Mom usually shops at the kind of store that has lots of different things to buy, like clothes and notebooks and toilet paper and furniture and food, and you put everything you want into a shopping cart. But this store sells only clothes, and none of the clothes have fallen onto the floor or been put back in the wrong rack or been thrown into a sloppy pile on a shelf. Everything is perfect. And also, there are no shopping carts.
The dress Mom is holding up has stripes, which I like, and it’s sleeveless, which I also like. I close my eyes and picture myself on television, and the dream is almost perfect except that my partner isn’t by my side. I open my eyes and Mom shakes the hanger and makes the dress dance in the air. “Well?”
“I like it.”
“But do you love it?” Mom says.
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s keep looking.”
I had to think of something to do today because today was feeling like the longest thing there ever was, longer than the lines for roller coasters at Six Flags and longer than the black-and-white movie Dad makes us watch every year at Christmas.
Mom is shuffling from hanger to hanger. “About this Mindy Love Show,” she starts to say.
My stomach gets tight. “Yes?”
“I know the idea of going on TV seems exciting,” Mom says, “but right now your father and I think it would be best to have your HSAM be more of a private thing.”
“Why?”
“It’s different with your friends and family. They know you. But you have to remember—sorry, you have to realize that what you have is extremely rare and if you go on TV, suddenly there are going to be a whole lot more people wanting to talk to you. Our phone will ring way more than it’s ringing now. Do you understand?”
That sounds amazing. But I know Mom doesn’t see it that way and it makes me wonder if the secret thing I’m trying to do is really worth it.
And now Mom is making me feel even worse because she just found a dress that is so great it would normally make me want to jump into the air but instead I just smile like a clown. Clowns have big smiles painted on their faces but they still don’t look happy.
“You don’t love this one either?” Mom says.
“No, I do.”
It reminds me of a superhero costume but also a police uniform and also the phrase about wearing your heart on your sleeve.
I smile for real now and so does Mom. She hands me the dress and walks away to shop some more. I hold it up by the end of the hanger and I notice the price tag. Normally Mom buys me clothes with prices that start with a number 1, like $12 or $14 or $18, but this dress is $52.
I follow Mom into the adult section so she can look at pants. There’s a girl my age and she’s also with her mom. Her mom holds up the same white pants that Mom is holding up, but her mom’s pants are much bigger and it makes me look again at Mom’s thinner legs and smaller waist because sometimes you see the same thing so many times that you forget what it really looks like.
“Are you going to get them?” I ask.
“You’re not supposed to wear white after Labor Day,” Mom says.
“When’s Labor Day?”
“In a few weeks.”
She holds the pants higher and she looks at the front and the back but she never looks at the price tag, which is usually the first thing she looks at.
“Why not,” she says, hanging the pants over her arm and leading us over to the dressing room.
I’m wondering what’s going on here, why Mom took us to this fancy store and why she doesn’t seem to care about price tags, even though she says we don’t have enough money to pay for the studio. Now I’m not feeling so bad anymore about what I have to do tomorrow because if Mom would rather shop at fancy stores and go on fancy vacations than save Dad’s studio and keep him playing music, then I really do have to do this all by myself.
And now I’m thinking about The Mindy Love Show again and also my partner. We’re in the dressing room and Mom is staring at the mirror to see how her legs look inside those white pants. I’m wearing the dress and it seems to fit well, but I’m focused on something else. “Do you know Marigold Hallowell?” I say.
We look at each other in the mirror even though we’re standing side by side. “Where did you hear that name?” Mom says.
“Gavin was asking about her before he left. Why? Who is she?”
Just a few seconds ago, Mom seemed happy with how the white pants fit her. But now, from the look on her face, she doesn’t seem so sure. “She’s an aspiring artist.”
“What does aspiring mean?”
“It means she wants to be a real artist someday, but she’s not quite there yet.”
I guess I’m an aspiring artist too, but not for much longer, because after I play my song on television and win the contest, I’ll be right where I want to be.
“What else did Gavin say?” Mom says, putting her normal clothes back on.
“Nothing, really. I reminded him about babysitting me tomorrow when you have tutoring.”
We leave the dressing room and get on line to pay. She’s decided to buy the pants but she still has that unsure look on her face. “Maybe I should cancel my session and stay home with you.”
My secret plan isn’t going to work unless Gavin is the one watching me. “You can’t cancel. What about your students? They need you, don’t they?”
“Since when do you care about that?”
I shrug.
“I guess I can always send you to Naveyah’s tomorrow,” Mom says.
“But I thought Gavin is supposed to watch me.”
The clerk asks for the next person in line. “I know,” Mom says. “But that was before…”
“Before what?”
Mom steps up to the counter, puts our clothes down in front of the clerk, and digs through her purse for her wallet.
“Before what, Mom?”
She runs her credit card through the machine and presses a few buttons. “Nothing, honey.”
But that’s not good enough for me. “I would like to know what’s going on with Gavin.”
She slides the card back into her wallet. “So would I.”
28
The waitress brings our drinks and leaves our menus. Maybe I’ll eat later, but for now, my stomach is already busy eating itself.
“When we met at the fair,” Mara says, “I wasn’t sure what you knew.”
When I ran into her that day, I saw Mara only as an acquaintance of the man I’d loved and an artist whose painting we once displayed in our home. But this woman sitting across from me now is someone entirely new. She’s a person on whom Syd was willing to bet our entire future.
It’s hard not to examine her every move and attribute. Rainbows of paint nest under her fingernails. Her eyes are hypnotically blue, extra-pronounced against her dark brown hair and fair skin. She’s got decent bone structure in the face, nothing too striking. On the whole, there’s something undeniably warm and welcoming about her, as if she’s subtly smiling even when she’s not. And then, when she actually smiles, her face seems to expand, and a grand dimple forms on her right cheek.
I take a swig of beer. “Please, start from the top. How did you two first meet?”