From that day on, she couldn’t do anything to please her son. Meanwhile, she and Ted were broken up, and not seeing him felt like someone had died. No one she’d ever dated seriously had disappeared from her life so suddenly. Somehow she’d remained friendly with her exes. Life’s too short for grudges. Missing Ted made Gina ill. She got migraines, threw up.
It was a crazy idea to ask Ted to tutor Toby. But Toby had been on the phone to his father every night, begging to go “home.” Home to freezing-cold Maine to live with his even colder stepmother. The first night Toby didn’t call his father was the night they ran into Ted at dinner. Toby seemed to fall in love with Ted as suddenly as Gina had.
“Really? You helped him do a triathlon?” Toby pressed in the car on the way home. “You know what? I think he likes you. Mom, he totally likes you! Why don’t you date him?” This was the first time Toby ever seemed remotely proud of her. She realized that’s what she wanted as much as her son’s love—for him to be proud of her. Or at least not ashamed.
“He’s married,” Gina had to admit. Not exactly something to be proud of.
“What?” Toby said incredulously. He looked out the window for a long time. “Well, he might be getting divorced.”
What on earth? Toby was so grown up in some ways.
“Why do you date dork loser Shane and dork loser Barry? How come you can’t find a nice guy, like Dr. Mackey?”
“Barry’s not a loser,” Gina said feebly.
Toby rolled his eyes, kicked the dashboard. “You should date Dr. Mackey.”
“I did!” Gina shouted, losing her control, finally, after ten days of her son’s unrelenting disdain. “I found him. I dated him. We broke up. He’s married!” Don’t ever talk to or argue with your child as though he’s your peer, Gina heard the words from her parenting book scold. She pulled off the road to regain her composure.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said, her voice wavering as she smoothed over her skirt. “I know that’s more information than you need. It’s just that’s why we won’t ever see Dr. Mackey again.”
Toby nodded. Then his tongue clicked in his mouth the way it did when he was figuring something out.
Over the next week, Toby went on and on about how Ted would be the best tutor. Finally, like an idiot, Gina gave in and asked Ted.
Now, for some reason, God only knows why, since he’s gotten back together with his wife, Ted has decided he will tutor Toby every week, instead of the once or twice he originally agreed to. He’s told Gina to take down the signs at the community college; there’s no need to hire a tutor. Even though they’re not sleeping together, seeing Ted a little bit is better than not seeing him at all. Criminy, she’s pathetic. The worst part is that the two men she loves most—Toby and Ted—seem to have no use for her. She hates the reactions she garners from them. From Toby: disdain. From Ted: pity. There’s nothing worse than someone feeling sorry for you. She sees it in Ted’s eyes. Poor Gina, with the out-of-control kid and crappy math skills. Okay, so she doesn’t remember how to do fractions. She’s not a corporate lawyer.
Gina would almost rather be hated than pitied. She’d rather be a bitchy force-to-be-reckoned-with. She could never master bitchiness, though. She certainly wanted to back in high school. She was captain of the drill team, and voted the student with Best School Spirit. Kids made fun of her enthusiasm. “You know what the guys call the drill team?” Amanda Cranson asked Gina in the girls’ room one day, raising an eyebrow at the short skirt of Gina’s uniform. “The Screw Crew.”
Gina tried to muster a callous comeback. But she just stood there, at a loss, hating being the perky girl.
“You don’t know anything about me,” she finally said, her hands trembling as she reached for a paper towel. But Amanda was out the door already, out the door and into the raucous sea of screaming kids in the hall, a sea that made Gina’s stomach churn.
7
Ted can’t stand the thought of living in the house without Elinor, so he convinces her that he’s the one who should move out. He signs a month-to-month lease for a furnished condo, wishing it could be week-to-week. Breath-to-breath. He wants to tell the realtor to wake him up when his wife has forgiven him and he can move back in with her. When he can stop thinking about having sex with Gina all the time, even when he’s examining bunions.
At home, he packs a medium-size suitcase, the biography of Ulysses S. Grant he’s been meaning to read, and a pound of bacon from the meat drawer in the refrigerator. Elinor raises an eyebrow at the bacon. They don’t speak.
