If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Now

by Claire Lazebnik

  “What about these?” I plucked at the pants and top I had on.

  “Fabulous. Get them both. I’m paying.”

  “You don’t need to pay for my clothes.”

  “I know. But since you’re not earning any money, anything you spend comes from Dad and Laurel. And anything I spend still comes from Gabriel. I figure he owes me. Whereas I owe Dad and Laurel for taking me in. You see what I mean?”

  “Not really. Whatever.” But as I went into the dressing room to take off the clothes, I felt vaguely uncomfortable with Melanie’s saying “anything you spend comes from Dad and Laurel.” She was right, of course: I had no money of my own, just a charge card that was billed to my mother. It was slightly shameful and I was slightly ashamed.

  Mom, Dad, and Noah were all in the kitchen when we got back. Dad was eating a sandwich even though it was the middle of the afternoon, and Noah was nibbling on a piece of GF toast. Mom was mixing something at the counter.

  “Hey!” Noah said when we came in and dropped the bags we were carrying on the floor. “I don’t feel sick any—” He stopped mid-word. He stared, his mouth open and noticeably filled with half-chewed bread. “Mom?”

  “Ta-da,” Melanie said.

  My mother turned. Her eyes widened. “Oh, my god,” she said, coming closer. She tapped my father on the shoulder. “Look at Rickie.”

  He looked up from the journal he was reading. It had crumbs and bits of tuna all over the pages. “What?” He squinted at me. “Something’s different.”

  “Of course something’s different,” Mom said impatiently. “She cut all her hair off. All of it.”

  “There’s a little left,” Noah said.

  My father said, “Lovely, Rickie. You look like Audrey Hepburn.”

  “You think? The woman at the barbershop said I looked like Winona Ryder.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know her. But you’re pretty the way Audrey Hepburn was pretty—those big eyes and long neck and all.”

  “Did you have to cut it all off?” my mother asked. I shifted under her gaze. How many times had she studied me like that? How many times had she sighed and then turned away, her disappointment plain to see? Sure enough, she sighed and moved back toward the counter. “At least all that awful color is gone,” she muttered.

  “I’m thinking about putting in some streaks.” I hadn’t been until that moment. I mean, there was a period when I was doing crazy stuff to my hair but I’d stopped a while ago and didn’t really want to do it again.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  Which of course instantly made me want to paint my hair all sorts of bright colors and make myself look like something out of a punk rocker’s wet dream.

  Maybe I was getting older, though, because as soon as I had that thought I also thought, But then I’ll look like an idiot.

  At some point I had to stop doing things to annoy my mother.

  No, wait—I had to stop doing things to annoy my mother that I didn’t want to do. No reason to stop doing the ones I enjoyed.

  “What do you think, Noey?” I asked, turning to him.

  “You don’t look like you,” he said thoughtfully. “But you look kind of cool.”

  “I like that,” I said. “I like looking cool.”

  “We got lots of new clothes for her too,” Melanie said.

  “Oh, thank god,” said my mother. I glared at her, but she either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

  Melanie and I had to report back to the Event Hospitality Committee about the caterers we’d called and met with over the previous couple of weeks—or, more accurately, the caterers she’d called and met with and then told me about. But I figured I had done my part by listening to her go on about it all.

  To my amazement, the next meeting was scheduled to take place at Marley Addison’s house.

  “Really?” I said to Melanie when she told me. “Really? She’s never come to a single meeting but she’s hosting one?”

  “I can’t wait to see her house, can you?” Her eyes were bright with excitement.

  “Where is it?”

  “On Maple Drive, one of those huge mansions with the gates that you need security clearance just to drive by.” Her face fell. “Actually, Gabriel said Sherri just bought a house on that same street. A smaller one—she’s not as successful as Marley.”

  “Not as talented, either.”

  “I hope this is the last steady job she gets,” Melanie said with a viciousness I’d never seen from her before. “I hope her house goes into foreclosure.”

