I give up on that Father Emilio.
So that was my day.
What do you think?
Want to trade?
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 Cafe, 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 I tell you?”
“Does he go to school with Emily?”
“Emily? Why would you say that?” Larissa got almost defensive.
“What are you getting all huffy for? He must know you from somewhere.”
“Who’s huffy? But why Emily? And he doesn’t. Just a mistake. But he looks much too old to know anyone like Emily.”
“I didn’t say like Emily. I said actual Emily.”
“No. How silly. Well, what did we decide on? Neiman’s?”
They strolled on.
“You better watch out,” Larissa said, “or I’ll tell Ezra how you brushed your hair for twenty minutes at my house because we were going to be valeted by Manuel at Saks.”
“First of all,” Maggie said officiously, bending her unruly red mop in Larissa’s direction, “you know perfectly well that Ezra wouldn’t care if Manuel and I went at it doggie-style in the parking lot. Of all things Ezra is, he is not Othello. Second of all, that wasn’t Manuel but Esteban. Manuel was off today. Third of all, I never brush my hair, and if your hair were curly, you’d know that. Poor Michelangelo. How he must suffer under your hand if you think you can brush his hair. And fourth of all, Manuel says to me ‘Vaya con Dios‘ every time he brings me my car. Now that’s a man who deserves special attention.”
“Does Ezra know this?”
“Ezra loves my little friends.”
Why did Larissa lie?
Why would she need to?
Flushed inside and out, she walked on, stifling the urge to turn around. For some reason she felt he might’ve turned around too. The whole thing made her jerkily uncomfortable, as if ants were crawling on her skin. And what’s more—the ants kept crawling back an
d forth, worrying the circle around the loop of the question, or was it around the pinpoint of the answer? Why would Larissa need to lie to Maggie about such a minor detail? Why didn’t she just say, oh, he helped me with my groceries? Took pity on a woman with a broken leg. And yet she didn’t. She hid it. Hid herself. Hid him. Why?
At lunch they discussed Bo, her current pervasive, unsolvable problems, (discussed blissfully because they weren’t their problems) and Maggie’s new love of painting (“Are you good, Mags?” “No, I’m terrible. But completely obsessed.”) and about Ezra’s lack of understanding of same.
“For all his bookishness, Ezra can be pretty dense about stuff,” agreed Larissa. “Don’t forget to tell him,” she added, “that he should brush up on his Ecclesiastes.” She hadn’t been a drama teacher for nothing. “For in much wisdom, there is much grief, and he who increases knowledge, also increases sorrow.”
To Jared in the morning, Larissa said, “I found a new market. Stop&Shop in Madison. They give out tasters all over the store, their meats are great, and their fruit is good.”
“Tasters, wonderful,” he said, kissing her. “I’m pleased for you. I know how much you like supermarkets. Go get us something nice.”
There.
She went food-shopping with the full approval of her husband.
The ground was hard like pavement, the grass in slumber. She bundled herself into a maroon cashmere Juicy tracksuit, she fussed with her hair, and drove to Stop&Shop. Before she left, she put moisturizer on, because who in their right mind would go out into that blistering January without protection for their face? She wasn’t as young as she used to be. She had to protect her skin. She had to put foundation on. Then a little blush because in the winter she looked so pale. A little mascara to not feel so plain. Mascara, like a mask for the eyes. Lipstick to brighten those winter lips. Deodorant was a must. So was perfume. Perfume because when Jared came home, it had lived on her skin and he said she smelled good. She put on Creed’s Virgin Island Water to go to the supermarket for Jared so he could nuzzle when he came home and tell her she smelled like summer coconut and lime.
Produce first, then tea, then sugar, then diet soda (again!) It was for hubby. She herself had stopped drinking it: didn’t want her metabolism to slow. With her ankle still slightly throbbing, she bought some chicken, some ground sirloin, a Cornish hen, cast a look of revolt at the calves’ liver, and made her way to the paper aisle.
“Would you like me to get those down for you?” a voice said behind her.
He was next to her, smiling, looking up at the 6-pack of paper towels she’d been trying to pull off the top shelf.
“Please,” she said, lightly smiling back. “I guess it helps to be tall.”
“Well, you’re no slouch in the tall department.” He pulled them down with one arm. “Just not quite tall enough.”
She was quite tall for a woman. Five-eight in her bare feet. He was wearing a black leather jacket today, an aviator scarf, ripped jeans again, old boots. His smile was clean, shiny, like he was thinking of a joke, of something witty to say.
“So what were you doing at the mall the other day?” he asked. “I said hello; didn’t you recognize me?”
That was witty? “Shopping. What were you doing at the mall?” She ignored the other, unanswerable bits of his question.
“Hanging out with my buddy Gil. He says I need some new clothes if I’m going to make an impression on my new bosses. So reluctantly I got myself a white shirt.”
“Oh, yeah?” Should she ask? Well, why not? They were just making small talk in the supermarket. She picked up a box of light bulbs, casual. “Where are you working?” She hoped he wouldn’t say Baskin-Robbins.
He pointed in some nebulous direction. “At the Jag dealership down the street. But that’s later in the day. Two mornings a week I got another job.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“At John Cortese in Summit. I’m a stonemason.”
“Stonemason.” She pondered the definition of that. Mason…was that Latin for to build, to make?
