Savages

52

When O gets home, Eleanor is pulling out of the driveway again.

Seems like that chick is always pulling out of driveways.

When O goes into the house, Paqu sits her down in the living room for a

Serious Talk.

“Darling girl,” she says, “we need to have a serious talk.”

Which for O is like

Uh-oh.

“Are you breaking up with me?” she asks, sitting on the sofa cushion where Paqu has patted her hand to indicate that she should sit.

Paqu doesn’t get it. She leans closer to O, her eyes get all soft and misty, she takes a deep breath and says, “Darling, I need to tell you that Steve and I have decided to pursue our separate destinies.”

“Who’s Steve?”

Paqu takes O’s hand and squeezes it. “Now, this doesn’t mean that we don’t love you. We do—very much. This has nothing to do with you and … it is not … your … fault … you do understand that, don’t you?”

“Oh God, is he the pool guy?”

O likes the pool guy.

“And Steve is going to stay in town, you can see him anytime you want, this won’t change your relationship.”

“Are we talking about Six?”

Paqu blinks. “Steven—your stepfather?”

“If you say so.”

“We tried to make it work,” Paqu says, “but he was so unsupportive of my life coaching and Eleanor said that I shouldn’t be with a man who isn’t supportive of my goals.”

“Six is unsupportive of your life coach coaching you to leave him,” O says. “What an asshole.”

“He’s a very nice man, it’s just that—”

“Is this an L Word thing, Mom? Because Eleanor strikes me as a little—”

Dykey.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, O thinks. She and Ash have done some quasi-lesbo things under the influence of grass, X, and each other, but it really isn’t their permanent thing, just sort of an emergency measure like Popsicles when you really want ice cream but the store is closed and that’s all that’s in the freezer.

Or maybe it’s the other way around, metaphorically speaking.

She tries to imagine Paqu going down, strapping on a tool belt, or being femme to Eleanor’s butch, but the image is scoop-your-own-eyes-out-with-a-grapefruit-spoon creepy and twenty-thousand-hours-in-therapy-and-you’re-still-messed-up wrong so she gives it up.

As Paqu gently intones, “So Steve is moving out.”

“Can I have his room?”