Love, Suburban Style (23 page)

Katie is alone.

Not alone… she has you and Ben,
he reminds himself.

But what do they know about dresses and shoes, proms and weddings? All those milestones in Katie’s motherless future loom before Sam every time he sets foot in a mall with his daughter. Things other parents look forward to, he dreads.

It isn’t fair.

But that’s the way it is. He has to accept it.

And you have,
he points out stoically. He rarely allows himself to wallow.

He won’t today.

But enjoy it?

That’s not going to happen.

Every man, woman, and child in suburban New York is at The Westchester on Saturday at high noon.

At least, that’s what it feels like to Meg.

It’s a rainy Labor Day weekend, so she should have realized that the upscale, elegant mall would be jammed with back-to-school shoppers. It wasn’t this crowded when they were here the other day to order the furniture from Crate & Barrel.

“Let’s just valet park,” Cosette suggests on their third fruitless journey through the packed parking garage.

“Valet park?” Meg echoes incredulously, and her daughter points to an elegant Scarsdale-type matron emerging from her white Lexus sedan and handing over the keys to a uniformed attendant.

“I don’t think so,” Meg mutters, steering the Hyundai in the opposite direction. “This is crazy. Maybe we should just go home.”

“No!” Cosette’s tone is so forceful that Meg nearly hits the brakes.

“Since when are you so into shopping with me?” she asks.

“Since I don’t have anyone else to shop with,” is the prompt reply.

Oh.

“You’ll make some friends as soon as school starts Wednesday,” Meg assures her. She adds, fishing, “Anyway, you already know Ben.”

“Yeah.”

No new info gleaned from that comment.

But Cosette did admit to jogging with him, but insisted he was just a friend. She wasn’t very convincing.

Meg has been wondering just what her daughter has been up to when she’s behind the closed door of her bedroom. She has her cell phone, and she also has her computer, with dial-up Internet access, thanks to the phones being turned on. For all Meg knows at this point, Cosette has been in constant contact with Ben Rooney since she kissed him.

But if she has, she’s not letting on. What can Meg do besides snoop? And snooping isn’t her style.

“Mom! Hurry!” Seizing her arm, Cosette gestures at a Chevy Tahoe vacating a spot a few feet away.

Meg flips on her turn signal and prepares to pull in when it pulls out, but a Mercedes SUV appears out of nowhere and slips into it first.

“Hey!” Meg shouts out the window in frustration.

“Mom!”

“That person just stole my spot.” Steaming, Meg watches a pair of Fancy Moms emerge from the Mercedes, clutching designer handbags and effortlessly unfolding designer strollers for their designer-dressed toddlers.

“We need to go,” Meg decides abruptly. “Let’s go down to the city and shop on West Broadway instead.”

“No! Come on, Mom, you hate driving in traffic in the rain.”

True.

But she also hates mingling with self-centered, arrogant women, and the mall promises to be filled with them today.

“Cosette, I don’t see how we’re going to shop here if we can’t even find a parking—”

“There!” Cosette indicates a Volvo station wagon pulling out of a spot just yards from them. She reaches over and flicks on Meg’s turn signal. “Get in there, Mom. Hurry.”

Meg spots a shiny black sedan coming around the corner in the opposite direction. Seeing the Volvo pulling out, the driver brakes. Puts on her turn signal.

“She’s going to steal your spot, Mom!”

“No, she isn’t!” Meg guns the engine and screeches the car forward, just barely missing the exiting station wagon as she swerves in triumphantly.

Take that, you… you Fancy Mom,
she wants to shake her fist and shout.

“Next time,” Cosette says, as they head toward the elevator, “We’ll valet park.”

Over my dead body,
Meg thinks.

There was no valet parking at malls when Meg was a kid. In fact, this particular mall wasn’t even here when Meg was a kid. Her parents took her to Caldor for her back-to-school wardrobe, where they could pick up school supplies and lunch box snacks as well, all under one roof.

Under the towering, skylighted ceiling at The West-chester are tony stores one finds on Fifth and Madison Avenues in Manhattan: Coach, Tiffany, Gucci… there’s even an Elizabeth Arden spa. Elegant white pillars line the marble-floored and carpeted corridors, which are filled with natural light, unlike most malls. Sculptures, fountains, and lush greenery are tucked along with designer boutiques.

