Love, Suburban Style (35 page)

“I didn’t see anything back there when we drove over.”

“Actually, maybe it’s in the trunk. Just find it and bring it in. Thanks.” She says it loudly enough so that Ben and Meryl can hear from the stage. She sees them pause briefly and glance over to see Cosette leaving.

Meg turns guiltily back to the action onstage, the scene under way once again. It will take Cosette a few minutes to reach her car in the far parking lot… then to conduct a fruitless search for a box that doesn’t exist.

That should be long enough for Ben and Meryl to finish the scene without his jealous girlfriend looking on.

It’s not a foolproof plan, but it’s all Meg’s got.

And it actually seems to be working. The interaction between Norma and Joe is quickly picking up romantic steam. They sing and dance “The Perfect Year” in flawless harmony. In Ben’s arms, Meryl has come alive, convincingly playing a woman wistfully in love with a man who’s out of her grasp.

By the time they’ve reached the pivotal moment, Meg senses that everyone in the auditorium is captivated by what’s to come—and so are both the actors on stage.

She holds her breath as Meryl leans in to kiss Ben.

She’s supposed to initiate it, yet from where Meg sits, it looks pretty mutual. And breathtakingly real.

They slowly part, and Meryl utters her next line. “
I’m in love with you, Ben. Surely you know that.
”

It’s so convincing that Meg doesn’t even realize something is amiss until she hears the rustling and whispers and muffled giggles from the kids around her.

Oh, no.

Poor Meryl.

It takes another moment for her to pick up on the mishap. Then, suddenly comprehending what she just said, Meryl gasps and covers her mouth, clearly humiliated.

Ben shuffles his feet uncomfortably and looks around, probably checking to see if Cosette is back, if she heard.

“Okay, cut,” Meg calls, realizing the scene has just hopelessly disintegrated.

The line was supposed to be,
I’m in love with you, Joe.

She said
Ben.

Because she is,
Meg realizes.
She’s head over heels for him.

Anyone can see that, including Ben.

Including Cosette.

“He’s Joe,” a familiar voice calls icily from the back of the auditorium, interrupting the scene. “Not Ben. You said Ben.”

Meg turns and is dismayed to see her daughter striding down the aisle.

“I know. I’m really sorry.” Meryl tries to laugh it off, beet red. She ducks her head, refusing to look at Ben.

Cosette comes to a stop beside Meg and thrusts the keys at her. “There was no box in the car.”

“There wasn’t? Oh… I must’ve left it at home.”

“Yeah, you must have.” Cosette flops into a seat and glowers at the stage.

Ben refuses to look her way.

Actually, he suddenly seems to be focused on Meryl. He leans toward her and whispers something in her ear. She looks up shyly, smiling. Whispers something back.

Maybe there’s hope, Meg thinks. Hope for the scene. And hope for Meryl’s crush.

I’m not supposed to be rooting for her,
she reminds herself.
She isn’t me, twenty years ago, and Ben isn’t Sam.

Sometimes, though, it’s like watching history repeat itself… with potential for a much happier ending.

So where does that leave Cosette?

Teenaged relationships crash and burn,
Meg reminds herself.
It happens all the time. You survive, you move on, you find someone new. That’s a part of growing up.

That would have happened to her and Sam, too. Maybe it’s better that they never got together back then, as kids.

But that doesn’t stop her from wistfully wondering what would happen if they gave it another chance now.

Finding the door ajar, Sam pokes his head into Ben’s room and sees him standing in front of the mirror.

“Ben?”

He looks up. “Yeah?”

“I just wanted to tell you to break a leg tonight.”

“Thanks,” Ben says without enthusiasm.

“Do you know all your lines?”

Ben nods.

“Well, I’ll be sitting in the second row on the left. If you get a case of stage fright, look at me, and I’ll do this.” Sam makes a hideous face.

Ben doesn’t laugh.

“I’m kidding, of course.” No response. “What’s wrong, Ben? Opening night jitters?”

