Odd Mom Out

This is why I was feeling uncomfortable.

I have to work—it’s not a choice—yet my work isn’t just a paycheck, it’s who I am, what I love to do. “I agree. That’s why I’ve made a point of working from home.”

“So smart. Because those full-time jobs are so hard on families and children.”

I don’t have a part-time job. I definitely have a full-time job, and I think Lana knows it. I think Lana’s being clever and slightly unkind.

“You’re very lucky you have such a supportive husband,” Lana adds sweetly. “He must really help pick up the slack.”

“Is that what men do?” I ask just as sweetly. “Pick up the slack?” Either Lana is living in la-la land or she’s just trying to push my buttons. Virtually all of my friends are married, and while most are still happily married and most would marry their husbands all over again, most also wouldn’t say their husbands make their lives, or their work, easier.

Lana blinks, taken aback. “Uh . . . well . . . I don’t know.”

Her expression looks about to crumple, and I feel a ping of remorse. “So how many children do you have?” I ask, trying to change the subject and move us into safer territory.

Lana grabs gratefully on to the new topic. “Just these two, Paige and Peter. They’re twins.” She pauses. “Fraternal.”

Yeah, I guessed that.

Lana leans toward me to whisper conspiratorially, “I just wish we’d thought a little more about the names. My son gets teased at school all the time.”

“For Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater?”

She stiffens uncomfortably. “No. For Peter Parker.” She pauses, waits for me to get it. I don’t get it.

“Peter Parker,” she repeats a trifle impatiently. “As in Spider-Man.”

“Ah. Sorry. I haven’t read the comics in years.”

“But the movies . . . ?” she persists. After a moment she shakes her head, her cheeks flushed nearly as pink as her fruity Juicy Couture tracksuit. “So are you going to the emergency parent meeting this afternoon?” But she doesn’t wait for me to ask, launching immediately into an explanation. “It’s about the kindergarten nightmare.”

“What nightmare?”

“You haven’t heard?”

“I’m afraid we’ve been . . . traveling.”

Lana shudders. “It’s a disaster. A complete fiasco, that’s what it is. Those poor kids. And their parents!”

I just shake my head.

Lana leans even closer, her hand pressed to her throat, and whispers, “They’re sending all the Points kindergartners to the Lakes.”

She delivers the information with a note of triumph, and I stare at her blankly. Obviously I’m missing the point. “Forever?”

“No, for the year, until the school board can figure out what to do with all the kids. Despite the remodel a couple years ago, Points Elementary has already outgrown its space, and so all the incoming kindergartners are going to be bused to Lakes Elementary.” She pauses, stares at me. “Can you believe it?”

“Bused,” I repeat, wondering why children are being bused to a school that is less than half a mile away from their own.

“Exactly! Those little children bused and then mixed with kindergartners from the other school. They’re not even being kept separate. No, Lakes teachers will be teaching Points kids, and Points teachers will be teaching Lakes kids—awful, that’s all I can say.”

“But it’s just for one year, isn’t it? And don’t most of the kids play on the same sports programs anyway? I know Eva’s soccer team last year had children from Enatai, Points, and the Lakes—”

“But families, siblings, separated. And now the Lakes wants one-sixth of our auction money, too. As if we wanted our children to attend their school!”

Now is one of those times I think I should read the Points school bulletins more closely or maybe attend a PTA meeting or tiptoe into the back-to-school brunch so I can put faces to names and learn the school news firsthand.

“There’s going to be a parent meeting today, before tonight’s beach picnic,” Lana continues. “It’s at Taylor’s house. You do know Taylor Young?”

“Oh yes.” I nod and smile. “I do.”

Eva is hanging on every word as well, and she nods furiously. “I do, too.”

Lana shoots Eva a condescending smile. “You know where Jemma lives, sweetie, don’t you?”

