The boys were dressed and watching cartoons at the kitchen table when she got back at 6:50. Mike, a gangling fifteen-year-old, swallowed the last of his orange juice and shoved back his chair when she came in the door. Through the donut he'd stuck in his mouth to free his hands, he said, 'Where you been?'
“Stuck behind the garbage truck. Ready?' Mike mumbled something that might have been, 'Just about.”
Jane sat down for a second in the crumb-spattered place he'd left and prodded her youngest gently in the ribs. 'Hey, Todd, old thing, haven't you got anything to say for yourself?”
He tore himself away from a vision of a badly animated character flying between buildings. 'Hey, Mom, old thing. I need three dollars to get some colored pencils at school. The teacher said we had to have them for maps today.'
“Three dollars? Why didn't you tell me yesterday? I could have picked them up at the store.”
He grinned. 'I guess I forgot.”
If Katie, or even Mike had given her that line, she probably would have been irritated, but with Todd — well, it was different. He was still her baby. At ten, he hadn't started to develop the apparent contempt Katie had for her. Jane had no doubt he'd get to that stage in good time. Even Mike, the most sensible and even-tempered of children, occasionally showed signs of it.
She remembered vividly how she'd felt about her parents during her early teens. She'd been sure they were the frumpiest, most embarrassing individuals in the world. She was nearly twenty before she began to realize that they were actually quite interesting, sophisticated people. Most of the time she felt certain her children would come back to liking her when they grew up. But Todd still thought she was okay, and she wanted to hang onto that as long as possible. She needed unreserved love right now more than ever.
Mike shuffled back through the kitchen balancing a backpack of books and a battered tuba case. Somehow he freed a hand long enough to stuff another donut in his mouth. 'Mmrphh?' he asked, looking at her and then at the door.
“Sure,' Jane said, opening it and getting out of the way while he maneuvered through. Willard tried to make an escape, which Jane thwarted with her knee. He backed off with a 'well, it was a good try' look and collapsed pitifully in front of his empty food bowl.
Thinking she might fool Mike, Jane started toward the driver's side of the car, but Mike spit the donut out in the driveway and said, 'I'm driving.'
“Mike, don't throw that food there!'
“The birds'll eat it.”
Jane got in on the passenger side, wishing she had a crash helmet. 'Have you got your learner's permit with you?”
Mike just rolled his eyes in exasperation and threw the car into reverse. They shot backward, Mike grinning, Jane with her hands splayed on the dashboard. Someday, she told herself, she'd remember this time fondly, but not anytime soon. Mike's driving made her crazy. This was the sort of thing Steve ought to be here for; teaching a boy to drive was 'Dad work.' It wasn't that Mike drove all that fast — well, only in reverse — but he was a curb-clipper. After sixteen years of perceiving the road from the passenger seat, he liked the same view, even though he was now sitting four feet farther left. 'Watch the jogger!' Jane shrieked.
“I see him,' Mike assured her placidly, swinging out a generous four or five inches to the left.
They stopped and picked up Ernest, a tubby, pimpled boy who tossed a trombone case in the back of the wagon, and Scott, a tall, California-blond, and altogether shockingly handsome boy who carried no books, only a pair of drumsticks. He bounced into the seat behind Jane and beat an affectionate tattoo on her shoulder. 'Hi, Mrs. J. Lovely as always,' he said, lifting a portion of her uncombed hair with a drumstick.
Jane half-turned. 'I'm more concerned withinternal beauty, Scott. Of which I have loads, I might add. Mike! That truck is stopped!”
The high school was in the opposite direction from the junior high, and the time lapse had given the same trash crew time to get in her way twice in one morning. They'd probably get some kind of award for that, she thought.
“Plenty of room,' Mike said, going around it with a fraction of an inch to spare.
“Excellent!' Scott said and beat out a happy rhythm on the window.
Once the boys were out of the car, Jane was stranded in a snarl caused by a mob of girls surrounding a red Fiat. The high school parking lot made her strangely sad. These boys and girls on the verge of adulthood were all so young and healthy and beautiful. Even the plain ones had a wonderful vitality. But it wasn't their youth that saddened her. She was handling the march of time fairly well. It was their air of 'belonging' that she envied. They waved and called to each other and moved in graceful shoals, like happy fish. The boys punched each other's arms in a friendly way; the girls put their heads together, sharing secrets.
Jane had missed all that. A State Department brat, she'd never attended the same school more than a single year, and several times had been only a semester in one place before her father's assignments moved them on. There had been benefits, of course. She'd lived all over Europe and much of the Far East, not to mention both east and west coasts of the United States. But those were the kinds of advantages that only the adults who chose such a life could appreciate. To a naturally shy child, it had been agony.
At least she'd spared her children that unhappiness, she thought as she squeezed through a group of boys noisily tossing a basketball back and forth over passing cars in the parking lot. Her kids had all been born here and had lived in the same house all their lives. When they left their familiar neighborhood, it would be because they wanted to, not because they had to.
There wasn't a lot she was willing to give Steve credit for, but thank God he'd left her with barely enough money to keep them in this secure life and neighborhood with a full-time mother. They'd never be able to keep up with the Christmas-in-the-Caribbean crowd, but at least they weren't going to have to move into a crackerbox rental house and sell off the china to make ends meet.
Todd was sitting on the front steps when she pulled into the drive. Just behind her a blue Mazda stopped and honked. The driver hopped out. Dorothy Wallenberg had on a tennis skirt and neon-pink blouse. She was a plump, solid woman who had thighs like tree trunks — well tanned, well-muscled tree trunks. Dorothy always seemed to be in a hurry, and this morning was no exception. 'Hi, Jane, do me a quickie favor, will you?' she said, bounding around to the trunk of her car and gingerly lifting out an enormous sheet cake. 'Take this in to Shelley, please.”
Jane slapped her forehead. 'For the meeting tonight! I'd forgotten. I promised her I'd make a carrot salad. She'll skin me for not having it ready.”
Jane's friend and neighbor Shelley had a wonderful house for entertaining and did a lot of it. Almost any group she belonged to could count on her house for meetings and parties, but she despised potluck dinners, and when she was forced to have one she managed it like a parole officer. Nobody got to just wander in at their leisure, bringing their food. The food came first, early in the day; the guests could then arrive as late as they wanted without interfering with serving the meal. That was Shelley's standing rule, and it was a measure of the strength of her personality that her friends had learned to honor it.
“Thanks!' Dorothy said, easing the pan onto Jane's waiting arms.
“You're coming tonight, then?' Jane asked. Dorothy had previously claimed a schedule conflict. A former nurse, she volunteered in a free birth control clinic several nights a week.
“Sure,' Dorothy answered with a grin. 'Life isn't all vaginas.'
“Mostly, though,' Jane answered.
Dorothy laughed and got back into the car. 'All settled, kids? Jane, there's a donut on your driveway.'
“I know. Flocks of ravenous birds are due any minute.”
Her hands occupied with the big cake pan, Jane stuck out her leg and waved good-bye to Todd with her foot. He rolled his eyes and looked away.
A bad sign, that. A symptom that the beginning of the end was in sight.