No lunch box snacks here,
Meg thinks with regret as she and her daughter survey the directory on the main floor.

“Wow, Mom.
Ch-ching.
” That’s Cosette’s verbal shorthand for a whole lot of cash…

Which is what one definitely needs to shop here.

Which we don’t have,
Meg acknowledges.

“Let’s go to the Gap,” Cosette suggests, to her relief.

Okay, so far, so good. Maybe she’ll want to buy some regular jeans—
blue
jeans—and T-shirts. T-shirts in white and blue and gray.

To Meg’s surprise, Cosette does just that. She picks up some more black jeans and black T-shirts, too… but Meg is so pleased by the unexpected addition of color to her wardrobe that she doesn’t protest.

She’s also noticed that her daughter has gone a little lighter on the eye makeup today. It’s still there, and still black, but not quite as startlingly. And she’s tucked her long hair behind her ears for a change.

She doesn’t look wholesome… not by a long shot.

But she doesn’t look like Marilyn Manson, either.

“You should get some new jeans, too, Mom,” Cosette suggests, checking her watch as they make their way toward the register.

“I have plenty of pairs of jeans.”

With a pointed downward glance, Cosette informs her, “Yours are cut wrong.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You know… they’re not in style anymore.”

“I just bought these last year.”

“Exactly. Here, try these.” Cosette expertly plucks a pair from the nearest stack and thrusts them at her.

“I thought we were ready to pay and get out of here.”

“Yeah, but you should get some new jeans first.” She sneaks another peek at her watch. “Go ahead, Mom. I don’t mind waiting.”

Meg glances dubiously at the jeans. “You didn’t even check the—”

“Yes, I did. They’re a six. Exactly your size. Go ahead, try them. And if they fit, buy them. And get some other stuff, too.”

Meg wants to protest. They’re shopping today to buy clothes for Cosette, not her.

Then her gaze falls on a nearby woman. She’s fortyish, a married mom, with a pretty face and slender figure. But it’s her style that makes her eye-catching. Her sleek, well-cut clothes aren’t last
season’s
fashion, let alone last year’s.

I
am
feeling a little frumpy,
Meg decides.

How ironic that in cosmopolitan New York City, she rarely felt that way. Mostly because she traveled in artistic circles there. You went to rehearsal in sweats, and so did everybody else. And nobody on the subway or in Hell’s Kitchen or the East Village gave your wardrobe a second glance.

In Glenhaven Park, however, they do. Running to the A&P for milk and eggs and bread last night, Meg was very conscious of her no-frills shorts and tops and her no-makeup, no-manicure state… and so was everybody else in the store.

I need to step it up a little,
Meg thinks.

Not,
she adds defiantly,
because I want to become one of them.

No, it’s because she doesn’t want to call negative attention to herself, for Cosette’s sake and because you can’t launch a successful career if your clients don’t respect you. She wants to make a living teaching voice here in the suburbs—not just because she needs to supplement her alimony and child support checks, but because she could use the self-esteem boost after leaving behind her stage career.

All right, then. It can’t hurt to try on the jeans.

Anyway, it’s not as if this is Chanel. It’s the Gap, for Pete’s sake. She can buy something for herself here. It doesn’t mean she’s defected to Team Fancy Mom, at risk for becoming shallow and self-absorbed.

Not just self-absorbed, but child-absorbed, too. Women like Olympia Flickinger don’t just dote, they obsess, micromanaging every detail of their children’s lives.

I’ll never be like that,
Meg thinks, and for the first time, she doesn’t lament Cosette’s foray into gothdom.
At least I’ve given her the space to breathe, and experiment.

She suspects that’s more than Sophie Flickinger will ever have.

In the dressing room, she quickly sheds her old jeans and pulls on the new.

Surveying herself in the mirror, she’s startled to find that she feels transformed. Not just outside—the jeans are lean and sexy—but inside as well.

When was the last time she bought something for herself?

I wish Sam could see me in these,
she finds herself thinking as she turns and looks over her shoulder to survey her behind in the mirror.

