Roomies (23 page)

Can I tell you that it’s been my secret dream since I was eight to be an only child? Talk about guilt.

So your dad is in Italy RIGHT NOW?

Does he happen to have a twin brother who runs the gallery with him?

Sorry that didn’t work out.

—Lo

Yes: Ugly but warm blanket my grandma knit me last Christmas.

No: Paper cuts from my filing job—quitting that next week.

Maybe so: A long-distance boyfriend?

THURSDAY, AUGUST 8

NEW JERSEY

When my mother calls me down to dinner on Thursday and pulls a steaming pan of chicken Parmesan out of the oven, I want to scream. It’s like the whole world has suddenly gone mad for Italy. All week, everywhere I turn, there’s the boot to kick me in the face. There are features about great Italian travel deals in every newspaper and magazine that crosses my path. Every show I watch on TV seems to have some reference to Italy or Italian food or Sicilian wine. So as much as I’ve tried to put the fact that my father is on this spectacular vacation out of my mind, I can’t.

Yes, Lo, he is in Italy right now!

I haven’t answered her e-mail yet, but not for any specific reason. I’ve just been busy, mostly spending time with Mark, and then thinking about Mark during the time I’m not spending with him. And anyway, our e-mailing has sort of settled in nicely and things don’t feel so urgent all the time. I’m happy about that.

Then I feel newly irked about the e-mails my parents have been
exchanging. I say, “My so-called father’s probably having chicken Parmesan in Italy right now. Did he mention his big vacation plans in his e-mail to you?”

“He did not,” Mom says, straining the spaghetti over the sink. “Must be nice.” She slides the pasta back into the pot but then she just stands there, facing the window, not turning around.

For a really long time.

The steam fills the air like the house is on fire.

“Mom?” I finally ask. “You okay?”

I know what’s coming. I’ve been waiting.

“Yes.” She is wiping away tears. “I’m fine.”

She takes a plate from the cabinet and puts some spaghetti in it, then hefts a piece of chicken out of the pan and puts it on top of the pasta. “You’re welcome to say ‘told you so,’ if you want.” She deposits my dinner in front of me.

“What do you mean?” I ask, even though I know.

“It’s over.” Now she’s fixing her own plate. “The married one.”

“I’m sorry, Mom,” I say. “Did he say why?”

I really
really
don’t want her to know it has anything to do with me.

“No, he didn’t say why. He didn’t say anything. He just stopped returning my calls. Stopped texting. It’s like he died.” This gives her an idea. “Maybe he
died
?”

“Mom,” I say. “I am pretty sure he didn’t die.” Though I sort of wish he had. Who goes around treating people like that?

“I’m pathetic.” She slides into a kitchen chair. “How did I get to be so pathetic?” She starts crying.

I go to her side. “You’re not pathetic, Mom. You just…” I am not sure what to say that won’t make things worse. “You may be trying
too hard. You should, I don’t know, let things
come to you
or something. Maybe you should take a break… from dating? Regroup? Take a vacation?”

She smiles and says, “Where?
Italy
?”

“Anywhere.” I twirl my spaghetti and try to think of a place I’d want to be. I say, “Anywhere but here.”

It’s early when we’re done with dinner so I ask if I can go out for a while, to the mall. I want to try to find a present for Mark, though I still don’t have any idea what it might be. At the last second I decide to text Justine and Morgan to see if either of them wants to come along. We still haven’t been able to find time to get together and it’s starting to really weigh on me. I’m sort of relieved when they both say yes. I guess it makes me feel like I still belong. Then a text from Justine comes through—
We’re actually at my place
—and I feel sort of sick.

I pull up in front of Justine’s house and they’re out the front door before I even put the car in park so I don’t bother. They get in and we’re off toward the mall with a quick exchange of “heys” and then Justine says, “Everything okay?”

I don’t want to get into it; how I feel like they’ve dropped me entirely just because I broke up with Alex, just because I’m going away to college and they’re not. I say, “Yeah, of course. Why?”

Justine shrugs and kicks off her flip-flops and puts her feet up on the glove compartment. Morgan laughs in the backseat and says, “But don’t you sort of hate the mall?”

“I need a present for… that guy.” I swat at Justine’s feet and she puts them down.

“Wow!” Morgan says, laughing again. “Must be serious!”

“Yeah,” I say, annoyed by all her laughing. “It sort of is.”

I take my right hand off the wheel again, reach for my necklace, and hold it up. “He gave me this.”

Justine leans over for a look and says, “Holy crap!”

Morgan pops forward to get a glimpse. “That is intense.”

“Yeah,” I say, letting go of the necklace.

“So what are you going to get him?” Morgan asks.

“No freaking idea.”

Justine sees Alex and Karen Lord coming out of the food court, before either Morgan or I do, and says, “Uh-oh.” They’re face to face with us and we can’t reroute or do anything about it.

“Hi, EB,” Alex says, and he drops Karen’s hand. She responds by sliding her arm around his back, near his waist, and now I’m the one who wants to laugh.

“Hi,” I say to Alex. Then, “Hi, Karen.”

