Chapter 7 #2
Is it even possible to ask a catus for permission?
No. And that made me like the cactus analogy even more.
Perhaps, when I returned to my tiny studio basement in Chicago, I’d splurge and buy myself one.
It would be the most colorful thing in my apartment.
Or maybe I could just get a cutting while I’m here and repropagate it? Then it would be free.
In the backseat with me, Alaric stared out his own window. We hadn’t spoken since leaving his house earlier. Brad, up front, hummed tunelessly along with a country radio station. I didn’t ask where we were going. It was clear that if Alaric wanted me to know, he would have said so.
I tried to recall—other than after Alaric’s unexpected visit to my office on Saturday, or back before Thanksgiving when he’d blindsided me in the hotel bar during the NA-IEOC keynote we’d both decided to skip—the last time I’d felt this uncertain about what would happen next.
Most of the surprises in my life thus far had been bad ones.
I’d woken up this morning with a sense of dread.
We passed a freshly painted sign for the “Bluebonnet Country Day School.” Once upon a time, the school had used one of those exterior announcement boards where the letters could be rearranged. An involuntary snort of laughter escaped my lips, drawing Alaric’s attention.
“What? What’s so funny?”
I pointed at the sign for the school as we turned into the parking lot. “Remember when they had that marquee sign, where you could re-arrange the letters and someone vandalized it to read “Blue Butt Try Day Scowl”?”
Alaric made a face, his eyes narrowing on me. “Don’t tell me it was you?”
I shook my head. “No. Not my style.”
The SUV rolled to a stop outside the squat building made of red brick, its roof a patchwork of corrugated metal and solar panels.
“Ah yes. You’ve always been a rule follower, even if it’s only the letter of the law and not its intention or spirit.”
“Hey.” I held my hands up. “If our country’s capitalist forbearers had wanted us to adhere to ‘intentions’ and ‘spirits’”—amping up the sarcasm, I used air quotes for these words—“then they would’ve elected one of those witches burned in Salem as the first president instead of a slave-owning general with a psycho tradwife.
Why set up so many exclusionary systems unless they wanted to keep power centralized and homogenous and only for old white men?
Don’t be a hater just ‘cause I’m a lady player. ”
Alaric squinted at me, but he also smiled. “A lady player?”
I’d spent a good part of last night replaying our conversation from late yesterday afternoon over and over in my mind and had come to the conclusion that Alaric—like most white dudes—really hated the fact that I—a woman who’d grown up poor—was now rich and I’d done it all by myself and didn’t want or need anything from him.
“Admit it. Part of the reason my money makes you and guys like you so uncomfortable, and you therefore feel emboldened to question me about it, is because I don’t have a penis and I don’t come from generational wealth.
If I were man who’d attended Yale as a legacy student with a C grade point average, nothing about my plans for Alenbach would be surprising. No one would be batting an eye.”
He started shaking his head before I’d finished speaking. “Aly, I’m not surprised by your plans for Alenbach. It’s you that I—”
I spoke over him, wanting to put this boundary up between us before he said something sweet again, or something personal.
He was responsible for this dread in my chest, making it hard to breathe all morning.
If I must spend the next three days with him, participating, it felt imperative that I dig a metaphorical moat between us as soon as possible, a big one, with alligators.
Alaric clearly knew me too well and was too smart and, inconveniently, some part of me actually cared what he thought.
I didn’t want to accidentally stumble headfirst into one of his traps.
Better to keep him at arm’s length and keep him there for the duration.
“Is it my fault that our laws and regulations are designed to help the rich and litigious instead of the poor and ethical? I didn’t design the system, Alaric.
I simply taught myself how to work within it.
And, for the record, and to the tune of billions of dollars, so did you.
The only difference is, you got a head start. ”
Feeling immensely satisfied with this parting shot, I opened the car door and exited, closing it behind me with relish.
Inhaling the morning air deep into my lungs, or trying to while still battling dread of the unknown, I glanced around the front of the red brick building, wondering for a moment where he’d brought us.
