She wants to make fun of the scripts with Tucker. Since the weekend, he’s stopped shaving. He’s even more appealing with stubble. She likes all the gray in his beard, wants to believe that he has pleasing chest hair, that his skin will feel good against hers, that he won’t mind her bony body, that they’ll enjoy sleeping side by side. After Gust left, it took months to learn to sleep alone. She watches Tucker from across the room, gets paired with him once that afternoon, but has to share him with Beth. The next day, they get a turn alone. Tucker nudges her boot under the table. He says, “I’d rather not yell at you, can we just talk?”
“We have to practice.” Frida pulls her feet up and sits cross-legged. They’ve known each other for one month. At this point in her courtship with Gust, they’d already said “I love you.” They were already spending entire weekends in bed.
All week she’s been careful, refusing to sit with Tucker at lunch, walking in the other direction if she sees him in the hall.
Roxanne thinks catching feelings in this place is a matter of proximity. “It’s like giving a starving person a piece of pizza,” Roxanne said. “Beanstalk is your piece of pizza.”
Is she his? Is he also starving for affection? Emmanuelle and Jeremy look up from their coloring books. They glance back and forth between their parents, alert to the excitement in their voices. The four of them look like a demented little family. Bad parents, false children. In the future, Frida thinks, there might be no other way.
Their hostile co-parenting scripts, as Tucker delivers them, sound more than a little like foreplay.
“B-I-T-C-H,” he says slowly, his fingers dangerously close to Frida’s. “I don’t have any more money. We had an agreement.”
Frida smiles despite herself. She’s glad not to be touching Emmanuelle. Her hand would be too warm, her pulse too fast.
They giggle through the fury round. As they do their breathing exercises, his foot grazes her calf. Protected by the noise, he adds extra lines to the script. “You were supposed to pick him up at three thirty, why can’t you ever remember anything?” becomes “You were supposed to pick him up at three thirty, why can’t you ever remember anything? I think about you. I would definitely ask you out if we met under normal circumstances. Give yourself more credit. You’re beautiful. You’re a fox.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She tells him to stick to the script. He’s losing his mind if he thinks he can talk like this. It’s not safe.
“No one can hear us.”
Emmanuelle asks, “Mommy, what fox?”
“A furry animal. Mommy is not a fox. Daddy Tucker is just saying that because it’s summer and summer is romantic and he’s lonely. Mommy can’t help him with that. Parents aren’t supposed to feel lonely. I don’t feel lonely. I have you.”
To Tucker, she whispers, “Be reasonable. You should be thinking about your son.”
“You’ll meet him one day.”
“I’m sure his mother would be delighted. Imagine telling her where you found me.”
Ms. Khoury approaches. They practice two pages of hostile dialogue until she passes. Tucker reaches for Frida’s arm.
“Unwanted physical contact,” Frida says, pulling away. “Don’t. The kids can see us.”
At the end of the day, when they line up to return their dolls, Tucker takes greater liberties. His hand brushes Frida’s. Their fingertips touch. The charge is sharp. Dazzling. More urgent than what she felt with Will.
Frida shoves her hands into her pockets, the happiest she’s been since losing Harriet. They’ve played a whole history today, from total rage to a slow boil to begrudging respect to, finally, a serenity that makes them sound like they’ve both had lobotomies. She doesn’t know what he sees in her. Surely they’re too old for these games, too broken for romance. As she boards the bus, her thoughts are far away. Far from Harriet. Far from motherly. It’s a fantasy that can be killed in a thousand ways. She’s a fool for even thinking about him. But he could lift her so easily. Lift her heart, but also pin her to a wall and fuck her standing up.
* * *
Phone privileges are finally granted. Frida’s prognosis has been upgraded to fair. When she returns to Kemp that night, she and Roxanne do a victory dance. They hop around the room and cheer. Roxanne bounces on her bed, makes Frida do the same, just for a minute. They laugh like little girls. Roxanne even tries teaching Frida the Cupid Shuffle, the dance she and her mother used to do around the house. They collapse in giggles when Frida keeps messing up the steps.