We weren’t expected to answer. Our mother had asked what was called a rhetorical question. But Cody said, “Peanut butter.”
“Peanut butter smells as good as basil?” she shrieked. “Oh, that’s a good one.”
I rolled my eyes at Cody. We didn’t agree on many things. But we both agreed that Friday night dinners were awful. We also agreed that our mother should not have a boyfriend. Especially this boyfriend. Things were already weird enough in our life.
She put a bowl of celery sticks on the table. I bit into one right away and spit it out. A trick! Instead of celery this tasted like licorice without the good candy part.
“Fennel,” my sadistic mother said, smiling. “Isn’t it an interesting celery substitute?”
“No,” I said, just as sweetly. “It’s disgusting and repulsive.”
I knew she didn’t care. She would write in her column how much we’d loved it and then other unsuspecting mothers would give fennel sticks to their children. She would write something like, “They’ll be delighted at the surprise taste of licorice instead of the blandness of celery.”
She was humming, not really paying attention to my misery.
“What time is The Boyfriend getting here?” I muttered.
My mother narrowed her eyes at me. “Why do you work so hard at being unpleasant?” she said.
What I worked hard at was being pleasant, but I didn’t say anything. I just stripped the long threads from the stalks of fennel.
“If I were a sculptor,” Cody said, “I would make things out of metal so they couldn’t break. What good is making things that no one can touch?”
“No one can touch the Sistine Chapel,” Mom said. “Does that mean Michelangelo shouldn’t have painted it?”
Cody frowned. He didn’t know what she was talking about.
The doorbell rang and she tousled Cody’s hair on her way to answer it. “You’ll see it in Rome,” she said.
“It’s a ceiling,” I told him. “A famous ceiling.”
“Uh-huh,” Cody said.
Mom turned toward us, her face all desperate, and she said, “You know, your father is soooo happy with his new family and his new life as a celebrity. Am I asking too much to want a little happiness of my own? Am I?”
We just stared at her, surprised and blank-faced. She stared back and I wondered if she was going to cry. But then the doorbell rang again and she scurried off.
We could hear her laughing her new laugh, the one she’d acquired around men lately, full of fakeness and flirtiness.
“Why would anyone waste their time painting a ceiling?” Cody asked me. “How do you even do it?”
I put out bread for a sandwich, inhaling the familiar smell of Wonder Bread. Then I smeared on peanut butter and grape jelly and handed it to Cody.
“Doesn’t the paint drip on your face?” Cody was saying.
“He did it on his back,” I said patiently.
Cody’s eyes widened. “Wasn’t he afraid he would fall?”
“No, he was on scaffolding.”
Cody looked all confused, but I didn’t know how to describe what scaffolding was so I just said, “It’s a beautiful, famous ceiling. You’ll see.”
Then I made my way past my mother and The Boyfriend, heading for the door.
“Hey!” my mother said. “We have polenta.”
“Enjoy it,” I said. “I’m going next door to Sophie’s.”
Being at Sophie’s was like being in a museum: all fancy and quiet. The rooms were all painted colors that made me feel calm; the floors had intricate patterns made with wood. The kitchen had two of everything—two stoves, two refrigerators, two dishwashers—and cupboards that reached the ceiling. Those cupboards had glass doors so that I could see all of the food Sophie’s parents kept on hand. Crackers and chutney and fat pretzels, Little School Boy cookies and Mint Milanos, three different kinds of salsa and smoked almonds. On and on it went. At home there was yogurt and granola bars and bags of dried fruit and trail mix bought in bulk from the natural food store.
Sophie was probably the busiest person on the planet next to Mai Mai Fan. She played field hockey and she took clarinet lessons and horseback riding lessons and a million other lessons. A ballerina has to be focused. A saint has to sacrifice. In other words, I had my hands full, too, just in a different way. Also, my mother believed that kids should not lead overly organized lives.
Sometimes I pointed out that Sophie’s mother hired someone to keep her organized and drive her from one thing to another, but of course that only opened the door for my mother’s ranting about money and my father and how unfair life is.
“I can’t afford an outrageously expensive loft in Tribeca, can I?” she liked to ask me. A rhetorical question.
Sophie’s parents were at a play in Boston and wouldn’t be home until late. Tonight, Sophie’s older sister Emma was in charge, which meant she would sit upstairs on the third floor in her room and read. Emma was an overachiever. She wanted to read one hundred books this summer—an admirable goal, I thought.