Wife 22 (35 page)

“Jesus! Nedra was right.”

“When is Nedra ever wrong? We’re signing up to get short, timely messages from Ho-Girl right now,” William barks.

“What—no! You can’t do that. She’ll know it’s us.”

“Give me some credit. I’m not going to sign up as @ma&pabuckle.”

“You’re going to use a fake handle?”

“Do you have a problem with that?”

“Well—yes. Don’t you? Shouldn’t we?” I try to keep a straight face.

“Not when it comes to our daughter. Let’s keep it in the Hostess family so she won’t suspect. How about @snoball?” he asks.

“Ug—that pink marshmallow skin makes me sick. How about @dingdong?” I suggest.

“I hate Ding Dongs. How about @hohos?”

“Too close to Ho-Girl. How about @nuttyhohos? Remember those? When they added peanuts?” I say.

“Fine. Done.”

We turn to each other and begin laughing.

“Quiet, you Nutty Ho Ho,” whispers William.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

“She just tweeted again,” he says.

I peer at his screen and we read the Tweet out loud together.

“What the hell, Zoe!” I gasp. “Does she have any idea how dangerous this is?”

William’s fingers fly over the touch screen.

“You weren’t supposed to type that! Now those sickos are going to know her real name,” I yell at William. “And so much for our fake handle.”

“She thinks we’re Jude,” says William.

William growls.

I grab the phone out of William’s hand.

William grabs the phone back.

“Now you’ve given them her last name!” I shout.

Suddenly the garage door begins to open. William and I stand there, blinking, huddled together, as Zoe materializes in front of us. She holds her phone in one hand, the garage door opener in the other. She’s so furious she can’t speak. She tweets instead.

“Zoe, please—” I say.

Zoe looks at me and begins to cry. Then she starts tweeting again.

“Baby,” I say.

“I am so not your baby. You have absolutely no idea who I am!” she yells.

Zoe holds the garage door opener up over her head and clicks it aggressively like she’s firing a weapon, and the door slowly begins to lower on us.

“William—”

“Just let her be,” he says, as our daughter’s head, then her torso, then her legs disappear.

I give a little cry and he pulls me under his arm, where the scent of detergent is the strongest. It’s nice there, a nest. We stay like that for a few minutes.

“Well,” he finally says. “What now?”

“Lock her in her room for a thousand years?”

“Force her to eat skirt steak?”

“Are we terrible?”

“At what?”

“Being parents?”

“No, but we suck at Twitter.”

“
You
suck at Twitter,” I say.

“That’s because you made me nervous. I had stage fright.”

“Oh, if I hadn’t been there you would have been much wittier?” I ask.

“@
nuttyhohos
Apricots are ripe, vegan daughter,” he says.

“@
nuttyhohos
Saved them all for you, please consider eating instead of Ding Dongs.”

“@
nuttyhohos
Not that I don’t like Ding Dongs. There is a time and place for Ding Dongs. When you’re thirty and live in your own apartment and can pay your own rent.”

“@
nuttyhohos
Not kidding. If you don’t eat the apricots today they’ll rot.”

“@
nuttyhohos
FYI apricots six dollars a pound. EAT THEM OR ELSE.”

“@
nuttyhohos
and try not to swallow pits.”

“@
nuttyhohos
swallowing bad idea in general.”

“@
nuttyhohos
says surgeon general.”

“@
nuttyhohos
and your father.”

“Well?” says William.

“Not bad.”

“Yes, all my followers think so.”

“All
one
of them.”

“All you need is one, Alice.”

“I have to go talk to her.”

“No, I think what you need to do is give her a little time.”

“And then what?”

William lifts my chin. “Look at me.”

Jesus, you smell so good, how could I have forgotten you smelled like this?

“Let her come to you,” he says.

Then he abruptly lets go of me and turns back toward the shelves, frowning. “I’m going to have to do it again,” he says. “Now where’s the damn level?”

“M
om! Help! I need a bigger Tupperware!” Zoe shrieks from the kitchen.

These are the first words Zoe has uttered to me in two days. Both William and I have been getting the silent treatment since the Twitter incident.

“Could this be interpreted as ‘her coming to me’?” I ask William, who is sitting on the couch.

William sighs. “Damn dog door.”

“Well?”

He puts down the paper. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

I leap to my feet.

“I’ve been calling you for ages!” Zoe’s crouched by the stove, holding a pint-sized Tupperware container, her eyes darting around wildly.

“That’s not big enough.”

“No shit, Mom. All the Tupperware has disappeared.”

I open the fridge. “Leftovers.”

“There it is!” yells Zoe and I whirl around just in time to see the mouse barreling toward me from across the room.

“Eek!” I shout.

“Do you think you could come up with something more original?” grunts Zoe as she chases after the mouse, who skitters like a drunk, ears flapping, a tiny Dumbo.

“Eek, eek!” I cry again as the mouse runs between my legs and disappears under the fridge.

Zoe stands up. “That’s your fault,” she says.

“What’s my fault?”

“That it went under the fridge.”

“Why is it
my
fault?”

“You seduced it.”

“How?”

“By opening the door and letting all that nice cool air out.”

“Really, Zoe? Well, let me open it again and maybe the mouse will reappear.”

