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“Damn, Hot Pants is giving you the good lovin’ huh?” Chris said, then ducked, laughing when Shoshana tossed a potato wedge at his face.
“Rude,” she said, then slurped her own drink. “Also, I told Bax not to call him that.”
“I’m not Bax,” he pointed out, then picked up another wing, “You’re happy though, huh?”
“I mean--”
“Not trying to pry,” Chris said, waving the chicken wing in the air like a flag, “but if I told you all of this last month, it would have been a real different conversation, right?”
“Yeah, probably,” Shoshana admitted. She considered the food in front of her, picking up a wing and looking at it for a long moment before biting delicately at the skin. “I like who I am when he looks at me. And it’s weird because when I’m being that person, it’s like my life is completely different than the way I thought it was.”
“That’s good, Sho,” he said, sounding like he meant it. “I’m happy for you.”
“I’m--happy for me too,” she said, knowing her expression was very dreamy-Disney-princess and not caring in the slightest. She held out her hands in an exaggerated shrug. “I just can’t wait to see how I’m going to fuck it up.”
* * *
“Tah-tee,” Dani sang in her little girl voice. David smiled but didn’t acknowledge her, so engrossed was he in the book in front of him. She danced around the chair, chanting the wordtateh, tateh, tateh,until David finally looked up, closing the book over his finger.
“Dani,” he said, and she stopped in front of him. Collapsing on his knees. she wiped her curls out of her face while she giggled. “What do you want, precious girl?”
“Did you know that some people can change their hairs?”
“I did, but I think you need to tell me what you mean. There’s a lot of ways they can do that,” David said, wondering if she was going to ask for a haircut or to have her hair straightened. He was fine with the former but wasn’t ready for his daughter to be concerned with flat irons.
“The mice lady has pink hairs, but her hairs weren’t always pink, she said they used to be blue,” Dani said, proud of her knowledge. “And she said one time they were greenandpurple.”
“When did you see the mice lady?” David asked. He wondered if perhaps this was something they talked about that day at the showroom and Dani was only now bringing it up. That happened sometimes. She liked to let things percolate until they bubbled up at unexpected times.
“I saw her today,” Dani said, lifting one of her own wispy curls to look at it. “Tate, could I have pink hairs?”
“You… saw Shoshana today?” David said, definitely confused now.
“Uh-huh, she was talking to Miss Abi at the big desk before snack time,” Dani said.
David almost laughed, he’d forgotten for a moment that Shoshana and Abi were friends.
“And Kelly said her hair was pretty and she said thank you and that she liked to make it different colors because it's fun. Then she and Rueben’s mommy helped us eat snacks and she played puppets. Can I make my hair different colors, tateh? You didn’t say.”
“I think that’s a thing we have to talk to Mommy about before we decide for sure. Did you brush your teeth?” David said, wondering why Shoshana hadn’t mentioned she was going to be at the preschool. He didn’tmindexactly, she was free to do what she pleased. It was just that he hadn’t expected Dani to bring her up. Like they had spent the day together or something.
“Nope, cause the blue goop is icksy.”
“Well, that’s no good. Come on, we need to brush our teeth and then it's bedtime,” David said, marking his place in the book and putting it on the table at his elbow. He agreed that the blue children’s toothpaste was vile, but that didn’t mean she got to skip her teeth before bedtime.
“Can we call Mommy and ask about my hairs? I want to change them as a surprise before I visit,” Dani said, excited now. She was going to visit Mariam for the last half of her summer break from the university, and the more Dani talked about it the more she seemed to add to her expectations for the trip. He was glad she was so excited to see her mother but was growing concerned she would be disappointed. David considered pointing out that changing her hair wouldn’t be much of a surprise if she got permission beforehand, but he decided not to. He didn’t want to give his crafty child the opportunity to get her way that handily.
“You spoke to Mommy this afternoon, remember? You can talk to her tomorrow if you want, how about that?” He was relieved that she seemed to accept this answer and went through the motions of getting Dani ready for bed while his mind twisted down a path he didn’t like. The more he thought about it, the more questions he had.
Why was Shoshana at the preschool? Why didn’t he know about it? He’d had multiple text conversations with her today, she could have mentioned something. He would have liked to have seen her too, if she was at Beth Elohim anyway.
Moshe tried to speak a few times during this inner monologue, but he silenced his mental rebbe, preferring instead to work himself into a proper snit. He knew it was ill-advised. He knew there was an explanation, but still it rankled that she’d forgotten about him.
He rolled his eyes, annoyed with himself, which only propelled his anger at Shoshana. He wasn’t a teenager, and neither was she, just because she hadn’t stopped by his office one time didn’t mean she’dforgottenabout him.
It was that she hadn’t told him, he decided. Why the secrecy? He’d even seen Abi this afternoon after the preschool day was over. She, also, hadn’t bothered to mention that a person who wasn’t a parent of another preschooler had hung out with his kid.
You’re being ridiculous, he told himself as he stood under the too-hot spray of the shower.There are probably ten completely logical reasons why she was at the preschool today and you didn’t see her. There’s no reason to get angry.
