Odd Mom Out (5 page)

I would be disappointed. Beyond disappointed. “Why is it such a long shot, Frank?”

“Don’t make me state the obvious.”

“Because I own a Harley?”

He laughs, deep guffaws that make me smile. “Yeah, and it has nothing to do with you being a woman.”

“Being a woman just makes me better.”

“I know that. But we’re talking about the bike industry.”

I know. Macho, male dominated, no room for women at the top. Just at the bottom. Underneath ’em. Right where men like to keep ’em. “Frank, you can’t scare me.”

“So let’s just take it a step at a time and see what happens.”

“You’ve got yourself a deal.”

I hang up the phone and smile at nothing in particular. Frank just made my day.

Two hours later, Eva finally gets us to Points Elementary to check out the class list. She bounds out of the car, and I trail behind more slowly, still thinking about Frank’s call.

I want to be part of the Freedom Bikes ad campaign. I want to be involved.

Despite it being a Saturday morning, there’s an impressive crowd grouped in front of the school office window where the class lists have been posted. Eva’s pushed toward the front to get a look at the fourth-grade class sheet.

I’m learning here in Bellevue that class assignments determine the kind of year it’s going to be, and it’s not only the teacher who influences the class but the kids in the class as well.

Parents want their children to have a good class, too, but I’m beginning to sense that to some here, good doesn’t mean behaved. Good means connected. Good means rich.

I’ve heard the names bandied about, too, and the most desirable kids to have in your class are those sired by Microsoft millionaires and billionaires, the founders of Amazon, or one of the McCaw brothers, those fathers of wireless technology.

If you don’t get a technology heir, you could always hope for a Nordstrom or an offspring of the professional athletes filling the Seahawk, Sonic, or Mariner roster.

Good kids from good money.

Long live the Eastside communities of Medina, Hunts Point, Yarrow Point, and Clyde Hill.

“Mom!” Eva’s reaching through the crowd and grabbing my elbow. “Did you see who I’ve got? Mrs. Shipley, the one I was telling you about last year, the one who does the school’s literary magazine.”

“Oh, not Mrs. Shipley,” groans a mother in the group. “She’s impossible, the hardest teacher by far at Points. It’s common knowledge that she gives twice the homework any other fourth-grade teacher does.
Twice.
And her expectations for writing! Absurd. These kids are still just learning to write. How can you expect them to be doing essays every week?”

Apparently, Mrs. Shipley was moved over from Bellevue High School, where she taught honors students, and she approaches her fourth-grade classes as though she were still teaching ambitious Ivy League–dreaming teenagers.

Eva lets out yet another squeal. “Mom! You won’t believe it. Guess who’s in my class?”

I don’t have a clue, and Eva, bless her, doesn’t make me wait.

“Jemma,” she breathes, her grip tightening on my wrist. “Jemma’s in my class! We’re going to be together in the same class this year. Finally!”

We’re heading to the car now, but Eva continues to jump and twirl. “This is so great. It’s so wonderful.” She turns to beam up at me. “This is going to be the best year ever.”

Chapter Three

Eva’s dancing through the aisles of downtown Bellevue’s Office Depot, her mood so ebullient that you’d think we were in a bridal salon instead of an office supply store.

Although to be completely fair, Eva truly does love office and school supplies. When she was a young child, her favorite purchase at the grocery store or drugstore was a spiral-ring notebook.
Seriously.

While Eva searches for the correct supplies, I’m left to push the oversize shopping cart and check off items as they’re found. I’m also thinking about Eva and Jemma being in the same class and what an ungodly long year it will be if Eva insists on trying to make Jemma her friend.

This summer, Eva and I went to the Yukon for our summer vacation. We flew on Air Canada from Vancouver to Whitehorse, where we rented a car and spent a week exploring the Yukon Territory.

Growing up, I’d read everything I could by Jack London (my two favorite authors being Jack London and Mark Twain), and one of the places I’d always wanted to visit was the Klondike, so this summer Eva and I went.

