“Yeah,” he said. He tore off a slip of blank receipt paper. “Sorry for the holdup. I just need you to do something for me.”
“Um…” Now the woman was glaring at me. “What’s up? Is the money okay?”
“Oh, yeah, the money’s fine,” he said. He passed me the slip of receipt paper and a pen. “I’m gonna need you to write your number right here.”
There were no words.
I wrote my phone number on the paper and passed it back to him. His hand brushed mine, and he smiled.
“Gotta go,” he said, cocking his head toward the old lady.
“Me too,” I said. When I got into my parents’ car, idling in the fire lane, my hands were still shaky.
He texted me almost immediately, as we were unloading the groceries and Mom was asking what board game we should play. I didn’t expect him to text right away. According to my friends, most guys wait a few days, and I get that—kind of a power play. I’d do the same thing if I had to make the first move. But he didn’t.
is this the girl from the store?
I stood in the kitchen, one hand on the box of strawberries, the other holding my phone. My mom shooed me out of the way, and I sat on the couch, still staring at the screen. After a minute, I texted back.
yeah
But it was just one little word. It didn’t seem like enough. Feeling bold, I added:
what’s your name?
He responded fast. I pictured him standing at the checkout counter, ignoring a customer in favor of me:
ok great didn’t want to text a fake #
Jake, you?
Caroline
do girls usually give you fake #s?
no one ever has
but your so beautiful I bet you get asked all the time
thought you might have a fake one ready for such purposes
And if he didn’t have me already, he had me then. All of me, immediately, in that perfect misspelled compliment. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful.
anyway so Caroline
pretty name for a pretty girl
wanna get coffee sometime?
I nearly fainted.
yeah sure :)
next Saturday?
so far away?
yeah I have school :(
high school?
I panicked. In the kitchen, Mom was unpacking the grocery bags and talking to me about an orange glaze for the fruit salad, but I couldn’t pay attention. I hadn’t even considered that he might not know I was in high school. But there was nothing to do about it. You can’t take that back.
yeah I’m gonna be a junior next year
but very mature for my age :)
I believe it ;)
I’m 18…not too much older
your 16 right?
will be in a few months!
It would have to do. I was trying to think long-term. He’d find out eventually. But still, he took a long, long time to respond. When he did, it was worth it.
you look so mature
in a good way
still up for that coffee?
saturday, 2?
at stomping grounds? it’s near the grocery store
absolutely :)
can’t wait
Mom shook the Sorry! box, startling me into dropping my phone.
“Caroline?” she said, looking at me over the game. “Caroline, who are you texting? Is everything okay?”
I picked up my phone from the floor and dusted the crumbs off it as if it was a treasure. “No one, Mom. Everything’s good.”
“It had to be someone.”
“The kid Lauren’s babysitting is acting up. It was funny.”
The lie slipped out of my mouth so easily it surprised me. I didn’t usually lie to my parents. They never disapproved of my choices, so there was no point. Maybe it was his age, or the fact that we’d only just met—for a few minutes, no less—and I’d agreed to go out with him. They wouldn’t love that. But mostly, I felt like it was a miracle to keep all on my own: if I spoke it out loud, it would disappear.
Now, Mom dries the last plate and puts in the cabinet with a clatter. “Shall we get going, then?” she asks. Dad wanders back into the living room to put away his book, and I go upstairs to get my purse. I text Jake, i miss you. He doesn’t respond.
Getting in the car with my parents, my mom prattling on about how our old yogurt place has gone downhill, I can’t shake this feeling of missing something more than his presence. Missing my stomach dropping out from under me whenever I see him. I still feel like that sometimes. But not all the time, not anymore.
Mom moves on to her standard post-party recap, which she does after every major holiday, the Fourth most of all. She will accept responses from either me or my dad. Both of us staying silent is not an option.
“…and I really think the party went well this year.” She finishes a sentence, takes a deep breath, and launches into the next one. “Brian Michaels was a little uptight, but then again, that’s just his nature. And Doreen is so fun. I don’t know how those two have been married for so long. I shouldn’t question other people’s relationships. But those two. Whew! It’s just hard for a girl to understand.”
“Brian and I had a nice conversation,” Dad says. “I think Doreen is a bit loud for him sometimes.”
“Well,” Mom sighs, “I prefer her to him, but I’m glad you entertained him. I hate seeing wallflowers.”
She meets my eyes in the rearview mirror. “Speaking of, Caroline, you and Georgia spent a lot of the party outside. I was beginning to get worried you wouldn’t come in. But I appreciate you spending all that time talking to Mr. and Mrs. Harold. They’ve missed going to your choir concerts, you know. But he travels so much for work, and she doesn’t like going out alone.”
“It was no problem,” I say.
The world outside the car window is as familiar as it is boring. Green grass, white houses, clean but dilapidated strip malls. We pass the shopping center with the grocery store where Jake works and the coffee shop where we had our first date and the old yogurt place, Yo-Life.
“Did Georgia enjoy the party?”
“Yeah, I think she had a good time.”
