The Queen Gene by Jennifer Coburn Page A

darling?”
    “I’m not sure.” I thought about it for a moment and remembered my high school Spanish teacher saying that she spilled lunch on her blouse. “Um, I think it’s ‘mancha,’ but it may mean stain, not spot.”
    “Mancha!” Anjoli shouted gleefully. “As in Man from La Mancha ? How could I have been so insensitive, darling? Of course, your name is Mancha.” I realized she was talking to the dog. She returned to me. “Lucy, you are a lifesaver. I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself of denying Mancha his Latino roots.”
    Oh, somehow I’m sure you will, Mother.
    “Mancha, of course you are Mancha!”
    Finally, I saw Jacquie emerge. I ducked down so she wouldn’t see me watching her as she quietly left. No drama. No yelling. She quietly exited and headed for the main road.
    “I hate the artist’s wife,” I told my mother.
    “Is she still shopping nonstop?” Anjoli asked.
    “The only breaks she takes are to complain or fight with her husband,” I returned.
    “So kick her out,” Anjoli suggested.
    “I can’t do that,” I said. “She’d be homeless.”
    “Well, she should start acting like someone who’s on the brink of homelessness.”
    “And how is that, Mother?”
    “Grateful, darling. Only people with money should complain. We’ve earned it.” She paused. “Oh good God! I cannot believe what I’m seeing.”
    “What?! What’s going on?”
    “I’m dying right now. Dying, darling! Call an ambulance because I am really and truly dropping dead.”

Chapter Twelve
    Later that evening, Mancha called me and I could hear that my mother was not only alive and well, but regaling dinner guests with tales of her crisis du jour. “Stop laughing!” Anjoli said playfully. “This is not one bit funny.”
    “Shouldn’t that be one iota, love?” Alfie shot. The group laughed. I didn’t get it.
    As it turns out, NYU will have its first Kappa Alpha Theta sorority house right across the street from Anjoli’s home. What she saw that afternoon was a sign being posted on Mrs. MacIntosh’s old place, the brownstone facing mother’s. Everyone in her dining room was looking at brushed silver letters reading “KAT House.”
    “Like a whorehouse?” asked my mother’s friend Kiki.
    “Sounds like it, doesn’t it?” Anjoli lamented.
    “Imagine how that’s going to affect business here!” Alfie shot.
    “You ought to take your show on the road, Alfie,” Anjoli quipped. “And I mean now, darling.” A crowd of about five or six people laughed and applauded my mother’s advance in the battle of the wits. “It’s Kappa Alpha Theta, and I hear they’re all goddamned adorable. Sixteen of them are moving in this summer. I will simply die from the noise. Mancha, put that down.”
    “Mancha?” a man asked. “Is that what we’re calling him this week?”
    “I realized I needed to acknowledge his heritage,” Anjoli said. “Stop biting!”
    “Here baby, come sit with me,” Kimmy said. “Have you tried doggie massage, Auntie Anjoli? I’m taking a baby massage class.”
    Kimmy had been to Princeton twice this month, which was unusual since she typically only made these road trips while she was ovulating. According to my mother, Kimmy was no longer having sex with random students. She met an anthropology professor she was actually dating. Still, Kimmy held to the notion that she would be pregnant soon. I wondered if she was the only student in baby massage who not only didn’t have a baby, but hadn’t even conceived yet.
    Anjoli was not at all happy with Kimmy’s choice of mate. She hadn’t yet met Nick, but she already knew she didn’t like him. Anjoli griped about his job. “What does one do with a Ph.D. in anthropology?!” Anjoli asked Kimmy and the dinner guests.
    Alfie answered. “He’s an anthropology professor, love! At an Ivy League school. He’s hardly a slacker.”
    “I hate those academic types,” Anjoli said. “So snooty. They think they’re better than