Practically Ever After

by Isabel Bandeira

  “Not everything is a gender war thing, Grace,” He pointed out with a frown, and tapped on my desk to emphasize his point. “Part of your grade includes taking into account the most efficient manufacturing methods and evaluating the market for your design. You have an uphill road on that if you insist on keeping this design.”

  “Challenge accepted,” I muttered under my breath as he walked over to praise Nick’s glorified spaghetti strainer. I set my prototype gently down on my desk and pulled up the manufacturing methods chapter in our textbook, jumping ahead past traditional manufacturing methods like milling and turning and over to casting. It wasn’t 3-D printing, but, on a large scale, at least it was less expensive. People mass produced metal jewelry all the time, so I wasn’t trying to reinvent the wheel.

  An image of a final, testable prototype popped into my head and I grinned. It wasn’t part of the project, but I had two weeks until the final presentation and I had plenty of time to make it work.

  Chapter 36

  “Okay, take a look at this and let me know what you think,” Mom said, slipping off her reading glasses and pushing a list into my hands the second I walked into the study after school.

  I glanced down at the paper, which was filled with names of different foods broken up by appetizer, main meal, and dessert, then looked back up at Mom. “Fundraiser?”

  Mom dropped down into the spindly chair at her desk and gestured at a thick, accordion-style folder that sat open on the desk. “No, your graduation party. I really should have started planning this in December, but since you said you wanted something casual…”

  “Caviar canapes are not casual,” I said, pointing at one of the appetizers on her list. I wasn’t surprised, though. Casual for my mom was semi-formal for the rest of the planet.

  “It’s just a starting point. I used that list for Alice’s baby shower last month and everyone loved it.” She quirked a smile at my disbelieving look. “Fine. We’ll do philly cheesesteak rolls, mini calzones, and mini tacos, and if Uncle Eduardo has a heart attack at your party, it will be on your conscience.”

  “Letty’s studying to be a cardiologist, right? Just make sure she RSVPs and we’re okay.”

  Mom pulled up something on her tablet. “Speaking of, I need to figure out what size tent we need to rent. The party company needs to know next week, so I wanted to get a final number. Do you know if Leia and her parents are coming?” She whipped off the last sentence a little too casually, then looked up at me with an innocently curious look. Mom-Prying 101.

  “No.”

  She casually jotted a note onto her tablet. “Do you want me to leave spaces just in case they find time on their schedule to come?”

  “Mom,” I said, flatly.

  “Grace,” she said, imitating my tone.

  “We’re not together anymore,” I said, the words cutting painfully at my throat as I said them. “You know that.”

  “You’re so much your father’s daughter. He also tries to hide his feelings, but I can see right through the both of you, and I hate it when you’re hurting.” Mom put down her tablet and dropped her hands delicately to her lap. “I really wish you would let me help you drown your feelings with a junk food binge or a shopping trip.”

  “Phoebe brought cupcakes?” I said, weakly, plopping into one of the overstuffed worn leather armchairs. “They were nice and carb-y?”

  Mom rolled her eyes. “Can we please let me live out even the tiniest bit of my Gilmore Girls fantasy for once in my life?”

  “I think going to New York City to buy expensive shoes and purses, and then getting high tea at the Plaza isn’t very Gilmore Girls-like. They were more into coffee and bad takeout, I think.”

  “Yes, but good shoes and purses last forever while bad takeout and coffee just give you heartburn. I don’t like mixing heartbreak with acid reflux.”

  “I was the one who did the breaking up, you know,” I said pointedly.

  Mom gave me one of the epic side-eyes she probably developed after years of dealing with corporate executives and PTA parents, then dropped back to a super casual expression and tone as she said, “You know, I know what it’s like to break ties with your past to try new things. Sweetie, you might be a lot like your dad, but you have my heart. Dad is good at making quick decisions and clean breaks. You can try, but you can’t just turn off the things you love. They’ll just keep haunting you until you really face them.”