“Good,” Mom says, contented. “I’m glad. We’ve enjoyed having her around this summer. I think she’s really good for you.” She looks back at me. “And she goes to that small private school, right? Eastern?”
“Right.” I look at my phone. The screen is black—Jake still hasn’t said anything. I debate whether it’s too much to text him a third time without a reply. Probably.
Mom keeps talking about Georgia, and I tune her out. They were never this enthusiastic about Lauren or Chandler, even though I’ve known those girls for years. I think my mom likes Georgia’s girl-next-door, make-yourself-at-home shtick. She’s never even met Georgia’s parents, which is probably for the best. From my brief interaction with Georgia’s mom, I don’t think they’d get along particularly well.
We pull up at the new yogurt shop. I haven’t had frozen yogurt in months. Mom tells us she goes here with Cynthia after power yoga every Wednesday.
The walls are a neon yellow, and the oldies’ mix station is blaring from a boom box—an actual boom box—in the corner. My mom gets strawberry-chocolate blend with chocolate shavings and whipped cream. “Just one more day of indulgence,” she says. My dad gets vanilla with M&M’s. I get a bowl of fruit with a perfunctory swirl of raspberry yogurt on top.
“You can have more than that,” Mom says when she sees my bowl, but Dad quietly shushes her, and we sit there with the old music blaring. The fruit is fresh and good. My parents both eat their yogurt carefully, spoonful by small spoonful. If I close my eyes and forget the yellow walls, it’s actually kind of nice. The three of us here together, our small family, just like it used to be.
/>
The rest of the day is quiet. I watch a movie with my parents; we eat leftover burgers and salad for dinner. Jake finally responds to my texts, apologizing for his silence and blaming his hangover. Later that night, I am in bed, texting and halfheartedly painting my toenails when Mom pokes her head in the door.
“Hello?” she says, knocking. “Can I come in?”
“Yes,” I say. There’s no point in knocking if you’ve already opened a door, but I don’t think she would listen if I told her that.
She sits on the bed next to me, and I move my wet toes carefully away from her. My bedspread would not be forgiving to the purple glitter polish Georgia lent me.
“I wanted to talk to you,” she says. There is something a little odd about her tone, and I realize she’s nervous. I stop painting my nails even though I’m only half done. I don’t think my mom has ever been nervous about anything in her life.
“Yeah?” I say.
“Yeah,” she says. “About college.”
“Mom, I looked through the whole book this morning, I marked the places just like you said, I thought—”
“I know,” she interrupts me. She pauses for a beat. “It’s not about college exactly. It’s also about Jake.”
She knows. How does she know? She’s been reading my texts. She’s eavesdropped. Jake told Toby and Toby told Georgia and Georgia told her mom and her mom called mine. My brain stops working, and for a moment I can’t breathe. I should be figuring out a game plan, but coherent thoughts are impossible.
But then she exhales and puts a hand on my knee, and my room comes back into focus. I start breathing again. The rational part of me knows if she found out, she’d be furious, and she’s not angry at all. She’s just looking down at her hand on my knee as if she almost can’t believe it’s there.
“Yeah?” I press, tentative.
“Yes,” she says, shaking her head as if to clear it. “Did I ever tell you about any of the guys I dated before your dad?”
I shrug. I know she and Dad met when they were both twenty-four at a party thrown by a mutual friend, and I had not considered she might have had boyfriends before then. I’d never contemplated my parents’ relationship in any depth at all, come to think of it.
“Well,” she says. “There were several.”
“Okay.” I don’t know where this is going, but I desperately hope it isn’t going to turn into a sex talk. We did that when I was fourteen, and it left me scarred for life. Besides, Jake and I always use condoms, so I don’t need the lecture. Not that I can tell her that.
“But my high school boyfriend was the only serious one before your dad. Henry.”
I don’t respond, and she continues. “We started dating when we were in middle school, if you can believe it. Seventh grade. And we were still together when senior year came along. I had always kind of thought we would go to the University of Alabama together and then get married. It was that serious.
“But you know, when you’re applying to colleges, you’re supposed to send in more than one application. Just in case.” She pauses for a moment, but there is no way I’m taking that bait, so she keeps talking. “So that’s what we did. We each applied to three or four schools. All of his were in Alabama, and most of mine were too, but I also applied to Vanderbilt. I had gone with my mom for her reunions a few times, and I had always thought it was such a beautiful campus. And I loved Nashville. We wouldn’t have had the money for it without scholarships, and I thought I’d never get in, but I applied anyway.”
I nod. Mom went to Vanderbilt, I know this. She still watches their football games on TV sometimes, even though their team isn’t that great and she doesn’t keep up with football generally.
“Well, so, March rolled around, and Henry and I had both gotten into the University of Alabama. Which I was very happy about. It’s a good school with a lot of great programs. He sent in his acceptance letter the first day he could. And he kept asking me when I was sending in mine. But I wanted to wait until I heard from Vandy, even though I thought it was really unlikely. And then I heard, and I’d gotten in. Not only that, but with the financial aid combined with scholarships, I’d actually be able to go.
