“Why?”
The hard part, the spitting out part, was done and now she relaxed. “Well, it’s only going to be the two of us, and it would be cheaper if we moved somewhere smaller. We could find a nice apartment, probably, and save money. The house is really too big for just two people. We can’t possibly fill it. Selling just seems like the logical choice.”
“I don’t want to move,” I said a bit too loudly, and I was surprised at the sharp tone in my voice. “I can’t believe you want to sell it.”
“It’s not a question of wanting to, necessarily. You don’t know how expensive it is to keep it up, month after month. I’m only thinking of the best plan.”
“I don’t like the best plan.” I didn’t like any of it, suddenly, the changes and reorganizations and alterations to my life that were all in the control of other people and outside forces. I looked at my mother in her nice pink outfit and lipstick and Lydia-inspired frosted-and-cut hair and wanted to blame her for everything: the divorce and stupid Lewis and Ashley’s wedding and even the height that set me to stooping and scrunching myself ever smaller, fighting nature’s making my body betray me. But as I looked at her, at the concern in her face, I said none of this. I would push it back again, dig my heels into where I stood while the world shifted around me, what I’d considered givens suddenly lost to someone else’s mistakes, miscalculations, or whims. A marriage, a sister, a house, each an elemental part of me, now gone.
“Haven, none of this is decided yet,” my mother said, reaching across the table awkwardly to brush back my hair, her fingers smoothing my cheek. “Let’s not get upset, okay? Maybe we can work something out.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, thinking of the tether again, pulling me back even as I strained to get away, to speak my mind. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
She smiled. “It’s okay. I think we should all be allowed to yell at each other, at least once, before the wedding. It would probably do us all a lot of good.”
Later, after we’d made small talk so that she could feel we’d ended on a good note, I sat alone at the table and stared out into the mall, putting off going to work. The Lakeview Models would make their first appearance the next weekend, kicking off the official start of mall season, each weekend an event or sales spectacular. It was a whole world, the mall, enclosed and safe, parameters neatly marked. Only Sumner seemed out of bounds, cruising in his golf cart wherever he pleased, keeping the peace and dodging the crowds. As I left I could see him over by the giant gumball machine, uniform on, looking official. He saw me and came over, leaving his cart safely parked by a row of ferns.
“You look upset,” he observed, dropping into step beside me. His uniform cuffs rolled over his feet and hid his shoes.
“Well, it’s been a long day,” I said.
“What happened?” He waved at the owner of Shirts Etc., a round woman with jet black hair that had to be a wig. Her bangs were too neat, clipped straight across her forehead.
“I just had lunch with my mother.”
“And how is she?”
“Fine. She’s going to Europe.” I was walking as slowly as I could, with the Little Feet sign looming up ahead. The words were spelled out in shoes, just like on the boxes and the name tag in my pocket, which I would wait until the last possible second to put on.
“I love Europe,” Sumner said, adjusting his glasses. “I went my sophomore year and had a grand time. Lots of pretty girls, if you don’t mind underarm hair.”
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Mind underarm hair?”
He thought for a minute. “No. Not especially. But it depended on my mood and the extent of the hair itself. They have great chocolate in Europe, too. You should ask your mom to bring you some.”
“I think we’re going to move,” I said, trying out the words for the first time. It felt strange. Again I saw my house, my room, the flowers. Maybe we’d end up in an apartment like Ashley’s, all white paint and new carpet smell, with a splashing pool within earshot.
“Move where?” Now Sumner was waving at all the merchants. A few days on the job and he already knew everyone, exchanging inside jokes and winks as we passed each store. Again I felt that dizzying rush: of being with him, close to him, being taken along for the ride regardless of where he might be going; that hope that maybe somewhere in all this madness and confusion, he was the one who could understand me.
“My mother doesn’t know,” I said. “She just wants to sell the house.”
“Oh.” He nodded but didn’t say anything right away. “That’s tough.”
“It’s only ’cause of the divorce and Ashley moving out,” I said. “Just the two of us now, and all that. I don’t know. Things have been so nuts lately.”
“Yeah,” he said. “When my parents got divorced it was really ugly. Everyone was fighting and I couldn’t deal with it. I just packed up my car and took off. I didn’t even know where I was going.”