bad, I don’t feel bad enough to change my plans. I’ve a job. It’s not a choice. This is how I pay my bills and keep a roof over our heads.

My first client meeting that morning runs late and threatens to slide into the lunch hour that I’ve reserved for my second client meeting, which can’t happen, as this lunch is a “kiss the customer’s butt” meeting, one of those I’ve got to do every now and then when we’ve either screwed up or the client just feels sensitive and needy.

In this case, the client’s very sensitive and needy, and it doesn’t help that she—the director of sales for a local four-star boutique hotel—is six and a half months pregnant.

But I get through both meetings, survive the emotionally charged lunch, promise my hotel client the sun and the stars and the moon, and rush back to the studio to update my team—who are putting in a full day of work today despite it being Friday—so they know what we’ve got to do and when.

We’re still in a meeting in the studio when Eva returns home from school. She sticks her head around the door, waves hello to everyone, and tells me she’s got to talk to me ASAP.

“Go ahead,” Robert says, gesturing me away. “It could be an emergency, one of those ‘I’m becoming a woman’ things.”

Chris makes a disgusted sound. “
Please.
She’s a child.”

“A nine-year-old going on nineteen,” Robert flashes.

He’s got a point, I think, heading for the house.

I find Eva sitting cross-legged in one of the chairs at the dining room table. “I don’t have any homework,” she says, munching on string cheese and a fistful of Goldfish crackers. “It’s Friday.”

“So what are you doing?”

“Planning my sleepover party.” She looks at me hopefully and smiles very big. “I really want to have a party.”

With her long dark hair and big smiley eyes, I think, I’d like her to have a sleepover, too, but a sleepover
party
?

“And I want everyone to come,” she adds. “Jemma, Paige, Devanne, Lacey, Brooke, everyone.” She’s peeling the string cheese, tearing off long, skinny strands so that the cheese hangs pale and forlorn. “Maybe if people came here, saw our house, saw how fun we are—” She looks up at me, her nose scrunching. “We are fun, aren’t we?”

I nod my head. “The coolest.”

She gives me a reproving look. “I’m serious.”

“So am I.” I reach for the box of Goldfish crackers and shake some into my hand. But a party, here, to prove it? Sounds dubious at best.

First of all, coolness—like beauty—is in the eye of the beholder, and second, I don’t particularly want Jemma and gang running around the house turning up their noses at everything.

“You can help me do this,” Eva adds earnestly. “We could send out invitations—you could design something—and it’d be really fun. We’d do things no one else does—”

“Like what?” I interrupt mildly, intrigued by this passionate daughter of mine who doesn’t know the word
quit.

“I don’t know. Maybe make it like a spa party. We could do manicures and pedicures. And rent a bunch of good movies and decorate. Like Hollywood. Or Arabian Nights. Something no one else does.”

She makes it sound so easy. I know parties aren’t so easy. And it’s not even all the work. It’s the fact that you need people to come.

I try to imagine the parents looking at the invitation and getting one another on the phone.

Who is Marta Zinsser? What is this slumber party for, and who else is going?

Is your daughter going?

No. Is yours?

No.

“Come on, Mom,” Eva pleads. “You’re good at stuff like this. You can make it happen.”

I’ve got stacks and stacks of work on my desk and more headaches, but Eva’s excited and I love it when she’s excited. Her enthusiasm always touches me. “Okay. I’ll help you plan it, but limit the list, Eva. No more than ten girls.”

“Okay.”

“And when are you thinking? It’s almost October, Halloween will be here before you know it.”

“What about the weekend after Halloween? That gives us lots of time to plan. What do you say?”

“I’ll look at the calendar, but I don’t see why not.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Eva jumps from her chair, throws her arms around me, and hugs me tight. “It’s going to be a great party. It’s going to be the best.”

During the weekend while Eva plans her slumber party, I put in some late nights in the studio to make up for my shorter workdays. Almost every night after Eva goes to bed, I head to my desk in the studio and get to work.

Saturday night I get a lot done; however tonight, Sunday night, I’m so tired that I can hardly focus.

Luke never called again. I told myself I didn’t expect him to, but the fact that he didn’t call stings. I liked him. A lot. Too much.

It’s ridiculous to get so interested in a man, especially as I keep telling myself I don’t believe in love and romance. If Tiana is right, that the brain is wired to lust to enable us to reproduce, then it’s great that I haven’t heard from Luke. It’s better not to have contact. It’s better to go through my withdrawals and just get this whole fascination/infatuation over with.

Now.

And speaking of now, I’ve been staring at my blank computer screen for nearly an hour, and I’m not getting anything done. I want to chuck the towel in and go to bed, but I can’t do that. Frank said we’d have a chance to present our proposal to the Freedom Bike Group sometime in the next couple of weeks, and so far, I don’t have a clear vision for an ad campaign.

Why? Because I’m thinking about Eva and Mom and Dad and Luke and Taylor and everyone and everything but work.

This bike thing’s a big deal, too. I can make it work. I know I can. I’ve just got to start somewhere, take some of my vague, disjointed ideas and find a theme to pull off.

Yawning, I rub my eyes and then the top of my head.

Can’t go to bed, can’t go to bed, must get work done.

Standing, I open the windows and door to bring in the cooler night air. The cool air helps.

Caffeine would help, too, so I search out the coffeepot in the studio’s miniature kitchen, pour the dregs from this afternoon’s pot into my mug, and zap the stale coffee in the microwave.

When the microwave dings, I take the hot mug back to my desk and turn on brighter lights before taking my first swig.

God. The coffee is nasty, so damn bitter that at first I don’t think I can possibly drink it. But I gag it down.

I take another sip and gag again, but as I swallow, I kind of smile. The coffee’s terrible. It’s the worst coffee I’ve had in years.

In the morning I like my coffee smooth, laced with milk and sugar. But there’s something evocative about this cup of really awful coffee. The dark, burnt bitterness reminds me of a badness I used to have, the badness I aspired to, denim and old leather and hard-core boots. Tough as in tattoos and long hair and a swagger.

I think of my old bike in the garage, a bike I haven’t ridden in months since there isn’t time and this doesn’t seem to be the place.

But thinking of my bike in the garage reminds me why I bought it, why I needed it.

The motorcycle was an escape. The motorcycle helped me relax, forget, dream, breathe.

My motorcycle wasn’t ever for trips around town. It wasn’t a form of transportation for two. It was just my way to get out, to find some quiet, to get some peace of mind.

The pleasure of the open road. The freedom of riding my own chopper. The freedom of telling people and society to f—— off, to do what you want. With my feet up on the desk, the nasty coffee curling my tongue, I get an idea.

Leaning forward, I search the music folder on my computer and find what I’m looking for, the 1971 album released by Starbucks last year and on it the song by the Kinks, “20th Century Man.”

I click on the song, crank the volume. The guitar strums. Foot-tapping twang. I crank it loud. Louder.

I stop the song, play it again, smiling faintly even as the idea grows, a minimovie playing in my head, a funky film short.

Dennis Hopper.
Easy Rider.
Big sideburns, real choppers, an upper lip in a curl. Shaggy hair. A handlebar mustache. Sunlight. Laid-back. And the open road.