Girlfriend Material (10 page)

“See you tonight,” said Lawrence. He put down his drink and stood up.

“See you tonight,” said Adam, grabbing the lemon wedge from his glass and standing up too.

“Yeah,” I said. “See you tonight.”

“I look forward to it,” said Adam.

It wasn’t a full-body tick check, but it was a start.

MAYBE MY DAD HAD BEEN WRONG
about my having to wait for college to have a guy like me. Maybe there
were
guys who I could be into and who could be into me, only they all lived in a different zip code. It was kind of an exciting prospect, and the whole time I was riding my (well, Tina’s) bike home from Larkspur, I kept thinking about seeing Adam at Lawrence’s house later.

As I stepped into the cool of the shadowy living room, I saw Sarah lying on the sofa reading
The New Yorker
.

She looked up as the screen door slammed shut. “Hey,” she said, lazily turning the page.

“Hey,” I said. I’d already decided to make my announcement quickly—just rip off that Band-Aid. “Um, I ran into Jenna and those guys today,” I said, hoping my rabid joy in their company didn’t show.

“Yeah, Jenna told me,” she said, not looking up from her magazine. “I just talked to her. She said you played golf with them.”

“I did,” I said. I almost added
It was fun
, but a second before I did, I wisely reminded myself that Sarah was not my parent. “They, ah, said …” I couldn’t bring myself to utter the word
we,
as in,
we are invited
, in case Sarah looked me straight in the face and said,
Who’s “we,” exactly?
so I just finished, “ … they’re meeting tonight at Lawrence’s at seven thirty.”

“Yeah, she told me,” said Sarah.

Was I going to have to ask her permission to go? Was I going to have to ask her for a ride? Was I going to have to get a ride from someone else? It occurred to me that I not only didn’t know where Lawrence lived, I didn’t have any of their phone numbers, so it wasn’t like I could call and ask.

Why was Sarah making this so difficult? “So I …” I wanted to scream. I wanted to yank her perfect blond hair out of her head by the roots. I wanted to grab the magazine from her hands and force her to eat it, column by column.

Finally Sarah looked up at me. “My uncle’s coming up from New York, so my parents are cooking this big dinner. I already told them about it.”

Of course. Uncle Jamie! How could I have forgotten about Uncle Jamie? Whom I suddenly wanted to murder. For a split second I had the crazy idea that I’d go to Lawrence’s house anyway. After all,
my
uncle wasn’t coming up from New York. But just as I was imagining showing up at Lawrence’s (wherever that was) solo, having biked over, Tina came out of the kitchen.

“Hey, Katie, did you have a good day?” she asked. She was holding her hands in front of her at an odd angle, but before I could ask why or answer her question, she said, “I’m dripping scallop. Are you two ladies ready to lend your youthful energies to this fabulous family feast?”

Sarah groaned, and in the midst of my despair, I actually felt a tiny sliver of solidarity with her in her irritation.

“Sure, Mom,” she said. “We’re ready.”

I was halfway to the kitchen when I realized that, ironically, Sarah had just used a word I’d been unable to utter only a few minutes earlier.

We.

Maybe it was because Sarah kept referring to him as Uncle Jamie, but I’d gotten some idea that Jamie was Tina’s older brother and that he was actually elderly or at least oldish. When the car pulled into the driveway, I expected Henry to walk in the door with a gray-haired man in a suit.

But Jamie turned out to be Tina’s younger brother, and he was wearing a pair of ripped, faded jeans, a T-shirt, and a pair of hip-looking sneakers. I’m not into older guys, but if I were, I would definitely have thought Jamie, with his shoulder-length brown hair and light blue eyes, was cute. He came and gave everyone, me included, a huge hug, and when he got to my mom, he made a big deal out of lifting her slightly off her feet and swinging her around.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” he said. “It’s so great to see you again.” He was still hugging her, which bugged me. I mean, the woman
did
have a husband who just happened to be my father.

“You too, Jamie,” said my mom, and I was glad she extricated herself from his hug as she said it. “It’s just great seeing you.”

Tina hadn’t been exaggerating—dinner really was a feast. In addition to ceviche, Henry and Tina had prepared salad and grilled vegetables and cooked up a ginormous pot of linguine with clam sauce. They’d even made their own bread. I was so stuffed by the time Tina put a second serving of pasta on my plate, I felt like the tick from the poster.

I’d anticipated spending the entire night being pissed about not getting to hang out with Adam, but for a while it was actually fun being with Sarah’s family. It was even okay being with Sarah. Maybe it was because we were the only people under thirty sitting at the table, but at one point when her mom referred to “rap music,” Sarah said, “Mom, it’s
rap
, not rap
music
. You’re, like, the poster child for lame.” She rolled her eyes and made a face in my direction that indicated I’d understand what she meant, and we both laughed.

By the time Henry uncorked a third bottle of wine, I couldn’t help noticing that my mom and Jamie seemed happy to see each other. Really happy. My mom kept calling Jamie “Coop,” which apparently had been his nickname in high school, which is where he was when she had first gone home with Tina for a vacation and met him.

“I had such a crush on you,” said Jamie, and it took me a minute to realize he was talking about my mother. “You walked in the door with that green suitcase—”

“Oh God,” she said, “I’d completely forgotten about that suitcase.”

Jamie reached across the table and poured her some more wine. We were sitting out on the deck, and Tina had put several candles in glass holders on the table. I wished the setting didn’t feel quite so … romantic. “Okay,” said Jamie, “how much does it prove my eternal devotion that I remember the suitcase?”

“Utterly,” said my mom, laughing. “Utterly.”

“And then you ran off to Utah. To
Utah
, for Christ’s sake.” He shook his head as if it was beyond his ability to fathom the absurdity of my home state.