The living room upholstery at Ted’s rental unit has an oily sheen that makes him want to stand in the middle of the room to watch TV. Until recently, the place has been used as temporary housing for workers relocating to the Valley during the boom. Now that the economy has slowed, schleps like Ted can move in at a reduced rate. We want this to feel like your home away from home, a rental brochure by the telephone says. Your hell away from hell. The TV is bolted to the wall. Ted puts his pound of bacon in the fridge and the bottle of vodka in the freezer. Nice diet. And he’s a doctor.
The apartment is painted dark, oppressive colors, which seem to be the latest trend. In the bedroom, the burgundy walls close in on Ted as he opens his suitcase. The blood-red shade seems to suck not only the light from the room, but the air, too, and Ted feels a twinge of claustrophobia. He drags his suitcase out to the slightly lighter mushroom-colored living room. He wrestles open the foldout couch and sinks into the soft center. The thin mattress bends around him like a taco. The sheets smell slightly moldy. He remembers when he and Elinor painted their kitchen and family room. She chose a pale yellow—pineapple ice—that she said would “draw in the natural light.” As he watched her pop open and stir the first can of creamy paint, he felt grateful to be married.
He clicks on the TV and mutes a guy who’s shouting about trucks. Flipping through his stack of mail, he finds a letter from the insurance company:
Dear Mr. Mackey,
We have made a decision based upon our investigation of the facts regarding responsibility for the automobile accident on August 12. According to California law, a driver may be considered principally at fault in an accident if the driver’s actions or omissions were at least 51% of the cause of the accident. The results of our investigation reveal that Theodore Mackey was 100% responsible for this accident for failure to maintain a proper lookout. . . .
Elinor has insisted that regardless of what the insurance company or cops decide, Ted should schedule a court date and plead not guilty. “Bank on a bureaucratic snafu,” she told him. “Chances are the cop won’t show and you’ll get off. Then our insurance won’t go up.”
“But I’m guilty.” It irked Ted that bureaucracy could absorb this fact.
“Doesn’t matter,” she insisted. “You don’t perjure yourself by pleading not guilty.”
Loopholes. Ted sighs, closes his eyes. When he opens them, he spots a bug scurrying across the kitchen floor. A cockroach? That lazy-ass realtor could have found him something better than this squalid shoe box. His pulse pounds in his ears as he lunges into the kitchen. A brown insect freezes under his gaze. It’s some kind of beetle. Still, he grabs the phone book from the kitchen counter and annihilates the vermin with one smash. “Fucking squalor!” Pounding the floor with the phone book feels good—right, somehow. Squatting on his haunches, Ted beats at the flattened beetle or whatever the hell it is until it is just a brown smudge.
“Hey!” A muffled shout comes from the apartment below. “Shut up!”
“You shut up!” Ted hollers back. He raises the phone book high above his head and slams the floor again and again. “Shut. The. Fuck. Up!” He pounds and shouts until his throat burns and his head throbs and his hands ache—experiencing one of those rare moments where pain feels good.
The only thing Ted looks forward to all week is seeing Toby and Gina. While Gina seems glad that he’s tutoring Toby, she keeps a careful distance from Ted. She’s dating the con
cert promoter now—a guy who’s clearly loaded. The last time Ted picked up Toby to study, he watched the two of them pull out of the parking lot in a Jag. Gina waved to Ted, laughing at something Richie Rich said. Ted hasn’t told Gina that he’s separated from Elinor. He worries this will just make him a troublesome complication in her life. Instead, he’d rather be helpful, bringing Toby’s math grade up to at least a C-plus.
On his way to Gina’s one Saturday, Ted spots a Toys “R” Us and swerves off the road to buy a present for Toby.
“What kind of games do ten-year-old boys like these days?” Ted asks the teenage clerk behind the glass case where the computer games are locked up. The kid seems to have been waiting all day for someone to ask this.
“For what kind of player?” he wants to know. “Does he have the Xbox 360?” The boy, who has two silver hoops in his ears like a pirate, rubs his palms together, savoring this possibility.
Ted has no idea.
“PS2?”
Ted shrugs. “He has a Game Boy. What’s the coolest game for that?” Ted winces as he hears himself use the word cool. What a geezer dumb-ass. “Is there something with lots of battles?”