What? Sam?

You’re not allowed to think about Sam.

Remember?

“Let’s see, Mom,” Cosette calls from out in the store.

Meg ventures from the dressing room.

“Wow. You look great,” Cosette says approvingly.

“You do look great,” a male voice echoes.

Meg swivels her head to find Sam Rooney looking appreciatively at her from across a clothing rack, as though she’d made a wish and he just materialized in a puff of magical blue genie smoke.

“What are you doing here?” Meg asks Sam, wide-eyed, before he can inquire the same thing of her.

“Shopping,” he says, and gestures with his head. “Ben and Katie are in here someplace. I was just going to find a chair and sit.”

He sees Meg’s daughter—who didn’t look the least bit surprised when Sam turned up in the Gap just now—turn slightly to seek out Ben.

Spotting him, Cosette slips away in that direction, but only after sneaking a peek at herself in the nearby mirror and patting her hair into place.

He can’t believe what he just said to her about looking great in those jeans. He saw her, and it just slipped out. But she really does look great in them. They’re snug but not tight, gently hugging her curves in all the right places.

I wish I could do that.

For God’s sake, get your mind off that. You’re a grown man, not a teenaged boy.

On that note, he looks over to see his son ducking his head and pushing his hair back from his forehead the way Sam’s noticed he does when he’s trying to impress a girl.

And that girl is Cosette.

“I didn’t know you were coming here today.”

He turns his attention back to Meg, who looks vaguely embarrassed. Or is it defensive?

“I didn’t know you were, either,” he replies, and tries hard not to allow his eyes to slip down past her neck again.

“Well, I have a feeling somebody knew,” Meg says, and he sees her gazing across the store at Ben and Cosette, who are chatting over a stack of sweaters.

“You think they orchestrated this accidental meeting?”

“I was already planning on going shopping somewhere today.”

“So was I, and we always come to this mall,” Ben tells Meg. “The Cheesecake Factory is near here. Remember I told you…?”

“Right. Your family tradition. I remember.”

“Why are you
here
?” Of all places. Why not some other mall? There are so many others in relatively the same distance of Glenhaven Park: Jefferson Valley, Danbury, Woodbury Common, Stamford, the White Plains Galleria…

Why here?

Why now?

“It was Cosette’s idea to come to The Westchester,” she admits. “So you really think they planned on hooking up here?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. But Ben says they’re just friends. Anyway, they were going out for a run together this morning when I came back from walking the dog.”

“In the rain?”

He shrugs. “It wasn’t raining that hard. And there are worse things they could have been doing. Running is healthy. Wholesome.” He flashes her a grin and tries not to think unwholesome thoughts about what
he
could be doing with
her.

“I know. Running is fine. But… well, have they done anything else? I mean, did they see each other last night, or yesterday?”

“Not that I know of. Not that I would know, though. Ben is alone in his room a lot, on the computer.”

“So is Cosette.”

“You know, things are different these days than they were when we were young. Kids carry on entire relationships over the Internet.”

“That’s what scares me,” Meg says, shaking her head.

“Ben is a good kid,” he assures her.

“So is Cosette. I guess I’m just surprised.”

“He’s not her type, right?”

“I don’t know if she has a type. I don’t even know if she
is
a type. Until the last day or two, I thought I had her pegged. Brooding rebel. But now all of a sudden—”

“Dad, there you are. I can’t decide on these jackets, so can I get all—” Appearing around the rack, Katie stops short. “Meg! What are you doing here? Hey, great jeans!”

“Hi, Katie. Thanks.”

“Are you getting them?”

“I don’t know,” she says, looking self-conscious.

“You definitely should.”

Yes. You definitely should,
Sam thinks, and reluctantly hauls his errant eyes up to Meg’s face again.

“Meg, I need your help,” Katie tells her. “I like all three of these jackets, but unless my dad says I can buy all of them…” Her gaze slips hopefully to Sam.

He shakes his head. “Nice try, but no.”

“So I can only get two. But which two?”

“You can only get one,” Sam amends.

“But Dad, I can’t pick just one. Look, this one is waterproof, so it would be good if it rains, and this one has the zip-in lining for cold nights.”