“Because I don’t want to. It’s my business, and I don’t feel like sharing it. Understand?”
“Yes,” Lena said, quietly defeated. What else could she say?
“I don’t want you to bring it up with me again.”
“Okay.”
Rain began to splash against the windshield. Lightning cracked the sky. This had the makings of a great summer lightning storm. Lena loved those.
“What about the next time I don’t want to share something in my life with you?” Lena asked. She couldn’t help adding that. She couldn’t come away totally empty-handed.
Ari sighed. “It depends what it is. But just so we keep things straight, I’m the mother, you’re the daughter.”
“I know that,” Lena mumbled.
“It’s not always fair.”
It’s never fair, Lena felt like saying, but for once she managed to keep her mouth closed.
Her mother pulled into their driveway. She turned off the engine, but she didn’t make a move to get out.
“Lena, can I ask you something?”
“Yes,” Lena said, wishing and hoping her mother had suddenly decided to alter her course.
“Who told you about Eugene?”
This was not what she had been hoping for. She kneaded her hands and cleared her throat. “I don’t think I feel like sharing that with you.”
Joe, the baby, was playing with cars on the floor, and Jesse was watching a TV show involving cats that spoke English with a Chinese accent. Carmen felt a little guilty, not doing more to earn her money, but Jesse liked the show a lot and it was on channel thirteen, so that meant it was good for him, right?
Besides, she had a lot of things to worry about, and she could do that better when the kids were quiet. She wanted to call Bee because she hadn’t heard her voice in eight days, but she couldn’t, so she called Lena at work.
“My job is much harder than your job,” Lena said accusingly when she picked up.
“You are so wrong. Have you ever spent time with a four-year-old boy?” Carmen demanded. This was part of a running argument.
“So how come you’re always calling me, if it’s so hard?”
“Because I care about you so much.”
Lena laughed. “Seriously, the Duffer is withering my soul with her eyes right now. I can’t talk.”
“Have you heard from Bee?” Carmen asked.
“No.”
Suddenly a howl filled the room. Then two louder ones. Jesse was taking Joe’s cars. “See?” Carmen said smugly to Lena before she hung up.
“Jesse!” Carmen intervened. “Let Joe play with the cars!”
“Nooooooo! They’re miiiiiiiine.”
“Come on, Jesse. Just give him the cars. Don’t you want him to be quiet so you can hear the TV?” Carmen felt nefarious, as if she were offering him a cigarette.
“No!” Jesse shouted. He wrenched the car out of Joe’s fat hand. Joe’s cry was so passionate it made no sound. His face turned purple, except for the creases around his nose and forehead, which turned greenish.
“Jesse, can’t you share?” Carmen begged.
When Joe’s cry finally picked up noise, it nearly blew the roof off.
Carmen scooped Joe off the floor and ran him around the room. “Want to play with my cell phone?” she asked in desperation.
It was Joe’s favorite off-limits pastime. He had once called Carmen’s father at work.
She thrust the phone at the baby, wincing as he accessed her speed-dial menu. Joe’s face returned to a normal color instantly. “Careful, honey, I’m over my minutes,” she pleaded as he pressed all the buttons.
Jesse stomped over and stuck his hand out. “I want the phone,” he said.
Carmen sighed. She was out of her depth here. What did she know about sharing? She was an only child. She never shared anything. She’d missed that lesson.
Carmen was ready to give up all hope when Joe magnanimously handed Jesse the cell phone. Jesse didn’t actually want the cell phone if Joe didn’t, so he dumped it on the floor. Then Jesse kindly handed the yellow car to Joe and kept the blue one for himself.
Five minutes later, both boys were crawling happily around the floor, one car apiece. Carmen sat on the couch and watched the boys play, wondering if maybe that lesson she’d missed had actually contained something valuable.
“His left isn’t for shit,” Bridget said to Billy.
Billy, though still frightened of her, had gotten a little used to her.
