Lilac Mines by Cheryl Klein

not to sound insulted, Felix says, “Sure, I guess.”
    â€œYou can take longer if you want.”
    â€œNo, no, it’s fine.”
    They wait in silence for the waitress to put out her cigarette and give them the bill.
    Coal has a vet appointment Monday afternoon, and Anna Lisa asks Felix to drive the poodle to Lilac Mines Elementary, where Anna Lisa is on duty for summer day camp. Then they’ll all go to the vet together. Felix would like to be treated as a bit more of a guest, but she tries to pretend that this is Europe and she is one of those travelers who forgoes snapping pictures in front of the Eiffel Tower for picking grapes at a vineyard with locals and fellow adventurers, the ones who want the real experience. Eva could be tangled in vines right now, scratches on her arms, Frenchmen flirting with her. Germany is a beer country, but if Kate’s on tour, they could have moved on.
    Eva, I know you made your decision. You made that really clear, Felix emailed before she left. Not to get all psychobabble on you, but I need some closure—can you just write back and let me know how you’re doing? As for me, some crazy shit has been going down. If there’s any way that you could give me a call, that would be cool.
    She hit “send” and the message zipped into the abyss, along with her where-are-yous and her what-is-it-about-Kates and her do-you-think-there’s-a-chances. The arc of her breakup floats somewhere in cyberspace.
    In this case the “real experience” involves chasing Coal, who wants to play with a chewed-up tennis ball, around the house until she can lasso him with a nylon leash. Coal looks like a dog who would relish riding in a Volkswagen, but he growls and twists and distracts. By the time he’s inside, he’s covered in dust, as are Felix’s silver-studded jeans.
    The school looks like most schools, gray and fortress-like, and Felix feels her outsider status acutely among the waist-high children jumping rope and greeting parents. She’s drawn to the one unique feature of the donut-shaped campus, the one-room schoolhouse in the middle of the schoolyard. Maybe because it’s older than her. A bronze plaque announces that this is the original Lilac Mines School, built in 1881. But a length of chicken wire stretched across the schoolhouse’s sagging porch tells her that this bit of history is for looking, not touching.
    â€œI never knew there would be so much paperwork in divorce,” an older woman’s voice is saying. Felix rounds the corner of the nurse’s office and finds a big woman in an honest-to-God muumuu talking to her aunt. A wispy little boy sits on the bed across the room, gnawing on the pale pink sheet. Anna Lisa is refilling a jar of Q-Tips. The smell of rubbing alcohol makes Felix queasy.
    â€œYou hear about ’divorce papers.’ You hear people say, ’I got the final divorce papers’ and you think, y’know, it’s just a symbol,” the woman booms. Her thin hair is pulled into a tight bun that seems to anger the rest of her head. “You figure they’re really happy or sad about their divorce. But it’s not true, Anna Lisa, it really is the paper that makes you sad, the paper that makes you happy when it’s the last one. You know your marriage is over long before anyone says ’divorce,’ so all that’s left to torture you is paper, paper, paper!” She throws up her flabby arms in a gesture Felix finds embarrassing.
    Anna Lisa looks up from her cotton swabs and sees Felix and Coal. “Blanca, this is my niece, up from L.A. till Halloween. Felix, this is Blanca Randall. And her grandson, Telly.”
    â€œTelly’s in a little bit of trouble,” Blanca stage-whispers. She winks, but Felix doesn’t know what the joke is. She does not want to be complicit with Blanca Randall; in the minute Felix has observed her, Blanca appears to be the exact