Page 41 of The Progressions

“Three chickens? Wow.” Then she asked another innocent one: “Did your father do ok? He said so, but what do you think?” I didn’t see the harm in answering that, either.

“He had fun,” I said, happy that it was true. “Miss Gail really drew him out. They talked about how it was hard for both of them to get around and she told him how nice everyone was at the stadium, how they helped her. They really hit it off.”

“I’m glad,” Iva said. “He’s been texting me to check in and saying the most supportive things, and I think that he deserves some fun. Maybe he and Miss Gail could go out.”

“Like, dating? I don’t think so,” I answered doubtfully. “He’s not at all interested in that, but it really would be good for him to have a friend. He told her all about working at the pickle factory and how we make our own, and then she listened to the recipe. She even convinced him to go for a little walk after we ate, but there’s nothing romantic happening.”

“Too bad,” Iva said. She sounded sad. “I wanted someone to get a happy ending.”

“You’re going to,” I told her. “You have beautiful baby Balderston, and we’re going to fix everything else.”

“Right,” she sighed. “Sure. Thanks, Kasia.”

Now she sounded so down, I was glad that I hadn’t told her more. She didn’t need to know what had happened when my dad and Miss Gail had taken their walk after dinner, leaving me and Tyler to clean up.

“That went pretty well,” he had mentioned as I cleared the table. “At least my mom didn’t start bragging. I’m sure you heard enough of that when you were sitting in the stands with her.” His hair was getting longer and one dark blonde piece dipped forward over his sharp cheekbone as he bent to put the plates in the dishwasher. I’d started to reach to help him, but he had pushed it away with the back of his wrist.

“I do know that you’re a genius, as well as being the best football player to ever put on cleats. She also told me that your first kiss was in the third grade,” I’d said. “Precocious.”

“It was from Riley,” he recalled. “She said to wait for her under the monkey bars before we got on the bus and when I showed up, she laid one on me.” He pointed to his chin. “Right there. Then she told me that I better not copy off of her anymore when we labeled maps of the British colonies in America, because she had caught me looking. She said she wouldn’t kiss me again unless I quit that.”

I had laughed. “Did you keep cheating?”

“I started studying. Pass that bowl.”

“So you don’t mind putting in the work, if there are rewards,” I had noted, and he had looked at me and smiled. It wasn’t as if anything earth-shattering had happened, but when he smiled like that…well, it was better that Iva didn’t hear how it might have made you feel.

Her next question broke into my thoughts. “Did you see that Shay is on an island called St. Barts? She’s posting pictures of herself nude, with shells over the important parts. She looks so beautiful. But she said that she was walking on the beach and all the poses happened organically, like she found the shells by chance, and there’s an Irish malacologist in the comments saying that those kinds of scallops are not native to the Caribbean.”

“An Irish what in the comments?” I asked.

“It’s a scientist who studies mollusks. Somebody sent him the post to ask about the shells and he doesn’t think there’s any way that what Shay said is true, so now her fans are mad at him. I have too much time on my hands, sitting in here and trying not to worry, so I messaged him. I told him what happened to you and I said that they’d move on and hate someone else soon enough,” she explained. “Did you get to find out why Shay and Tyler’s mom didn’t get along?” We had previously dissected that question at length, after he had told me that his mother hadn’t visited them when he and his girlfriend had lived together in California.

“I asked him. I said, ‘Your mom is great. Why didn’t your ex like her?’ And he just shrugged. But judging from how Shay Galton acted with me and how she got jealous over nothing, I would assume that she was jealous of his mother, too, of the love they obviously have for each other.”

“I think it’s great. If a guy can care for his mom that much, you get a good idea of his capacity for loving other women, too.” She started sniffing. “You know, Dominic and his mother didn’t get along very well. Was that where I went wrong?”

“Iva, does it matter now?” I asked impatiently, and apparently it did. It really did, and she got really mad at me and hung up. I sighed, but we would talk when I saw her later at the hospital. I planned to get groceries and then cook a few meals to leave in her fridge and freezer, too.

I had plenty to do, because although Tyler was still paying me for some things, I obviously didn’t need to be there as much with his mom now around. He had a list that he kept sending me, but itdidn’t feel right to charge him the same fee we had worked out before, not when I was hardly doing anything.

So I had taken on another job, in tech support. I was supposed to be responding to customer issues with their scientific calculators, but I really hadn’t expected so many of those issues. Since I knew next to nothing about scientific calculators (like, I hadn’t been aware of how to turn them off), I had read the manuals as fast as I could. The company had also given me various scripts which directed what to say to the upset customers who called, polite phrases of apology and assurances that we were going to fix their problems.

Unfortunately, my study of the manuals and those stock phrases weren’t too great in actually getting the little machines going. I felt sorry for the unhappy callers, because it must have been so frustrating to need help and then have to deal with me. As I worked on various invoices and maintenance problems relating to the condo complex, I also double-dipped into my secondary job.

“I understand your frustration,” I was saying for the tenth time to a woman whose calculator screen had gone black. “Um, can you check the input mode again?” I scrolled down, looking for a script that fit this problem, but then I stopped in alarm as she kept describing what was going wrong. “Ma’am, if the unit is actually smoking—”

She hung up and hopefully, she got a fire extinguisher. But my day only got worse, because next I heard a familiar and unwelcome rumble in the parking lot. He was a little late today and I’d been vaguely hoping for multiple flat tires, a watercompany bankruptcy, or a decision by everyone at this complex to drink right out of the tap.

No such luck. I saw the truck pull in and stop exactly where I’d told him not to go, blocking the walkway to the units. Cody got out of the driver’s seat and stood looking directly over at the trailer, directly over at me. I knew he couldn’t see me, not with the sun shining in his face and with the way I was hiding, but I still shrunk back. And I gave him the finger. I watched him heft two big, clear bottles out of the back and walk them up the path he’d obstructed. He disappeared behind the hedge and I tried to focus on the real job I had, the one beyond trying to explain to people where the reset button was located on their calculators. That was in different places on different models and was hard to find, even for me as the supposed expert.

But soon enough, Cody was knocking on the office door, which I was no longer locking except on water delivery day. I would have let him stand out there, but I knew him. He would knock for long enough to be very, very annoying and then he would start honking the truck’s horn. There weren’t that many people here on weekdays but there were enough that I couldn’t let him do it. On top of that, I was supposed to monitor his deliveries, and he’d claimed more than once that no one had been in the office when he’d had a problem—Iva had handled it, but I didn’t want to hear it again.

So, sighing, I opened the door and Cody swaggered in, as obnoxious as ever.

“No-Kasia!” he said.

“What do you want? Do I need to sign something?”

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