Burgess was playing their third game of the season, and they were still without a win. It was the first one Bridget had attended, and she watched it as avidly as if it were the World Cup.
Billy came a little closer to her. The dark green game jersey matched his eyes.
Bridget dropped her voice and leaned in to him. “Mooresville goalie. No left.”
She knew Billy wanted to ignore her, but he couldn’t completely.
Two possessions later, Billy smacked it hard and wide to the goalie’s left side. It went into the net without a fight.
Everybody screamed on the sidelines. Billy turned and gave Bridget a thumbs-up. It was a stupid gesture, but she smiled at him anyway.
Burgess won 1–0. The guys on the team and their friends and all their pretty groupies went out to celebrate, and Bridget went home to her boardinghouse alone. But she was too ramped up to stay in her room, so she dug her running shoes out of the bottom of her suitcase. She hadn’t used them in months. She put them on and stepped outside.
She ran straight down Market Street all the way to the river. She remembered the pretty, overgrown path that ran alongside it. The place with the arrowheads. On the far side of the river she saw the ancient, broken-down oak trees giving shelter to hardy weeds and climbers at the expense of their own failing branches.
She’d run so many miles in her life, her body seemed to welcome the exercise. On the other hand, it started to complain after only a mile or so in the July heat. She felt all the extra weight on her hips and shoulders and arms. It wrecked her stride and it wrecked her breathing.
Her mind flashed to the Traveling Pants. Just this morning she’d sent them on their way. She hadn’t even worn them. She felt angry at herself, and it made her run faster and farther. And the longer she ran, the more she felt like she was carrying a burden and she wanted it off.
Lena distinctly remembered the last time the Rollinses had had their Fourth of July barbecue, because she had thrown up all over the red-and-white checkered tablecloth. She had always blamed the watermelon, but one could never be certain. They had been ten years old that summer.
The barbecue had been an annual tradition from when they were babies, but the year they were eleven it went on long-term hiatus. Though nobody ever said so, Lena knew it was because of Bee’s mom. The relationships between the grown-ups were never easy after that.
She wasn’t exactly sure why it had been resurrected now, six years later. For a brief moment she had feared it was because Bee was away this summer, but she realized that Tibby’s mom had issued the invitations before Bee had impulsively up and gone.
Lena had another troubling thought: Had this party made Bee want to leave town?
But Lena didn’t really believe that. Bee had willingly—willfully—endured gatherings that had been harder than this one. In May she had inexplicably decided to attend the annual mother-daughter sports dinner, in spite of all their efforts to make other plans for her that night.
As they pulled up to the Rollinses’ groomed and gardened house, all the Kaligarises together for a rare family appearance, Lena promised herself to go easy on the watermelon.
“Now, who husked that beautiful corn?” Tibby’s mom asked by way of greeting as Lena and her family made their way to the backyard. Lena could see that the corn, speckled light and dark yellow, was piled pyramid-style on a blue platter.
“That would be me,” she said modestly.
She watched the mothers hug and kiss, one shoulder pat
, one cheek each. Lena noticed that her mom seemed particularly stiff. The fathers shook hands with each other and talked in deeper voices than they used at home.
Lena spotted Carmen standing several yards from her mom. Carmen wore a short denim cutoff skirt, a white tank top, and a red scarf tied at the back of her long hair. Lena was always impressed. Today Carmen managed to look sexy and patriotic at the same time.
Tibby was skulking around the periphery of the yard with her movie camera. She was wearing a bleach-spotted army green shirt and mangy khaki shorts. She didn’t look sexy or patriotic.
The three girls found each other quickly, like parted bits of mercury, and clumped together on the side of the deck. They watched as Christina and Ari repeated the stiff hug-and-kiss gestures.
“What’s up with your mom?” Carmen asked.
“She doesn’t look happy, does she?” Lena noted.
“Is she still mad at you about the Eugene thing?” Carmen asked.
“I think so,” Lena said. “She’s been weird.”
Carmen looked at the sky. “I miss Bee.”
“I miss her too,” Tibby said.
