A Month of Mondays

by Joëlle Anthony

  “I’ll get fresh silver,” the waiter said, straightening up and relighting the candle.

  Back in my chair, I opened my menu and stared at it blankly. “Who is Walker?” I asked from behind my curtain of bangs.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Why’s your last name Walker?”

  “Oh, that. Well, I was married since I saw you last.”

  For a second I thought she meant she’d gotten married since Halloween, and then I got it. “Since you took off, you mean?”

  “Yes. I suppose I do.”

  “So, are you still married?”

  “No.” She kept her eyes fixed on the wine list. “Not exactly.”

  “You’ve been divorced twice?” I guess that was rude but it popped out. One divorce is serious enough, but two in ten years? That’s huge.

  “I’m a widow,” she said.

  Oh, God. I am so lame. “Sorry,” I mumbled into my menu.

  “You didn’t know,” she said into hers.

  Great. Very smooth, Suze. Let’s see…so far I’d insulted her knowledge of the city, sat in the car like a dork, clobbered the waiter, and stuck my foot in my mouth so far I could taste my knee. Hmm…yeah…dinner with Caroline. What a good idea.

  “May I get you a drink?” the waiter asked, popping up again without warning and placing silverware in front of me. He moved quickly around the table and stood behind Caroline’s chair. Didn’t want to get too close to me, I guess. Smart man.

  “Yes, I’ll have a six ounce glass of the Beringer,” Caroline said.

  He turned to me.

  “Uh…lemonade?”

  He smiled. “I’ll be right back with your drinks.”

  We sat there studying our menus until he returned, placing glasses in front of us, and asking if we were ready to order.

  “We might need some more time,” Caroline said, “but we can order our starters now. I’ll have the steak tartare.”

  A starter? I scanned the menu frantically. The word tartare caught my eye in a list of items under Beginnings. “Umm…this one,” I said, pointing to Salade au chevre chaud. “It doesn’t have meat, right?”

  “Correct,” the waiter said.

  I had no idea what the heck it was, but it had the word salade in it, which I was pretty sure meant it was a salad of some kind. I could’ve chosen something in English, like the olive platter, but I only like the green ones stuffed with cheese that come in a jar. Somehow, I doubted any olives they served here would be the same.

  “I’ll give you a few more minutes,” the waiter said as he left.

  A few minutes for what? I wondered.

  Through my lashes, and a mask of bangs, I watched Caroline sip her water. She clicked her claws on the tabletop. Today they were a weird shade. Not orange exactly, but an autumn color. Sort of burnt pumpkin. Kind of gross, really.

  “I’m having the braised rabbit,” she said.

  I wrinkled up my nose. How sick. Who would eat a poor little bunny rabbit?

  She must’ve seen the look on my face. “Oh, I’m sorry. Are you a vegetarian?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “I eat fish.”

  She looked puzzled. “Don’t some vegetarians eat seafood?”

  I shook my head. “Nope.” She was still frowning, so I explained. “Vegetarians don’t eat any animals. Vegans don’t eat any animals or animal products, like honey. People who eat fish but call themselves vegetarians are just misguided.”

  I didn’t explain that I knew this because Amanda had totally embarrassed me at the lunch table in grade five. I’d been calling myself a vegetarian and she proved me wrong in front of everyone, reading the definitions aloud from an app on her phone.

  “Oh,” Caroline said. “I see. Do you want me to change my steak tartare?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t care what you eat.”

  “What are you having?” she asked.

  “That salad thing.”

  “That’s just the starter. You have to pick an entrée.”

  An ontray? Oh, then I remembered from French class. Entrée. “Uh, right. Okay.” Why couldn’t we have gone out for fast food? I opened the menu just as the waiter came back to take our order. “You go first,” I told Caroline.

  She asked a couple of questions while I tried to figure out what to order. I think maybe she was stalling for me. The only thing that looked even remotely familiar was the seared tuna, so that’s what I finally ordered. But before the waiter took my menu from me I noticed the price of my dinner. Forget the gold. Caroline would need a platinum card.

  When we were alone, she said, “Tell me about school.”

  Great. My favorite subject. Should I start with my impending suspension? Or maybe she’d like to hear about my hot English teacher. That might interest her. Or I could tell her about my friend Amanda who freaks out and calls the cops for no reason. That would be an entertaining story.

  “School is just school,” I finally said. “It’s really not that exciting.”

  “What grade are you in now?”

  What planet is this woman from? How could she possibly be my mother and not know what grade I am in? Maybe she isn’t really my mother after all. Maybe she’s some weirdo out to kidnap me…. Who am I kidding? Why would anyone want to kidnap me? “Grade seven.”

  “Junior high. Kind of sucks, doesn’t it.”

  I laughed, surprised. “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “High school will be better,” she said. “It was the best time of my life.”

  “Really?”

  “Well,” she said, actually cracking what appeared to be her first real smile of the evening. “It was good and bad.”

  “It was the best of times,” I said. “It was the worst of times.”

  “What?”

  “Dickens. He wrote that.”

