Sputterpub's Blog

Pam isn’t having a good morning. She’s been up an hour and still isn’t ready to leave the house. She carries her mug around as she rides herd on her nine year-old daughter and sees to her own scattered routine, and she keeps slopping cool coffee over the rim and onto the web between her thumb and forefinger. The only way to remove such a puddle is to drink it, and the third time she bends forward to sip the spill, her hand trembles and she spatters coffee on her white rayon blouse.

The tag says Dry Clean Only. She knows she can probably wash the thing, but she can’t fix the problem before work. She also knows she has no other clean white blouse. She’s going to have to change clothes.

“Andrea,” she calls up from the bottom of the stairs. “Are you ready to go?”

“Almost, Mom. I just have to fix my hair.”

Pam twitches with impatience. She sits on the bottom step and tries to calm herself. She rises and walks to the kitchen, where she dumps the cool liquid that’s left in her mug and refills it with hot. She pays attention as she climbs the stairs: spills none.

Stopping in the doorway to Andrea’s bathroom, she watches her daughter pull up the top and sides of her long hair. “Want me to help?”

“You can’t help” whines Andrea. “You can’t do any more with my hair than I can. It’s always snarly in the morning.”

“Honey, I’m sorry I can’t do French braids and other fancy styles. I know Barbara can.”

Andrea doesn’t want to talk about Daddy’s longhaired girlfriend. Her mother is already upset enough. “Your friend Erica can do a French braid, and she doesn’t have long hair. She even offered to teach you how…”

“That’s enough, Andrea! I’m late for a meeting, I have to change my clothes, and I don’t need trouble from you. Get ready for school.”

Pam proceeds to her room, irked. She’s recalling the debacle of a house warming party, how harassed she was when she asked her friend Erica to do something with Andrea’s hair, how what should have been a nice result (the braid looked good) turned into yet another example of her maternal inadequacy. She carefully places her mug on the nightstand, pulls the stained blouse off and throws it on the chair, wrenches open her closet door. She finds a fancy white sweater she can wear without changing anything else, and she puts it on, certain that it will be too warm for the day. She has a fleeting idea that if she’d just slow down she might redeem this morning. She’s too agitated to host that notion for long.

She collects snarly Andrea and reminds her to gather all the school necessaries that the child has already organized, picks up her own purse, folio, and jacket, and leads her girl up the path to the again-dusty black Lexus. They’re leaving the house earlier than usual but Pam is still running later than she needs.

On a normal school day, Pam would cart Andrea to the bus stop at 7:45. She’d ride the van to her private school and wouldn’t have a street to cross between home and campus. But Pam has an early meeting today; she can’t wait. She drives the ten minutes to Andrea’s school and drops her off across the street at 7:40.

That street is a mean one. Though 25 mph signs are posted every few feet, commuters treat it like a highway. Average speed is around 45, and average drivers are more attentive to their coffee, phones, and makeup than they are to pedestrians. There’s a small crosswalk and a walk/wait signal at the drop-off point, but the crossing guard won’t be on duty for another five minutes.

Pam stops the car and runs through her usual “Goodbye, honey, have a good day, see you tonight.” She adds a “Careful crossing the street.” Andrea gets out and closes the car door too hard, so Pam has a twinge of additional annoyance as she watches her daughter prepare to cross the road. She’s almost sure she sees Andrea push the button for the pedestrian signal. But Andrea doesn’t wait for the walking-person light. She looks both ways and then dashes toward the red hand. The child isn’t in any danger as she jaywalks in front of her mother, but Pam is dismayed to witness what she considers dangerous behavior on Andrea’s part.

Pam’s ability to organize around small issues is prodigious, so she manages to retain her dismay throughout her early meeting and the rest of her hectic business day. When she gets home with Andrea at 6:30 that night, she begins the delayed lecture.

“I can’t believe the way I saw you cross the street this morning.”

“I thought we were going out for Chinese food tonight.” That’s Andrea’s favorite cuisine, and generally the only food she enjoys sharing with her mother.

“Well, that was our original plan, but then you showed me your immaturity. I don’t want to hassle in a restaurant. We need to talk about this. If the talk goes well, then we’ll go out for dinner.”

“Come on, Mom! I’m hungry and I have a lot of homework. I got across the street okay.” Andrea stops herself from saying her father and Barbara wouldn’t have changed the dinner plan.

“Dashing in front of traffic is not how you’ve been taught! What were you thinking?”

“It was no big deal. Usually when you drop me off, there’s the crossing guard.”

“Andrea, stop this! You know better than to run across a busy street. I can’t believe I saw you do what you did.”

“I looked both ways. I was safe.”