  “You’re going to tell me the story again, aren’t you?” Every once in a while, Mom pulled out her ‘leaving New York for a new life’ story, complete with the very rom-com-esque decision to hop on a train to Philly without knowing if Dad was going to be waiting for her in the station when she got there.

  Mom arched her brows at me. “You haven’t heard this part.”

  “I think I’ve heard all of your stories, Mom.” I remembered years of sitting on Mom’s lap or next to Dad as we flipped through yearbooks and photo albums, laughing through all their bad haircuts and ridiculous school stories. Mom’s had been the worst—as someone always on the cutting edge of fashion, she had some gloriously bad nineties pictures that always made me laugh.

  She shook her head, a small smile playing across her lips. “You know I was dating someone else when I met your father, right?”

  “No.” This was news. I’d heard about how she and Dad had bumped into each other on the L train one day and how their chance meetings had turned into a classic New York romance straight out of a movie, but not the other boyfriend part. I’d always thought the “other guy” in her stories turned up later.

  “His name was Doug. We were the artistic power couple of the school. Everyone, even our professors, thought we were going to take the art world by storm.” She laughed at that last sentence. “That sounds so ridiculously dramatic now, but everyone thought we had a lot of potential, especially together.”

  “Okay…” I tried to figure out how she was going to tie this story to my present situation and came up blank.

  Mom held up her hand in a “wait” motion, as if knowing what I was thinking. “Doug and I had the same really tight group of friends. Looking back now, I think I stayed with him so long because everyone expected it. I think, somewhere along the way, I fell out of love with him as a boyfriend, but since we were such close friends and everyone told us we were the perfect couple, I just assumed that was how relationships evolved. I was young and stupid and I trusted everyone else before trusting my own feelings, you know?”

  “And then you met Dad?”

  “And then I met Dad,” she echoed me, with a grin. “He was the exact opposite of all the rest of my friends. Super practical and knew exactly what he wanted in life, just like you. But when I realized I was falling for your dad and that he had fallen for me… I made the more logical choice, which was to stay with Doug. We had the same friends, the same dreams, and even came from the same borough. It just made sense. I even made a pros and cons list to make sure.”

  I cringed a little on the “pros vs cons” part. That hit a little close to home. “Obviously, you didn’t stay with him.”

  “Obviously.” She said, “If I’d trusted my heart the first time around, I wouldn’t have hurt Doug and lost most of my friends when I realized I’d made the wrong decision. And I deserved losing them all, because of the way I handled things. Some people burn a few bridges, I managed the equivalent of setting the GWB on fire when I ran out in the middle of Doug’s first art show and got on that train. But, honestly, Grace? The first time I felt free and happy was when I made that ridiculously illogical decision and ran straight towards something that was completely uncertain.” Mom twisted her hands together as she added, “But I lost a lot of people I loved because I didn’t trust myself.”

  “Wow.” It was hard to picture my oh-so pulled together mom doing any of those things. She’d been a little vague sometimes about why she didn’t have a lot of friends left to visit in the city, but this put a whole new light on everything I’d alway
s believed about her and her life.

  She leaned forward so we were practically nose-to-nose. “I wasn’t happy when I took the logical way out, I wasn’t happy when I refused to confront my own feelings, and I can tell that you’re not happy, either.”

  I backed up and shook my head. I wasn’t my mom and Leia wasn’t my dad. There wasn’t going to be a dramatic reunion in front of 30th Street Station for us. “I’m fine. And this isn’t you almost staying in Manhattan because of that other guy in that weird love triangle thing you had going on before you realized you wanted to be with Dad. This is me. It was just time for things with Leia to end, and I really don’t appreciate you trying to turn my relationships into a mother-daughter bonding ritual.”

