19. Nineteen
Nineteen
“June, did you hear that we’re thinking about homeschooling next year?”
I blink away from the board book I’m holding and look at Mom One, forcing a smile.
“Umm. I don’t know if I heard that. Maybe? Sounds . . .” I wrack my brain for a feasible lie. “Fun.”
Mom Two melts into a puddle in her linen shirt at my response. “Doesn’t it? You should totally look into it. I bet the boys would just thrive. We’ll spend our days giving our kids a childhood just like Anne of Green Gables !”
I look at said boys across the library. Ty is on all fours with a puppet kitten in his mouth, baring his teeth as he growls; Hank is putting books down his pants. Homeschooling these kids would be nothing like Anne of Green Gables , everything like The Hunger Games , and is absolutely not happening.
“Didn’t Anne of Green Gables go to school?” I ask.
Mom One smiles. “You know what we mean.”
I do not.
“Hmm. Maybe. I actually might go back to work next year. Well, go to work, period. Last job I had was waitressing in college.” I laugh; they look destroyed. “Right, either way, guess it’s kind of hard to homeschool if you aren’t, you know, home.”
Kids approach—I can’t remember which of The Moms they belong to—and ask for food. Bags of seaweed appear and crunching ensues.
“June,” Mom Two whispers, dramatic, slow, and so serious I have to bite my cheek. “Have you thought about this? Like the ramifications of”—her eyes cut around the room, as if she’s expecting to see the FBI watching her—“leaving the home? Not just that, but at your age . . . isn’t entering the workforce difficult?”
It takes all my effort to not thump this woman on the nose. I want to tell her I’m forty, not four thousand. That my kids will be fine. That I don’t know what ramifications there could possibly be. But, when I open my mouth, all I can say is: “Uh.”
Mom One is ridiculously wide-eyed. “No offense, June, and we’ve always thought good for you for keeping up with the boys the way you do, but, leaving them now—where will you find the energy to be with them? When you’re done with work, I mean . . . I read a study once . . .”
She keeps talking, but I tune her out as every slow syllable pulls at my skin, my fingernails, and the hairs on my head. My tongue is a heavy and useless thing in my mouth, because I say nothing. I sit there, dumb, staring at The Moms as they tell me about my age, about public schools, about Anne of fucking Green Gables.
“Okay, my little friends, time to come to the carpet!”
Librarian Alice’s too-cheery voice stabs my brain along with her outfit. Red, polka-dot dress, hair in four—four—braids, and an arm full of books. The sight of her is a metal-spiked cleat to my throat.
I can’t do this.
Not for the sake of childhood literacy.
Not for the sake of being around moms with kids the same age.
Not for the sake of socialization.
Not for anything.
As kids and parents alike scramble across the too-colorful rug and obediently sit crisscross applesauce, I shoot to a stand, grabbing Ty’s and Hank’s hands in mine the second they sit down.
“Where are we going?” Hank asks, eyes wide.
I don’t answer. I can’t. I’m moving on autopilot with one mission: Get the hell out of here.
On the alphabet-covered carpet, everyone turns to look as I try to step across laps and diaper bags and seaweed snacks. I wince apologetically.
“Going the wrong way, friends.” Librarian Alice chuckles as a book is splayed open in her hands, picture of a corduroy teddy bear mocking me from the page.
When I look at her, she smiles with all her teeth.
If I don’t get out of this room now, I will die.
“Sorry,” I say, just above a whisper. “We have a . . . thing. I forgot.”
Her smile stays, but the way the shape moves from crescent to rectangular must mean she’s angry.
I take another step.
“June!” Mom One whispers, smiling big. “See you next week?”
I look at them. Their linen, their seaweed, and the toddler that now has its head shoved under one of their shirts, nursing, shining a spotlight on everything I’m not.
“No.”
Like well-practiced synchronized swimmers, their smiles drop, eyes narrow, and mouths form perfect O’s.
“I’ve aged out.”
When they look completely perplexed, the first genuine smile I’ve ever had in this place curls my lips.
With a sweet, “Good luck with homeschooling,” I turn away from them, tugging the boys’ arms as I walk. It’s exactly fourteen steps to the door. When the April air slaps my skin, I inhale it in gulps. Taking breaths like they are both my first and last.
Ty and Hank stare at me, speechless, faces filled with confused shock.
“So.” I look at them, switch my purse between shoulders, and put my hands on my hips. “I hate that damn place.”
At the confession, Hank barks out a laugh. “Mama said a bad word.”
“You hate the library?” Ty asks, astonished, looking from me to the glass doors of the building then back to me. “I thought grown-ups loved the library.”
I laugh softly. “Yeah, well, I don’t. Librarian Alice scares me.”
They both giggle.
“Let’s go to the park instead, shall we?”
When they shout hooray! and take off running to the minivan, I feel a fleeting pang of guilt. I know the library is good for them—every poster in the room tells me so—but still, I smile. I’ve never once done something so brazen in motherhood.
When we get to the park, free of The Moms doing everything right and Librarian Alice being creepy and happy, it’s easily Today’s Best.