Funny Story(76)

“That’s great, honey,” she says. “I know that kid’s been a tough nut to crack.”

“She’s just so shy. But the other kids in the group are really sweet,” I say. “And a couple are homeschooled, so she’s probably never met them, which could be good. A clean slate.”

“God, once, when you were having a hard time at a new school, I remember asking you if you wanted to be homeschooled,” Mom says.

I snort. “When would you have had time to homeschool me?”

“I wouldn’t have,” she says. “But you were so unhappy at school. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to just rescue you from your misery. Do you remember what you said to me?”

“I never even remember homeschooling being on the table,” I say.

“You said you’d miss your teachers too much.” She bursts into breathless laughter, which turns into a groan of exertion, followed by the clank of weights hitting the floor. “You were shy, but you were brave.”

“I was a little nerd, you can say it,” I say.

“Back then they used to call it ‘a pleasure to have in class,’?” she tells me.

My phone beeps and I step under an awning. “Hold on a second,” I tell her, blocking the glare to read the screen. “What the hell?”

“Is everything okay?” Mom asks.

“Yep!” I say too brightly.

Everything’s great except that my dad’s trying to call me, and it’s not two weeks after a major holiday, when I’d normally hear from him.

I fire a text his way: Sorry, on the phone.

He replies immediately, an extreme rarity: Gimme a call when you get a sec. Fun news.

Anxiety corkscrews through me. Fun news, in Jason Roberts Speak, is usually: Hey, I’m dating a twenty-six-year-old! (Not for long.)

Or, I made a friend who owns a catamaran, so I’m going out of the country for a while. Send you a postcard when I hit dry land! (He won’t.)

“Daphne?” Mom asks.

“Everything’s fine.” She and Dad aren’t mortal enemies or anything, but she stopped having contact with him pretty much the moment I turned eighteen, and as good as my mom is at empathizing, laughing through the shit storms in life, she’s always gone out of her way to not trash Dad. For my sake, I know, but sometimes I just want her to stop being supermom and just agree with me that he’s the worst. So mostly we just don’t talk about him.

“Well, look,” she says. “I’m happy for you, and I’m proud of you, and I love you.”

“And you have to go?” I autofill.

“I do,” she says. “I’m going to the beach tomorrow with some friends, but talk next week?”

“No problem,” I tell her. “Love you.”

“Love you more,” she says, hanging up before I can argue.

When I pass the taffy-green fairy-tale cottage, the morning glories vining around the picket fence are in full bloom, little birds cheeping from the branches like one more good omen.

On a whim, I check the online listing. The price has recently dropped fifty thousand dollars, but it’s still well beyond my real-life range. Still, it feels good to daydream.

To picture myself in a place like that. Hosting dinners and watching action movies. Grabbing chai from the café up the street and filling vases with fresh-cut lavender. Drinking wine out back with friends during lightning bug season.

I can almost see it. I can almost see a life here.



* * *





?“Any big plans for your birthday?” Harvey asks Ashleigh as we settle around the poker table several hours later with the others.

“It’s your birthday?” I say. “When?”

She groans. “A week from Saturday. Forty-three. And no to big plans. It just so happens to fall on the weekend Mulder and I get back from visiting my mom in Sedona, so he’ll be at his dad’s place, and I’ll be at home rotting my brain to the tune of Bravo reality TV.”

“Why would you be home?” I say. “We should do something.”

Around her cigar, Lenore says, “You’re not gonna win this battle.”

“I’ve always hated my birthday,” Ashleigh explains. “It’s just one more reminder of how little progress I’ve made. I’m in exactly the same spot I was this time last year. Looking at the same four walls in the same house in the same town, only minus a husband.”

“Oh, sweetie, that’s not true at all!” Barb pipes in. “You left a stagnant marriage. You started therapy. You got Mulder through a tough year, and now you’ve brought Daphne into our little circle!”

“And it’s not a day to celebrate progress, anyway,” I insist. “It’s a day to celebrate existence. We have to do something.”

“Aren’t the roles a bit reversed here?” Her brow arches. “I’m the fun, take-charge one.”

“You are,” I agree. “But you can’t Ashleigh yourself, so someone else has to.”

“I don’t want to go out.” She sticks out her bottom lip.

“Then we won’t go out,” I relent. “What if I come over and we paint?”

Her face scrunches, an expression akin to disgust. “Like Bob Ross landscapes?”