This sparks an enthusiastic list of pros and cons from the clerk, and finally Ted chooses a game that he thinks will be gory enough for Toby without horrifying Gina.
At the checkout he peruses a collection of unfamiliar action figures (where are Superman and Batman?), then buys a big box of Matchbox cars as a backup gift.
“Ow. Owwwwwww!” Toby’s voice rings in the air as Ted heads up the walk to Gina’s condo. He squeezes the toy store package under his arm and breaks into a jog. Toby appears from around the hedges, hopping down the sidewalk on one foot. “Bees!” he screams, his face contorted and red, tears streaming down his freckled cheeks. “Beeeeeeees!”
“It’s okay, sport,” Ted says, even though he’s not sure.
Gina appears, chasing after Toby with an EpiPen syringe. When she sees Ted, she throws back her head. “Thank God!” She thrusts the needle toward him. “He needs this.” Her hand shakes. “He’s allergic.”
Toby stops, closes his eyes, and waits for the shot. As Ted takes the EpiPen, he sees that Toby hasn’t been stung just on the foot; there are red spots all over his leg, too. Ted’s heart races at the thought of Toby going into anaphylactic shock.
“Okay, sport,” he says. “Okay.” He pops the green cap off the syringe and quickly gives Toby the shot in his thigh. “It’s easy,” Ted tells Gina. “You can even do it through his clothing.” Elinor always complimented Ted for giving painless shots. Ironically, the trick is to insert the needle with a quick jab—like ripping off a Band-Aid all at once.
“Dad knows how to do it.” Toby scowls at Gina.
Toby’s body goes limp. He leaps forward as soon as the epinephrine hits him, bouncing on his toes. “It hurth!” he yells. His tongue is obviously swollen, and he isn’t breathing as easily as he should be.
“Oh, honey,” Gina says, reaching for Toby. “He hit a nest under the deck,” she tells Ted.
“Stay away from me!” Toby screams at her. “Thee why I hate to play outhide!”
Gina retreats a few steps toward the house and doubles over, hugging her waist.
“You okay?” Ted asks her.
She nods. “Stomach cramps.”
“Listen, let’s go to the emergency room.” Ted tries to sound calm as he prods Toby toward the car. “You might need another shot, Tobe, since you were stung so many times.” Toby hesitates, so Ted stoops and lifts him into his arms, grabbing the computer game from the grass. He’s surprised by how light and leggy Toby is—like a spider. The scabs on his arms are rough against Ted’s skin.
“Ow, ow, ow.” Toby rhythmically knocks his head against Ted’s chest.
Gina hurries behind them.
“I know, champ,” Ted says. “I know.”
At the hospital, everyone assumes Ted is the husband, the father.
“Squeeze your dad’s hand,” the young emergency room doctor says as he gives Toby another shot of epinephrine. Your dad. The assumption fills Ted with remorse. But he doesn’t correct the doctor. Neither does Toby or Gina. Toby’s fingernails dig into Ted’s palm as the adrenaline surges through his limbs.
Gina watches from a chair beside Toby’s gurney, a pink bucket cradled between her legs. When they arrived at the ER, an Indian woman who had cut her hand with hedge trimmers dripped blood across the floor through a makeshift dish towel bandage. Somebody said, “You can see the tendon,” and Gina almost fainted. Somehow Ted managed to catch her and still hold Toby until a nurse came from behind with a wheelchair for Gina.
Now panic flashes in Toby’s eyes. “My thung!”
“I want you to breathe through your nose for me,” the doctor says. He can’t be more than thirty. Ted puts his face in front of Toby’s, seals his lips, and inhales deeply through his nose to illustrate. Toby’s eyes lock on Ted’s. They breathe together. As tears slide past Toby’s quivering jaw, Ted has the primal urge to carry the boy away from here, although he knows this is the safest place to be.
The additional shot makes Toby’s heels hammer the gurney. A nurse layers another blanket over him. His head rolls back and forth, and his lips move as he begins to count. “Through your nose,” Ted reminds him. He steps behind Toby as the doctor bends over the patient to peer in his eyes with a penlight. Gina leans over her bucket.
“Don’t worry, honey,” the nurse tells her.
“No more shots,” the doctor says, patting Toby’s leg. “We’ll just keep an eye on you now.”