“I’m excellent with irregular blue stone,” he said. “Also concrete pavers. Any kind of stonework, really. Do you need anything done at your home?”
“Um—no. But thanks.”
“A patio? Some landscaping walls? A walkway?”
“Thanks, we’re all set.”
“I’m saving up,” he said with a jerky kid-like shrug. “Hence two jobs.” He grinned. “I have this dream of starting my own business.”
He was saving money! He was responsible. He had dreams! He was ambitious. He had actual skills! He was hard-working. And he wasn’t in school.
He worked with stone? That might explain his skinny, hard-looking body. The light bulbs nearly fell out of her hands and broke.
Her question was: did one lay bricks in January? Wasn’t it a seasonal thing? I mean, today was twenty below zero with the wind chill howling it down another ten degrees. Did one lay pavers outside in Short Hills in January?
And the point of the doubt was what? That he was lying about being a stonemason? His real job was a hedge fund manager and he didn’t want her to know? Or maybe his real job was a senior in high school and he didn’t want her to know. Maybe she could bring him home, get him some milk and cookies and send him to the den to play video games with Asher.
“Much call for stone work in the wintertime?”
“Not really,” he admitted. “I’m part time till the summer. Mostly I’m at the Jag place.” He grinned. He was so friendly, so cute. So harmless. He would be a very good bag boy right here at Stop&Shop. And then he could help her get the groceries to her car.
“You must be glad the cast’s off,” he said. “Think of how many accidents could be avoided if only women would stay away from hairdressers. And the husbands would save so much money.”
“Yes,” said Larissa, “but we’d have roots and be ugly.”
“Not you.” He paused, as if for colorizing effect on her spousal skin. “That looks like your natural hair,” he elaborated.
“Yeah, the best natural hair money can buy.”
“Worth every broken bone,” he said, tipping his invisible hat. “Hey, are you in the market for a new car? Because we have some beautiful models coming in next week.”
“A Jaguar?” Larissa shook her head with an incredulous titter. “I don’t think so.”
“You sure?” He was smiling.
She squinted at him. It occurred to her that they’d been standing entirely too long, standing, not moving, standing, not shopping. Their carts were touching, his against hers, kind of bucked up, backed up. His front to her back. “Are you shilling for work in the supermarket?” Larissa asked. “Drumming up business in the produce aisle? First stonework, now Jags?”
“First of all, we’re in plastic and paper, and I don’t know what you mean. Just asking. Making small talk.”
“We’re not in the market for a car either. But thank you.”
“Well, if you change your mind and do come in, don’t forget to ask for me. Here’s my card.” Proudly he pulled out a stack of them from of his pocket and handed her one. He was shilling!
Gingerly she took one, glancing at the name. “KAI PASSANI. SALES REPRESENTATIVE.”
“Kay?” She’d never heard that before. “What kind of name is that?”
“Well, mine for starters. And it’s not Kay. It’s Kai. Rhymes with guy.”
“Oh, of course. I knew that.” She nearly stammered.
He had mercy on her. “Hawaiian.”
“Passani’s Hawaiian?”
“French. My old man was French. And Vietnamese.”
That explained the striking, non-Jersey nature of his appearance.
“Your mom is Hawaiian?”
“We lived in Hawaii. Is that the same thing? She’s actually from Canada, I think.”
“You lived in Hawaii? Lucky you.”
“Nah. Rock island fever from the time I could crawl.” He half shrugged,
half shuddered. “Glad I’m out.” He looked so casual when he spoke about a place so extraordinary. And she glimpsed that he was exotic, though on the surface, without a second glance, he looked almost ordinary. Unthreateningly friendly, unmenacingly young, just a kid with a motorbike and jeans and boots and kinky hair, not especially well-kept, a little out of place in her part of the world. He had an amiable smile, a relaxed manner. But there was something else too, behind the dancing eyes and the straight spine. A peculiar way his attention was laser-focused on the supposedly slapdash chatter with her.
“Glad you’re out in Jersey?” She bestowed him with her most skeptical expression.
“Especially in Jersey.” His eyes scrunched up. He tucked his wiry hair behind his baseball cap. “Bruce Springsteen made me love it. And what is your name, miss?”
“Larissa. And it’s Mrs.”
“Hmm,” he said, nodding in approval. “You look like a Larissa.”
They did not shake hands, he didn’t extend his, as if he had read Emily Post and knew that a young man did not offer his hand to a married woman unless she offered hers first. And Larissa, who had read Emily Post, did not presume for a second to extend her hand to him. In fact, Emily Post said you’re supposed to just wave or say hi when you’re introduced to children.
“Do I?” What did a Larissa look like?
“Yes. There’s something elegant and feminine about that name. Straight-haired.”
She looked into her cart. His low-frequency voice kept fooling her. His was not a child’s voice with that timbre, that out-of-state elocution She didn’t know what to do next. The awkwardness!
She decided to pass him, the wheels of her cart screeching a bit, and as she was flush with him, her shoulder to his chest, distinctly and unmistakably she heard him inhale. As she passed by him, he drew in a soft breath; why?
“Is that you?” he asked. “Coconut and lime?”
She didn’t look up from her paper towels. “I guess. Vestige of summer.”
“Yeah. Like a drink. With a little umbrella.” He smiled, nodding. “Nice.”