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But I don’t want to bitch about Amanda right now, so I say, “Well, now that I’m thinking about yesterday, I gotta ask: are you sure you didn’t get hurt? I feel like I must’ve hurt you somehow when I ran into you.”
Her expression eases up. “Oh, I’m fine. Really.”
“Do you swear?”
“I swear.”
I look at her with playful suspicion. “All right. If you say so.”
“I do say so.” She clears her throat. “So whatareyou doing at this party?”
Oh, yeah. Forgot Rae ever asked me that. “I’m close with the Kinleys because I’ve worked for Abby’s dad for almost ten years now. They don’t have a pool, so I got them into this one.”
A look of recognition flashes across her face. “Oh, okay. Abby’s mom told me something like that—told me they know someone who lives here and helped with the pool thing. I sure didn’t think it was you.” She shrugs. “Don’t know who I thought it was,but….”
“Yeah, I get that. It’s a funny coincidence. I wondered the last few days if Rae got an invitation or not, but I didn’t ask ‘cause I wasn’t sure she even knew Abby.”
“Indeed, she does.” Her eyes travel to the gift table and so do mine, and we look at the giggling bunch of kids seated there. Rae is on Abby’s right side, looking happy as can be.
Seeing her in a good mood reminds me of the other thing I want to ask Liv. I look at her again. “So fresh air is good for bad moods, is it?”
“It is.”
“What bad mood wereyouguys in yesterday?”
Her eyes come back to me, brow knitting as she appears to think back. Then her expression turns embarrassed. “Oh, it was n—”
She stops herself short right as I hope she’s not really going to try to downplay whatever happened. She didn’t let me do that, and I’m not prepared to let her get away with it either.
I think she knows it, but I still give her an expectant look.
Sighing, she crosses her arms and looks away from me. Quietly, she admits, “Our food stamps took a cut.”
I go from expectant to appalled.
Yeah, that is most certainly not‘nothing.’In fact, given her situation, I’d call it an outrage.
It’s a struggle to keep my voice quiet, too. “Are you serious? Why?” I amend quickly, “I mean, no, I’m not actually asking why. I don’t expect you to tell me—what I really mean is, that fucking sucks. You take care of a little kid all by yourself. You should have all the assistance there is.”
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t matter how small my raise at work was. It just matters that I got one.” I glimpse frustration in her eyes before she closes them and breathes deeply. “But whatever. I got some perspective and got over it. The fresh air did help.” Momentarily, she reopens her eyes, nods toward Rae, and adds more softly, “Helped her, too. Some kid made fun of her fingers earlier that day and it really upset her.”
“Wow,” I can’t help saying more loudly. “Wow.”A couple of parents nearby turn and look at me, but I don’t care, because poor Rae. Jesus.
“I know. And thanks, by the way, for not acting weird when you shook her hand. That also helped her. I don’t know if you could tell, but she was nervous about what you’d think.”
Icouldtell. And, yeah, I’m disturbed by the fact that her fingers are like that, but only because it’s probably her mother’s fault, which is bullshit. They’re nothing to make fun of or even make a big deal out of—they can be worked with and they don’t change who Rae is.
“Not a problem at all,” I tell Liv. “I’d never be mean to her. Pisses me off that anyone would be. I hope the parents of the kid who made fun of her handled that shit.” I would have if it were my kid, although I like to think any child of mine would know better in the first place. “Man,it makes me mad, even though it was just another kid.”
“It makes me mad, too,” Liv replies lowly.
I can only imagine.
I think about her sister again—not just about how she probably used drugs while she was pregnant, but also about how she left Rae alone as a toddler all that time ago. In what other ways did she treat her daughter badly? I have a feeling she wasn’t patient or encouraging or protective or anything else a parent should be.
I don’t ask about it, though. Even the thought of her yelling at Rae makes me angry, so hearing about anything worse than that would definitely put a damper on my mood.
I just conjure up a satisfying mental image of Liv smacking her sister in the face for sucking so much.
