“How is that supposed to make me happy? Aren’t I allowed a private life?”
“Of course you are. Everyone is. But we’re here to help you, to support you, like a pit crew, but without the jumpsuits and awesome whirry wheel-changing tools. We can’t do that if you don’t tell us what you need.”
“What if I don’t need anything?”
“We all need something. No one gets out of here alone, babe.” Why was this so hard, why was her child resisting her so much, so furiously? When she was small Frances had been her everything, and now she seemed to resent her mother’s very existence.
“But what if what I need is to be left alone?” Ava’s tiny indentation was there now, at the corner of her mouth, but so was the reduced blinking. The teenager was fighting herself for control.
Frances tried something else. “Have some tea.”
“I don’t want any fucking tea.”
Pause. Crap, now Frances needed to make one of those snap parenting decisions that she so frequently got wrong. She should have waited for Michael. Should she get angry at the cursing? Should she not? Two milliseconds, three milliseconds, four milliseconds . . .
“Then don’t have any fucking tea.”
Ava rarely heard her mother swear, except occasionally in the car, and this was startling enough to provoke a small smile. Frances doubled down, as this seemed to have been successful. “How about some fucking cocoa?”
Ava’s smile widened. “Nah, tea’s fine.” Her nascent tears seemed to be under control, and she took a sip and blinked at a normal rate. Frances cheered inwardly, and was tempted to get up and walk away while she was ahead, even though she hadn’t done anything except get her daughter to smile and drink tea. Seriously, some days that might be as good as it got. But then she remembered her conversation with Jennifer, and decided to press on.
She softened her tone, tried to sound open and nonjudgmental. “Jennifer said you’ve dropped your extracurriculars . . . What’s up there?”
In the blink of an eye the smile was gone. Ava scowled. “What’s up? Nothing’s up. The extracurriculars were (a) boring and (b) time consuming, and now I’ll have more time to do my precious homework. Isn’t that what you want?”
Frances shrugged. Maybe it was contagious. She’d be rolling her eyes next. “If you need more time to do your homework then it’s good you gave yourself that time.”
“Because I’m too stupid to do my homework in a regular amount of time?”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. “No, you were the one who mentioned homework.”
“Because that’s all you care about.”
“No, all I care about is you. I thought you liked working on the newspaper.”
“They got a new editor. It wasn’t me. I quit.”
Frances was surprised. “Because of that?”
Frances could tell Ava wanted very badly to look at her computer screen and feign indifference; her hand even drifted toward the laptop. “No, I just didn’t enjoy it anymore.”
“And the animation club?”
“Flip-book shit. It was stupid.”
“And the orchestra?”
There was a pause. Frances watched her daughter’s face. Ava was clearly trying to remember if she’d said she was doing a rehearsal the previous week, which she had, and wondering whether or not Frances had realized she hadn’t been. It was quite the little opera of facial expressions, and in the end the teenager decided to roll the dice.
“Yeah, that, too. I went last week, but I’m not going to go anymore.”
Frances pondered. Should she call her on the lie, wait for Michael to come home and discuss it with him, or let it slide right now but come at it another way?
She plunged on. “Oh yeah? Jennifer thought you’d stopped a couple of weeks ago. But you told me you were at rehearsal last week, right?”
Ava shrugged and frowned. “Did I?” She reached for her tea, took a sip.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure. What did you do instead?” There, that was straightforward. You know and I know that you said you were at rehearsal and we both know you weren’t, so tell me the truth. Good, right? Right?
“Nothing. Hanging out in the library I guess. I forget.”
Ah. Fuck. A sideways bluff, a teenage classic. Maybe I was doing something you wouldn’t like, maybe I wasn’t, I don’t remember. How much do you want to push this, Parent? We can both walk away at this point, the pothole covered over, appearances preserved. Wouldn’t that be the easier choice? Go on, let it go.
Frances didn’t want to let it go. Her own parents had been masters of the “everything’s fine here, move along, nothing to see” while at the same time being so incredibly miserable and fucked up they could barely breathe. They’d never recovered from losing her brother, but everyone in the neighborhood thought they were doing really well, so brave, an inspiration.
“I don’t believe you. If you quit a couple of weeks ago then you’ve been ‘at rehearsal’ at least twice since then, and I’m pretty sure you stayed late at least one other day.” Frances raised her eyebrows. “What’s going on, Ava? I’m not angry. I just want to know what’s up.”
Ava looked at her mother, a momentary look of hurt almost immediately replaced with anger.
“My private life is none of your business.”
“Yes, it kind of is. I don’t need color pictures, a verbal overview is fine. Are you seeing someone? Are you doing drugs? Are you counterfeiting money under the bleachers?”
Which was when the gasket blew, and all the way off. Ava sat up and pointed her finger, her face flushing. “You think you’re funny, don’t you? You’re always so ready to make a joke, to make it seem like we’re all so cool and relaxed here, sharing goals, working as a team, whatever theory you’ve gleaned from whatever parenting book or podcast you’ve listened to recently.” Ava looked at Frances with a more than reasonable facsimile of disdain. “You’re no different from anyone else’s parents, Mom, just a prying, fat old woman whose own life is essentially over and who