  She raised one of her perfectly drawn-on eyebrows. A trick she’d probably practiced a few thousand times in front of the mirror. That’s how I learned to do it. I raised one eyebrow back at her. I couldn’t believe I knew more about books than a grown-up. I hadn’t actually read the book, but it was a question on some quiz show. The more TV I watched, the smarter I got.

  Giant pause.

  Not the good kind where everyone’s comfortable. No. It was the kind of silence where all the conversations at the other tables seem really loud, even though you know they aren’t. I drew invisible designs on the tablecloth with my index finger and Caroline sipped her wine.

  When my salad finally came there were these weird whitish hockey-puck things on the plate, hot and apparently fried. It seemed to be some kind of cheese. Wispy curly green and purple leaves decorated the plate, and the chef had drizzled an oily red dressing over it all. I was pretty surprised, but I pretended like it was exactly what I’d expected. Luckily it wasn’t too gross or anything.

  Out of desperation to fill the silence while we ate, I made the mistake of mentioning Amanda and our project. I managed to keep my big mouth shut about Honors English, though. I was trying not to think about that too much, because it made me break out in a sweat.

  “Your project sounds very interesting,” Caroline said. “So you’re going to do the presentation for the school board?”

  “I guess.” I nibbled on one of the cheesy pucks. It was kind of tangy and soft like cream cheese. Not bad.

  “You don’t know?” Caroline asked.

  “Yeah, I do know.” Now she was acting like Baker. “We are doing it,” I said.

  I’d had to give in to Amanda’s insane idea because what were my choices, really? Do it and make a fool of myself, or not do it, have to go back to Lame-o English, and have Amanda flounce all over school telling everyone how I ruined her GPA. I didn’t really give a flip about her grade, but listening to her rant was another thing altogether. Also, Yoda was counting on
me—even if he didn’t know it.

  “Remind me closer to the date,” Caroline said. “I’d like to come.”

  “You would? How come?”

  “Well, I am a parent, and this affects us all. Besides, I’ve never seen you give a speech before.”

  Yeah, well, she’d never seen me do a lot of things before, and I doubt she’d lost much sleep over it. Why wasn’t it important when I landed my first fish? Or how about the time I skated all the way around the ice without falling when I was six? Where was she when AJ was a pinch-hit-mom and taught me how to bake Christmas cookies, or when Tracie had to tell me the facts of life?

  “Well, if you want to come,” I finally said, mostly for something to say, “I guess that would be all right.”

  “Great. I’ll call you,” she said.

  “Maybe I should text you.”

  “Why?”

  I poked at the salad wisps. “The thing is…Tracie’s really, really mad at me for talking to you,” I said. “I just think it’s better if you don’t call.”

  “I understand.”

  For a second her face crumpled around the edges, and I think she understood all too well. Then the happy plastic expression she wore all the time replaced her disappointment like lightning, but it couldn’t hide her eyes, and I could see what I’d told her had hurt. But Tracie was hurting, too. Even if Tracie was acting stubborn, I guess she had a right to be mad too.

  And that gave me an idea. I hadn’t wanted to do the school board thing before, and I still didn’t, but…if Caroline was going to come to it, and Dad, Tracie, AJ, and Uncle Bill were there too…and they were all rooting for me…maybe they’d be so proud of me, especially once the school board voted to keep the janitors, maybe they’d…I don’t know…sort of come together, or forgive each other. And if Tracie saw Caroline there, then she might realize our mom was serious about being here for us this time. Assuming she was.

  I finished the salade and glanced around the restaurant so I didn’t have to come up with something else to talk about. And that’s when I saw her.

  I couldn’t believe it. Seriously? Anger raced through me and my face heated up. This was unbelievable. “I have to go to the washroom,” I told Caroline.

  “Okay.”

  I got up, my chair making a loud scraping sound against the stone floor, and wove my way through the tiny tables. As I passed the one in the back, tucked into the darkest corner, I hissed, “Washroom. Now!” and kept going.

  By the time AJ opened the door to the tiny washroom I was standing there, my arms crossed and my teeth bared. “What are you doing here?” I demanded.

  She actually had the nerve to shrug and try to play innocent. “I just felt like going out to eat.”

  “An hour ago you were making dinner!”

  “That was for your dad and Uncle Bill. I wanted a little ‘me’ time.”

  “And what? You just happened to choose this restaurant?”

  She shifted from foot to foot. Someone tried to push the door open. The room was pretty small and AJ isn’t, so she had to step closer to me, and the woman scooted in around her and slipped into one of the two stalls.

  “So you’re just taking yourself out to dinner?” I whispered to AJ. “Not here spying on me?”

  “Of course not!”

  I stamped my foot like a two-year-old having a tantrum. “How stupid do you think I am?”

  “All right. It’s not a coincidence. But I wasn’t spying on you. I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  “What’d you think she was going to do to me in a restaurant?”

  AJ’s pudgy face had turned a little pink, and she nodded. “You’re right. It was stupid of me. I’ll…I’ll get my food to go.”

  I let out a noisy sigh of frustration. “Oh, just…eat it here. But don’t talk to us. I don’t want her to think I’m a baby and you had to come along.”

