Savages

29

When O gets up that morning (okay, afternoon), she looks out the window and sees a tall woman with close-cropped silver hair get into a BMW and pull out of the driveway.

“Who was that?” O asks Paqu when she walks into the kitchen to look for the Cocoa Puffs that Paqu has probably thrown out. (O hijacks the shopping list that Paqu gives Maria and adds items like Cocoa Puffs, Lucky Charms, Hostess CupCakes, self-heating lubricating gel, and Jimmy Dean sausage biscuits. But then Paqu goes on patrol in the pantry and throws these things out, save for the gel, which O whips into her room the second Maria comes back with the groceries.)

“That’s Eleanor, my life coach,” Paqu says. “She’s wonderful.”

“Your . . .”

“Life coach.”

This is just 2G2BT. This makes O really happy. Her skin gets all tingly as she asks, “Just what does a life coach actually do, Mom?”

Sure enough, Paqu gave the Puffs the heave, so O has to settle for Frosted Mini-Wheats, then scans the fridge for real, actual milk, not the skimmed or 1 percent shit that Moms insists on stocking when she’s not completely antidairy, which is apparently now, so O pours the cereal into a bowl and eats it dry, with her fingers, a small measure of revenge.

“Well, Eleanor thinks I have the makings of a life coach myself,” Paqu answers, placing some flowers into a tall, skinny vase. “So she’s going to help me actualize that potential.”

The potential actualization of that potentiality gets O even zingier. “So your life coach is coaching you to be a life coach.”

So you can coach other people to be life coaches. O almost hustles out the door right then because she just can’t wait to report this circle jerk of life coaching to Ben (Ben’s coming home!) and Chon.

Paqu ignores the question. “She’s truly amazing.”

“What happened to the skin-care product thing?”

“Superficial, don’t you think?” Paqu looks at the flower arrangement and smiles with self-satisfaction. Then she has a revelation. “Darling! You could study to be a life coach, too! Then we could be mother-and-daughter life coaches!”

“But then you’d have to come clean that you have a daughter over the age of ten,” O says, shoveling Mini-Wheats into her mouth.

Paqu peruses her with what O guesses is meant to be life coach–level discernment.

“Of course, you’d have to do something about that hair,” Paqu says. “And the … ‘body art.’”

“Maybe I could start as a ‘life cheerleader.’”

Rah.