“Cosette and I just broke up.”

Thud.

Sam wonders whether to acknowledge the fact that Ben never even told him they were in a relationship to begin with.

No. Better to just go with it.

“What happened?” he asks, knowing Ben isn’t about to tell him.

“You know Meryl Goodman?”

Hmm. Maybe he is about to tell me.

“The girl playing the lead in the musical? Yes. She’s a sweetheart.”

“Yeah. She is. I noticed that, and I kind of…”

“Like her?” Sam supplies gently, trying not to jar Ben out of the conversational flow.

Ben nods. “It’s not that I don’t like Cosette, too. But I want to ask Meryl out. I can’t help it.”

“You’re not supposed to be able to help it. You shouldn’t be settled down with one girl at your age. You’re supposed to play the field. You’re fifteen.”

“I’m sixteen, Dad.”

That’s right. Ben just had a birthday. Sixteen. He went down to Motor Vehicles to get his learner’s permit that afternoon.

It seems like only yesterday that he was playing with his Matchbox cars on the floor. Now he’s sitting behind the steering wheel of a real one as Sam coaches him on parallel parking and four-way stops.

How it’s flown by, Ben’s childhood.

Any second now, he’ll have a driver’s license. Any second after that, he’ll drive away. Off to college. And Katie will be next.

And I’ll be alone,
Sam thinks glumly.

“What do you think I should do, Dad?” Ben is asking… remarkably. Ben wants his advice.

“You should listen to your heart, Ben.”

And so,
Sam realizes with unexpected clarity,
should I.

“Meg?”

She looks up to see Olympia Flickinger standing in the corridor outside the music room, where she’s making last-minute notes on her script.

“I know you’re busy. Opening night.”

“Right. Is Sophie excited?”

“She is. She’d be more excited if she were playing a lead, but…”

She just had to get that little dig in there, didn’t she.

“Anyway,” Olympia says, “I just wanted to give you something.”

Meg waits expectantly for her to cross the room in her sophisticated heels. Until Olympia showed up, impeccably dressed as always, Meg was feeling pretty good about the way she herself looks tonight.

She’s wearing a figure-skimming red dress she bought last year for a wedding in the city. It’s not new, but nobody here has ever seen it, and it’s flattering on her. She put her hair up on top of her head in a tousled knot—her sex kitten ’do, as Geoffrey always likes to call it. And she’s wearing makeup. Not heavy stage makeup like she just put on Cosette, but enough to accentuate her features and make her look attractive.

Or so she thought until Olympia swept into the room in her swanky black pantsuit, heels, and professionally styled hair.

Oh, well. Meg isn’t trying to outdo anyone. She’s comfortable enough in her own skin that she’s stopped feeling so self-conscious whenever the Fancy Moms are afoot. She’s even managed to make a new friend, sort of.

She ran into Meryl’s mother, Jenny, at the florist’s shop this morning. Meg was picking up the arrangements needed for the set, and Jenny was buying a bouquet of roses for her daughter.

She confided to Meg that Meryl was a nervous wreck. Meg assured her that she was doing a great job.

She neglected, of course, to say anything about the kiss that blossomed between the two leads at last night’s dress rehearsal.

She and Jenny wound up grabbing a quick cup of coffee together at the cafe next door and made plans to have lunch someday next week.

So things are looking up on the friendship front.

At least, they were, until Olympia Flickinger burst onto the scene.

“This is yours, I think.” She extends a hand and drops something into Meg’s.

She looks down. It’s an envelope.

She must be paying me for that last voice lesson she had scheduled before she canceled,
Meg thinks. Well, this will come in handy.

“Thanks.”

“The contractor found it yesterday when he ripped out the old cabinets, and he gave it to Brad.”

What?

Meg turns the envelope over with hands that are suddenly shaking.

“We recognized your handwriting from the notes you sent home with Sophie,” Olympia goes on, oblivious to Meg’s emotional state.

