“Not really, continue.”
Julie sighed. “Well, I was going away to fight and either I was going to come back in one piece or I wasn’t. Bill said he’d married me in sickness and in health, and that it was his job to take care of me. It got really quite heated, but then I pulled the ‘I’m the one dying of cancer’ card, and he gave up. He’s still pissed, though.”
“And how is it?”
“A fucking nightmare. The treatment makes everything taste bad, like metal. I can’t eat hardly anything because the mouth sores are just the worst, and what I can eat tastes like WD-40 smells. I miss Bill and Lucas all the time, but I would hate it if they were here because then I’d need to worry about them, too. Do you know what I mean?”
“What does Lucas think is going on?”
Julie shrugged. “He thinks I’m working on a film. He was used to one or the other of us going away for work, so we just told him I was on a work trip, and I’d Skype every day if I could, and it’s been fine.” Julie was a script supervisor.
“Did the surgery hurt? Do you have small boobs now?” Julie was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, so it was hard to tell.
“It hurt so fucking much, honestly, but after those mouth sores I could handle anything. And yes, small boobs, but they’re still pretty messed up.” Someone had clearly come in the room because she smiled at them, and then looked back at Frances. “I have to go. But I’m really glad I got to talk to you.”
“Me, too. Try and come back soon. We miss you, and your husband is clearly going to the dogs.”
“Not to mention that I turn my back for five minutes and Anne is porking some random guy. What the actual fuck is going on with that?”
“Call me another time, I’ll fill you in,” said Frances. “Go do something relaxing. You should get one of those coloring books for grown-ups.”
Julie made a hacking noise. “Oh my God, you have no idea how many people have sent me those. They’re very kind, but honestly, if I see another fucking mandala I’m going to scream. On the positive side, I have enough sets of colored pencils to keep my kid stocked until college.” She sighed. “Let’s hope I see him get there.”
“Positive attitude, Julie.”
“Sure, OK.” Julie rolled her eyes. “Talk to you soon.” She hung up.
Frances took the iPad and tucked it back into Lucas’s backpack. Inside she found a drawing of him and his dad. Julie was in it, too, talking to them through a window. All of them were smiling.
Thirty-six.
Soccer that weekend was particularly irritating. There was something in the air, like a giant cloud of irritation, that doubled the usual number of sideline tantrums—and the kids were pretty bad tempered, too.
Lally was in especially fine form. Michael had dug himself a hole by telling her, in the car on the way there, that she could grow up to be anything she wanted. He was getting out of the car, congratulating himself on his right-on girl-empowerment fathering, when she suddenly asked, “Can I be a toilet?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Can I be a toilet when I grow up?”
He made a face at her. “No, you can’t be a toilet. You can’t grow up to be an object, you’re still going to be a person.” He anticipated the next question. “And you can’t change species either, you’re stuck with human.”
“But you said I could be anything I wanted.” Lally had had a bowl of Cheerios for breakfast, about three hours earlier. He had tried to give her a granola bar in the car, but failed. He understood low blood sugar was a factor here, but seriously, a toilet?
He was firm. “Yes, you can be anything, but anything that a person can possibly be in real life, not like, you know, a tree or something.”
“But I want to be a toilet.”
Milo was waiting to get out of the car. “Dad, just let her be a toilet, what does it matter? She’s not applying for toilet college, is she?”
Michael saw the wisdom of this. Frances was good at this, letting the small stuff slide over her; he would be like Frances. “OK, whatever. Sure, honey, you can be a toilet.”
Then they got out of the car and headed to the game. Michael had remembered orange slices in a Ziploc bag and two water bottles. He had remembered shoes to change into after the game. He had remembered his phone and car keys. He was crushing it.
“So,” continued Lally, as they wandered through the crowds of parents strung along the perimeter of games that were in progress, or about to start, or about to end. “If I was a toilet, where would people poop? Would people poop in my mouth?”
As Michael told Frances this story later, he emphasized that this had been the moment he could have headed off the whole thing. “I should have just ignored her,” he confessed. “I should have simply pretended that I didn’t hear, but, you know, I was distracted by finding the right little field, and looking for other kids on the team . . .” His voice trailed off. “I just didn’t . . .”
But in that moment, he didn’t ignore it. Instead he absentmindedly said, “I guess so, baby.”
They found Lally’s team, the Glitter Marlins, and Michael left Lally there for a moment to take Milo to his team, the Raging Robots. As he made his way back he paused for a moment to say hi to Lili Girvan and meet her boyfriend, but he wasn’t