My mom’s cheeks were flushed. She doesn’t normally drink very much, but she took a sip of the new glass Jamie had poured her. “I never stopped missing the East Coast,” she said. She looked out over the water. “My God, how did I end up there? I’m a New Yorker.”

This was news to me. In all of my sixteen years of life, my mom had never so much as once uttered a word to indicate she felt at home anywhere but where she lived: i.e., Utah.

“Do you ever think about coming back East?” asked Jamie.

Suddenly there was something truly insidious about this conversation. I mean, who was Jamie to ask my mom if she thought about moving East? How about asking her if she and
her husband
ever thought about moving East?

I waited for Tina or Henry to say something to him. Maybe,
Okay, Jamie, that’s enough. I think you’ve had a little too much to drink, and it’s fueling a trip down memory lane that nobody but you wants to take.

But neither of them said anything. They were just watching my mom and Jamie smile at each other as if they didn’t know my mother was a happily married woman.

“I’m stuffed,” I said abruptly.

You would have thought the sound of her daughter’s voice might have made my mom a little embarrassed to be flirting like a teenager, but she didn’t even look my way.

“I think I’ll turn in, actually,” I said a bit more loudly than I’d announced the state of my stomach. “Sure, honey,” said my mom, finally looking at me. I tried to make my eyes say,
You’re freaking me out
, but my mom was apparently unable to read eye-speak.

“Good night, sweetheart,” said my mom.

“Good night,” said everyone else.

The last thing I wanted to do was leave my mom alone (i.e., unsupervised by me) with Jamie, but now that I’d announced to the table my intention of going to bed, it would have seemed a little weird to suddenly go,
Actually, I’m staying right here
. The real problem was that what I wanted was not to go to bed myself but for my mother to go to bed.

Alone.

Since I wasn’t in the least bit tired, I walked away from Tina and Henry’s and just sat in the dark on the deck of the guesthouse. Then I called my dad.

“Hello?” he said. I could hear people talking in the background; it sounded like he might be at a party or a restaurant.

I cut right to the chase. “Dad, you have to make up with Mom. She’s, like, flirting with Tina’s brother.”

I hardly expected my dad to hang up immediately in his mad dash to get to the airport, but I definitely didn’t expect him to just laugh and go, “Oh, Katie,” like I was eight and had just told him I wanted a pony for my birthday.

“Don’t ‘Oh, Katie’ me,” I said. “Did you hear me? She’s flirting. With another man.”

“Well, a little attention from the opposite sex never killed anyone,” said my dad. Then he said, “So, how’re the lessons going? That girl’s father still a problem?”

It wasn’t that I wanted to be my parents’ marriage counselor or anything, but did my dad really not care at all that his wife was almost three thousand miles away from him, listening to some guy recite an ode to her college suitcase?

“Dad, I hate to sound like a broken record, but Mom’s—”

“Honey, I told you to drop it, and I was serious, okay?” His voice was sharp.

“Sorry,” I said. I thought he’d say he was sorry too, but he didn’t. Then he asked me how everything was going, and I just said, “Okay.” I really didn’t feel like talking to him anymore, so I told him I had to go, and we said good-bye.

I felt awful when I hung up the phone. My dad had just basically told me to shut up. My mom was flirting with another man.

Just a month ago I’d actually thought we were a reasonably happy family.

I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts, but I didn’t want to call Laura either. Here’s who I didn’t feel like having advise me on my family situation: Brad. Practically before I could think about it, I found 1myself dialing Meg’s number. I got her voice mail.
This is Margaret Draper. I’m sorry I can’t take your call right now. Please leave a detailed message after the beep, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
Was my sister the only college junior whose outgoing message made her sound middle-aged?

“Hey, it’s me,” I said. “Um, Mom’s being really weird. She, like, got her hair cut, and she’s totally flirting with Tina’s brother. I don’t know. Will you please call me?”

As soon as I hung up I was sorry I’d called. I could already imagine how Meg would condescend to me when she called back.
Kate, you just don’t understand Mom very well. I’m sure she wasn’t flirting. Why don’t you focus on
your
life and let Mom worry about hers.

As I sat semi-stewing on the deck in the dark, I heard the side door of the main house open and shut. A minute later Henry said, “It’s great to have Jamie here, isn’t it?”

“I guess,” said Sarah. “Not like he’s talking to any of us.”

Henry laughed. “He does only have eyes for Jane, doesn’t he? Well, it’s nice for her. She’s had kind of a rough time of it.”

“I guess,” said Sarah again.

I heard a noise I couldn’t identify and then the sound of bottles rattling together. I realized they must have been putting the garbage into the bins.

“Kate seems like a nice girl.”

Clearly they thought I was asleep. Either that or they didn’t realize how far their voices carried in the still night. My heart started pounding, and I tried to make myself as small as possible in my chair.

I could practically hear Sarah’s shrug.

“Have you invited her to the Fourth of July bonfire at the club yet?” asked Henry.

“I’m sure she won’t want to go,” said Sarah. “She doesn’t know anyone.”

Henry’s voice had just the slightest edge to it as he said, “That’s why you’ll introduce her to people.”

There was a pause and then Sarah said simply, “Fine.”

Henry said something else, but I couldn’t hear it, and then the door swung open. “Dessert, guys,” called Tina.

“Coming,” said Henry, and I heard them walking across the gravel. A second later the door slammed shut.

I knew Henry meant to do me a favor. I knew he was a nice guy who wanted me to have the chance to party with my peers as we rang in another bright year of our fair republic.

There was only one problem with his strategy: now that I knew Sarah had been forced against her will to invite me, there was only one thing I could say to her invitation:

No.