“At your age, you should know better. A five year-old knows better. You push the button and wait for the walk signal.”

“What walk signal?” Andrea’s eyes have filled; tears are about to spill down her flushed cheeks.

“What do you mean: what walk signal?! The walking man or person or whatever it’s supposed to be!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! Nobody ever told me about any walk signal!” She’s jumped up from the couch now, crying freely, and she continues ranting as she flounces across the living room. “I know about traffic lights and crosswalks, but I’ve never heard of this walking man thing!”

Pam has a moment of disorientation before filling with fury. “Now wait a minute, young lady. This isn’t about traffic any more. Now it’s about your lying. You need to sit down right now so we can discuss why you’re lying all the time.”

Andrea gawks. It seems to her that no matter what she does, the situation just gets worse. She stops pacing and blurts through her tears, “I lie all the time so people will like me. So I’ll have friends in school. Nobody likes me at school. I don’t want to go there. I’m so unhappy.”

“That’s not true, Andrea.” Pam lives in Piedmont and her ex has a home in Berkeley. Both communities have decent public schools, but Pam insists that Andrea attend the most expensive private school in the area. “You’ve always gotten good marks in getting along with others. Your teachers have told me time and again how well you’re doing.”

Andrea goes out of control. She’s starting to breathe convulsively as she sobs, and she’s jumping up and down while flinging her hands. She pulls a pillow off the couch and hurls it at the grand piano. When she picks up a second pillow, Pam leans forward and slaps her on the outer thigh, one quick time, to get the child’s attention. Andrea stiffens in response, and then runs out of the room.

Pam remains seated for a few seconds, contemplating a ruined evening. She pulls at her stocking where it’s stretched over her crossed right knee, and her straight hair falls toward her mouth as she looks downward. She’s not about to go running after her hysterical child. She’s heard Andrea’s door slam, and she knows the girl won’t come to any harm in her bedroom. Even if she took after her half-brother (not), Aaron didn’t begin the cutting till he was fourteen.

It’s looking like Chinese food is out. Pam has no appetite. She rises slowly, wanders to the kitchen, pours a glass of Merlot. She walks with her glass to the breakfast room, and she drinks the wine as she checks the corner shelf ceramics for dust.

She starts to wonder if she’s been driven by her own upset heart. Sure there’s been a sound basis in everything she’s tried to say to Andrea, but she wouldn’t have been so picky and forceful if she weren’t furious at her ex. The asshole. The man she still finds more interesting than any other she knows. Who now lives with Barbara. Larry has always had a paranoid streak, when he tends to attribute bad motives to other people’s behavior. Time and again in their ten years Pam tried to reason him out of those type suspicions. And now he’s turned the attitude on her. He accuses her of blackmailing him, when all she wants is an exchange: she’ll give him the money he’s had her hold, while he gives her his notarized signature on an innocuous little legal paper. And she never meant to bring Andrea into it. All Pam did was tell Andrea that the reason Pam was so sad was that Daddy was mean to her. It was Larry who told the kid the whole story when Andrea called him.

Pam sighs and shakes her head. She refills her wine glass and carries it with her to her bedroom. She peels off the clothes in which she’s been too warm all day, and takes a shower. She and Andrea remain in their respective rooms for another hour before Pam knocks on Andrea’s door and they negotiate a meal of soup and toast. Each is subdued for the balance of the evening.

The following morning, Thursday, mother and daughter both wake early and tired. They have plenty of time and no mishaps. Andrea rides the bus to school. This time the ripple from Pam’s calendar will affect day’s end.

Andrea has been seeing a child psychologist weekly for over a year, since Pam and Larry split up. Every four or five weeks, Pam and Larry are to spend a session with Diane, instead of Andrea. Pam forgot that it’s one of those meeting days. Just yesterday she’d arranged to meet with a new client this afternoon, and it would be more than inconvenient to reschedule that.

She calls Larry as soon as she realizes she can’t make their appointment. She leaves a message. She finds out later that by the time he listened, he thought it was too late to cancel. He went to Diane’s office to tell her; since he had Andrea with him for the afternoon, and since Diane obviously had the opening, she and Andrea spent the fifty minutes together.

Maybe Andrea would have taken the next step even if she hadn’t met with Diane. Or maybe Pam should be glad that Diane gave Andrea such clarity. Maybe Larry is actually the one behind it. Pam wonders if any of them knows how much it hurts to return home from a hard day and retrieve this message from the answering machine:

“Mom? It’s Andrea. Listen, I know it’s, um, your week until Sunday, but I don’t want to be with you right now. Uh, I’m really upset about what happened the other night. And I don’t like it when you hit me. I want to stay with Daddy and Barbara right now. Daddy says you should call when you get this message. Bye.”