I take out a large Tupperware container full of lasagna. I empty the lasagna onto a plate, wash the Tupperware, and hand it to her. “Here you go.”

“Thanks.”

“Now what?”

Zoe shrugs, sitting down at the table. “We wait.”

We sit in silence for a few minutes.

“I’m very glad you are not the kind of girl who is scared of mice,” I say.

“No thanks to you.”

We hear the mouse scrabbling around under the fridge.

“Should I get a broom?” I ask.

“No! That will traumatize it. Let it come out on its own.”

We sit in silence for another five minutes. We hear more scratching sounds, louder this time. “The elephant in the room,” I say.

Zoe’s eyes suddenly well up and she bows her head. “I didn’t want you to be ashamed of me,” she whispers.

“Zoe. Why would I be ashamed?”

“It just happened. I didn’t mean it to. Jude was in Hollywood. He was getting all this attention. And there was this boy. He kissed me. I didn’t kiss him first. And then I couldn’t stop kissing him. I’m a slut!” she cries. “I don’t deserve Jude.”

“You’re not a slut. Don’t you ever let me hear you use that word again when describing yourself! Zoe, you’re fifteen. So you made a mistake. You had a lapse in judgment. Why didn’t you just explain it to Jude? He adores you. Don’t you think he would have understood? Eventually?”

“I told him. Right away.”

“And what happened?”

“He forgave me.”

“But you didn’t forgive yourself. And that explains Ho-Girl?”

Zoe nods.

“Okay, okay. But Zoe, there’s something I don’t understand. The kiss
matters far less to me than why you’ve been so mean to Jude. He follows you around like a puppy. He’d do anything for you.”

“He’s smothering me.”

“So your solution is to just run away?”

“I learned it from you,” she mumbles.

“You learned what from me?”

“Running away.”

“You think
I’m
running away? From what?”

“From
everything
.”

I register that hit in my belly. “Really? That’s
really
what you think?” I ask.

“Kind of,” whispers Zoe.

“Zoe. Oh, God,” I trail off.

At that moment the mouse runs under the table.

I lift my feet and we look at each other, wide-eyed. Zoe puts her finger up to her lips. “Don’t make a sound,” she mouths.

“Eek!” I mouth back.

Zoe fights off a smile as she very slowly slides off the chair and crouches on the floor, Tupperware in hand. Next I hear the sound of the plastic slapping the floor.

“Got it!” she yells, crawling out from under the table, pushing the Tupperware in front of her.

The mouse isn’t moving. “Did you kill it?” I ask.

“Of course not,” says Zoe, flicking the plastic with her fingers. “It’s playing dead. It’s scared to death.”

“Where should we release it?”

“You’re coming with me?” asks Zoe. “You never come with me. You’re scared of mice.”

“Yes, I’m coming with you,” I say, getting a piece of cardboard from the recycling bin. “Ready?” I slide the cardboard underneath the Tupperware and the two of us lift the container and slip out the back door, Zoe with her hand on top of the plastic container, me with my hand beneath, supporting the cardboard. We walk that ungainly way for a while, up the hill to a grove of eucalyptus trees. Then we bend as one, lowering the Tupperware to the ground. I slide the cardboard out.

“Bye, little mouse,” croons Zoe as she lifts the plastic.

A second later the mouse is gone.

“I don’t know why, but I always feel sad when I let them go,” says Zoe.

“Because you had to trap them?”

“No, because I worry that they won’t ever find their way home,” says Zoe, her eyes filling with tears again.

It occurs to me in that moment that Zoe is the same exact age I was when my mother died. She looks mostly like a Buckle, not an Archer. She has good hair, by which I mean hair she doesn’t have to fight with. She has lovely clear skin, and lucky girl, she’s got William’s height: she’s nearly five foot seven. But where I see myself, where I see the Archer side of the family, is around her eyes. The resemblance is especially pronounced when she’s sad. The way she bats the tears away with those inky dark lashes. The way her iris lightens from a navy to a sort of stormy blue-gray. That’s me. That’s my mother. Right there.

“Oh, Zoe. Sweetheart. You have such a big heart. You always have. Even as a little girl.” I put my arm tentatively around her.

“I shouldn’t have said those things to you. It’s not true. You’re not running away,” she says.

“It might be true. A little true.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know that.”

“I’m an ass.”

“I know that, too,” I say, punching her playfully on the shoulder. Zoe makes a face.

“Zoe, honey, look at me.”

She turns and bites her lower lip.

“Do you love Jude?”

“I think so.”

“Then do me a favor?”

“What?”

I put my hand on her cheek. “Don’t wait any longer, for God’s sake. Tell him how you feel.”

“W
ho’s the understudy for the lead?” asks Jack, squinting at his theater program. “I can’t read it. Alice, can you read this?”

I squint at the program. “How is anybody supposed to read this? The print is minuscule.”

“Here.” Bunny hands me a pair of reading glasses. They’re very hip—square and gunmetal gray.

“No, thanks,” I say.

“I bought them for you.”

“You did? Why?”

“Because you can no longer read small print and it’s time you faced up to that fact.”

“I can no longer read
minuscule
print. That’s very nice of you, but I don’t need them.” I hand the glasses back to her.