I stand up, tossing the bunched-up fast-food bag on the empty seat next to Ruby Jo, and walk toward the front of the bus.
“I didn’t call you, lady,” the guard says. “Sit down.”
I really hate being called “lady.” A lady is fine. That lady in the green coat is fine. May I please speak to the lady of the house is fine. But this fat slob isn’t fine calling me anything other than Dr. Fairchild.
“How about you sit down,” I tell him, “since it seems that’s what you do all day anyway. And I’ll help this woman get off your bus. Sound good?”
I’ve learned about bullies in my lifetime. Any teacher has. The taller they stand, the taller you have to stand. And, even without heels, I’ve already got a good six inches on Mr. Beer Belly here. He backs off, as if no one’s ever spoken back to him, as if no one has stood her ground.
Good.
But I wonder why this should be so surprising to him.
The lady with the bent head is Mrs. Munson, she tells me. Mrs. Munson. What a name. Still, if her legs don’t work so well, her mouth makes up for it. “You tell him, honey.”
Once Mrs. Munson’s on the ground, I climb back aboard and collect my briefcase and the snack bag. All that’s left in it are the packs of cookies I took out of the kitchen cupboard over the fridge and brought along for Freddie.
Twenty-eight hours ago.
It’s always interesting to think of yourself as a ghost, an invisible fly on the wall, an unseen observer.
So I do that now, and picture myself in my own kitchen at four o’clock yesterday afternoon. Anne is home from school, backpack stuffed with books, stomach whining with the late-afternoon munchies. Teenagers are like hobbits: breakfast, second breakfast, that odd prelunch snack the Brits call elevenses, lunch, and so on. They’re all their own private little internal combustion engines.
She’s in the door, having let herself in with the key Malcolm and I entrusted her with only last year. Shoulders slumped with the weight of books—more slumped with the weight of other, less tangible things—Anne unloads her books on the living room sofa, washes her hands in the kitchen sink like her father’s told her to do since she was six. Right now, at this moment, everything is normal. Nothing has changed.
Her mother will be home in thirty minutes. A half hour at most. There will be banter and bickering and reminders that this house feels empty.
Or not.
Anne kicks off her shoes, shrugs out of her Harvard Crimson school jacket, goes to the fridge. She does this automatically, as she does every afternoon. At first, her mind is so intensely tracked on food she doesn’t see the note. Why would she, when yogurt or fruit salad or a slice of Swiss cheese calls to her like a wind-tossed plastic bag calls to a sight hound? It’s only when she goes back to forage for something else and put the wrapped hunk of cheese where it belongs that she closes the fridge door a second time and sees my note.
For the next five minutes, she’ll read and reread my scribbled apology, the news of my leaving, in the same way a jilted GI rereads a Dear John letter from his stateside sweetheart. Confusion mixes with disbelief and denial. It can’t be. She’s not really gone. This is a dream, a nightmare, a lie.
Mothers don’t just walk out.
In my imagined fly-on-the-wall position, I can see her tapping numbers into her phone, screwing up the sequence, trying again when the first call is answered by a hair salon. Then, “Dad? Mom’s gone.” And again, the cycle of confusion and denial starts.
Wives and mothers don’t just walk out.
I want to materialize in my kitchen, take Anne in my arms, and tell her I’m not gone, not really, but then Ruby Jo tugs at my coat sleeve because it’s time to collect our suitcases from the belly of the bus and start the long walk from the double gates to the low redbrick building that says Administration on its facade.