Sam Rooney, 31 Boxwood Lane, Glenhaven Park, New York 10535

It’s the letter. The love letter she wrote to Sam.

Who knows what would have happened if she had gone ahead and mailed it all those years ago?

Maybe you and Sam would have gotten together.

Then you would have eventually broken up.

Look at Cosette, licking her wounds over the argument she had on the phone with Ben after school. Meg couldn’t help but overhear Cosette’s end of the conversation. Nor could she help feeling guilty, as Meryl Goodman seems to be the source of the trouble between Cosette and Ben.

Thanks to me.

But if it hadn’t been Meryl Goodman, it would have been something else, sooner or later. The timing wasn’t right for Cosette and Ben.

“So you knew Sam Rooney, then, when you lived here?”

Startled back to the present, Meg nods numbly at Olympia.

“I wonder what’s in the envelope. Do you remember what it could possibly be?”

Meg shrugs. “I’m not sure.”

“Aren’t you going to open it and see?”

“Not now,” she says, tucking it into her tote bag. “I’ve got to get ready for the show.”

Obviously disappointed, Olympia looks poised to protest. But then Bill pokes his head into the room.

“Meg? Minor emergency in the girls’ dressing room. Nobody can find the hair spray.”

“I’ve got some in here.” She hurriedly grabs her tote bag and slings it over her shoulder, relishing the frustrated curiosity on Olympia Flickinger’s face.

Seated in the second row of the auditorium, waiting for the lights to go down and the show to begin, Sam feels conspicuously alone.

Katie is here somewhere, but she insisted on sitting with her friends. Both Jack and Sam’s father-in-law have tickets to come to tomorrow night’s performance. There are plenty of familiar faces in the crowd—students, parents, faculty members—but no one Sam would feel comfortable joining.

That’s okay. He’s used to going places solo. He’ll just sit here and reread the program until—

“Mr. Rooney?”

“Yes?” Sam looks up to see Julia Kiger, one of his sophomore physics students, standing in the aisle.

“I just found this on the floor in the hallway. You must have dropped it.”

“What is it?”

“I have no idea, but it’s addressed to you.”

He takes the envelope from her and turns it over. She’s right. It is.

But he didn’t drop it. Somebody else must have.

“Thanks, Julia.”

“No problem. You must be psyched to see Ben in the show. I heard he’s really good.”

He smiles. “I hope so.”

As Julia scurries off to join her waiting friends, Sam turns the envelope over, looking for some clue to what it might contain. There’s no return address, and no stamp. Clearly, it’s something somebody intended to mail to him, though… it has his name and address on it. So he might as well open it, right?

Right,
he tells himself firmly, already sliding a finger beneath the flap.

The applause in the theater is deafening.

Standing in the wings, watching her cast take a second bow to a standing ovation, Meg is elated.

“They did it!” she exclaims to Bill Dreyfus, who’s standing beside her, flushed with exhilaration.

“So did we!” Bill replies.

Then a couple of kids from the chorus grab his arm and Meg’s and coax them both onstage.

Beaming, self-conscious, she takes a bow with Bill, holding hands.

How strange it is to be back in the spotlight after all this time.

Yet, unlike poor, doomed Norma Desmond, she finds that she doesn’t crave it. What a relief it is to be behind the scenes now.

Blinded by the lights, she gazes out into the dark, crowded auditorium, knowing Sam is out there somewhere.

Part of her wishes she could see his face; part of her is glad she can’t.

A thousand bumblebees, remember? Just waiting to sting your heart.

She cringes.

And the curtain falls on opening night.

Sam awakens to sun streaming in the window and a strange aura of expectancy streaming in his blood.

Why?

What’s today?

Saturday, he remembers. Soccer game this afternoon, and—

Oh. That’s right.

His mouth curls into a smile and he turns to look at the folded sheets of stationery on his nightstand.

Meg.

He grabs the letter to reread it once more. Not that he hasn’t read it dozens of times already.