Vera
“What I need,” says my sister, her voice filling my car over the Bluetooth speakers. “Is an exorcism. An ex-orcism.”
She leans heavily on the syllable, the x catching in her throat like she’s trying to hack up a hairball.
“Just forget him,” I say, trying and probably failing to keep the impatience from my voice. “He was a loser. You can do better.”
She blows out a laugh. “Easy for you to say, Mrs. Perfect Life.”
Far from it and she knows it, so I don’t even bother to respond. I keep my eyes on the road. Little Valley Academy, where
my daughter, Coraline, is a senior and my son, Grant, is a freshman, looms ahead like a stone battlement—all iron gates and
turrets, mullioned windows, sweeping green lawns. The aroma of entitled privilege wafts like the scent of cut grass.
“Seriously,” she goes on, reception breaking up a little. “It’s a thing now. After a breakup, you get together with your best
girlfriends and basically eradicate your ex from your online life. You take down posts, eliminate tags. Your friends do the
same. Block. Delete. Fuck off. And—poof—he disappears. He basically doesn’t exist anymore.”
It’s interesting how people like my sister think that the world online is more real than the actual world in which people live and breathe. I’m glad I don’t have to keep myself from rolling my eyes.
The security guard nods me through the open gate; he never smiles though he sees me every day. They take security seriously
at Little Valley Academy, because the rich always think they’re in terrible danger even though they rarely are. No one without
the ID sticker in the window gets through the gate unescorted. After drop-off and dismissal, the gate is closed and locked.
“Would it make you feel better? An ex-orcism?” I ask, pulling onto the circular drive, getting in line to pick up the kids. Bentley, Porsche, Jag, Beemer. Chauffeur-driven
Lincoln Town Car. Even though I’m behind the wheel of a Mercedes GLS, I still remember my dad’s rattling, ancient Bronco.
Every time he turned the ignition, he offered words of encouragement, come on baby, one more time. I linger on the memory, one of the few of him that make me smile. There was something I preferred about that life, I think.
It was hardscrabble and ultimately tragic. But it was real, not buffed and shined, cropped and filtered like this one. Above me the sky is crisp, cold blue.
“I think it would,” Ana says, thoughtful. “It would be like cathartic or whatever.”
She has been taking it hard, this breakup with Paul. Who, by the way, I despised. And she has been behaving extraordinarily well.
I’m actually quite proud of her restraint, her maturity. Her other breakups have been—messy. I’m eager to keep her stable.
I don’t have the bandwidth for a cleanup.
Coraline’s senior year and the battle over where she wants to go to school, among other things, is taking up all my resources.
“How about a brunch this Sunday?” I offer. “At the house. Invite whoever you want. My treat.”
There’s a pause, a sigh. Then, “You’d do that?”
Her voice is soft, almost as if she’s experiencing true emotion.
“Of course,” I say. “Brad’s away this weekend, that company golf thing. He leaves on Friday, doesn’t get back until late Sunday. The kids are busy all weekend, sleepovers on Saturday. So, we’ll have the house to ourselves Sunday morning.”
Over the years, Ana’s group of close friends have become my friends, as well. So, the idea of having them for a girls’ Sunday
brunch is pleasant enough, and if it helps Ana feel better, keeps her stable, why not?
“What can I bring?” she asks, sounding excited now, eager.
“Nothing,” I say. “Just yourself.”
“You’re sure?”
“Consider it done. Let’s say 11:00?”
I am already ticking through what I’ll need. A large charcuterie board from Sal’s, flowers from The White Orchid. Place cards
from Papier. Quiche Lorraine and Waldorf salad, maybe a fruit platter from Mise en Place. Champagne for mimosas. A vegan option,
too. Maybe April will come to help me set up, serve, clean up after. She’s a magician in the kitchen. I’ll ask her to make
some scones.
As the car line snakes, I catch sight of my daughter, Coraline, with her wild shock of spiky black and pink hair, and Doc
Martens chunky beneath the plaid pleats of her uniform skirt. It’s a look. I let my kids be who they are, or who they think
they are right now anyway, at least when it comes to what they’re wearing. Anything else is to make everyone miserable. A
truth most parents I know in this environment don’t seem to grasp, as they try to bend and mold their children into versions
of themselves, or the selves they wish they’d been.
Though I know Coraline would get a charge out of this idea of me as a parent who just lets my kids be, our most recent argument ringing back to me, one which ended in tears and slammed doors.
