Page 70 of Pick-Up
“Is he eating food?”
“Do pretzels count as food?”
“While I’m away? Sure!”
“Then yes! He is packed with food.”
“And you’re okay, otherwise?” I ask. I’m no dummy. I can tell when my bestie is off her game.
“I’m okay.” She lets her smile drop.
I narrow my eyes, silently asking what’s up.
“I’ll tell you all about it when you get home.”
This is mom code forthe kids can hear meand/orthis is a longer story than I can squeeze in right nowand/or, finally,if I tell you now, I will lose it, and I can’t afford to lose it, so can I tell you and lose it at a designated future time?Whatever is going on, Celeste can’t go there right now.
“Got it.” Message received.
In her defense, I’m not sharing the details of my dicey situation either.
“Is that my mom?” I hear a little voice say off-screen.
“It is!” says Celeste. “Here, Bart, let me set you up with my phone in your bedroom, okay? So you can talk to her!”
“Which one is my bedroom again?” he asks. Classic. I drop my head in my hands, cracking up.
“Nettie! Nettie! Mommy’s on the phone!” he calls.
“Oh, okay. One second,” comes the much more distracted disembodied voice of my eight-year-old.
I am treated to some trippy visuals as the phone is carried into Celeste’s guest room and propped against what I imagine is a stack of books atop the side table. Bart’s face comes into view. Or at least a section of it does.
“Mommy!”
“Hi, Bonk!” I say. I want to eat him. “How are you?”
“Good,” he says, settling down on the bed across from the phone. He’s already wearing his favorite wild-animal pajamas. He grabs Elmo and cuddles the raggedy red thing.
“How was school today? Did you do anything special?”
“Um, I forget.” He looks at the ceiling while he thinks. “Oh, I played zombie fighters with Chris and Palmetto!”
“Palmetto? Who is Palmetto?”
“Mom! You know! In my class. He sits at the red table.”
“There’s a kid in your class named Palmetto?”
How have I missed this deeply Brooklyn detail?
“Yeah. At least, I think that’s his name.”
“I’m sure it is.”
This mom version of me, I can do. This me, I understand.
From afar, I see Nettie walk in and close the door behind her. She’s wearing a black sweater and bell-bottom jeans we just bought a few weeks ago. Is it possible she looks older and more beautiful than two days before?
