If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now (16 page)

A
couple of days later, when I got back from dropping Noah off at school, I found a brand-new pair of dressy wool pants lying
on my bed. I brought them downstairs to show Melanie. “Do you know where these came from?”

“I think maybe your mom got them,” she said, her voice a little too casual.

“You
think maybe
?” I repeated.

“I helped her pick them out,” she admitted.

“Why? I don’t need pants.”

She eyed the torn jeans I was wearing, which were older than Noah. “Yeah, you kind of do.”

I scowled. “And I
really
don’t need my mother buying clothes for me like I’m two years old.”

“Right,” Melanie said. “She’s such a jerk—buying you nice clothing because she thinks you might like it. How dare she?”

“Shut up,” I said. “You don’t get it because she’s not
your
mother.” I shook the pants at her. “You don’t even see that this is all about control.”

“Really, Rickie?” Melanie said, eyebrows raised. “Control?”

“You don’t get it,” I said again and, grimly clutching the pants, went in search of my mother.

She was drinking coffee in the kitchen. Eleanor Roosevelt was curled up against her leg, and, as I walked in, I saw Mom tear
off a piece of her bagel and toss it to the dog, who gulped it down happily and then stared at her hungrily, waiting for more.

“You shouldn’t do that,” I said sharply. “You’re just teaching her to beg.”

Mom started at the sound of my voice and then laughed sheepishly. “You caught me.”

“That’s why she bugs us during dinner, you know.”

“I know. I’ll try to stop.”

There was silence while I poured myself a cup of coffee and Mom went back to reading the newspaper. My parents were probably
the only people left in the greater LA area who still got the newspaper delivered instead of reading it online. “So I got
the pants,” I said abruptly. “The brown ones you left on my bed.”

“Do you like them?”

“No,” I said.

She frowned. “No, thank you?”

“Even if I liked them, I wouldn’t like them.”

“Meaning?”

“I don’t need you to buy clothes for me. I’m sick of you treating me like a little kid.”

She leaned back in her chair. “I’ll stop treating you like a little kid when you stop acting like one.”

“Meaning?”

“Grow up, get a job, dress like an adult, stop piercing and dyeing and tattooing yourself—”

“I haven’t gotten a piercing or a tattoo in over a year and a half. And I haven’t dyed my hair in ages.”

“You haven’t tried to clean it up, either.” She took a sip of coffee, then put the mug down with a definite clack. “Anyway,
I’d like a little more from you than just not getting yourself mutilated on a regular basis.”

“Are you talking about money?” I said, my voice high and strained and, even to my own ears, whiny and childish. I hated the
way I sounded and I blamed her for making me sound like that. “Is that what this is about?”

“Let me make one thing perfectly clear,” my mother said. “It is
never
about money. I just want to see you doing something with your life. I don’t care what it is: finish up college, get an internship,
write a screenplay, whatever. Just find something you love and start doing it.”

“And dress the way you want me to. You forgot that one.”

She heaved an overly dramatic sigh. “Grow up, Rickie.”

“We’ll move out, if that’s what you want,” I said. “I’ll send Noah to public school and get a menial job of some sort and
we’ll live in an apartment somewhere. Would that make you happy?”

“No,” she said calmly. “Would it make
you
happy?”

I raised my chin defiantly. “Maybe.”

“I want Noah to have a good life and a good education,” she said. “The way things are now, I don’t think you’re capable of
providing him with either without our help.”

That hurt. I knew I wasn’t doing much with my life, but I thought I was a pretty good mom to Noah. There was a pause. I didn’t
want to say anything because I didn’t want her to hear my voice break and I wasn’t sure I could control it.

She pushed back her chair and got to her feet. “Rickie,” she said gently and started to put her arms around me. I flinched
and ducked away from her touch. Then I left the room.

I left the pants in a heap on her bed and neither of us mentioned them again.

When I checked my e-mails later that day, I had a short one from my friend Monica, who had finished law school the year before
and now lived in Manhattan, where she worked about a hundred hours a week and devoted whatever free time she had left to doing
pro bono work for various civil liberties groups.

