Page 25 of Pucking My Biggest Fan

She looks at me one second longer than the milk deserves. Then she hauls the cart around and lets it go, because there are still groceries to get.

Here’s what I do on the scenic route, fast, while keeping my face easy for the kids. The page never had my face on it. That was the first rule, before rent, before anything — never face, never name, never the window — and I checked it the way other people check locks. A man who half-knows a face from somewhere has nothing. People think they know me every so often; I have one of those faces. Somebody’s gym is missing a brunette. That’s all this is.

Except he heard my name. Teddy said it twice, at frozen-food volume, and the man was still looking when he did.

And except for the other thing, the rule under all the other rules: he looked at me standing next to the kids. The page was one life and this house is another, and the whole point of every rule I ever made is that the two are never in the same aisle. They were just in the same aisle.

By checkout I’ve put it down. Mostly. Margot aligns everything on the belt by size without being asked. Teddy narrates the receipt like election returns. And I catch myself checking the front windows on the way out, the way you check a lock you already know you locked.

* * *

Margot puts groceries away by a system she has never explained and I have never questioned. It works. Cold things first, then by shelf, bananas exiled to the hook because — her words, months ago — “they make everything near them ripen faster.” She’s right. Bananas radiate. Nobody tells you this.

“Counselor worksheet is due Monday,” I say, handing her the yogurt. “Is it done?”

“I answered every question.”

“Honestly?”

“Correct.”

She almost smiles at the yogurt — not at me, at the yogurt — and puts it away. Neither of us mentions the almost-smile. That’s the arrangement, and it’s working.

At dinner the ice maker grinds, holds a long dramatic pause, and produces nothing.

“The ice thing is broken,” Teddy says.

“She’s thinking.”

“Machines don’t think.”

“That’s what she wants you to believe.”

Margot looks up from her plate, from me to the freezer and back, and takes the whole exchange in without comment. Nine years old, and she misses nothing.

The phone buzzes while I’m rinsing plates: brenda update requested.

two grinds at dinner, zero ice, I report. she’s punishing you for the overtime loss.

that’s fair. tell her I’ll bring her a magnet from the airport.

she prefers loyalty and a repair guy.

she’s getting a magnet.

I laugh — actually laugh, alone, at the sink. A man three time zones away made me laugh at a sink. I dry my hands and decide not to think about what that means.

A minute later, while I’m drying the pot: you good? short answers tonight.

I stand there with the towel. He reads rooms from two time zones away now. I type a man at the store thought he knew me and look at it for one whole breath, and then delete it letter by letter. I type something true enough instead: all fine. your son lobbied hard for scorpion candy. margot ruled against. democracy is dead.

tell the court I’ll review the case friday.

Kids down, kitchen wiped, I should go up. Instead I start tomorrow’s sauce, because cooking settles me and the good pot was right there. And while it comes together I read the day’s thread back from the top, which I would deny under oath.

Here’s the truth I never say to anyone. This — the small pieces of a day, handed over one at a time — is the exact thing he used to pay for. He was FOURTEEN, I was JUNO, and for over a year he paid monthly for a stranger to trade days with him at three in the morning. Now he gets the same thing free, from his own kitchen, and I get his day back from wherever the team plane took him. It’s the best hour of my day. And he has no idea that the stranger and the nanny are the same woman.

The phone buzzes one more time, late: home tomorrow by dinner. tell everybody.