I feel like I should have some sort of update on finding Millie at the start of every entry, but it has proved frustrating hard to find her, and writing all the "this is a new experience" things that I did almost twenty years ago feels frivolous. And yet I feel I should do this more often, if only so that she can get some sort of update if she is reading the blog. Heck, I have recently been given an ironic reminder of how important such updates are.
So, let's go back a couple of weeks to Labor Day. We'd purchased tickets for the Red Sox game months ago, and while it seemed strange to go as father and daughter rather than husband and sports-loving wife, let alone have the empty seat where either Millie or Penny was supposed to sit (depending on your point of view), but it was a beautiful day, and both Ray and I decided we needed something like this, especially when the alternative was sitting at home fretting about the imminent start of the school year.
So we went out, and it was a lot of fun. The Sox are probably going to make the playoffs, and there aren't many great teams in the AL, so they may do okay, but, boy, there seem to be a lot of replacement-level guys in the bottom half of the order that make me feel like they'll be exposed there unless Anthony's back. We'll see.
We were still talking baseball when we arrived back at the apartment and heard noises inside. Ray put his hand out to keep me from moving forward as he opened the door and stepped in, but I kept following him and poked my head around the door, where we saw a woman with her feet up on our coffee table, painting her toenails while CNBC played on the TV. She smiled, slightly, upon seeing us, which was unsettling, because she had my face.
"Ah, you're back. As you can see, I let myself in with the key you left me." She made a motion to fan her feet and then stood, striding over to Ray and extending a hand. "You must be Raymond Lee. I'm Harmon Keller, and I'll be your wife Penelope for the next few months." Ray gave a numb, half-hearted shake, and she turned to me. "And you must be - well, not the real Penelope, but the previous one. We've met, briefly, once or twice, though to meet again under these circumstances... Well, it's something, isn't it?"
Ray made a grunting noise. "It sure is. Maybe something non-coincidental?"
She put her hand on her chest. "Why, Mister Lee, whatever would make you think that? I'll have you know that I made my reservation several months ago! It's a good thing I only had the vaguest of plans, or I should be very cross with you!"
My turn. "And why did you make that reservation? It seemed like you had a good thing going."
"Well, I did, I suppose. But a few months ago, I got promoted to purser, and I realized that it was probably as far as Alicia Polawski could go. She wasn't getting promoted to ground-based management, the YouTube channel was barely monetized, acting wasn't happening, and on the other side of thirty, it's not as if some pilot or first-class passenger is going to court me and let me retire to be a housewife. So, it was time to start again." She smiled wider. "But don't worry - I'm not looking to be a mother, or even a woman, long-term. As well as you've maintained yourself, I wasn't looking to gain ten years overnight. Your life is simply a stepping-stone."
"Uh... thanks?"
"I know, that sounds harsh, but isn't that what you were hoping to hear?" Ray and I nodded, reluctantly. I'd kind of been counting on the new Penelope's decency as opposed to her dissatisfaction, but I suppose that as long as they had the same results, that was fine. "Excellent! Now, for practicalities - I gather the school year starts on Thursday, and we're going to need to figure out sleeping arrangements. There doesn't seem to be a spare bedroom, and I'd rather expected you would have set one up in anticipation. Unless...?"
Ray quickly clarified that, no, he did not intend to sleep with her, and we spend a while moving the couch that opens out into a bed into my home office and the one that doesn't to the living room. We ordered in, made up the bed, and then spent an awkward evening trying to feel.
After that, there were two days to get Harmon ready. She was actually on the pennies those days but was taking photos and texting me questions constantly. Her level of organization was kind of impressive - there's no sign that her brain is full despite being a few decades older than she appears.
Meanwhile, I was trying to cram socially. I'd avoided most of Millie's friends aside from the other girls taking tennis lessons, although they weren't really who I worked about; this past month aside, Millie isn't the sort to keep secrets, and I knew most of the people she was close to well enough. It's the rest, the whole school full of classmates she knows by name but barely talks to even though they were in a play together two years ago or were lab partners in a science class or just happen to see a lot because Joe Leonard is next to her in every alphabetically-seated class. With all these kids just turning 13 in the past year or two, they're just now getting social media on their phones, so there's not nearly as much frighteningly-available information as they would be if they were a couple years older. I've had some as students, but that's something else.
So far, I've only gotten a few kids asking "why are you being weird, Mills" - apparently there's a group that calls her "Mills" - and I've been spinning a story about having nightmares since falling asleep on a commuter trail train without my phone's charger and winding up out way in the middle of nowhere, so I'm not getting a lot of sleep. You can chalk up any sort of weird behavior to not getting much sleep, and nobody is going to say "no, actually, the opposite happens", especially tweens who haven't really had anything happen to them.
But more about Millie's friends another day.
The thing that kind of throws me is "Ms. Lincoln". I've known since May that I was going to have Millie in my English class, and we had mostly laid down ground rules back then, but Harmon wasn't in on that and the dynamic is different. She's going out of her way to show that "her daughter" won't be getting any special treatment, and it can be kind of excessive. I know the material - hell, I prepared the lesson plan - so it's not like she can performatively trip me up - but it looks like I'm going to be blamed for any disruption in my general area because I'm "not posting attention". Sure, I do look out the window s bit - I have read these books and am a successful midlist author! - but I'm starting to think that I might as well start to answer texts or just spend the whole period obviously doodling in my notebook if it's going to be like this!
The thing that really annoys me is that she's kind of a good teacher. I'm not a bad one, but the folks who have been at this school for decades are occasionally honest about how I'm doing fairly well for someone who took the job because "midlist author" doesn't pay as well as it used to and will probably leave if I got Netflix money coming in, and that's pretty fair, even before getting into how quickly teachers burn out. But for a guy who hasn't been in a classroom for seven years and probably had the TAs so most of the work then, Harmon engages the kids and has a much better feel for when to go into more detail and when to ask them to see her later. I envy that, a bit.
At home, she's not like that, but it's an odd vibe whether Ray is around or not. She is twenty years or so older than me, so, she tends to talk down to me a bit, and I think she's more comfortable in a teacher-student relationship rather than parent-child or it's being peers. Meanwhile, Ray has just adjusted to it being me in here before she showed up, and not he's having moments where he has to hesitate because I'm dating something as his wife when Harmon is sitting in a chair and looking kind of sexy as she reads her book. Like, I've been a woman longer, but she's been out clubbing and partying, giving of the aura of being available for at least a drink more recently, even at work, I imagine.
I know Ray well enough to trust him and know that he's not going to respond to this, and that we're kind of lucky that it's someone like Harmon who can sort of slip into that part of my life in basically no notice and is apparently much more animated to how the Inn makes prior relationships into something strange than she was at first. Half of me wanting her out of my life and house is probably just wanting Millie back. But I do want her gone already.
- Arthur/Penny/Millie
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