Eva and Jemma ride the school bus together every day. They even share the same bus stop. Not that Jemma ever talks to Eva, but, hey, just standing on the same corner as Jemma rocks Eva’s boat.

“Join us at the meeting,” Lana urges. “You’ll hear from the committee about what’s been done and what we still need to do. There’s no time to waste.”

With a glance at her watch, Lana shakes her head. “Oh dear, look at the time. Tennis in less than an hour. Have to hustle.” She points at me, jabs her finger. “Four o’clock at Taylor’s. If your husband can’t watch your daughter, she’s of course welcome to come. There will be other kids there.”

Now Lana wiggles her fingers in a wave and moves on.

Eva is staring after Lana Parker, her forehead furrowed. “Why did she keep saying ‘your husband’? Doesn’t she know that you’re not married and I don’t have a dad?”

“I guess not, and I didn’t feel like correcting her.”

“Why not?” she asks, turning to look at me. “Does it bother you?”

“No.” At least it didn’t bother me in New York.

“So tell her. It’s weird listening to her say ‘your husband, your husband.’ ”

“I will. Next time.”

Eva’s still looking at me. “We are going to Mrs. Young’s today, aren’t we?”

Going to Taylor Young’s? Going to a ridiculous committee meeting to protest kindergartners spending a year at another local elementary school, a school that leads the state in WASL scores? Do those women have no life? And is my daughter completely out of her mind?

“Go?” I ask her, my voice calm, clear, although on the inside I’m fairly frothing at the mouth. “I don’t think so.”

Eva deposits the space maker in the cart and faces me. “Why not?”

I hear that cool, steely tone, and it amazes me how Eva can sound so much like my mother. It’s one thing to hear your mother’s disapproval come from her lips. It’s quite another to hear it from your nine-year-old daughter.

I take a deep breath. “Because for one, I don’t agree with them. These moms are making a mountain out of a molehill—”

“They just want what’s best for their children.”

I stare at Eva and try to see who AS1V677 really was, AS1V677 being her sperm donor father.

I ordered AS1V677 off the Internet, choosing AS1V677 over the other sp

erm donors because (a) AS1V677 had a great résumé. He was thirty-two, raised in a big Jewish-Irish-Catholic family, had gone to William & Mary, played sports throughout high school and college, and was now a practicing pediatrician in upstate New York. And (b) AS1V677 was taller than me.

At nearly five ten, I’ve felt huge next to most women and have tended to tower over many male colleagues, so I thought it only fair that I give my offspring height, too.

Height and résumé aside, it didn’t hurt that AS1V677 was also described as very attractive, with blue eyes and thick, wavy brown hair.

But facing Eva, I’m not seeing that attractive element, I’m seeing stubbornness as well as a frightening need to play follow the leader.

“Eva, I hate committee meetings.”

“But you’re a mom. You’re supposed to do mom things.”

“Committees are mom things?”

“Yes.”

“Says who?”

She throws her hands into the air. “Everybody knows. Ask anybody here. They’ll tell you. Moms meet and . . . do things.”

Anybody here being the choice words.

“What about working moms?” I ask her, leaning on the cart, fascinated by her view of mothers’ responsibilities. “When are they supposed to have time to attend all these meetings?”

“I don’t know. They just . . . work them in. And you could. If you got up a little earlier or stayed up later. You could, I know you could. If you tried.”

If I tried. Wow.

“Well, thank you for that, Eva. I’m clearly missing pages in The Perfect Parent Handbook.”

She rolls her eyes. “Meetings can be fun, Mom. Just give them a try.”

“Like men and marriage?”

Eva grabs the shopping cart and begins pulling it to the front of the store, her green eyes snapping with temper. “Mom, I love you,” she says, pausing by the electronics, “I really do. But one day I hope you’ll realize there’s nothing wrong with being normal.”

I watch her huffily haul the cart all the way to the checkout line, and I know I’ve had this conversation before, but that time it was with my mom, not Eva.