  “I’m not pushing you to do anything. I just know how you are. Make sure you don’t logic all the joy out of your life. I know what that feels like and I don’t want you to have to learn from your mistakes if I can help it.” There was a sad, nostalgic note in her voice that she covered up by pressing her lips together and further straightening her already perfectly straight back. She tucked a nonexistent loose strand of hair behind her ear and turned back to her folder. “Now, are you sure you want a red and orange cake and not just red and orange accents? Sweet Eats said they could make the whole cake PCHS orange with red piping, but if you want buttercream, everyone is going to end up dying their tongues, and that’s not a great look.”

  That hint of sadness in her last statement before she’d switched to her perfect planner persona tugged forward all the arguments I’d been hearing coming from their room for the past few months.

  “Mom,” I asked in my tiniest voice and automatically hated myself for it. I was supposed to be an adult, ready to give support wherever I was needed. “Are you and Dad getting a divorce?”

  Mom stopped in the middle of erasing and rewriting on her list for what seemed the hundredth time that afternoon and gently put her pencil down on her desk. “I’m sorry, what?”

  I sunk deeper into the armchair, dropping my English textbook onto my lap. “You two have been fighting for the last two months. I hear you in the mornings.”

  “Oh, honey,” Mom said, squeezing next to me in the armchair, half on the overstuffed arm. “Couples fight. You can’t live with someone for over twenty years and agree on everything all the time. Dad and I are okay.” She poked me gently on the tip of my nose and then She leaned over to cuddle into my side. “Are our fights that bad?”

  “Awful. Dad even left the other morning without saying he loved you.”

  She squeezed my arm. “You noticed that, huh?” At my nod, she said, “I’m sorry for making you worry, but we’re okay. People fight. It’s how we act and what we do after the fight that’s important. Dad and I make sure we keep talking through things, even if we don’t always agree. We’re going to be okay.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. This is nothing compared to the great kitchen remodel fiasco from a few years ago. I swear, we risked almost twenty years of marriage over travertine.” Mom went back to her list, looking up add, “One more piece of life advice, Grace. Never equate happiness with kitchen appliances, and always compromise on the backsplash.”

  Chapter 37

  The line snaking out of Paris Patisserie brought back memories of every Monday before jazz class, when my entire class would basically line up to find out what flavor they were giving out for free macaron Mondays. From all the people in dance warmups on line and all the kids in Haddontowne Academy uniforms, it didn’t look like things had really changed much, since the strip mall was close to their school, too.

  I glanced at my phone—I had twenty minutes before recital practice with about thirty people on the line that stretched far down the sidewalk outside the patisserie. If transactions at the patisserie on macaron Monday still took an average of thirty seconds, I might still make it with time to spare, especially if I warmed up while on line. I technically could go after practice or just buy macarons another day, but they always gave away their beta test flavors first and I didn’t want to miss out on the next matcha bubble tea macaron or whatever bit of sugary genius the bakers had dreamed up that week.

  Slinging my dance bag over my shoulder, I hopped out of my car and jogged over to the end of the line, bouncing in place once I settled in behind a girl in a Haddontowne uniform. The line was moving as fast as I had predicted and I had finished two sets of ankle rolls, about twenty relevés, and a few plies before I was only a few people away from the front door. I looked through the bakery windows to check my posture in the ornate mirrored walls inside and froze when I saw a familiar face… belonging to the girl in front of me.

  Apparently, Leia had decided to change her hair color again.

  My heartbeat picked up to a rabbit pace and I mentally cursed myself for not even recognizing my own ex-girlfriend even though, in my defense, the Haddontowne late spring uniforms were figure-hiding crimes against fashion. She was focused on her phone, so I still had a chance to slip out of the line before she could notice I was there.

  Someone behind me let off a massive sneeze, Leia looked up from her phone, and, before I could duck away, our eyes met in the mirror. Her already big brown eyes widened in surprise and recognition.

  Crud.

  I broke the gaze and, in front of me, I saw the shoulders of Leia’s blazer heave up and down and then square up before she turned slightly to face me. “Grace.” She had that look on her face, the pleasant but distant smile that she put on for people when she was trying to be polite and good even if she didn’t want to talk to them. It killed me to see her using it on me. “I guess you’re teaching today?”

