I’d Know You Anywhere

How dare you? What are you thinking? What are you up to? She found herself dialing-okay, furiously poking-the ten numbers that she had managed to commit to memory without even trying, this at a time when she could barely remember an errand from room to room. The phone rang and rang and rang and rang. She imagined the house in which it rang, a house with a husband, maybe children. A happy house. That was privilege.

How dare she. How dare she.

28

ISO WAS GROUNDED. GIVEN THAT this was a first for her, it was also a first for Eliza and Peter, who were still trying to work out how to define the punishment. They allowed her to play soccer, because they had rationalized that Iso’s transgressions should not punish the entire team. (Although her team was quite good, its bench was a little thin, and Iso’s nonparticipation could force them into forfeits.) She was permitted to watch television, but only programs that other family members chose. Eliza hoped that this would at least lure Iso out of her bedroom, force her to interact with her family. Finally, they had taken her phone away and limited her computer time, but Iso said she needed to use the Internet for some of her homework, and she appeared to be telling the truth.

Appeared to be was the key phrase. For Iso, while now an exemplary citizen at North Bethesda Middle School, had been caught lying about her after-school activities. She had told Eliza that she and a classmate needed to go to the library on a Saturday to research a project; the other girl’s mother would pick them up and bring them home. Eliza had checked with the other mother, not out of suspicion but caution. If Iso had garbled the message in any way, two young girls might be left waiting in front of the library at dusk. Granted, they would be in supersafe Bethesda, almost within walking distance of the Benedicts’ house. But Eliza wanted to be sure she wasn’t imposing on the other mother.

“The library?” The mother, Carol DeNadio, had a warm, throaty voice and laugh. “I wish Caitlin wanted to spend Saturday afternoon at the library. No, I was going to drop them off at Montgomery Mall.”

Eliza, caught off guard, embarrassed and humiliated that Iso had set her up this way, blurted out: “Is that safe?”

“The Montgomery Mall? Safe as anywhere, I suppose. Especially when the girls are together in their gaggle. Iso has lovely ma

“Th-th-th-thank you.”

“I suppose that’s from living in England? Or maybe you’re just a better mother than I am.” The latter was said with breezy self-deprecation. “But, seriously, I’ve been dropping Caitlin off there since she was eleven. I give her three hours and strict instructions. She’s not allowed to leave the mall, and there will be hell to pay if she’s not at our meeting point. Also, her phone has to be on, and she has to take my calls. Screen me, and she loses the privilege.”

It certainly sounded harmless enough. So why had Iso lied about it?

“I didn’t think you would give me permission,” Iso said, her eyes focused on a spot on her bedroom wall, somewhere between her parents’ heads. The wall, by Iso’s choice, was a pale, pale lavender.

“We certainly won’t now,” Peter said. “You know how we feel about lying, Iso.”

She sighed. “Yes, it’s the one thing we must never do.” Parroted back in a tone that bordered on mockery, as if it were ridiculous, this mania for truthfulness.

“Why did you think we would prohibit it?” Eliza was genuinely puzzled.

“Because you’re always blah, blah, blah, shopping is evil, the more stuff you buy, the bigger your carbon footprint, blah, blah, blah. And when I want to go to McDonald’s, I have to hear the whole Fast Food Nation thing, E. coli and worms in my stomach, whatever.”

“It’s true, shopping for shopping’s sake is a bad habit,” Peter said. “As for hamburgers, I think if you’re going to eat one, you should eat a really good one.”

“The really good ones, the ones you like, are at restaurants and cost eight dollars. At McDonald’s, I can get a full meal for less than five dollars.”

Eliza did find this amusing, father and daughter in a discussion over relative economics, the cost of values. Peter was willing to pay for taste. Iso wanted quantity. It wasn’t that far removed from Peter’s work at his firm, where they were banking on the idea that people with certain values would be drawn to their investment tools, even if they could get faster, better results through other companies.

“Let’s not get derailed by hamburgers,” she said. “The fact is that you lied to me, Iso, and we can’t have that. You have to be punished. By the way, if you had asked me, I probably would have been okay with you going to the mall. My own parents were very strict about that when I was young. They had a lot of blanket rules about how I was allowed to spend my time, and I resented it. You couldn’t pay me to go to a mall now for recreation. But when I was fourteen, it was all I wanted to do.”

“Really? Gra

“Not about most things. They merely hated the idea of the mall.”

“But things were safer when you were young, right? You had a lot more freedom.”

Iso’s comment wasn’t meant to provoke. She was just repeating something she had heard or intuited. The world used to be so safe. No, that wasn’t a sentiment she was likely to have picked up at home. Eliza found the current culture of paranoia a good cover for her. She could be careful about her children without anyone thinking she was odd or strict.

“Iso, you’re grounded,” Peter declared. “For two weeks.”

“What does that mean?”

Several days in, they were still trying to figure that out. Could Iso walk Reba? That was a tricky one. It was nice to see Iso taking an interest in the dog and volunteering to do an essential task, but also unusual. “If you take Albie,” Eliza had decreed. Iso decided she didn’t want to walk Reba after all. Could she call a friend about homework? Only if she did it from the kitchen telephone, within earshot. If Albie was watching television and Iso joined him in the family room, could Iso at least mention to him that there was probably a better program? No. Because Albie would give Iso anything she wanted.

It was true, Albie was a completely indiscriminating television watcher. Today was Sunday, a gray, drizzly one that managed to be at once humid and chilly. Peter had gone into the office, and Eliza was trapped in the house with Albie and Iso. That was the problem with having a child under house arrest. One had to stay with her. Early in the afternoon, the three found themselves in the family room, regarding one another warily. A game? They couldn’t agree on one. A jigsaw puzzle? Iso couldn’t be bothered with anything that uncool. Books? Even Albie seemed to find this appalling. Eliza grabbed the remote and turned it to the only cha

Mist-shrouded mountains, clearly a set, rose into view. Gene Kelly, Van Johnson-“Oh, it’s Brigadoon,” Eliza said. “That’s a wonderful movie.”

Albie, who probably would have watched a test pattern without complaint, crawled onto the sofa and nestled into Eliza’s side, and she tried not to show how overwhelmingly happy this made her. Iso lay on the floor, chanting, “BOR-ing.” But eventually Gene Kelly caught her attention.

“I don’t get it,” Albie said. “How does the town sleep for a hundred years?”

“It’s magic,” Eliza said.

“But that fu