How to Be an American Housewife - Margaret Dilloway [56]
Then I walked back down the short hill, slow, to my house. The air inside, so cold when I’d left, always felt hot and stale. Every day, I wanted to open the windows, but I worried that Helena would get a chill. I left them closed.
“I wish I run,” Mom would say, every time she saw my running shoes by the door. “I use run faster than anybody. Beat even you.”
THE PHONE ON MY DESK RANG AGAIN, and I did nothing. The endless years stretched out before me as though they had already been lived. I felt a lurching in my bones so violent, I thought we were surely experiencing an earthquake. I needed to get out of here.
Whenever I felt this way, I got another cup of water and distracted myself with chitchat. Today, I did what I felt like doing. What I thought my mother would do if she could, if she were me. I grabbed my jacket and ran.
The blue silk blouse stuck to my armpits. Late February and eighty degrees. A San Diego winter. I ran to the far end of the parking lot, that same glee I had felt when I ran as a child, my hair whipped back. I was sure that no one had seen me leave, and if they had, they did not care.
By the time I got to my car, my bad mood had disappeared completely. I would go pick up my daughter. We would have dinner with my parents—too much starch, which would make me sleepy. All would be well.
I cranked up a mix I made about ten years ago, probably for my ex-husband. It didn’t matter. These songs were my favorites. I bobbed my head and sang along to the Smiths, waved at the cute guy wearing Ray-Ban Wayfarers in the convertible to my right. He rewarded me with a grin.
As usual, traffic was backed up in Mission Valley by the time I got to Finney Plimpton Middle School. No worse place existed for a school, sandwiched between shopping malls and business parks. Helena loved it, though, and with my husband’s parents footing the bill for a private education, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity.
I parked by a banana-yellow Escalade. The kids were in the auditorium, rehearsing their sixth-grade play, South Pacific. Helena was playing Nurse Nellie. Somehow I, Suiko Morgan Smith, had raised a kid who was everything I was not—ultrabright, ultratalented, ultraconfident, ultranice. I held my breath for her thirteenth birthday and hoped she wouldn’t morph.
When I went back to work, Mom had been scandalized at day care. “You gonna let stranger take care kid?” she had demanded. “What if shake death?”
“She’s not going to get shaken to death,” I had said, though of course the thought insinuated itself as a late-night worry, eyes wide open. You never know, my mother’s voice whispered in my head.
“What am I supposed to do?” I had asked her. “You can’t take care of her.”
“Yes can.” Mom had tried to convince me to leave my baby with her, but that was impossible. They were in their sixties by then, and their ailments made them seem older than their years. I would not leave her for more than short periods. Day care had treated her fine.
I watched my daughter, her long hair shampoo-commercial shiny, in the middle of a pack of girls. “Hey, you. Look who’s here early.”
Helena broke away. Her caramel-colored eyes, the same shade as mine, were bright with tears. I put my arm around her. “What happened?”
“Amelie’s having a Disneyland weekend,” she sniffed. “I can’t pay for tickets.”
We got in the car. “I bet Grandma and Grandpa will foot it. You could do some chores for them.” I meant Craig’s folks, or Grandma and Grandpa Trump, as I called them.
Helena clicked her seat belt shut. “They don’t want chores, Mom. They want me to watch old British comedies and be the fourth for their old-fogey bridge parties.”
“Consider it character building.”
“Amelie thinks she’s all that because she got her period months ago and is already in a B cup,” Helena blurted out. “Kiana just got hers, too. When am I going to get mine?”
“You’ll get yours, honey. Don