  I shook my head mechanically. “Recital practice. The junior preps needed an extra push, so Aunt Drina gave me their tap time.” Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “You changed your hair.”

  She reached up and, in the way she always did when she wanted to show off a new color or haircut, flipped her hair so the short red and black strands perfectly caught the sunlight. With her other hand, she propped the door open as she passed through, taking her hand off it within milliseconds of my own touching the metal and glass. “Change is good.”

  “It is,” I said, finding myself unconsciously nodding like a bobblehead doll at her comment. Not everyone could pull off bright stop-sign-red highlights like hers, but she somehow—always, my traitorous brain whispered at me—made this vampire-mermaid hair look like something Botticelli would paint. I caught myself staring, forced a poor imitation of her unaffected smile onto my face, and tried to grasp at anything to sound as breezy and unaffected as I could. “I mean, my colorist talked me into changing my highlight color from butterscotch to dawn, and I feel like a totally new person,” I joked, and tried to toss my hair in the same way she did, failing miserably as my ponytail flopped flatly over my shoulder.

  Leia’s eyes took on a little amused spark as she said, in a mock serious tone, “I can definitely tell.” I braced myself for the inevitable teasing, maybe a comment like ‘Are you sure she didn’t just give you the same color and charge you more for it,’ but it never came. Instead, she dropped her eyes to her watch. “Someone’s messing with the wait time. We haven’t moved for a whole minute.” Something else was off, too. A sweet jasmine smell rose off her—she’d changed her perfume. That had been one of Leia’s favorite tricks, to pick up a little bit of solid perfume and run her fingers through her hair, so every time she turned her head, she called it “whispering” the smell into the air. But, before, she’d always used a spicy smell, something that reminded me of her description of visiting a spice market on her family vacation in eighth grade, with bags of peppercorn and saffron scenting the air. Now… the jasmine and her hair combined made her seem even more painfully mature and distant. Like she was becoming a different person than the Leia I knew.

  I craned my neck, glad for an excuse to look anywhere but at her. I caught sight of a guy with slicked back hair and thick black glasses holding up t
he line. “It’s hipster guy. I think he’s ordering one of his pretentious coffees again.”

  “Crud. We’re going to be here forever.” She narrowed her eyes at the front of the line and the expression on her face was adorable, like an angry kitten getting riled up. Leia was always freakishly cute when she was annoyed. “He’s been coming here for years. Everyone knows you don’t order stuff on macaron Mondays until they run out of macarons.”

  “Let’s see if I can guess what he’s ordering.” I pretended to push invisible glasses up my nose. “I’d like a shakerato, but is your espresso single source fair trade picked by mountain dwelling monks under a vow of silence?”

  “And none of that commercial white sugar. I need unrefined sugar hand scraped from a Moroccan sugarloaf,” Leia added gleefully, imitating coffee hipster’s current hand motions perfectly. “That sugarloaf is gluten free, right?”

  “The ice has to be chipped by hand from imported Norwegian glacier ice.” I pursed my lips, then added, “Oh, you don’t have that? Fine. I’ll live with ice made from filtered water. But you really need to look into getting some of that in. No one in SoHo would drink a shakerato made with tap ice.”

  Leia let off a delighted snort. “I’ll bet you anything he’s going to make us wait until he takes the perfect picture of it for his Photogram, too, just because the counter is a better offset color than the tables.”

  “I don’t have to bet,” I said as a grumble rose up from the front of the line. “Two years and that guy hasn’t changed.”

  “Remember when he was writing his ‘novel?’” Leia said, moving forward as the line started up again.

  “’It’s a literary thinkpiece about the brevity of our lives on this earth, with a misunderstood writer at the core. Is the man writing his story or is his story writing him?’” I quoted the synopsis he would force on everyone in listening distance for months.