Chapter Seven Augusta #4
Augusta tried not to roll her eyes. There were always the “cool parents” in every class, the ones who thought they were reinventing the entire concept of authority by letting their kids swear, by doing away with bedtime, by letting them gorge themselves on Halloween candy until they felt sick so they would learn moderation naturally on their own.
Augusta found it all highly irritating. It meant Jane was constantly complaining about how other kids were allowed to do various things she had forbidden, and at the end of the day it all smacked of laziness to Augusta.
Really, while the cool parents made a case for teaching their kids independence and autonomy, weren’t these parents really just re-creating tiny versions of themselves?
These were the kids with shrunken leather jackets, the kids wearing distressed denim, the kids who had strong opinions on Nirvana and Green Day even though they hadn’t ever heard them played outside their parents’ homes.
Augusta wouldn’t take the bait and join in the conversation about swearing so she smiled blandly and glanced over at Colin.
He and Alexia, the beautiful mom, were laughing about something, and Augusta felt a shot of jealousy.
Was Alexia a size medium? She looked at the other women at Colin’s table.
Marlow’s mom was a medium. Frankie’s mother was too.
Colin caught her eye and smiled. He came over and whispered in her ear.
“Are you hungry? Do you want me to get you a pretzel?”
“I’m okay.” She squeezed his hand. And she was. Mostly. She had loved Colin for so long and she knew she would for the rest of her life. Maybe he cheated. Maybe he didn’t. She had to let it go.
After only an hour it started to rain so the party broke up early and Augusta and Colin drove home.
As Colin hummed along to the radio, Augusta counted out cash for Zoey and gave him the highlights from her picnic table: Evan and Rachel had quit drinking but had gotten bizarrely into cigars and kept inviting people over to smoke, Doug and Jess had bought a new house with a pool but hadn’t realized the previous owners had played water polo and so the entire thing was ten feet deep with no shallow end, and Paul, Sailor’s dad, was indeed the calendar tzar parent.
When they turned into their driveway there was a blue Jeep parked in front and Augusta turned to Colin, confused.
“I have no idea.” He shook his head.
Augusta felt her heart speed up. Who was in her house?
Were the kids okay? Was Zoey? She jumped out of the car and dashed to the front door, throwing it open and running into the living room.
“Zoey?” she called. At first Augusta couldn’t figure out what she was seeing on the sofa: Zoey’s bare back, a tangle of legs, and a pair of hands clutched around her waist. At the sound of her name, Zoey whipped her head around and tried to cover her breasts with her arms. There were discarded clothes on the coffee table, cushions on the floor, and lying back on the sofa, beneath Zoey, Augusta realized there was another girl, her hair long and blond, naked as the day she was born, most definitely a size medium.
That night in bed, as Augusta performed her painstaking antiaging rituals, she couldn’t stop smiling.
The underwear had belonged to Zoey’s girlfriend!
It was like the first day you woke up healthy after a long flu, the sensation of how good it felt to be alive in a body, unencumbered by the weighted blanket of sick.
“I can’t believe this whole time Zoey was gay and didn’t say anything,” Augusta mused, carefully squeezing a dallop of collagen-infused lotion onto the backs of her hands and rubbing them together.
“You expected her to self-report her sexuality?” Colin teased. He was lying on his back, his bedside lamp already off.
“No, but we’re so obviously socially liberal. I mean, this is Massachusetts.”
“She’s young. She’s probably still figuring it out.”
“Looked like she had things pretty well figured out on the sofa,” Augusta cracked.
“No, but maybe this is her first girlfriend, or maybe she’s bisexual.” Colin looked at the ceiling thoughtfully.
“Colin, be real. She’s gay.” Augusta rolled her eyes. She pulled her lip mask from her bedside table drawer and carefully slicked on a layer. She basically preserved herself like a mummy every night before bed.
“You’re going to decide her sexual identity because of something you glimpsed for two seconds?”
“Well, that was a pretty revealing two seconds.” Augusta snickered.
“Still, you can’t just decide she’s gay.”
“Ugh, Colin, I have a gay brother.” Augusta rubbed lotion into her elbows.
“Some of my best friends are Black,” Colin murmured.
“What?” August asked, puzzled.
“Never mind.” Colin put a pillow over his face.
“Ohh, but in good news I think the hookup on the sofa is grounds to keep paying Zoey twenty an hour!” Augusta announced merrily.
“Go to sleep, you crazy person,” Colin croaked out from under his pillow.
Augusta clicked out the light, a smile on her carefully moisturized lips.