1The thing no one tells you about being a single parent is that you will be running late for the rest of your life.
No matter how early you set the alarm, how generously you appoint transition time, or how much you prepare the night before, you will still find yourself standing in the entryway of your house at 8:05 yelling Are your socks on yet? as you anxiously watch the seconds go by.
I know, because I’m here now, yelling those exact words for the fourth time today and at least the thirtieth time this week. My lifetime count is probably in the thousands.
“I can’t find matchies!”
“It doesn’t matter,” I call, trying not to let the frustration show. “Matching socks are boring, anyway.”
This appears to be today’s golden ticket, because my daughter, Parker, bounces down the stairs seconds later, beaming from behind her no-break soft plastic glasses.
“Look!” she says, gesturing down. One of her feet appears to be getting eaten by an ankle-length frog, and the other hugged by a smiling, rosy-cheeked sloth.
“Perfect,” I pronounce, forgetting the ticking clock for a moment as I look down at her.
The other thing they don’t tell you about being a single parent is that you’ll love your quirky, near-sighted, perfectly herself oddball child so much it will make every stressful countdown worth it. And then some.
Despite the ticking clock, I take out my phone and snap a picture. My best friend Inez’s contact is at the top of my suggested list, of course. I don’t trust myself to remember the nuance of the outfit when I see her later, so I send it with the caption: Fashion Icon.
“I thought we were late,” Parker says pointedly.
“We are,” I say, stowing my phone with a chuckle. “I wanted to show Auntie Inez your style, but now we’ll probably be last in the drop-off line again.”
“I like being last,” Parker says, unruffled as she pulls hot pink rain boots on over her mismatched socks. “I get to make an entrance.”
She flounces out to the car before I can respond, tutu bouncing over her jeans, green dinosaur sweatshirt completing the ensemble.
Oh, to have the confidence of a six-year-old, I think as I grab the keys and follow.
We are indeed last in the drop-off line. The doors to Ridley Falls Elementary are so close, and yet so far away. This morning the school is wreathed in mist with the town’s trademark ponderosas looming over it.
In the backseat of the Jeep, Parker belts along to the radio. When your car was made before the new millennium there’s no aux cord, and there’s something pop-rocky playing that I recognize from working a thousand karaoke nights.
It makes my brain hurt. I pray for the serenity not to lean on the horn at the PTA moms lingering at the front of the line.
“If you took a chance! If you let me in!”
“How do you know this song?” I ask, glancing at Parker in the rearview mirror. She’s using one of her rain boots as a microphone.
She gives me a withering look. “Everyone knows this song. The Walking Wild? Madison’s mom knows them.”
This is probably true. When Ridley Falls became the home of the Pacific Northwest’s most beloved indie record label five years ago, name-dropping within city limits reached an all-time peak. “Put your shoes back on,” I reply wearily. “We’ll be at the front in just a minute.”
It takes ten, but we do eventually reach the promised land—marked by traffic cones adorned with the school mascot, the mighty porcupine.
No matter how late we are, I can never bring myself to rush this part. I get out of the car, unbuckling Parker and grabbing her backpack, checking for missing shoes, glasses, lunch box, etc. and pleased to find everything where it’s supposed to be for once.
“Have a good day at school,” I say, down on one knee in front of her.
“I always do.”
“I know. You’re pretty awesome, you know that?”
“Duh,” Parker says, flipping one of her short brown pigtails. “You tell me every day.”
“Get used to it. I’ll still be doing it when you’re a hundred and five.”
“Deal,” Parker says, sticking out her tiny hand for me to shake. A little knot of kids call her name from the doorway then—none quite so flamboyantly dressed, I note with pride—and she bounds off without so much as a goodbye.
There’s a thread of tension that runs through you from the moment your kid wakes up in the morning until the second another qualified adult takes over, and mine snaps the moment Parker is in the building. Suddenly, the four hours of sleep I got between closing the bar and the alarm ringing for school don’t seem like enough.
My phone buzzes before I can even pull out of the drop-off lane. Inez, of course, replying to my photo of Parker from earlier. Cash Delgado, the message reads. Your daughter is officially more fashionable than you are.
I try to be offended, but then I look in the rearview mirror. At the rumpled T-shirt I threw on over yesterday’s jeans. The short curly hair that’s more a riot than a style. The bags lingering beneath my eyes.
Touché, I text back. But you have to give me some credit for being so behind on laundry that she’s forced to be creative.
Three eye-roll emojis precede her next text. I’ll meet you at your house in fifteen and we can get through a few loads before we have to open the bar.
To some people, this would seem like extreme altruism. Volunteering to help your single parent best friend do laundry before your shift? Inez deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. But I know Inez, so I know better.
Wow, I reply. You must really not want to be there when your girlfriend wakes up.
She’s not my girlfriend, she insists. And I’ll get you coffee if you don’t bring her up again.
I start the car, feeling marginally less exhausted at the thought of coffee I don’t have to wait in line for. You have a deal, I text her back.
I don’t even have time to restart the slightly damp, severely wrinkled clothes in the dryer before Inez breezes in without knocking.
“Honey, I’m home!” she calls.
Inez always looks much more put together than I do, no matter where she’s coming from or how late she was up the night before. Today she’s wearing a pair of dark jeans that hug her hips. A black tank top with one of those breezy shawl things over the top. Her dark hair is in a topknot that looks messy on purpose.
She was the first person I met in Ridley Falls, fresh off the bus from Portland when I showed up to work at Joyce’s, leaving my whole life behind. I’ll never forget that day—Parker and I were lost, Inez was coming out of a coffee shop and dropped her cup on the sidewalk. It splattered all over my shoes. She insisted on buying me new ones, and Parker ogled her with her little baby smile, and we all ended up eating lunch together.
Sometimes I remind her she still owes me a pair of shoes.
“You’ll never guess who was at Ponderosa’s,” she says, closing the door behind her with one foot, balancing the coffees and an overlarge tote bag she takes on dates that have overnight potential.
“Who?”
“That couple who comes to karaoke once a month or so—the guy always has like three too many pretentious-sounding beers and stares at my ass?”
I know who she’s talking about immediately. The blessing and curse of running a small-town bar. “The wife drinks white wine and makes a face after every sip,” I confirm. “It’s like, if you hate it so much . . . why do you order it all the time?”
“Exactly. They were in front of me in line, just falling all over themselves to look like responsible adults in the light of day. I swear she said the words vow renewal four times in five minutes. As if her husband didn’t once ask if he could bounce a quarter off my tits.”
I laugh, taking the coffee, drinking half of it in one fortifying gulp. “And you wonder why I’m still single. I’m telling you, for those of us afflicted with heterosexuality, it’s bleak out there.”
She hangs her bag on my coat closet doorknob, kicks off her shoes, and collapses into my creaky old corduroy chair, which is the same root beer–brown as the carpet. Interior decorating isn’t high on my list of priorities—the place came furnished and I didn’t ask too many questions.
“I’ll never understand how you do it,” she says and sighs.
I take my own cup to the matching couch, sitting beside the pile of laundry I’m afraid might become sentient if I don’t deal with it soon. “I don’t do it,” I reply, trying to think of the last thing I did that counted as a date. Did rattling the storeroom shelves with an ex-coworker count? “And anyway, it can’t be so blissful in La La Lesbian Land if you’re here this early in the morning.”
Inez glares at me over her to-go cup lid. “You promised not to bring it up.”
Copyright © 2024 by Tehlor Kay Mejia. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