We traveled the Top of the World Highway, panned for gold, had a drink at Diamond Tooth Gerties, and we laughed so much. We hiked and batted at mosquitoes the size of my fist. (Only a slight exaggeration.) We had such a good time, and I thought—somehow—that when we returned, Eva’s confidence would be back, too.

And it was, for all of one day, until Eva tried to tell the girls at the pool about her trip and the girls laughed.
Laughed.

“Why did you go there?” Jemma asked in disgust. “Why didn’t you go to Hawaii like everybody else?”

Okay. That’s why I don’t like Jemma Young, and this is why I never wanted to be part of the popular-girl clique. Being popular seemed like such a drag. All those girls trying to say the same thing, do the same thing, pretend to be just like one another.

How horrible.

Eva peers around the school supplies display. “Mom, is it twenty-four or forty-eight crayons? I forget.”

I smooth the supply list that I’ve inadvertently crumpled and look for Eva’s class. Fourth grade. Crayons. “Twenty-four.”

Her hand hovers over the Crayola boxes. “I like the forty-eight better. More colors. More choices.”

“Then get the forty-eight.”

“But we’re supposed to get what’s on the list.”

“The list is merely a suggestion—”

“It’s not, Mom. It’s required.” Eva dumps the crayons and colored pencils in the cart. “Everything on there is required.”

How did I get Little Miss Schoolgirl for a daughter?

I specialized in cutting class and forging my parents’ signatures. Eva won’t miss school even after a dentist appointment. She insists on going back after getting a filling, showing up for class drooling with a thick wad of cotton clamped between her teeth.

Now she continues to select the just-right binder, the exact plastic-coated colored dividers, the specific number of number two pencils, the set of highlighters, the precise style of notebook.

Eva’s still crouching in front of the plastic space makers, trying to find one that’s twelve inches long—not nine—when I spot my favorite kind of Bellevue mom, one of those women who are perfectly done even for a Saturday morning trip to Office Depot, with two kids.

I don’t recognize her, but the kids look familiar, particularly the little girl, and I hear their conversation even before they reach us.

“I have to have a new backpack, I hate my old one.”

“This year I want everything purple. A purple binder, purple folders, purple pens.”

“Why can’t I have an iPod? Or an iPod shuffle? Everyone has an iPod shuffle.”

Eva hears them, too, and her face lights up. She shoots me a significant look, as though to say,
See?
as she scrambles to her feet. “Hi, Paige,” she says breathlessly, the turquoise-lidded space maker clutched to her chest.

“Hi, Eva.”

Eva and Paige size each other up from across a safe distance of mothers and shopping carts. Awkward silence unfurls even as I place Paige. Yesterday, at the pool. She’s one of Jemma’s friends.

“Buying your school supplies?” Eva asks, and her voice quavers nervously.

“Yeah.” Paige is chewing gum, and she pops a little purple bubble. “Who’s your teacher?”

“Mrs. Shipley.”

“Jemma has her,” Paige says, cocking her head and rubbing her foot against the back of her calf. “I’ve got Mrs. Lewis. She’s supposed to be easy.”

“You’re so lucky,” Eva breathes, making me think she’s got the IQ of a tree monkey.

Why is she playing dumb? Where the hell did her feisty personality go? And what is so special about these little girls that she feels the need to earn their approval?

Paige’s mom in the meantime has been studying me, and when I look at her, she forces a quick smile. “I don’t think we’ve ever met. I’m Lana Parker, Paige’s mom.”

I hold out my hand. “Marta Zinsser, Eva’s mom.” We shake hands, and she winces at my firm grip. I didn’t expect her hand to feel like pudding.

Lana Parker removes her hand as fast as she can from mine. “Are you new to the area?”

“We’ve been in the Pacific Northwest over a year now.”

“Where did you move from? California?”