Lena felt sad. She grabbed one of Tibby’s hands and one of Carmen’s. They squeezed and dropped them before it got sappy. They sometimes did this when one of them was missing.
“She has the Pants still,” Carmen mused.
“I hope she’s all right,” Lena said.
Silently, they considered the various ways in which Bee was crashing around Alabama, armed with the Pants.
“I gotta go,” Tibby held up the camera. “I’m working this weekend.”
“Are we still going to the thing at the Mall tonight?”
“Sure,” Lena said unenthusiastically. Every year on the Fourth, a big group of kids from their high school gathered by the reflecting pool to hear bands and watch the fireworks. Lena felt it was incumbent upon her as a teenager to go, but she didn’t like crowds and she didn’t like parties.
Effie appeared with two hamburgers, a mountain of potato salad, and two ears of corn.
“Hungry?” Lena asked.
Effie ignored her. “I want that skirt,” she told Carmen.
“You can borrow it,” Carmen offered magnanimously. As an only child, Carmen appreciated the novelty of Effie.
Lena surveyed the party. In the old days it had been full of counterculture types. Tibby’s parents used to be the young, cool ones. Somebody had always pulled out a guitar and played folk songs and the odd Led Zeppelin tune, which her parents never knew that well on account of being Greek. Lena suspected in hindsight that a lot of the grown-ups had been enjoying bong hits in the finished basement while the kids chased each other around on the lawn. Six years later, the Rollinses’ friends were a lot less scruffy. Most of them had toddlers and babies.
Suddenly Lena realized why this party had been reborn. The Septembers and their parents were vestiges of the Rollinses’ first phase of parenting. Tibby’s mom had invited them again for old times’ sake, but this party was really about their second-phase friends, the parents of all of Nicky’s and Katherine’s friends. In fact, Lena strongly suspected she was going to get hit up for babysitting before the night was over.
It made her feel a little bit sad. She understood better how it was for Tibby. She considered how she would have described this feeling to Kostos if she were still writing real letters to him. Maybe it was just the sadness of time passing. Maybe it was a regular-life kind of heartache.
Lena, Effie, and Carmen ate on the grass and watched the babies run around. Then Lena watched with some foreboding, when the dessert platters came out, as the little kids scarfed pounds of drooly pink watermelon.
The sun had hardly begun its descent when Lena’s mother appeared at her side looking out of sorts. “Lena, we’re going to go. You’re welcome to stay if you can get another ride home.”
Lena looked up at her in surprise. “You’re going already? It’s pretty early.”
Ari cast her the “I don’t want to talk about it” look. Lena had been getting a lot of those lately.
“I’ll come too,” Lena said. When at parties, Lena often yearned to be home in her room. Even Effie decided to leave with them. Lena guessed that was because the only available guys were under four years of age.
Out of the corner of her eye, Lena saw Carmen’s mom beckoning Carmen over. Christina wore the Christina version of the look Ari was wearing. What was going on?
Ari went straight for the car without making any apparent good-byes. Lena zipped to Carmen’s side. “What’s going on?” she murmured.
“I don’t know.” Carmen looked equally bewildered.
They both bore down on Tibby in the empty kitchen. “What’s going on?” they asked her.
“God, I don’t know.” Tibby looked a little shell-shocked. “They were closed up in the dining room, the three of them. Your mother thinks my mom and Carmen’s mom told you some big secret about Eugene. They were whispering, but you could tell they were pissed.”
Lena groaned. She heard the engine revving outside. “I’ll call you guys later. My mom is about to drive away.” The three of them hugged quickly, parting as friends while their mothers left in anger.
Lena sat in the backseat on the drive home feeling a whole new kind of sad. She’d had some unarticulated hopes for this thing. On some level she’d had a fantasy that their mothers would remember how much they loved their daughters and each other and effortlessly strike up their old friendship again.
Now Lena felt like she understood how it was for Carmen, with her divorced parents. It was a basic human desire to long for the people you loved to love each other.
