Page 30 of Work with Me

Mom remained silent.

“I don’t even get to go out for recess most days,” Noah grumbled. “My teacher makes me stay inside to finish my work.”

“You’re missing recess?” My voice was too high, too loud. I reached for my water and gulped it down.

“Yeah.”

I shook my head. “Then I think—”

“I’ll tutor him,” Esmy interrupted me. “After school, I’ll work with him on his homework.”

“Esmy—” Mom began.

“No, Diane. I want to do this. So he can keep playing soccer.”

Mom stood and picked up Esmy’s plate, then hers.

“Noah,” I said, “if Grandma Esmy does this for you, you need to take it seriously. We’ll give it a few weeks, and if we’re not seeing improvement, we’ll talk again about soccer. Understand?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Grandma Esmy.”

She patted his hand. “Put your plate in the dishwasher, and then we can start.”

I got out a container for the leftover veggie balls and started scooping them in. Mom ran water in the sink. Even the rushing water sounded angry. “I’ll take care of it, Mom. You cooked, I’ll clean.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the kitchen table, where Noah had opened a workbook. She said in a low voice, “I don’t normally like to get involved in your parenting. You’re his guardian, after all.”

“You still can’t let that go. After six years.”

“Nope.”

Mom and Esmy helped us a lot, even welcoming us both into their home. But Melissa had made Noah my responsibility, not Mom’s.Thanks, sis.I set the container on the counter, more forcefully than I’d intended. “But what, Mom?”

“I agree with Esmy. Noah needs to run and play. He’s only ten.”

“Mom, I—” I stopped myself. What was I going to tell her? That maybe if she’d been sitting in the too-small chair at that inquisition, she’d have threatened to pull him out of soccer, too? That I agreed he should run and play like other kids, but that other kids weren’t failing language arts and in danger of being held back? That the last thing poor Noah needed was another reason to be the object of ridicule at school?

In the end, I said something that was more honest than I’d intended. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

She gave me a sad smile. “Sweetie, no matter what anyone says, none of us knows what we’re doing. You have to take it a day at a time and do the best you can. I sure as hell didn’t know what I was doing, pregnant at seventeen and married to someone I didn’t love. But Melissa turned out okay. You did, too.”

We’d never been hugging types, so I patted her arm as I walked to the refrigerator.

“Alicia, I think your phone’s dinging,” Esmy called out.

“Dinging or buzzing?” I asked.

“Definitely dinging. Oh. You know what? It sounds like that song, ‘You’re So Vain.’ Who sang that, querida?”

“Carly Simon,” Mom hollered back.

“Oh, boy,” was the G-rated interjection I used as I passed by Noah.

“Shit,” was what I muttered when I dug my phone out of my satchel and confirmed it was a text from Jackson. Had he found another bug? I knew we should have kept up the pair programming, but I couldn’t take another one of his condescending corrections. He was usually kind about it, but did he always have to be right?

I leaned against the dryer and read his text.

Jackson: Hey

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