“New York.”

Lana’s eyebrows try to lift but can’t go far, as her forehead is very taut and smooth. A little too taut and smooth. “That’s a big change.”

“Yes, it is.”

“How do you like it here?”

“It’s good,” I answer vaguely, not bothering to mention I’m relatively local, raised in tiny Laurelhurst just across the 520 bridge. I never was comfortable with my father’s wealth or social status, a status my mother enjoyed tremendously. Instead of hanging on Dad’s coattails, I’ve tried to make my own way in the world, wanting to succeed on the basis of my talent and reputation versus his.

“Was your husband relocated?”

My husband. Great. I love these kinds of questions. “No. I was transferred.”

“And he followed you out? There’s a good husband for you.”

I just smile, the small, close-lipped smile that I use for moments like these. I had plenty of them in New York when I’d take Eva for walks in her stroller and then again when I enrolled her in school.
Does she look like her daddy or you? Her father isn’t listed on the emergency contact forms. Will her father be coming to the parent orientation?
I used to try to answer all the questions, but it just got old and repetitive, and now I do my best to ignore them. “I’m lucky I have an interesting career.”

“What do you do?”

“I have my own advertising agency, Z Design.”

“That must keep you busy.”

“There are some long hours,” I admit, feeling vaguely uncomfortable and unsure why. There’s nothing alarming about Lana Parker. A dark blonde with hair swept off her face, Lana reminds me a bit of Faith Hill in
The Stepford Wives.
She’s pretty, quite pretty, but not quite real, either.

“I couldn’t work,” Lana says, lips pursing. “Not when the kids are little. They’re only children once, and I don’t want to miss a thing.”

This is why I was feeling uncomfortable.

I have to work—it’s not a choice—yet my work isn’t just a paycheck, it’s who I am, what I love to do. “I agree. That’s why I’ve made a point of working from home.”

“So smart. Because those full-time jobs are so hard on families and children.”

I don’t have a part-time job. I definitely have a full-time job, and I think Lana knows it. I think Lana’s being clever and slightly unkind.

“You’re very lucky you have such a supportive husband,” Lana adds sweetly. “He must really help pick up the slack.”

“Is that what men do?” I ask just as sweetly. “Pick up the slack?” Either Lana is living in la-la land or she’s just trying to push my buttons. Virtually all of my friends are married, and while most are still happily married and most would marry their husbands all over again, most also wouldn’t say their husbands make their lives, or their work, easier.

Lana blinks, taken aback. “Uh . . . well . . . I don’t know.”

Her expression looks about to crumple, and I feel a ping of remorse. “So how many children do you have?” I ask, trying to change the subject and move us into safer territory.

Lana grabs gratefully on to the new topic. “Just these two, Paige and Peter. They’re twins.” She pauses. “Fraternal.”

Yeah, I guessed that.

Lana leans toward me to whisper conspiratorially, “I just wish we’d thought a little more about the names. My son gets teased at school all the time.”

“For Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater?”

She stiffens uncomfortably. “
No.
For Peter Parker.” She pauses, waits for me to get it. I don’t get it.

“Peter Parker,” she repeats a trifle impatiently. “As in Spider-Man.”

“Ah. Sorry. I haven’t read the comics in years.”

“But the movies . . . ?” she persists. After a moment she shakes her head, her cheeks flushed nearly as pink as her fruity Juicy Couture tracksuit. “So are you going to the emergency parent meeting this afternoon?” But she doesn’t wait for me to ask, launching immediately into an explanation. “It’s about the kindergarten nightmare.”

“What nightmare?”

“You haven’t heard?”

“I’m afraid we’ve been . . . traveling.”

Lana shudders. “It’s a disaster. A complete fiasco, that’s what it is. Those poor kids. And their parents!”

I just shake my head.

Lana leans even closer, her hand pressed to her throat, and whispers, “They’re sending all the Points kindergartners to the Lakes.”