She and I had run our high school newspaper together, co-editors-in-chief. When I got into Berkeley, she was a little jealous
because she didn’t. She went instead to a small private school on the East Coast where she totally kicked ass, which is how
she ended up at NYU Law School, where she also totally kicked ass.

In retrospect, Berkeley probably should have bet on her, not me.

I also had an e-mail from Coach Andrew. It was short. “I can come on Sunday from 9 to 11 to work with Noah on some skills.
If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume the time works for you and that the directory address is correct. Don’t forget the cupcakes.”
It was signed “Andrew.”

My finger gently danced on the touchpad, positioning the cursor over the Reply button, but I didn’t click it.

Having the school coach come to our house because my kid was a loser was awkward. Paying him in cupcakes instead of money
was awkward. Insisting on giving him money when he had already refused it was awkward.

But telling him
not
to come seemed like the most awkward thing of all.

I closed his e-mail without replying.

Ryan called me on my cell that night, right after I’d put Noah to bed.

“So what are you up to right now?” He sounded a little drunk. Not the first time he’d called me in that condition.

“Nothing.”

“Then come over. I’ll be leaving town again before you know it. We have to get in some quality family time while we can.”

“This counts as family time?”

“Sure,” he said. “We’re strengthening the in-law bonds.”

“We’re not going to be in-laws much longer.”

“We’ll always have a niece and nephew in common, right?”

“How old are they?” I asked suddenly.

“What?”

“How old are Nicole and Cameron?”

“Why?”

“I was just wondering if you knew.”

“Nicole’s older, right?”

“Never mind,” I said. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

“I get the sense you’re mad at me,” Ryan said later that evening.

“And that explains my driving all the way here to see you… how?”

“Seriously. You seem weird tonight.”

“Do I?” I thought for a moment. We were both on his bed, watching
SNL
. We’d already had wine and sex. In that order. And then more wine. “I don’t know. I guess sometimes it strikes me that this
is a little… you know… pointless.”

He shifted his body a few inches away from me. “This isn’t going to be one of those talks, is it? About how I can’t commit?”

“Have I
ever
said anything like that?”

“No,” he said, relenting. “I’m sorry. Guess I’m thinking of someone else.” He flashed a brief grin. “A couple of someone elses,
actually.”

I studied his face for a moment. “Do you ever think that maybe you guys got a little screwed up about fidelity and commitment?”
I asked. “You and Gabriel?”

“It
is
one of those talks!” he said accusingly.

“No, really. I’m just thinking out loud. I don’t have a problem with your total lack of commitment. I kind of like it. And
at least you’re consistent. Unlike your brother. He tried settling down and look where that led.”

“Are we back to talking about that?”

I slid off of the bed. “We’re not talking about anything. And I have to go.”

“Don’t forget I leave in December,” he said to my back as I pulled on my clothes. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

“Call me.”

So I was thinking about all that stuff when I got home: about Ryan and Gabriel and whether their parents had somehow screwed
up their attitudes toward women and relationships,
and then I was thinking about myself and how, when I was eighteen years old, I thought it would be great to be all settled
down with a kid and a lifetime partner but now that I was in my mid-twenties and my friends were all searching for permanency,
I was deliberately having sex with the one guy who I could be sure would never want a serious relationship. Which made me
wonder if I was living my life backwards, becoming less and less mature, an emotional Benjamin Button.

Anyway, I was musing about all that as I came into the house and was absently heading toward the stairs when I heard voices
in the kitchen so I changed direction. I peeked in. Dad was sitting at the kitchen table in his bathrobe, his face settled
into tired but peaceful lines. Noah sat across from him, sipping a glass of milk. He was wearing an old pair of pajamas that
were like a size four or something. He was so thin and the elastic was so shot that he could still get into them, but they
were comically tight and short on him.

Noah was telling Dad about Austin’s birthday party. “I wasn’t very good at the baseball part,” he was saying as I came within
earshot, “but I totally ruled at Fenwick Ball.” That was a definite exaggeration—I don’t think he landed a single shot at
Fenwick Ball—but I was happy to hear Noah sound even the slightest bit proud of his athletic ability, so I said, “He did great,”
as I entered the room.