  “I won’t even look over at you. I’ll get the waiter to move me to a table in the bar. And Suze…I’m sorry.”

  Part of me wanted to thump AJ, but instead I grabbed her in a quick hug and then ducked around her and back out into the restaurant.

  “Everything okay?” Caroline asked when I came back.

  “What? Yeah, sure. Fine.”

  We sat there, kind of smiling, kind of not. So awkward.

  Waiter to the rescue. He set my tuna down in front of me, and it was tiny. Three stalks of asparagus tented over it, tied with what looked like a green onion. Two new potatoes rolled to one side. When I cut into it, the tuna was raw and almost completely red in the middle. I ate the potatoes and the asparagus.

  Caroline cut into the little stack of meaty bones on her plate while I watched through my shield of hair. It looked like chicken, but I knew she was a heartless woman chowing down on the Easter Bunny. What she didn’t ask, and I wasn’t about to explain anyway, because it was personal, is why I didn’t eat meat.

  When I was little, AJ told me that I should only eat things I was willing to kill myself. She told everyone that, but the rest of my family ignored her. I took it to heart, though. I was willing to catch a fish, and I knew how to gut it and even cook it, so I ate fish. But I couldn’t really see myself butchering a cow or plucking a chicken, so I gave meat a miss.

  “Don’t you like your tuna?” Caroline asked when she noticed me not eating.

  “Ummm…” I leaned across the table and whispered to her, “It’s not cooked all the way.”

  “It’s seared,” she explained. “That means they flash cook the outside. That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

  “Oh.”

  Figures. Rich people liked their food raw. Oysters, salmon, even hamburger. That’s what her steak tartare was. I saw it once on the Food Network.

  For the rest of the night we exchanged small talk, but my mind was far away, trying to figure out the best way to get my family to sit together at the school-board meeting. I had a feeling that if I could save the janitors’ jobs and make everyone I love proud of me, they’d realize it was worth trying to get along. And then I could have a fair shot at getting to know Caroline for real.

  Chapter 18

  I’d only agreed to go to dinner with Caroline if we weren’t too late and she took me to Amanda’s afterward, because we’d already planned a sleepover. AJ thought I should be grounded for being suspended, but I’d explained to them I’d been doing research and Dad let me off. Besides, this was the first sleepover we’d invited Jessica to, so I could hardly miss it.

  When Caroline pulled up in front of Amanda’s, I jumped out of the car and she popped the trunk so I could get my overnight stuff and the giant gift basket that I’d brought along to share. But then I stood there on the sidewalk with the door open, not sure how to say good-bye.

  “Call me anytime,” she said.

  It seemed weird to just walk away. I stuck out my hand, but instead of taking it she fumbled around in her purse and gave me a card. “Here’s my home address and cell. Work number, too. Call me there if that’s more convenient.”

  “Okay.”

  “Susan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “What happened to your hair?”

  How rude! Did I comment on her faux blond? No! “Nothing happened to my hair,” I said. “It grows this color.”

  “Really?”

  Was she actually stupid or trying to be cool? “Why?” I asked.

  “No reason. Except I thought you might like to visit my stylist before your big speech. My treat.”

  I allowed myself to imagine a salon as fancy as the restaurant we just ate at, but then I shook it off. “I’ll let you know.”

  I slammed the car door and flew up the walkway without looking back. I don’t know why it made me mad, her mentioning my hair like
that. I guess because it seemed like she was throwing her money around to show off or something. If she wanted to help, she should have paid more child support, not taken me to fancy restaurants where I didn’t know what fork to use.

  I’d barely knocked when Amanda threw open the door and warm air rushed out as usual. “Hurry up,” she said.

  “I’ve got an amazing movie picked out,” Leigh said. “It’s got this real gorgeous actor from Atlanta. You haven’t heard of him yet, but—” Amanda dragged her off to the family room.

  As I shut the door behind me, I caught a glimpse of my hair in the entryway mirror. It did look pretty bad. Maybe I would take Caroline up on the offer to get it fixed after all. What did I have to lose?

  I changed into my slippers, and I could hear laughter drifting through the house. Amanda’s dad, Steve, came down the hallway and wrapped me in a warm hug. “How’s my favorite reader?” he asked.

  “Good,” I said, hugging him back. He was solid like a tree trunk, all muscle. “How’s my favorite sports journalist?”

  He ruffled my hair and gave me a friendly noogie. “Awesome, as usual.”

  Steve loved me because I was the only one of Amanda’s friends who read his book cover to cover. I don’t even think her mom made it through the whole thing. It wasn’t like I was a big fan of baseball, but when someone I knew ended up on the New York Times Best Sellers list, I kind of had to read his book, didn’t I? He even signed a copy for me.

  “Read anything good?” he asked me.

  “Ummm…Death of a Salesman?”

  “Heavy.”

  “Suze?” Amanda yelled from the family room. “Talk about books later. Leave her alone, Dad!”

  “You’re in demand,” he said.

  “Always.”

  Steve grabbed my sleeping bag and pillow, carrying it through the kitchen to the back of the house for me. “I’ve got some books you might like,” he said. “Don’t leave without them.”