Lena watched her mother’s tense face through the rearview mirror. Effie cast Lena questioning looks. Her father, seemingly oblivious, finished the piece of watermelon he’d brought with him. At least Lena hadn’t thrown up.
Carma,
Stop worrying, okay? You didn’t say so on the phone yesterday, but I could tell. So stop it. I’m fine. I need to be here, and pretty soon, I may even figure out why. Did I mention Billy? Oh, I guess I did. About fifteen times.
So here are the Pants, back to you again. Did they seem to go around fast this time, or is it just me? I can’t tell you how I did with the Pants. I can’t talk about it. You have to wait till the end of the summer and then I’ll have some big things to say. I just know I will.
Hey. Have fun at the big old Rollinspalooza. Give Nicky and Katherine a little tickle torture from me. And tell Lenny to go easy on the watermelon.
Love, love, love. All ways all the time, Carmabelle.
Bee
Sometimes you need to make a mess.
—Loretta, the Rollinses’ housekeeper
Tibby felt the heat of Alex’s body as he leaned close to her. His chin was probably less than six inches from her shoulder.
“I love this,” he said.
No, I love this, she thought.
It was a series of fast clips of her mother not having enough time. It had been a setup, really. Tibby had told her mom she wanted to do an interview, and Alice had spent most of the weekend putting her off. First with the towel on her head and her toenail polish drying. “Honey, can we do it later?” Then poking her head out of the bathroom. “Sweetie, I just don’t have time this minute.” Then frustrated and shiny up to her elbows in pink ground beef, making hamburgers for the cookout. “Can you just wait till I’m finished making these?”
Tibby ran the clips shorter and faster as they mounted. Gradually she increased the speed of the video so her mother’s voice got higher and her movements increasingly jerky as the documentary progressed.
“Why don’t you throw this in?” he asked. It was a close-up of red Popsicle juice running down Nicky’s forearm.
“Why?” she asked.
“’Cause it’s a cool shot. Also, you don’t want it to get predictable.”
Tibby turned her face slightly, so she could see more of him. She was both awed and ch
astened. He was so good at this. Whereas her ideas were predictable.
Subtly he was pushing her past the pure slapstick humor she had begun with, toward a darker, more chaotic portrait. Tibby knew it was more cutting, but it was also more challenging.
For good measure, she threw in a random shot of a yellow patch of grass in her otherwise green backyard.
“Brilliant,” he said, nodding.
He was a good teacher. She was a good student. And Tibby felt some tiny, evil pleasure in the fact that Alex had taken such an interest in her movie, and that Maura had barely begun filming.
Tibby glided all the way back to her dorm on the word brilliant.
When she got to her room, Brian was there.
“Hey,” she said, surprised.
“I came back. Is that okay?”
She nodded. Part of her wasn’t so sure.
“I wanted to see how your movie was coming.”
“Thanks,” she said. She knew the last time he’d come, he’d made himself indispensable to a local copy shop whose computer network had been on the fritz. At least he’d be working.
She looked at Brian’s thoughtless clothing. What was his home like that he seemed to want to be in it so little? She wondered, and yet she didn’t ask him about it, did she? For years his life had been a video game in front of a 7-Eleven. Now, it appeared, it was Tibby.
“I have to work a lot,” she said. “I’m supposed to show the first cut on Sunday. We’re giving a little film festival for Parents’ Day,” she explained.
“That’s okay. I have stuff to do too.” Brian settled himself on the floor with his notebooks and pencils to demonstrate.
Tibby set her computer up at her desk. She needed to lay in the soundtrack tonight. She had thought she knew what songs she wanted, but now that she’d seen what Alex was working on, she was worried hers were too … predictable. She thought of all his hand-printed CD cases. He probably knew all the musicians personally. She felt like a stupid teenybopper, buying her CDs at Sam Goody.
She set about finding some lesser-known songs from lesser-known bands. She could create a hodgepodge and vary the speed so the actual songs would be almost unrecognizable.