Page 60 of Cut Off
Pick Up
ZOE
Jonah Holt’s been pretending he isn’t nervous for the six-minute drive to Dickens Elementary, which would be a lot more convincing if he hadn’t checked his rearview mirror eleven times to look at the empty backseat where his son will be sitting.
I’m counting. What can I say?
“You realize we’re gonna be early, Jonah.”
He pulls into a pickup spot. “We’re not early.”
“I could knit a sweater.”
He’s wearing a navy hoodie and a baseball cap pulled low, and despite all that, he is still, unmistakably, six-foot-two of obvious. His attire is fooling no one.
But…
Eli asked him to come to pickup.
The first time. After fourteen days of Jonah hovering at the kitchen counter at two -forty-five p.m., pretending toscroll his phone while I grabbed my keys. Fourteen days of “Tell him I said hi.” Fourteen days of the man tracking his son’s phone during school dismissal time. And then last night, over spaghetti, the kid said, mouth half full: “You can come tomorrow if you want.”
Jonah’s fork had stopped midair. I’d almost cried into my noodles. Jonah said, “Yeah, okay, sure,” like it was nothing.
So now we are painfully early.
We climb out of the SUV, the afternoon sun slanting through the maples on Cedar Avenue and turning everything pumpkin-colored. “You don’t have to do anything except just be a guy with a face.”
“A guy with a face.”
“Well, your own face.”
He huffs out something that’s almost a laugh.
We post up by the flagpole. A handful of moms already cluster near the kindergarten door, and one of them does a double take so violent, I’m worried for her neck. Jonah pretends not to notice. I pretend not to notice him pretending not to notice. The school smells like cut grass and the ghost of cafeteria pizza, and somewhere, a kickball is bouncing off a wall in steady thumps.
“What if he gets embarrassed?” Jonah’s eyes zero in on the side doors where Eli will exit.
“He’s got a friend or two now. He got the lead in a play. He’s a badass, he’ll be fine.”
“I’m so happy he got the lead.” Jonah jams his hands into his pockets. “And I hope he meant this offer.”
I bump my shoulder into his arm because I can’t reach his actual shoulder without a stepladder. “He told you to come, and he doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean.”
“True.”
I shrug. “He’s also always right. He and I spent twenty minutes debating whether a hot dog is technically a taco because of the structural starch. I Googled it, and he was right.”
That earns me a real laugh, short then gone again. He tugs the brim of his cap.
The bell rings.
Kids spill out in waves: the kindergarteners in a teacher-led crocodile line, the second graders shrieking, the older kids ambling out trying to look bored. Backpacks bigger than torsos. A million little high-tops. A boy carrying a paper-mâché volcano with one hand and a juice box with the other.
Jonah scans. I scan.
The fourth graders come out in a clump near the side door—Eli’s teacher, Ms. Lark, guides each child toward each parent. She's the kind that doesn’t miss details. She’s smiling, and I know she’s ticking off names in her head. Kids peel off to cars, crossing guards, and the little knot of waiting parents. The clump thins. The clump thins more. The clump is now four kids. Now two. Now—
Now Ms. Lark is looking at us, then down at her clipboard with the furrow of a woman who doesn’t make mistakes, but somehow has.
