Frances took a breath and stayed down. At moments like this she felt sorrow in a way she never experienced in any other context. Sorrow for herself because, let’s face it, that shit was hurtful, and sorrow that she had failed at parenting so badly that her child was capable of such cruelty. She knew Ava saved her harshest words for her, she knew that intellectually, but she also knew that those feelings were real, that at points like this Ava genuinely didn’t like her very much.
“That’s not true, and it’s very mean. I just asked you a reasonable question. There’s no need to make a federal case of it. Just tell me what you were doing, and why you’re lying to me about it.” Frances really hadn’t wanted this conversation to go this way. “I don’t think of you as a liar, Ava. Please just tell me what’s going on with you.”
“Nothing. I already told you. I hung out at the library and did my homework. There’s nothing.”
“Why did you tell me you were at rehearsal?”
Yet another shrug. “Because it was easier than explaining why I wasn’t.”
“Which you still haven’t explained. And who’s Piper?” Don’t get angry, Frances. The minute you get angry, the minute you raise your voice, you lose the argument and everyone ends up in tears and the emotional hangover the next day is such a bastard.
Ava crossed her room to sit in her scruffy, oversize armchair, a fixture since she’d been born. She’d been nursed there, rocked there, read to for years and years. Now it was her own nest, and as she pulled her legs up tightly, Frances could see her thinking hard and trying not to lose the fight. Winning mattered so much to her because she hadn’t yet realized that she and Frances were on the same side. “Piper is nobody. Just a girl at school who liked me and doesn’t like me anymore.”
“‘Liked’ in the romantic sense?”
Ava deepened her scorn, if that were possible. “You’d love that, wouldn’t you? If I was gay like Iris? It would be so easy to look cool then, you could just be like, ‘Yeah, my kid’s gay, it’s fine, as long as she’s happy.’ You’d be so accepting and right-on about it.”
Frances felt her temper rising. “And that would be bad? I should throw you out of the house instead?”
“No.” Ava tossed her head, looking momentarily like the piebald in the poster above the chair. “Oh, never mind, Mom. You don’t even know what you don’t know.”
Count to three. “And what about the orchestra?”
“I quit because I wanted to have more time. I want to have some space, for crying out loud. I need time to myself, time that is just mine.” Suddenly, she had tears in her eyes. “Everyone knows where I am and what I’m doing all the time. I have a schedule on the wall. I have organized activities. I have about as much freedom as someone on death row and that’s pretty much how I feel. I just want to have something private, something only I know, and a little fucking room to breathe.” She turned and buried her face in a pillow that said “No Bad Days” on it in fluffy letters. “I just want you to leave me alone!”
Frances reached for her. “Ava, I . . .”
From the pillow, desperately, “Mom, I’m not speaking hypothetically. I want you to leave me alone now. Just go away. I hate you!”
Frances got up and walked out, almost in tears herself.
That went well.
• • •
To add insult to injury, even though it wasn’t needed, Michael was annoyed with Frances for going ahead without him.
“I thought we agreed to talk to each other before talking to Ava?”
Frances was sitting on their bed, surrounded by dogs as usual. She nodded. “I know, it just . . . I should have waited. I didn’t think it would go that badly, that quickly.” They kept their voices low, but Michael wasn’t one of those people who needed volume to make his displeasure felt. He wrinkled his eyebrows at her.
“Do we even have a theory about why she dropped her extracurriculars? Do we know anything about this Piper girl? Has she ever mentioned her?”
“Maybe. I don’t remember it, but that isn’t cast iron. Those first weeks of school are always such a clusterfuck. Three different schools this year, all new names, I’m surprised I remember who’s teaching which kid.”
Michael looked at his wife, who was hiding behind Jack and Diane. He loved her very much, but he found himself increasingly mystified by her relationship with Ava. For his own part, he found the teenage girl living in his house as confusing as the ones he’d gazed at as a teenager. He hadn’t understood them then, and barely any of them would even deign to talk to him. When his kids brought home friends he could never tell them apart. They all looked like critters to him, just fast-moving blurs of hair.
“Was that Bella?” he would ask, and Frances or Ava would roll their eyes and say, “No, that was Quinn, they’re completely different!” and he would shrug. He knew his own kids at a vast distance, or from the corner of his eye, and that would just have to do. He loved them unreservedly, especially Ava, who was the most like him. But his conversations with her were completely different from the ones she and Frances had.
Early on Frances had told him something he’d taken very much to heart. “You,” she’d said, “are the alpha man in your daughter’s life. You are the model. Every other man in her life will be measured against you, and her relationships will be measured against ours. If you speak to her disrespectfully she will accept that level of shit from