“So I was overjoyed, obviously, and the first person I told was him. We had never talked about what we’d do if I got in, because I never thought I would, but I assumed he’d be happy for me. It’s only a three-and-a-half-hour drive between the two colleges, and he had a car. I had some older friends who were still dating their high school boyfriends across much longer distances.”
She pauses and looks at me, as if I’m supposed to respond.
“He wasn’t happy for you,” I guess.
“No, he was not. We got into a huge fight about it. He said if I didn’t go to Alabama, it was over. And not only that. He said lots of nasty things.” She shakes her head.
“So you broke up with him?”
“Well, no. I said I’d go to Alabama. And I told him I’d sent in the acceptance letter. But I hadn’t. I couldn’t make myself put it in the mail. It was the biggest lie I had ever told.”
I shift in the bed. I suddenly want to start painting my nails again so I have something else to focus on, but I feel like it would be rude.
“I just kept waiting and waiting. And then, the week it was due, I had put the stamp on the envelope and everything, and my friend Lindsey called me and told me Henry was cheating on me.”
My mouth drops open. “Seriously?”
Mom nods, and what had been an uncomfortable, contemplative expression on her face shifts into something like victory. “Yep,” she says. “For months. With a girl he’d met at the YMCA. Two years younger than me and much bigger boobs.”
“Did you know her?”
“Vaguely. She went to the same high school. Her name was Alexandra.”
“So what did you do?”
“I broke up with him, shredded the Alabama envelope, and sent my enthusiastic acceptance to Vanderbilt.”
“But wasn’t he mad?”
She looks at me, her expression unreadable. “Yes, he was,” she says. “But I was mad too, remember. And personally, I think I had more of a right to be angry.”
I look down again. There’s a smudge of purple drying on my pinky toe where I missed the nail. “Yeah,” I say. “Fair. So…”
“Well, then I went to college, and we talked a couple times that first semester. But soon enough we lost touch, which was for the best. I dated a few different guys in college. And then later, a couple years after graduation, I met your dad, and we got married and moved here and had you.”
“Okay.”
I want to ask her why she’s explaining this now, but I also don’t want to know.
“I’m telling you all this,” she says, as if reading my mind, “because I think Jake is one of the reasons you’re not as interested in college as I was.”
“Mom, that’s such bullshit,” I protest. “Jake would never cheat on me. He’s super supportive.” The truth of our future grows in my stomach like a hot air balloon, pushing organs uncomfortably out of the way, threatening to burst me from the inside out. I imagine the leaving in vivid clarity—waking up in a bed that isn’t this one, my mother infinitely far away—and I feel as if I’m going to choke.
Mom holds up her hands. “I know he’d never cheat on you, Caroline. That’s not what I’m saying. And please don’t curse,” she adds. The familiar request breaks some of the tension in me, enough to help me breathe. “Jake is a good guy. We like him. I just don’t want you to limit yourself to stay closer to him.” She puts her hand on mine.
“I’m not asking you to break up with him,” she continues. “All I’m saying is that if I had stayed with Henry and gone to college with him, my life would have been very different. Honestly, not as good as it is now. And I want you to have all the opportunities you can. As much as I would love i
f you were always here with us, I want you to have the chance to go somewhere else. I don’t know if you’re getting any pressure from Jake to stay here, but…”
“I’m not,” I say flatly. The truth feels like a lie. “He’s not pressuring me at all. He’s a really good boyfriend, Mom. He’s great, actually. My high school boyfriend is not your high school boyfriend.”
She pauses for a moment, her hand still on mine. Then she takes it away and stands.
“Okay,” she says. “I’m sorry for upsetting you.” She walks to the door and looks back at me. She looks tired and sad, and somehow, older than usual. “I love you,” she says.
“I love you too, Mom.”
She closes the door behind her. In the time we’ve been talking, the light from the window has faded into dusk, and with the door closed, my room is a dark, bruised purple. I pull the covers up over my body, my one glitter-nailed foot sticking out of the blankets like a diseased limb. I’m shivering a little, even though it isn’t cold at all. I look at the glitter on my big toe, a murmur of sparkle in the darkening room, and then I close my eyes and try not to think about anything.
Chapter 9
Going back to work feels, appropriately enough, like jumping into a pool the morning after a thunderstorm. First, the cold is a shock, and then you swim around for a while and it’s comfortable again. It’s funny how nice it is to have that extra day in a three-day weekend. I wonder if my job in Arizona or Connecticut or Washington will have three-day weekends. If it’ll have weekends at all.
The aquarium was closed on the Fourth, but open on Saturday and Sunday. Usually, Jenny only works on weekdays, and Naima runs the store on weekends—she’s a year-round schoolteacher who uses the aquarium gig to pick up extra money. But she asked off a long time ago, so Jenny had to work. I think Jenny would’ve made me be here with her anyway, even though Naima normally only runs the cash register and doesn’t do any of the administrative work that supposedly takes up Jenny’s time during the week. But from the moment of my hiring, my mom made sure the aquarium knew that Fourth of July weekend was nonnegotiable vacation time.
The Goodbye Summer Page 11
