‘Cool, man. I’ll bring my bong.’
This – just this – was why she was here. To be a college student! Well, not really one of them, but to be immersed in their world for a few hours a week. And to eventually join the elite tribe her husband belonged to of college graduates. Milly stood straight, balancing on her right leg, left foot hardly touching the ground, her backpack nonchalantly over one shoulder like all the younger students. She noticed that her right hand had found its way to the back of Harold’s chair.
‘It’s electric,’ he said. ‘I don’t need pushing.’
‘Oh! Of course. I probably couldn’t really, anyway.’
‘Let’s have a coffee,’ he said abruptly. ‘Do you have time? Let’s go to Café Olé, my treat.’
His chair began to whir down the hall, towards the ramped doors, but then the doors flew open and a group of boys in identical athletic shirts rushed in. So many robust bodies! Harold looked up at her – he had to look up at her – and smiled.
‘You okay? They’ll be gone in a minute. Hold on to my chair if you like.’ He swivelled to provide a protective barrier.
She felt them rush past, all that youth and carelessness, and she shivered because she was about to sit in a café with a man not her husband. She looked round at the boys, and they were good-looking, of course, but all their noses were small.
‘Right,’ said Harold. ‘You ready? Let’s go.’
‘Yeah, let’s go,’ she echoed.
And just like that, aged fifty, with her oestrogen ebbing daily and rogue hairs appearing on her chin, and her breasts finally grown large, Milly MacAlister was smitten. Like a sudden bee sting, or a clap of thunder. She felt nauseous and stunned. It turned out that loving Jack had not inoculated her from loving another man after all. It must be a different kind of virus, she found herself thinking, having spent years charting her children’s cold and flu bugs. She knew you didn’t catch the same virus twice, but the world was heaving with other viruses, and the same viruses mutating. It was inevitable to be infected again. Wasn’t it?
Jack didn’t seem to care about avoiding infection. You think he would, after Colette. Her husband, the philanderer. But unlike him, she’d never go that far. Goodness me, how foolish that would be! No one could help getting a crush, but there was no excuse for acting on it. None whatsoever. Wives who had affairs were just plain tacky. These thoughts took two seconds, while she walked lopsidedly to the café. During the second cup of coffee – and she didn’t even like coffee – Harold brought her thumping to the ground with:
‘My wife likes to bake muffins. Chocolate chip. But she’s begun putting all sorts of weird healthy stuff in them. Seeds. Wheat germ. Brewer’s yeast. Yech. You ever tasted carob? Disgusting.’
Wife! Of course, but why did he have to say it?
‘I like muffins to be sweet and fattening, myself,’ she said. She gobbled up the last of her muffin, to demonstrate her sensual appetite.
‘Ditto.’
‘My kids all have sweet tooths,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t sound right, does it? Sweet teeth? No, not right either.’
Harold smiled, then he waved the waitress over and ordered two more muffins.
‘My husband likes muffins too,’ said Milly, lobbing the word husband casually. Well, it was only fair. A spouse for a spouse.
‘Is he a student here too?’
She laughed. ‘Jack? No! He graduated twenty-five years ago. Four of our kids are away at college. Well, our son and daughter and our two nephews, who’ve lived with us for years. They’re all over the state, no one chose the same college.’
‘Goodness. Four.’
‘Still have one at home. Billy. He’s ten.’
‘Five!’
Milly considered mentioning seven-year-old August. They were seeing quite a lot of him these days, since Colette got remarried.
‘Do you have kids?’
‘Nope!’ he said with gusto. Then a quieter, ‘No.’
‘Oh. Smart thinking.’ Floundering. She wished she could shirk the kids immediately, join Harold in his childfree world.
‘Well, we did have one, but she was stillborn.’
‘Oh, no! I’m so sorry. We had a baby that died too,’ she rushed in, relieved.
He looked out the window at the traffic in the drizzle. She did too. A woman crossed the road pushing a shopping cart full of what looked like wet rags. She wore three coats over a pair of jeans, and a headband with rain-sodden feathers. Others quickly walked round her, with umbrellas and rain coats. Milly sighed and felt guilty for using poor Charlie as a social lubricant. She hadn’t mentioned him to a stranger in years. What kind of woman was she? She pictured his dinosaur sleep suit, which instantly invoked genuine grief.
‘Do you have a degree already, or is this your first?’
‘My first,’ she said, heavily.
‘Want to catch up, eh?’
‘Sort of. At first I just thought it would…’
‘Be fun?’
‘Improve things.’
Jack had not stopped her, but he hadn’t exactly encouraged her either. He treated her classes like a cute housewifely hobby. College of Marin was not a university, and everyone knew an Associate degree was a nothing degree. Last night, when he called to her from the sofa asking if there was any beer, she’d answered in her preoccupied voice: ‘I’ll check as soon as I finish this.’ He’d walked into their bedroom, and there she’d been, her forehead wrinkled in concentration, her right hand scribbling notes. He’d blinked and left.
‘I just wanted to…to improve myself,’ Milly said to Harold. ‘See if I could do it. Sounds silly, doesn’t it?’
‘Not at all. I want to, as well. Learn. Go on learning. But I keep daydreaming in class, and I’m not finding it very easy to study at home either.’
