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Mom is extra-cheerful and solicitous these days, blending my smoothie before I have a chance to, leaving little packages on my bed with cheery Post-it notes. “Saw this cute top and knew it would look great on you.” “Bought some sandals for myself and knew you’d love them too!” She doesn’t say anything about me sleeping till noon. She ignores my monosyllabic conversation, amping up her own to fill the silences. Over di
—“How lovely this would look on your future!”—while I poke at my chowder.
No longer caring what Mom will say, I give notice at the B&T. Knowing Nan is just a few yards away, radiating anger and resentment through the walls of the gift shop, makes me feel sick. It’s also impossible to concentrate on watching every swimmer at the Olympic pool when I keep finding myself staring fixedly at nothing at all.
Unlike Felipe at Breakfast Ahoy, Mr. Le
“Oh now, Ms. Reed! Surely…” He glances out the window, takes a deep breath, then goes over and shuts his office door. “Surely you don’t want to make this Precipitous Choice.” I tell him I have to, unexpectedly touched by how flustered he is. He pulls a small paisley silk handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and hands it to me. “You have always been an excellent worker.
Your work ethic is unparalleled. I would hate to see you Retire Impulsively. Is there…perhaps…a Delicate Situation on the job which makes you uncomfortable? The new lifeguard? Is he making Unwelcome Advances on your Person?”
Part of me wants to giggle hysterically. But Mr. Le
“Do I need to Have Words with Someone?” he asks. “Is there something you need to Get off Your Chest?”
If you only knew.
For a moment, the words crowd into my mouth. My mother nearly killed the father of the boy I love and now I’ve broken his heart and I can’t tell anyone. My best friend hates me for something she did and I can’t fix it. I don’t know who my own mother is anymore and I don’t recognize myself and everything is terrible.
I imagine pouring all those words out to Mr. Le
“It’s nothing about the job. I just can’t stay here.”
He nods. “I accept your resignation with Great Regret.”
I thank him. As I turn to go, he calls, “Ms. Reed!”
“Hm?”
“I do hope you will continue to swim. You may keep the key. Our Arrangement for your training stands.”
Recognizing this for the gift it is, I say, “Thank you.” And leave before I can say more.
With no schedule, no babysitting or breakfast shift or lifeguard gig, days and nights bleed into one another.
I can’t settle down during nights and spend them roaming the house restlessly or watching Lifetime movies, where everyone is worse off than I am.
Why don’t I call my sister?
The answer is, of course, that I do. Of course I do. She knows this situation from the inside out, knows Mom, me. Knows it all. But here’s what happens when I call: Straight to voicemail. My sister’s husky voice, her deep-from-the-belly laugh, so familiar and so far away. “Got me. Or not, really. You know what to do. Talk to me! I may even call you back.” My imagining: Tracy out on beach, bright blue eyes squinting against the sun, having that carefree summer she told Mom she’d earned, phone in Flip’s pocket, or switched to off, because what was the big deal. Their perfect summer. I open my mouth to say something, but snap the phone shut.
The strangest part? Mom used to notice if I had a nearly invisible stain on my shirt, or hadn’t conditioned my hair enough, or if my morning routine deviated in some miniscule way: “You always have a smoothie before work, Samantha. Why are you having toast? I’ve read that a change in a teenager’s routine could be a red flag for a drug habit.” But now? Clouds of pot smoke could be unfurling under my door and that probably wouldn’t stop the blizzard of Post-it notes that are her primary form of communication these days.
Please pick up my silk suit at the dry cleaner. Toile chair in study has stain, apply OxiClean. Will beout very late tonight; turn on alarm when you go to bed.
I’ve quit all my jobs and become a recluse. And my mother doesn’t seem to notice.
“Sweetheart! Good timing,” Mom says jovially as I drag myself into the kitchen in response to her Yoo-hoo, Samantha, I need you. “I was just showing this nice man how I make my lemonade. Kurt, did you say your name was?” Mom asks the man seated at our kitchen island after waving cheerfully at me with the lemon zester.
“Carl,” he responds. I know him. He’s Mr. Agnoli, who takes the photographs for the Stony Bay Bugle.
He always photographed the wi
“We thought a quick piece about the state senator at home would be great along with pictures of her making lemonade. A metaphor for what she can do for the state,” Mr. Agnoli tells me.
Mom turns around and checks the sugar/water mixture melting on the stove, enlightening Mr. Agnoli about how it’s the added lemon zest that really does the trick.
“I’m going back upstairs,” I say, and do so. Maybe if I can just sleep for a hundred years, I’ll wake up in a better story.
I’m jolted awake by Mom jerking on my arm. “You can’t doze the day away, sweetheart. I’ve got plans.” Everything about her looks the same as always: her smoothly uptwisted chignon, her faultless makeup, her calm blue eyes. I’m in a backward version of the way I felt after Jase spent the night. When big things happen to you—shouldn’t they show on your face? Not on Mom’s, though.
“I took the whole day off.” She’s rubbing my back now. “I’ve been so busy, neglecting you, I know. I thought maybe we could go get facials, maybe—”
“Facials?”
She pulls back a little at the sound of my voice, then continues in the same lulling tone, “Remember how we used to do that, the first day of summer vacation? It was a tradition and I skipped right over it this year. I thought I could make it up to you, we could go out to lunch afterward—” I sit up abruptly. “Do you really think that’s how it works? I’m not the one you need to make it up to.” She walks over to the window overlooking the Garretts’ lawn. “Stop this. It’s not doing any good.”
“Maybe if I could understand why not, Mom.” I haul myself out of bed and stand next to her at the window, looking down on the Garretts’ house, the toys in the yard, the inflatables floating in the pool, the Mustang.
Her jaw tightens. “The truth? Fine. I never enjoyed it when you and Tracy were small. I’m not like that woman over there—” She gestures out the window in the direction of the Garretts’. “I’m not some broodmare. I wanted children, sure. I was an only child growing up, I was always lonely. When I met your father with his big family, I thought…But I hated the mess and the smells and the constant distractions. As it turned out, he’d had enough of all that growing up too. So he took off to be a boy again, and left me two little babies. I could have afforded ten na