A Song in the Daylight. Paullina Simons

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6

       Loose Change

      At the breakfast island, Asher said, “Mom, if you and Dad got divorced, we would decide who to go live with.”

      “No, you wouldn’t, Ash,” said Larissa. “Mom and Dad would decide.”

      “Are you getting divorced?” Michelangelo kept eating his Frosted Flakes.

      “No, buddy. Eat quick. We gotta jet.”

      “Well, I’ll go with you,” Asher declared, though no one asked. “You yell less.”

      “Are you kidding?” said Emily. “Mom has such a temper. No, we should go with Dad.”

      Michelangelo hugged his mother around the middle. “You and Daddy aren’t getting divorced, right?” Still kept on with that soggy cereal, though.

      “No, sweetums,” said Larissa, running her fingers through his tangly gold curls.

      “Mom,” said Asher, “if you and Dad both died, like, tomorrow, who would we go to live with then? Uncle Jimmy?” Larissa’s brother Jimmy lived in Detroit.

      “Uncle Jimmy has no room,” said Larissa, getting some pretzels and a drink into a paper bag for Michelangelo’s snack. “Besides, he knows nothing of kids. What about Grandma?” She said that with negative conviction. She said it while shaking her head behind the question, no, no.

      “Yeah, I guess.” Asher was thoughtful. “Maybe Florida with Grandpa?”

      “We should go to school, that’s where we should go,” said Larissa.

      “Yeah!” said Michelangelo. “Grandpa. I want to go to Grandpa.” Michelangelo loved Jared’s dad more than anyone else in the world. Drawings of him in his golf cart popped up all over her house.

      “Oh, but how would we get there? We have no money for a plane ticket.” Asher turned to his mother. “Mom, can you give me cash for all the gift cards I got for Christmas? I have, like, two hundred dollars. I’ll be able to buy a plane ticket then.”

      “But what about me?” wailed Michelangelo. “I don’t have two hundred dollars.”

      “Let’s look around the house for loose change,” said Asher. “Let’s start now. We’ll get enough for a plane ticket by the time they’re dead.”

      “How about if you start your search for loose change right after school,” said Larissa. “Okey-doke?”

      “We’re going to miss the bus,” said Emily. “Let’s go, Ash. Mom, I can’t find my sneakers. I have gym today.”

      She couldn’t find them for ten minutes. They missed the bus. She had to borrow her mother’s footwear, but when she moved her backpack to sling it on her back, there were the sneakers, cleverly hidden underneath. An exasperated Larissa drove them all to school. “Maybe a little less discussion about my death, and we’d all be more punctual.”

      “No, I don’t think so, Mom,” said Asher. “I believe the two are unrelated.”

      “Go to school. Learn something.”

      Michelangelo was late for his spelling test. Asher forgot his clarinet, and his glasses. Emily “forgot” her coat, though it was ten degrees below zero.

      To recuperate from the morning, Larissa spent the early afternoon walking the mall with Maggie. She didn’t think it counted as a calorie burner, though, shuffling along at their creaky middle-aged pace.

      “Larissa, you know that Ezra is shocked you’re not genuflecting at his feet for offering you the drama director job.”

      They were strolling, looking indifferently through the store displays.

      “Mags, I know. But he doesn’t understand things anymore.”

      “He says you’ve changed.”

      “I haven’t changed. I’m exactly the same as I always was. My life has changed. I can’t just la-di-dah and take on a huge commitment like a theater director job.”

      “He says you did it in Hoboken when the kids were babies.”

      “Believe it or not they required less! And I was thirteen years younger. I was still entertaining the unsustainable hope that stage was going to be my life. That’s over and done with. I can’t be memorizing, chewing pencils, rehearsing, on the phone, getting involved with parents and students. It’ll consume me. Just like before. I barely have enough time to be a chauffeur. The kids need me for twenty different things in the afternoon. I have a husband who works twelve hours a day and who likes his food hot. What does he care if his wife is engaged in minutia of play rehearsals? Which scene to cut? Who’s going to play Desdemona? He just wants his steak on the table. And I understand that. But look, I’m still there. Ezra knows I can’t be far from it. I do the sets, I sew the costumes. I run the lines. Honest, that’s enough for me.” She turned her face away to the Tumi flagship store windows.

      They bought things they didn’t need, like bras and hoodies. They were roped into some Dead Sea scrub, for seventy dollars!—“Made from Dead Sea Scrolls, I’m sure,” said Maggie—and were deciding on lunch at California Pizza Kitchen or their beloved Neiman’s Café, which had the most exquisite monkey bread with strawberry butter, when Larissa spotted the Ducati dude from Stop&Shop strolling toward them with a male friend. They were talking, lightly laughing; they acknowledged the women not at all but for a polite half-second glance, except as they were passing, the Ducati dude tipped his baseball cap at Larissa, his head tilting and his mouth stretching in a casual but unmistakable white-teeth smile.

      Barely exhaling, Larissa quickly looked away from his face, casting her gaze down to his faded ripped jeans, his worn boots. His friend was neat, ironed blue Dockers, a white shirt. Not him.

      “Who was that?” Maggie asked absent-mindedly as they glided past, and Larissa, picking up on the absent-minded, decided to play deaf, a trick she had learned from her kids. She ignored the question hoping it would hang in the air and be gone.

      “Lar! Who was that?”

      Didn’t work that time. “I’ve no idea,” said Larissa. “He must’ve mistook me for someone else.”

      “Get out.”

      “Yes.”

      “No way.”

      “Yes way. Maybe he was saying hello to you.”

      “Larissa!”

      “Okay, I’m joking. What, you don’t know him?”

      “Larissa!”

      “I don’t know him either. What can СКАЧАТЬ