reminder of all the terrible things that happen when mothers don’t worry.
After Twyla left, I hired Dori to help me with my classes. At first it was sort of a charity move, something to keep my friend distracted, but Dori has turned out to be surprisingly good at handling registration, getting students to pay up, invoicing hospitals for my consultations, and, generally, keeping me and the business going. She is even working on helping me “establish a Web presence.”
Dori glances at her watch. “Just FYI, we’ve got class in twenty-five minutes.”
I jump up. “Shit! How did I lose track of an entire hour? Where’s my bag?”
“Chill. It’s all out in the great room. I’ll go pack up. You …” She eyes me, doing a quick triage. “Brush your hair, put on a clean top. Then we gotta hit the trail like a steaming cow patty.”
I run a comb through my hair with one hand as I gather up cell phone, car keys, keys to the classroom where I teach, and purse. In the great room, Dori is stuffing my class materials into the striped canvas beach bag I haul back and forth to classes.
“Where’s Britney?” she yells. Her years as a roadie girlfriend, then wife to a musician husband have left Dori with a sense of urgency about any show, even a lactation class.
“Shit, I put Britney in the laundry room. She needs to be washed. Pretzels was gnawing on her. We’ve gotta take Lady Gaga. Credenza. Second drawer down.” Dori calls the weighted dolls I use in class Britney Spears and Lady Gaga.
Dori digs out my backup demonstration doll and jams her into the canvas bag as I shuffle my feet into the pair of sandals I locate under the couch.
“Let’s turn this mother out!” Dori yells as we run for the door. “Give me your keys. I’ll drive! You put on makeup!”
In spite of myself, whenever I jump into my dilapidated Chevy Malibu with Dori, an oldie plays in my head about “head out on the highway. Lookin’ for adventure.” It makes me feel as if I’m fifteen again and cruising with my best bud.
“Dori, slow down,” I order as the succession of gas stations, Subways, liquor stores, and dry cleaners that line the road out of my subdivision, Parkhaven Country, whiz past. “I’d rather be late than dead. Besides”—I point to a sign—“school zone ahead.” I flip down the visor and lean in closer to the mirror to swipe on some lipstick and mascara.
At the top of the steep hill we are descending, a football coach in royal blue stretch shorts stands blowing his whistle at some small boys—made even smaller by oversize helmets and shoulder pads—who, red faced and streaming sweat, are chugging up the incline.
“Oh, great,” Dori says, “I see Child Brutality Month is in full swing.”
This is another well-worn conversation. At this point I would usually jump in and suggest that Amnesty International should investigate a school system that takes children who’ve spent an entire summer exercising only thumbs on game controllers, wraps them in nonbreathable polyester, sticks solar-collection helmets on their little heads, shoves them into killing heat, and lets a sadist with a whistle run them around. But I don’t repeat my lines. Instead, I marvel at Dori and her imperviousness to the constant, eroding drip of regret. On some level, she still thinks that we—she and I—had it all figured out. That we were the moms going our own way, unconventional but, ultimately, right.
She slows down as we approach the four-way stop at the edge of the elementary school. A moment after stopping, she mutters, “Go, asshole,” and makes a face at the driver of the Jeep Cherokee across from us. The driver gestures at Dori to go ahead. She holds her hand out, impatiently indicating the empty intersection, mutters to herself, “You go, asshole.”
He doesn’t move.
“Dori, just go.”
“No, he was here first. It’s his turn. Oh, look, now he’s giving me Little Lady Fingers.”
It’s true, the driver is gesturing with two fingers twitching above his steering wheel for us to go ahead.
“I hate that patronizing shit.”
The cars on either side get tired of our standoff and zoom through the intersection. Then the Cherokee squeals out. As he passes, the driver flips Dori off. She gets a good look at his face and screams, “Oh my God, it’s Pastor Jesus Juice from Six Flags over Jesus!” The youth minister from the nearby megachurch whom Dori has decided is a child molester