But then I remembered the sign we’d passed.
Bluebonnet Country Day School.
My exhale was a whoosh as a new wave of nostalgia slapped me right across the face. This old preschool was where Alaric and I had first met. Not only that, but I’d been happy here. Really happy.
Also exiting the car, though he didn’t slam his door, Alaric circled around the hood and beat me to the obvious. “It’s our preschool,” he said.
I looked at him, then at the school, then back at him. “This is—”
He didn’t even wait for me to finish. “Where we went to pre-school, yes.”
“You brought me to our old preschool?” There was so much incredulity in my tone that even Brad, who now stood on the asphalt next to the driver’s side door, cracked a smile.
“Shall we?” He held out his elbow, as though he expected me to take it.
I stuffed my hands into my jacket pockets. “Lead the way.”
We walked to the front of the building. A new addition—a covered ramp—caught my attention, but otherwise the exterior and the entryway remained exactly as I remembered: hand-painted tiles lining walls; windows low to the ground so that even the tiniest students could see out.
I remembered the first day my mom had brought me here, how she’d crouched down to give me a tight hug and kiss. How she’d told me she loved me. How she’d cried but I didn’t.
I hadn’t thought of that in years.
There was a new security system, a keypad and camera mounted at child height just past the exterior doors.
Alaric opened the interior door for me after punching in a code and gestured me through.
I hesitated for a second, then walked past him, letting the smells of tempera paint and paste and popcorn wash over me.
The office had been wallpapered in Christmas decorations and was staffed by a thin woman with bright red lipstick who clearly did not recognize either of us, but greeted us both like we were family.
“Are you the Jordans?” she asked, tugging together the edges of what appeared to be a hand quilted vest made entirely out of Rudolf the red nosed reindeer fabric from the 1970s or 80s, perhaps an heirloom. At her ears dangled little Christmas trees made of green wire and felt balls.
Alaric returned her smile and spoke for both of us. “Yes. We’re expected.”
Wait. Did he tell her we were a married couple?
I didn’t give voice to the question. Whatever he’d said to explain our visit, I didn’t wish to contradict or embarrass him.
The woman handed us both visitor badges, the kind with peeling adhesive, and said, “Go on down to the yellow room. Mrs. Boone is finishing circle time.”
My throat tightened. Mrs. Boone was still here? It didn’t seem possible. She’d been a new teacher when I was a student, barely older than my mom. I’d assumed she’d retired, or moved on, or died. . .
Actually, that wasn’t true. Truthfully, I simply hadn’t spared her a thought in almost three decades.
The hallway was smaller than I remembered, the proportions built for toddlers and not for grown adults.
These walls were covered in a new crop of art—finger-painting turkeys, construction paper snowflakes, a red and green paper chain that ran the length of the hall—but the effect was the same as it had been in my memory.
A kind of wild, welcoming, cozy, collaborative chaos.
We reached the door of the yellow room, where a sign read “Mrs. Boone’s Busy Bees!
” Through the window, I could see a cluster of children, all cross-legged in a circle, watching as Mrs. Boone read from a giant book.
Confoundedly, I felt my chin wobble, and I suddenly wished I had one of those IOU photocopies to tear up.
Alaric hovered close by. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I croaked and cleared my throat.
Stupid Alaric and his stupid contract. Why had he brought me here?
The question remained in the back of my mind as I greedily drank in the sight of her.
She looked almost exactly as I remembered: a shock of frizzy hair, thick glasses, hands that moved constantly, illustrating every story.
She was a little heavier, maybe, and her skin had the papery look of a person who’d spent decades outside in the sun with young children and only young children.
She’d aged. But essentially, she was unchanged.
An odd thought popped in my head. Mrs. Boone, as she was now, reminded me of Alaric’s house. There was a certain dignity and beauty to her, how she wore her age openly, how the fine etching of wrinkles on her face told the history of a life spent laughing.
I didn’t have many wrinkles, not really. Not yet. But I knew, when they appeared in earnest, they would likely etch my face with a very different pattern.