“Hi,” she says, rolling her eyes like she couldn’t be bothered.

“Hey, so good luck in California,” Alex says. “You know, if I don’t see you before you go.”

Twenty days. That’s all I have left. It suddenly seems crazy. That’s less than three weeks!

“Thanks,” I say. “Good luck to you, too.”

I look pointedly at Karen Lord and wonder if I get across what I’m going for. Namely,
Yeah. Good luck with that.

“You beaching it tomorrow?” Karen asks Justine and Morgan, and my friends both look painfully awkward and mutter things like “Maybe” and “I’ll text you.”

Then, with strained looks all around, we seem to agree that the interaction has come to an end and, without any more discussion, we’re all on our merry ways again. “That was weird,” Justine says.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Totally.” Morgan spies the Hallmark store and says, “I need a birthday card,” then drifts in.

Justine and I linger by a front window display of all sorts of graduation fanfare and she says, “So you know what else is weird?”

“What?”

“We’re already moving on. Before we even have to. Why is that happening?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe it’s easier. Less pressure to have some big final hurrah.”

“Maybe.” She seems to be studying the sign that says CONGRATS, GRAD! YOU’RE ON YOUR WAY! “It’s almost like you and me are too close. Like
sisters
close. Sometimes I’m not even sure I like you that much anymore, but I still love you.”

For a second it’s like she’s kicked me in the stomach but then I realize that she’s right. The fact that she gets it, too, feels like a miracle. Morgan has gotten on line for the cashier and Justine shouts to her, “Meet us next door.”

Morgan nods. The line is pretty long.

“So if I’m a sister you don’t really like, what does that make Morgan?” I ask, and Justine shrugs, then says, “A cool cousin?”

I smile.

“So tell me about this guy,” she says, wandering into a gadget-y store. “What are we in the market for?”

“I don’t know.” I’m studying a chessboard display near the front
of the store when I say, “What do you give a guy when you’ve already given him your virginity?”

Justine’s mouth drops open; she has a massager of some kind in her hands. “You did not.”

I think I smile. “Oh yes I did.”

And then I did it again, too. The other night. Under the boardwalk! Such a cliché! For a second, I wonder if and when I’ll do it enough times that I’ll stop counting. Then I have a feeling of vertigo, like I’m on some crazy high slippery slope. Does this mean I’ll never refuse a guy sex again? I don’t think so, but I’ll need to watch that.

Right?

“Holy shit.” Justine puts the massager down and grabs on to a built-in shelf along the wall, like she needs support, or to catch her breath. “I never thought you’d do it before me. Never in a million years.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” I say with some snark, because this isn’t about her. But maybe I’d feel the same way if I were her? Until I lost my virginity, I sort of resented people who already had; people like Morgan. I always wondered how they’d found the guts and the opportunity when it seemed unlikely I would ever find either of those things.

“Where? How was it?” She is tailing me as I wander deeper into the store.

“The Moonlight Motel,” I say, right as I find a noise machine display.

“You cannot be serious!”

“Why not?” The floor sample machine is turned on and it’s making
a white noise sound. I hit a button and switch it to “Ocean,” then listen to see how authentic it sounds.

“No, I mean, that’s awesome!” Justine grabs my arm but I am far away, lost in the waves. “I love the Moonlight. It’s so old school. It’s just… I’m looking at you and it’s like you’re this totally different person.”

I hit the button again and it switches to “Heartbeat” and I turn it up, maybe a little too loud, and it feels like it’s somehow in sync with my own heart, which seems to be pounding so hard that someone could maybe even hear it if they were standing next to me.

I don’t want to be a totally different person.

“I’m still me,” I say, but Justine has already walked away. She has climbed into a big leather recliner, where she is testing out some fancy-pants pillow, and I swear, if we weren’t in a public place, if Morgan weren’t on her way across the store to us, I’d run over and climb in next to her for a hug.

Mark texts me later that night, asking
How’s your mom?

I write back:
He didn’t break it off. Only stopped calling.

He writes back
Sounds about right. A-hole.

The whole thing feels sour, which I hate, and I have no idea what to say in reply so I sit there in my room, not quite sure what to do with myself, and he writes
Missing you.

That, at least, is easy to reply to. I text
Ditto. See you tomorrow?

He sends back
Yes please. Will consult list for task to cross off.

G’night
, I write. And I think hard for a second about someplace we can slow-dance, or a fight to pick, or what to buy him, but nothing comes.

Dear Lo,

Only twenty days to go. It’s funny. I’m having a hard time keeping myself in the present now that I know I’ll be gone in a few weeks. I find myself drifting and thinking of other people I know and wondering what they’re doing. Like I try to picture your final days in your house with your family, and I wonder what my mother’s days are like, when she’s at the office or an open house and I’m not around, and I wonder what my dad’s doing right now, six hours ahead in Italy. (Yes, he is there now. He was already there when he wrote to me.) Probably drinking wine and having the time of his life. I wonder if I’ll stop all this envisioning of other people and places after I move? I’m not making sense.