“Where were you?” Noah whipped around. “I woke up and you weren’t there.”

“Sorry. I went out. But I told Aunt Mel to listen for you if you woke up.”

“I was up anyway,” my father said. “I heard him calling for you.”

“You should have told me you were going out.” Noah had been perfectly happy alone with my dad a second earlier, but
now he was working up some tears. “I woke up and you weren’t there and I was so scared.”

“Noah, there were three other adults in the house with you. There’s nothing to be scared of. You know that.”

“You should have told me you were going out.”

“I didn’t know I was going until after you were already asleep.”

“Then you should have woken me up. I was scared.”

He drove me crazy when he got into these never-ending circles of complaints. I was too tired to argue him out of his misery,
so I said sharply, “Look, Noah, you’re
fine
. You were sitting here having a perfectly nice time with Grandpa, so don’t give me a hard time about this. Just go back to
bed, okay?”

“You’re mean,” he said as he got down from his chair. “And I’m sleeping in your bed and you better not move me!” He left the
room.

There was a brief pause. Then “Kids,” my father said genially.

“Was he really upset when he couldn’t find me?”

“Not that I noticed. I heard him calling and brought him down here and got him some milk. We had a nice chat.”

“I wish he’d sleep through the night.”

“That would be nice,” Dad agreed. “He gives you a run for your money, doesn’t he?”

“You have no idea.”

“But that’s how it is with kids,” he said, sounding a little like he was reciting something he’d been taught to say. “They
make life complicated. But what would we do without them?”

I leaned against the counter and regarded him. “Do I complicate your life, Dad?”

“Only in a good way. I enjoy having you around. Always have.”

“Really?” It suddenly mattered to me that this kind man who shared genetic material with me was glad I existed.

He held out his arms. “You’ve been a delight since the day you were born, Mel.”

I went over and hugged him, although I couldn’t help feeling that his praise would have meant a lot more to me if he hadn’t
called me by his other daughter’s name.

Dad went upstairs and I was about to follow him when my eyes fell on the oven and I suddenly remembered I was supposed to
bake cupcakes for Coach Andrew.

It was late and I was exhausted. I thought about putting off the baking until the morning, but that would mean I’d have to
wake up early, which sounded even worse than staying up a little while longer. I decided to compromise: bake them now, frost
them in the morning. Even if I overslept, I could finish them up while Andrew was playing with Noah.

It took me a few minutes of searching through the pantry before I remembered that I was out of gluten-free mixes. I had used
up the last box the week before. I cursed myself for forgetting to pick up some more.

Baking from scratch sounded like way too much work at that hour, so I used one of Mom’s regular mixes. I mixed the batter
by hand so I wouldn’t wake anyone up with the KitchenAid, and by the time I had filled the cupcake liners and put the pans
in the oven, I was pretty wiped out. I went into the family room and watched TV, fighting my eyelids, which kept trying to
close, until the cupcakes were done. Then I pulled out the pans and just left them on the stove to cool. I’d deal with them
in the morning.

I saw Eleanor Roosevelt sniffing at that end of the room and hissed at her, “Don’t even think of it!” Then I finally, finally
dragged myself up the stairs and did a quick and cursory face-
wash and tooth-brush before collapsing onto my bed, where Noah was sprawled across the whole mattress. I shoved him to the
side and fell asleep within seconds of lying down.

I
was still asleep when Noah ran into my room and shook my arm. “Mom! Mom!”

I burrowed my forehead deeper into the pillow and tried to ignore him.

He just shook me harder. “Coach Andrew is here! At our house! He said he’s here to play with me and that
you knew about it
!”

That got my attention. I sat up. “Oh, my god! What time is it?”

“Why didn’t you tell me he was coming?”

“I forgot.” I was only sort of lying: I hadn’t told Noah ahead of time because I wasn’t sure how he was going to react and
didn’t want him to have time to decide he didn’t like the idea or to get nervous about how he’d do. I had planned to tell
him that morning, before Andrew came—but apparently I’d overslept.