You’re a trouper, Ted is about to say when he remembers that this was Elinor’s pet peeve. “If one more Gen-X intern says I’m a trouper I’m going to strangle him with his stethoscope,” she’d fume. “You should ask a patient how they’re doing, not tell them.”
“How you doing, buddy?” Ted asks Toby.
Toby’s legs slow to a jerky shake. “I hate bees.”
Ted nods.
“You’re a brave fella.” The doctor pats Toby’s shoulder. “What’s your favorite sport?”
“History,” Toby says distractedly, looking over at his mother.
“He’s a history nut,” Ted tells the doctor.
“Wow,” the doctor says. “Well, I think you’ll be back to the books in no time.” He gives Ted a you-must-be-proud smile on his way out of the room. Ted bends to kiss Toby’s gnarled curls, surprised by their softness. Toby’s looking away, and Gina doesn’t see it, so the kiss seems like a stolen pleasure.
In the car on the way home, Gina says to Toby, “Baby, you were brave. I’m proud of you.”
“See, that’s why I don’t want to go outside,” Toby says gloomily. “That’s why I want to stay inside. Why can’t you let me stay inside and read?”
Gina closes her eyes.
“Oh, now,” Ted tells Toby, “those stupid old bees could get you while you’re walking to the car to drive to the mall.”
“Whatever,” he says. “I could have died.” His eyes dart back and forth, watching the passing scenery.
“We’d never let that happen,” Ted tells him. He wants to take back the words we and never, both of which suggest permanence on his part.
They ride in silence. Finally, Toby unbuckles his seat belt and leans between the front seats to talk to Ted. “Hey. Did you know Guillotine was a guy?”
“You’re pulling my hair, sweetie.” Gina tugs her head forward to loosen her long hair from his grip.
“Sorry.” Toby moves his small hands to Ted’s headrest. “Did you know that he was a doctor who invented the guillotine? He figured out that decapitation is the quickest way to die.”
“Ouch,” Ted says.
“Yeah. The blade weighed eighty-eight pounds. That’s more than me!” He flops back against the seat.
“Toby, honey, we just came from the hospital.” Gina grasps her forehead. “Buckle your seat belt now.”
“Okay, but did you know that the guil
lotine was on wheels and they rolled it around Paris during the revolution and that’s how they killed Louis the Sixteenth? And you know that lady, Marie Antoinette? You know what my book says?”
“What’s it say, sport?” Ted asks.
“It says that she never said, Let them eat cake. She never said that.” Toby is miffed by this misconception. He buckles his seat belt.
“Really?” Ted asks. “See, it’s good to question history.”
Gina shakes her head. “How’d I get this genius kid?” She pushes the button to roll down her window partway. The wind blows her hair off her cheeks. She closes her eyes, arches her back, and tips her face up. Her body forms a long arc from her chin, down over her throat, between her breasts, and across her belly to the dark red waistline of her batik skirt. Ted swallows, looks back to the road. At the ER, he took care of everything: Toby, Gina, the discharge paperwork. While he couldn’t ever do anything to make Elinor feel better, with Toby and Gina it seems all he has to do is show up. They need him. Is this a weird thing to be grateful for? Hell, that Jaguar guy could probably fix everything, too. All he’d have to do is write a check.
“Stew’s Steak Shack!” Toby shouts, startling Gina. “Can we stop?”
“No.” Gina frowns.
“Please?”
“Please?” Ted echoes in a kid’s whine, trying to be funny.
Gina smiles. “Why not?” she concedes. “A steak sounds good.”
The three of them slide into a circular booth, Toby in the middle. Ted and Toby choose hamburgers. Gina encourages Ted to order his burger protein-style, which means no bun. “You’re doing so well,” she says.
Ted straightens his back and sucks in his stomach.
“Look, you can have strawberry shortcake without the shortcake for dessert,” Gina adds. She manages to make these suggestions without seeming bossy. Ted likes it when she fusses over him.
As they eat, ketchup seeps between leaves of iceberg lettuce, dripping off the ends of Ted’s fingers. Clutching his wrist, he waves his hand in front of Toby’s face, grimacing. “Gahhhhhh,” he moans, feigning a B-movie injury, ketchup dripping like fake blood.