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There was an e-mail waiting for me in the morning forwarded to me from Jesse, which had been forwarded to Jesse from Cheryl, reminding all of us that I was supposed to go on the twins’ field trip to Hartford that day. Claire had sent it to Cheryl, and had asked Cheryl to send along to her sister—me, apparently—followed by a smiley face. My sister? Cheryl wrote in her e-mail to Jesse, followed by a series of expletives far less friendly than a smiley face.
It was the last thing I wanted to do. To be at the elementary school no later than 9:15 A.M., ready to help monitor the field trip bus. No, strike that: the last thing I wanted to do was get up and begin to focus on the photographs still strewn all over the bedroom floor. No, strike that: the last thing I wanted to do was get up and deal with my husband—to go and help him at the restaurant, like I had promised—and then have to answer to the photographs on the floor. No, strike that: the last thing I wanted to do was run into my mother-in-law on the way to helping Griffin at the restaurant on the way to dealing with the photographs.
And so I let Jesse give us all a ride to school on his way to MIT to try and work on his dissertation (and avoid his mother).
But when we pulled up to the school—the minibus already in front, the twins jumping out—Gia was standing there, getting ready to board, wearing a pair of bug-shaped sunglasses. Sunglasses that would have undoubtedly looked great with her orange scarf.
“Oh man,” Jesse said, just as Gia looked up and saw both of us through the car’s windshield.
“What do we do?” I said.
“Wave?” Jesse said.
I, meanwhile, was stuck on the slightly less immediate problem.
“She’s going? It’s the Children’s Museum,” I said. “A children’s science museum. Aren’t there art classes she needs to teach or something?”
“Apparently not right now.”
I sighed, loudly, wrapping my terrible coat more tightly around me as I opened the passenger-side car door. “Well, come on, I guess,” I said.
“Come on where?”
She was still looking right at us. She was still looking right through the windshield in her bug-shaped shades.
“To say hello.”
“No way.” He shook his head. “Too awkward.”
“Too awkward?”
“Yep.”
I glared at him. “Jesse, you’re seriously going to send me out there all alone?” I said.
“I’m not sending you anywhere,” he said, turning the ignition back on. “If you want to make a run for it, I’m game to take you. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. Well, anywhere between here and MIT.”
“Gee, how generous,” I said.
“Don’t mention it,” he said. “I’m that kind of guy.”
It wasn’t easy, but Gia and I managed to avoid each other the entire way to Hartford—me sitting all the way up front in the minibus, Gia sitting in the back, leading the kids around her in some sort of magical-singing-puzzle contest.
We managed to avoid each other at the actual museum, all morning—it was all I could do to keep my eyes on the twins and my other assigned peanuts as they raced from one accidentwaiting-to-happen exhibit to the next. We even managed to avoid talking to each other as we handed out paper-bag peanut-butter lunches together in the museum lunchroom—Gia somehow managing to do it with a flourish, each kid’s bag decorated with a lacy flower.
But then, right before we were set to leave the museum, to get back on the bus and make our way home to Williamsburg, we happened to take several little girls to the bathroom in the same three-minute interval. And so, at the very end of the field trip—so close to free from each other—we found ourselves face-to-face. Or, rather, side to side. In front of the sink bank, looking into the same slightly discolored mirror.
“Hey . . .” she said.
“Hey,” I said. “Long day.”
She nodded.
I started washing my hands quickly, trying to hurry my girls along. Then something came over me, and I decided to take a different tactic. To be something like brave.
“Look,” I said, “Gia.”
She met my eyes in the mirror.