  “I hope she gets an STD and it goes into her brain and she dies,” I said.

  She touched my arm. “You’re a good sister.”

  “I know.”

  We didn’t actually need security clearance to drive down Marley’s street, but we did get stopped at the gate, where a guard asked to see Melanie’s driver’s license. Funny how nervous that kind of thing can make you—both of us were tense and silent as we drove up the long driveway to a huge flat parking pad where a few other familiar cars were already parked. The house wasn’t as enormous as I expected, but the landscaping was stunning.

  “This is so exciting!” Mel said, clutching my arm as we walked up to the front door.

  “Really?” I said. “Just because she’s a celebrity? So is Sherri, you know, and she’s a jerk.”

  “I don’t care. I’m still excited about being in Marley Addison’s house.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  A beautiful young woman with perfect hair wearing linen pants and a silk tank top answered the door and for a moment I actually thought it was Marley herself—she had the same fair coloring and long layered haircut and even similar features—but then she held out her hand and said, “Hi, I’m Cori, Marley’s assistant. Come on in!” I wondered if Marley had hired her because they looked so much alike, or whether it was some kind of creepy stalker thing where Cori was transforming herself over time into looking more and more like her boss and would one day kill her and take her place and no one would even notice except for Marley’s kid, who would tell people “That’s not really my mother!” and no one would believe him.

  Or maybe it was just a coincidence.

  Cori led us down a huge hallway lined with paintings. “Marley’s been stuck in a meeting all morning and still isn’t back. She said you should all go ahead and enjoy the snacks and get started and she’ll get here as soon as she possibly can.”

  Gee, what a shocker. The A-list movie star hadn’t cleared her schedule for the Event Hospitality Committee after all.

  Tanya and Carol Lynn and Maria were already in the living room.

  “Wow,” Melanie said as we entered. And wow it was. All of the houses that we’d had meetings in had been nicely decorated. But this room was perfect: someone with an impeccable eye for color and design had put together that bright pink ottoman and dark green chair because they shouldn’t have gone together but they did, in some profound and soul-delighting way. The whole room was like that. In a million years, I couldn’t have mixed the fabrics, colors, and styles the way they were mixed, and knowing that I would never have the guts or knowledge to decorate like that made me feel strangely sad, like a door was shut to me that would never open no matter how long or hard I knocked at it. This was how famous and powerful people lived, the ones who were richer than 99.9 percent of the world, and normal folk like us, who were merely richer than 99.6 percent of the world, could only envy them.

  Maria was hovering over a sideboard covered with platters of food and dominated by a large silver coffee urn. “I can’t get over this spread.”

  “I’m so glad you like it!” Cori said. “Marley left the choice up to me and I just love Clementine’s pastries, so that’s what I got. Is there anything else I can get you ladies?”

  “We’re great, thank you,” Tanya said. She was already seated and, as usual, peering at her BlackBerry screen like it held the secrets of the universe. “We really appreciate this.”

  “It’s
our pleasure,” Cori said. “Go ahead and start your meeting—Marley will be here soon. And don’t hesitate to give a shout if you need anything. I won’t be far.” She gave a little wave and left the room.

  “Oh, my god!” The exclamation came from Maria, who had just turned around, plate in hand, and was staring at me. “You cut your hair! I thought it was just pulled back at first. But you chopped it all off!”

  Now everyone was looking at me.

  “Oh, my god, that takes courage,” said Carol Lynn from the sofa where she’d been scrolling through some application on her iPhone. “I mean, it’s adorable, but…” She gulped theatrically.

  “You should wear more makeup now,” Maria said, squinting at me thoughtfully. “Outline your eyes, make them really stand out. That would totally work with this. And you’re still young enough to use color on your eyelids.”

  “She looks great,” Tanya said with an air of summation, clearly more interested in the conversation’s ending than in the haircut. “Let’s start the meeting.”

  Melanie settled in the other armchair. I stayed on my feet to study the food options. There were a lot of them.

