“Rachael is draining me today,” she announces through a yawn. Rachael is a fictional psychopath who has a habit of poisoning her husbands. It’s part of Mom’s “process” to speak about her characters as if they’re real people.
“Sorry to hear. Maybe Rachael should see a therapist,” I croak.
“Oh, she’d love the attention, the narcissist.” Mom’s rooting around in her purse, juggling her phone, sunglasses, wallet, and keys in a way that triggers my anxiety. She finally tosses a pack of Band-Aids toward me. “Grabbed these last night at work. For your blisters.”
“Thanks,” I say, grateful.
She plunks onto the couch beside me, pulling my battered feet onto her lap to inspect. “Orthopedic shoes, my ass. Why don’t you just wear flats?”
“Kassie says flats are basic.”
Mom rolls her eyes. “Of course she does. Anyways, how was school? Don’t you have your big scholarship interview today?”
“That was yesterday.”
“How’d it go?”
My future just dove headfirst down the drain. Clay Diaz also thinks I’m a freak. I’m going to be dateless at prom. My best friend is moving far, far away in a matter of months. Life as I know it is changing. It’s cool. It’s fine. No big deal. Of course, I’m too drained to say all this out loud, so I settle for a grumpy, “I don’t have the strength to talk about it.”
“Well, I’m here when you’re ready,” she says, though the dark circles under her blue eyes tell me she doesn’t have the bandwidth for emotional labor.
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Weren’t you supposed to celebrate the interview and end of exams with Kassie? She wasn’t over last night.” She pulls my legs on her lap, settling next to me on the couch.
“She was with Ollie. Where else?” I mumble.
I can read her look. She’s about to launch into the same speech she’s given me since ninth grade—about how I need to be honest with Kassie that it hurts my feelings when she ditches me. “You know that baby photo of you in those crocheted overalls?”
I crinkle my forehead, unsure what this has to do with Kassie. “The ones that make me look like I have a saggy butt?”
“Georgia made those as a gift for my baby shower,” she says, giving me an affectionate nudge in the ribs.
“Who’s Georgia?”
“Exactly. Georgia was my best friend. All through school. We were attached at the hip, like you and Kassie. Grandma used to say she was her second daughter because she basically lived at my house.”
“How come I’ve never heard of her?” Mom has a small circle of girlfriends she gets wine-drunk with at monthly book club, and none of them are named Georgia.
“Because we’re not friends anymore,” she says simply.
“What happened?” I frown, running down the list of grisly potential best friend betrayals.
She drums her fingers over my legs, eyes misty. “We grew apart. After college, she went backpacking around the world. I moved to Maplewood, married your dad, had you. We talked on the phone every single day for a while. Then it was once a week, once a month, and then we started dodging each other’s calls . . . only calling back because we felt obligated to, you know?”
“Obligated? But wasn’t she your best friend?”
“She was. There was no bad blood. No fight. No real reason why we stopped talking. I guess we just ended up living two completely different lives that no longer intersected.” Mom lets out a soft chuckle. “Actually, we’re not even friends on Facebook anymore.”
“No one uses Facebook anymore, Mom.” I eye her warily, shaking my head. I know where she’s going with this. “And that won’t happen to me and Kassie.” We’re supposed to be maid of honor at each other’s weddings and godmothers to our future children.
Mom sighs and gives me a weak smile. “I’m not saying you and Kassie won’t be best friends in twenty years. But friendships can change. Sometimes people drift apart. That’s just life. It doesn’t make it any less painful, though.”
I swat her words away like pesky houseflies. I don’t mean to be a brat, but Mom is out to lunch. I can’t imagine a reality where Kassie isn’t blowing up my phone, asking how hot she looks on a scale of her grandma to Kylie Jenner in certain outfits, or whether she’s wearing too much bronzer. And then there’re the serious texts when she vents about how much she wishes her parents would just divorce already, because they’re both checked out.
Mom can tell I’m over the conversation and starts scrolling on her cracked iPhone. “Want to order pizza for dinner tonight?”
“We ordered pizza last week,” I remind her.
It’s been just Mom and me for years now. We aren’t a family who breaks bread at the table every night, rehashing our days. We usually eat on the couch. Ever since Dad left, Mom thinks sitting at our six-person dining table, just the two of us, is “depressing.” She’s probably right. I have vivid memories of sitting at the table with Dad. At the beginning of each meal, he’d ask what I learned in school that day. Mouth full, I’d jump at the opportunity to show off all my newfound knowledge, reciting facts from every subject. Bonus if I had a good grade to report. Dinner was when Dad and I bonded most, probably because he’d spend most of his evenings working. Sitting at the dining table across from his empty seat just feels . . . wrong, like a stark reminder of what I no longer have.
Mom props her bare feet on the table. “What about Subway? Oh, before I forget—I got a voice mail last night.”
“A voice mail? From who?”
“Your dad.”
My stomach plummets. “Oh.” That’s strange. Dad never calls just to talk. He prefers to text intermittently, only asking about school, as though my grades are the only thing he cares about. We only have formal phone calls on Christmas and my birthday, which happen to fall within a month of each other.
“He left a rambling voice mail. Asked me to ask you to give him a call, if you want.” Mom has that forced neutral tone she uses when she doesn’t want to persuade me either way.
“If I want?” I repeat, hesitant.
“I know he’s not Dad of the Year, but I think you should give him a call.” There’s something odd about her tone. A weird, nervous lilt, like there’s something more going on.
“Why should I?” I don’t bother to mask my saltiness.
Dad left for the city when I was nine. Mom fell into a depression for months afterward. Camp with Kassie that summer was my solace—a place I could decorate myself into oblivion with stickers and temporary tattoos, fill up on candy and white freeze pops, and forget about how much I missed Dad and the way things used to be.
For the longest time, his calls were the highlight of my week. I couldn’t wait to tell him about my latest test grade, or the elementary school speech I rocked, just like our dinner table conversations. He would get all warm and affectionate when I told him good news.
By middle school, things had changed. He started climbing the corporate ladder and married a woman named Shaina, who he’s currently in the process of divorcing. She was pleasant in a Stepford kind of way and owned multiple frilly aprons in different colors for every occasion. She also abided by the hashtag #happinessishomemade, which is the clear opposite of Mom, whose idea of homemade is a dry Betty Crocker box cake. She smiled a lot, but she already had three kids of her own, so she wasn’t particularly interested in me. After they married, my calls with Dad became distant and less frequent. They mostly consisted of me rambling while he put me on speakerphone and tapped away on his laptop. No matter how good my grades were, his responses were clipped, delayed, and often completely unrelated.
Things went downhill in ninth grade. I called to tell him I’d been elected freshman student council rep and he didn’t even remember that I was running in the first place. That was the moment I gave up seeking his approval. The moment I stopped visiting him in the city. What was the point? He was never coming back anyways, no matter how much I accomplished.