In the shower she rubbed herself up with gel, breathing the steam. She soaped her thighs, her shoulders, massaged the back of her neck. Kim still liked her body. Her lips were plump and her legs were firm and shapely. Her skin was soft enough. A stranger would never have guessed that she’d used up more than half of her thirties.
She stayed in the shower long after she’d rinsed off, enjoying the warmth, and then she stepped out onto a plush teal rug, water streaming off her. The mirror and fixtures were fogged. She wrapped a towel around herself and wandered into the closet connected to the guest bathroom, dripping on the carpet among a hundred dresses, many with their tags still on. This was Rita’s runoff area, for the clothes that wouldn’t fit in her primary closet. Kim thought of her own cramped bedroom closet back in Galesburg, her bulky coats and worn sundresses. She couldn’t have fit another hanger in there, yet she didn’t own one article of clothing she still liked.
Staying in Galesburg had never been the plan, of course, and she thought about this often now — just how she’d wound up where she was. When she’d graduated, the part-time position she’d taken as a senior in college had been offered to her full time. She could still remember how grateful she’d been. She’d wanted money, not more loans. She’d wanted aimless weekends and a little cash to spend, not more Sundays of homework. Her job as an assistant became a job as an adviser. She went as far, those first couple years, as sending off for the grad school applications. Places like Arizona, Oregon. She felt herself envying the professors on campus, with their consuming research, with their peculiar, prized minds. But then she was moved laterally and promoted; she decided to buy a new car, and take a trip to Italy. She was administrating the honors program now, a position of accomplishment. The higher-ups loved her. She had great insurance and a retirement account and summers off. For the last sixteen semesters she’d been making sure all the hottest shots at the school — so many twenty-year-olds with cutesy snow hats and ear buds hanging down their shoulders and knobby knees and cheery jewelry — had the ducks of their futures in a row. The years were coming and going, the seasons slipping past.
She tightened the towel around herself and sat down in a rustic ladderback chair that Rita had, for some reason, put in the bathroom. When Kim had first started visiting her, in her new neighborhood, they had laughed at the fact that Rita had started playing bridge and had joined a book club. They’d laughed at the invitations Rita received to attend Tupperware parties and lingerie parties and other types of parties that weren’t really parties. Now Rita didn’t make excuses. Now these women were simply her friends. These women were fast becoming her old friends. Rita had had Franklin young, a surprise, but becoming a mother hadn’t changed her. It was being around these other mothers, all of them kept women, that had made her different.
Kim got dressed and brushed her teeth and went back down to the kitchen. She entered the walk-in pantry and surveyed a row of cereal boxes, each a version of granola. There was a case of pomegranate juice, unopened bottles of vinegar and marmalade and steak sauce and brown mustard. There was an entire shelf of whole bean coffee. Kim heard footsteps and turned to see Franklin leaning in the doorway of the pantry.
“You’re already getting dirty,” he said.
Kim looked at him neutrally. He’d changed his shirt to a yellow polo. His eyelashes were long and thick like a girl’s.
“It’s like they say how once you’re born, each minute brings you closer to death. After you shower, every minute brings you closer to being filthy. It’s exhausting to think about.”
“Unless you like to shower,” Kim said. “Unless that’s a highlight of your day.”
She brushed past Franklin, getting out of the pantry, and sat at the table. He followed her over. He picked up the soda Kim had left before and drank half of it down with a series of hard glugs. The clouds were clearing off and the sunshine was softening, a reasonable springtime sky prevailing.
“You had me worried there for a minute,” Franklin said.
“How’s that?”
“When I brought up the museum.”
Kim’s bare feet were cold on the tile. She pulled them up under her on the chair.
“I knew you didn’t want to go to the mall,” Franklin continued. “It’s funny, I outgrew hanging out at the mall right around the same time my mom got back into it. We just missed each other. Of course, she prefers the outlet mall and I always went to the proper mall.”
“So is there really a Gauguin assignment?” Kim said. “Or did you make that up?”
“Oh, the assignment exists. It’s just a matter of getting ourselves to do it.” Franklin’s lemonade was still sitting out on the counter, and now he dumped it down the sink. He opened a drawer and found some kind of protein bar, which he ripped open and took a chewy bite of. Kim could smell him now, a combination of ordinary scents — clean laundry, lotion, unwashed hair.
“Do you ever miss your old house?” Kim asked him.
“All the time,” said Franklin. He was chewing with effort.
“I can’t get used to this one. I’ve been here twice now and it still feels like a bed-and-breakfast.”
“You can get off by yourself in this house. That’s the silver lining. You don’t know anyone else is home.”
Kim felt her stomach growl. She wasn’t going to do anything about it.
“I feel sorry for men who have to live in houses like this,” she said. “It’s a big dollhouse. I feel sorry for you and your dad.”
“Well, sometimes I go weeks without a Dad sighting. He lives at hotels. Not that I don’t like the guy. Not that I’m complaining or anything. Somebody’s got to bring home the bacon.”
“It can’t be good for a man’s soul to have a cutesy mailbox.”
Franklin craned his neck, as if to look out at the mailbox. It couldn’t be seen from where they were sitting.
“Do you have a job?” Kim asked.
“Yeah, right. Me with a name tag, speaking to customers.”
“So what do you do with your time? I’m sure they’re big on extracurricular activities at that school of yours.”
“My time?” Franklin took a moment. “I guess I lose track of it quite a bit.”
“No volunteering with the poor? No socializing?”
“I steal mail sometimes. Speaking of cute mailboxes. That’s something I used to do. That’s pretty much the opposite of volunteering with the poor, huh?” Franklin gave up on his protein bar, or maybe he was only taking a break. He set it on a paper towel on the counter. “It’s not like I never make friends. Girls seem to like me okay. A couple of them.” He lowered his eyes, which were a wan green. Kim could hear the ticking of clocks from other rooms, all slightly off rhythm with each other.
“Full disclosure, I’m suspended right now. From school. My mom doesn’t know. I had my dad talk to the Assistant Dean of Studies and sign the papers and he promised he wouldn’t tell her. I’m suspended this whole week.” Franklin produced a chuckle that didn’t make it past his throat. “Dr. Crantz told me the suspension would be in my file forever and I told him it was important to me to have an interesting file. He didn’t think that was humorous. I told him I wanted my file to be a fun read. I think I saw somebody say that in a movie once. It was pretty lucky I got to say it in real life.”
Franklin insisted on driving. He had a used Audi sedan he was letting go to hell. He’d tried to peel the bumper stickers off it, but you could see where they’d been. The hubcaps were missing. As they walked down the driveway toward the car, which was parked half on the curb, a little boy wearing a loose jersey hopped over a bush from the yard next door and winged a football toward Franklin. Franklin didn’t see it in time to catch it, but he managed to flinch so it wouldn’t hit him in the head. The ball glanced off his forearms and bounced out into the road and came to a stop. Franklin’s face was red. He looked at the boy in exasperation, before taking a breath and regaining his composure. “I’m the quarterback,” the boy declared. He scuttled past them and retrieved the ball from the road, then ran back over to his own yard, leaving them standing there.