  “So how was the fifth-grade campout?” Maria asked Tanya as she sat down on the sofa next to Carol Lynn.

  “Wonderful.”

  “Really? I heard two boys threw up.” Carol Lynn was wearing running shorts. You could literally see her thigh muscles contract every time she crossed her legs or uncrossed them—there was no fat to obscure them. “I also heard that a girl had some kind of middle-of-the-night freak-out and was screaming in her tent so loudly she woke up all the other kids.”

  “It was just a bad dream,” Tanya said.

  Carol Lynn’s eyes widened. “So it’s all true?”

  “There are always a few hitches,” Tanya said stiffly. “Overall, it was a lovely weekend.”

  “God, I’m glad I wasn’t there,” Maria murmured audibly to Carol Lynn, who laughed.

  Tanya cleared her throat and shuffled some papers. “Okay, so… The good news is that I think we’ve figured out the napkin situation, thank you, Carol Lynn. Now for the biggie. Food. How’d you two do?” She looked at Melanie, well aware which of us was the responsible adult.

  Melanie had printed up the menus that all three caterers had e-mailed us and made copies for everyone, which she now quickly passed out. “These are on recycled paper,” she said.

  “Good girl,” said Tanya approvingly. She studied the pages, flicking each one aside after she had read it. For a few moments, the only sound in the room was the rustling of the pages—and the noises I made as I poured myself some coffee and heaped my plate with scones, fresh fruit, and jams. I didn’t need to look at the estimates; Melanie had already made me look at them too many times as she agonized over which one we should recommend to the rest of the committee.

  “Only one of them was willing to make the lamb chops for our budget,” she explained now to the others once they had finished reading. “But the rest of the meal suffered for that. The others offered more variety but no lamb chops. So I’m a little torn.”

  “Let’s go with this one.” Tanya waved a page. “Crackerjack Catering. But tell them to substitute something else for the soup. I hate when they serve soup in those spoons and call it finger food. Soup is not a finger food.”

  “Hear, hear!” Maria said. “It’s time someone stood up against that insanity.” Tanya narrowed her eyes, and Maria said quickly, “I’m serious. I hate that too.” Tanya returned her attention to Mel, and Maria gave me an amused got out of that one look behind her back. I grinned at her.

  “I actually kind of liked the third menu best,” Melanie said to Tanya. “From Spicy Girl Catering. I thought she was offering us more for the money and the food seemed a little more interesting and sophisticated.”

  Tanya shook her head. “We need to go with Crackerjack. They know the school and everyone was happy with what they did last year.”

  “But this could be even better,” I said.

  She shot me a look. “And the guy who owns it has a nephew at the upper school. His sister is president of the Parent Association and called me last week to make sure we were using him again.”

  “Why were we checking all those other caterers, then?”

  “I didn’t want it to look like nepotism. We had to be fair and open-minded about this.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “In that case, both Mel and I think that Spicy Girl offers more for the money.” I didn’t really care, but I was mad she’d wasted our time. Well, Melanie’s time.

  “I’ll take that into consideration,” Tanya said flatly.

  Marley never showed. Cori apologized for that as she escorted us all to the front door an hour or so later. “Marley just called to say she feels awful that she got held up and hopes you all understand. And she said to please let us know how we can help out with the event.” She smiled brightly as she ushered us out the door.

  As we strolled toward our cars, sluggish in the midday sunshine, Maria said to me, “I’m so glad Noah came to Austin’s party. And you know who absolutely fell in love with your son?”

  “Who?”

  “Debbie Golden.”

  “Who?” I repeated, just as blankly.

  “Joshua’s mom.”

  “Oh, her! She was really nice.”

  “She’s great,” Maria said. “And Joshua and Noah are two peas in a pod. I’m surprised they haven’t connected before now. But Debbie said Joshua’s been talking about Noah ever since the party. You have to get them together.”

