dorm rooms, debating whether to take biology first or second semester.
As Madison stands beside the guard tower while the boy climbs up, the highlights of her résumé scroll through my mind: senior class treasurer; a math whiz; performed around the state with her select choir group; spent the first half of the summer in Nairobi on a church mission helping build a pump station; accepted at Duke.
I replay Aubrey’s life. This time, I am a permanent part of Joyce Chaffee’s group of Moms Who Had a Clue. I shave my legs, watch my language, and stick a violin in Aubrey’s hands when she is three. Instead of spending every second with Tyler this summer microwaving breakfast burritos, she is in Africa pointing to something on a blueprint while Masai tribesmen, tall and lean as Giacometti sculptures, tilt in to catch every word spoken by their pale child savior. I hear Aubrey’s angelic voice echoing off cathedral walls.
Yes. I decide that these adventures are worth putting up with the suburban moms.
I make this decision as if it were an actual possibility. As if I were swimming through a wormhole, a rip in the space-time continuum, and would find Joyce and her crew nestled on blankets in the cottonwood grove, opening Tupperware containers of Goldfish and carrot sticks, figuring out which camps to sign up for. As if I could still join them. As if Aubrey would still be standing on the edge of the pool at this very moment, tummy round and plump, hair two squirts of pigtail above the goggles strap, hands tucked into her armpits, shivering a little, bouncing as she yells, “Mom. Mom! Watch me, Mom; I’m gonna dive! Mom, are you watching?!”
A continuous loop plays in my head, focusing on me barely glancing up from my book—I had so little time to read back then—and yelling that I was watching. Dive already and give me two seconds of peace. I barely tore my eyes from the page—it was The Handmaid’s Tale! Who could resist?—as Aubrey steepled her arms above her ducked head, curved her fingers, bent over until she slowly toppled into the pool. A moment later, she burst to the surface. “Did you see me? Mommy, did you see me?” Hungrier for my approval than for oxygen.
I’m certain I gave it. Probably with too much rote lavishness. Precisely the sort of knee-jerk self-esteem building that Recent Studies just revealed is the psychic equivalent of feeding your children lead-based paint chips. The overpraising and inevitable blue ribbons have left an entire generation undermotivated and overentitled. Except when they are driven, achievement-addicted anorexics.
I am deciding that, henceforth, I will praise Aubrey only if she’s done something to really deserve it. That’s when I notice that the single cottonwood above the pool is the only tree left. The big grove was cut down years ago. Probably around the same time that Aubrey’s world stopped pivoting on my praise.
I dive underwater and swim down into silence. The whistles tweeting, children yelling, the tinny music, aggravation from Mr. Banana Hammock, my worries about Aubrey and her college money, for one second they all stop. I dive deeper, so deep that slivers of pain crack into my ears. At the bottom of the pool a Sponge-Bob SquarePants bandage floats like a wisp of yellow seaweed and I wish I had bought the Little Mermaid Band-Aids that Aubrey begged me for, instead of always cheaping out and getting whatever was on sale.
I pop to the surface, grab my kickboard, and churn through the water.
At the turn, Dori falls in next to me. “You’re doing it again, aren’t you?”
“Doing what?”
“Don’t pretend. I recognize that expression. That’s your regret expression.” Dori breaks into her chanteuse mode and belts out, “ ‘Non, je ne regrette rien!’ ”
“Look, I completely agree with you and Edith Piaf. And moi? My own life? I really have very few regrets. It’s this whole other life, Aubrey’s, that I was supposed to arrange that I wish I could have a second chance at.”
Dori reaches over and slugs my biceps.
“Ow!”
“Sorry, I read where you can interrupt negative thought cycles with a sharp physical stimulus.”
“Well, tell your buddies back at the lab that it works.” I rub my arm. Joyce Chaffee would never have given me a monkey bump. At this very moment, we—Joyce and I and the other Moms Who Had a Clue—would be discussing what kind of under-bed storage containers to buy our daughters for their dorm rooms.