You don’t even know me, she’d shrieked. Oh, my little girl, I know you better than you know yourself. This is an example of the kind of thing our
family shrink would ask me not to say. It’s infantilizing, Vera, the doctor chastised me last session.
Yeah, but! But! She was an infant—like five minutes ago!
Now Coraline stands with her two closest friends.
Ethan, with his wild tangle of curls, towers lean and smiling over Coraline.
He’s messy, gangly, but handsome in his way, the way of youth.
He whispers something in my daughter’s ear and whatever he says causes Coraline to look into the crowd of kids exiting the school and laugh.
Autumn, a ginger blonde, freckled and bespectacled, looks worriedly at her phone, head bent, thumbs tapping. Her hair is pulled
tightly into braided pigtails. Coraline tugs on one. Autumn leans into her, and Coraline drops an arm around the girl who’s
been her best friend since preschool. They both seem unformed to me, not awakened really. So different from Ana and me as
teenagers. We had to grow up fast, learn to take care of ourselves, survive. Especially me, the elder.
And there are so many open questions about gender and sexuality now, plus the arrested development from the years of the pandemic.
The devices stealing attention and awareness, taking kids out of their bodies and the real world, telling them stories about
themselves and others that are less than true. All of them, it seems to me, are yet to become.
Not like when I was young, losing my virginity in the back seat of my dad’s Bronco to my next-door neighbor Billy. An arrangement
of proximity really, rather than of any real desire. There was no question of consent, just a magnetic pull from his body
to mine, a wild curiosity guiltily satisfied. But it was real, alive, not an image on a screen. The world vibrated when I
was young, felt electric with possibility.
“Vera, did I lose you? Let me guess. Car line.”
Ana, just two years my junior (though it seems and feels like much more), resents my children, even though I know she loves
them in her way. They draw most of my attention now. And Ana, who used to be my main focus, has had to take a distant back
seat to Coraline and Grant. She doesn’t always bear it graciously.
“No kids at the brunch, right? Sleepovers you said?”
No, we wouldn’t want anything to take focus from Ana and her ex-orcism.
“They won’t be home,” I repeat. “But what about Iggy? Isn’t she breastfeeding?”
An annoyed sigh. “I think she can leave the thing with its father for a couple hours, right? Don’t they have like that pump
or whatever?”
Nice.
Who was it that said that the world is sharply divided between people who have children and those who don’t? Parents remember
what it was like before. But single people can’t imagine what it’s like after. The choices you have to make, the sacrifices,
the negotiations for even a few hours out. What you would do to protect and provide for your kids. It changes you. I don’t
even like to think about who I would be if I hadn’t met Brad and had Coraline and Grant.
The back door opens and Grant climbs in. He doesn’t even bother jockeying for the front seat. Coraline is the dominant personality,
the elder, the more confident, outspoken. Though he towers over her now, she still bosses him around like she always has.
The car bucks and pitches as he heavily lands in the back.
“Hey, pal,” I say. “How was your day?”
“Good.”
For Grant, that’s a rave. It might be: “Sucked.” Or: “I don’t know.” Or maybe no answer at all, AirPods in, barely a nod to
acknowledge my existence. He looks at me with his deep, dark eyes as I turn, pushes his floppy brown bangs away though they
slide right back. The girls like a floppy-haired boy these days, skinny, asexual; the clean-cut, masculine look that Brad
would prefer is out. Grant tugs off his blue blazer, loosens his tie. He has purple shiners of fatigue under his eyes. I don’t need to ask if
he was up late gaming. Red World, the bane of every parent’s existence.
“Expound,” I press.
He digs through his bag and hands me a clipped stack of paper.
Mr. Wilson is the only teacher at school who insists that work be turned in on real paper instead of submitted via one of the digital platforms available at the school.
I love the man for this—a real English teacher who has forced his students to learn how to write well and clearly, to analyze and annotate texts, take notes in paper notebooks, keep a planner.
They spent a month on Hamlet. Mr. Wilson is funny and wise, with a deep love of language and literature.
For Grant, at least, it’s been contagious.
There’s a big A emblazoned across the title page of Grant’s short story, which is twenty-five percent of his grade this unit focused on creative
writing. Coraline is a much better student, though she’s operating far below her abilities, just coasting because she can.
Grant struggles in every area—academically, socially. So, this is a big deal.
“Holy wow, kiddo,” I say, flashing him a grin. “That’s fantastic.”