  “Well, now that I know their last name I can actually look them up in the directory,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “And how terrific was Coach Andrew?”

  “He was pretty awesome.” I felt funny as I said it. Like I had some personal stake in how “terrific” Coach Andrew was. Which I didn’t. Did I?

  “Bye.” Maria gave me and Melanie each a peck on the cheek and then walked briskly toward her car, agile despite four-inch high heels that would have slowed me down. She got into a large black Mercedes and drove off.

  “Wait a second,” I said. “Her license plate—I’ve seen her car before.”

  “Yeah, at all the other meetings,” Mel said.

  “No, I mean—” It hit me. “She’s the one who cut me off in car pool a couple of months ago! I was so annoyed—she broke all the rules and then blocked me in.”

  “A lot of people have black Mercedes.”

  “No, it was definitely her. The car had that license plate—and now that I think about it, I can picture her driving. I just didn’t know her back then, but I remember the blond hair and all.” I shook my head. “It was the most piggish thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “But you like her now,” Mel said.

  “I guess. It’s weird. I hate so many things about her but I like her.”

  “You judge people too quickly. If you hadn’t grown up with me, you’d probably hate me because I’m so wishy-washy and boring. You’d think I was pathetic and write me off.”

  “That’s not true. I couldn’t help but like you. No one can.”

  She shook her head. “You’re loyal to everyone who’s close to you, Rickie, and suspicious of everyone you don’t know. I promise you, if you had never met me—”

  “My life would be a tragic waste.” I cut her off in such a mock-dramatic voice that she laughed and thankfully dropped the subject.

  The next Sunday, when I opened the front door in answer to his knock, Andrew took a startled step back. “Holy cow,” he said.

  “That’s a stupid swear,” I said.

  “When did you cut your hair?”

  “Last week.” I touched it self-consciously. “I know it’s extreme.” He studied me so intently that I had to look away. “Well?” I said when I couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “It suits you,” he said and came in the house.

  I wondered what he’d say to Gracie—she of the long, blond flowing tresses—if she showed
up one day with it all cut off. Probably not “It suits you.”

  Nicole and Cameron were joining the coaching session. Mel had dropped them off earlier and gone on to take a yoga class in Brentwood.

  Whenever I looked out the window, the three kids seemed to be having a great time playing with the coach.

  At the end of the hour, Noah ran into the kitchen ahead of the others, shouting, “I totally creamed Cameron in the last game!”

  “You shouldn’t gloat,” Nicole said as she and Cameron followed him in. She was wearing a neat ponytail and a yellow sweatsuit that fit her low in the hips and showed off her little-girl belly bulge—which I loved. “That’s bad sportsmanship.”

  “Sorry.” He whispered to me loudly, “But I totally did!”

  “Who wants a cookie?” I asked diplomatically. I put out the plate of cookies I’d made while they were playing and poured some milk for them and then went out back where Andrew was tossing the last of his equipment into his net bag. “How’d it go?”

  “Terrific. They’re such great kids.”

  “Did Noah really beat Cameron at something? Because that would be a first.”

  The coach grinned. “There may have been a tiny bit of creative scorekeeping.”

  “You cheated?”

  “Not exactly… It’s just that Cameron is so much more athletic than Noah but he’s younger and that’s hard on Noah. He was beating him at everything.” He gave me a sly look. “So I may have engineered things a bit on the last game to make sure Noah would end on a high note.”

  “You seemed so honest.”

  “It’s all an act.” He slung the bag over his shoulder, and we walked back into the house.

  Mom was in the kitchen. She was removing the plate of cookies from the table, over the kids’ protests. “It’s too close to lunchtime,” she said. “You can have more after you’ve eaten a healthful lunch.”

  Cameron appealed to me. “I only had one so far, Rickie. Everyone else had two.”

  “You can have another one.” I took the plate from my mother and let Cameron pick out a cookie. Mom made an annoyed sound, which I ignored. I offered the plate to Andrew.