That gets her attention. “What are you talking about? You are enough.”
“No, I’m not. How can I be? I’m the one shot, the heir and the spare, so you have to make damn sure your one investment pays off because there’s no backup.”
“That’s ridiculous. You’re not an investment.”
“You treat me like one. You’ve poured all your expectations into me. It’s like I have to carry the load of hopes and dreams for all the kids you didn’t get to have.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says in a quiet voice.
“Really? Medical school at thirteen. Come. On! What thirteen-year-old wants to go to medical school?”
For a moment, Mom looks likes she’s been punched in the gut. Then she places her hand on her stomach, as if covering the place of impact. “This thirteen-year-old.”
“What?” I’m totally confused now. But then I remember how in high school, Dad always sent me to Mom when I needed help with chem or bio, even though he was the doctor. And I can hear Mom reciting the pre-med requisites by heart when the college catalog came. And I think about the job she once had, doing public relations, but for a drug company. Then I remember what Grandma said to her at the disastrous Seder: That was always your dream.
“You?” I ask. “You wanted to be a doctor.”
She nods. “I was studying for the MCATs when I met your father. He was just in his first year of medical school and somehow found the time to tutor in his spare time. I took the tests, applied to ten schools, and didn’t get into one. Your father said it was because I didn’t have any lab experience. So I went to work at Glaxo, and I thought I’d apply again, but then your father and I got married, and I wound up moving over to PR, and then a few years went by, and we decided to start a family, and I didn’t want your father and me to both be in the midst of school and residencies with a small baby and then we had all the fertility issues. When we gave up on having another child, I quit working—because we could afford to live on your father’s income. I thought about applying again, but then I discovered I liked spending time with you. I didn’t want to be away from you.”
My head is spinning. “You always said you and Dad were set up.”
“We were. By the campus tutoring center. I never told you everything because I didn’t want you to feel like I’d given up on account of you.”
“You didn’t want me to know you’d quit when you were behind,” I clarify. Because isn’t that exactly what she did do?
Mom reaches out to grab my wrists. “No! Allyson, you’re wrong about quitting while you’re ahead. It means being grateful. Stopping when you realize what you have is enough.”
I don’t entirely believe her. “If that’s true, maybe you should quit while you’re ahead now—before things between us get really messed up.”
“Are you asking me to quit being your mother?”
At first I think the question is rhetorical, but then I see her looking at me, her eyes wide and fearful, and a little bit of my heart breaks to think she’d ever truly think that.
“No,” I say quietly. There’s a moment of silence as I steel myself to say the next thing. Mom stiffens, like she’s maybe steeling herself too. “But I am asking you to be a different kind of mother.”
She slumps back in her chair, I can’t tell if it’s in relief or defeat. “And what do I get out of this?”
For a brief second, I can picture us one day, having tea, me telling her all about what happened in Paris last summer, what will happen on this trip I’m about to take. One day. Just not yet.
“A different kind of daughter,” I say.
Twenty-eight
JULY
Home
I’ve bought my airplane ticket. I’ve paid for my French class, and even with both of those expenditures, I still have five hundred dollars saved by the end of a surprisingly busy and lucrative July Fourth weekend. Café Finlay closes on July 25, but unless things go disastrously in the next three weeks, I should have enough money saved by then.
Right after the Fourth of July, Melanie comes home. My parents told me she’d be back from camp for a week before heading off to a rafting trip in Colorado. By the time she gets back from that, I’ll be gone. And by the time I come back from Europe, it’ll be time for school. I wonder if the entire summer is going to pass, as the last six months have, as if our friendship never existed. When I see Melanie’s car in her driveway, I don’t say anything. Mom doesn’t either, which is how I know that she and Susan have discussed our falling-out.
French class comes to an end. During the last week, each of us has to give an oral presentation about something particularly French. I give mine on macarons, explaining their origins and how they’re made. I dress up in one of Babs’s chef aprons and wear a beret, and when I’m done, I hand out macarons that Babs made special for the class, along with Café Finlay postcards.
I am coming home from class in Mom’s car, which I’ve borrowed to lug all my presentation stuff, when I see Melanie in her driveway. She sees me too, and we look at each other for a moment. It’s like we’re asking each other, Are we both going to pretend the other doesn’t exist? That we don’t exist?
But we do exist. At least we used to. And so I wave to her. Then I walk toward the neutral territory of the sidewalk. Melanie does too. When she gets closer, her eyes widen. I look at my silly costume.
“French class,” I explain. “Here, do you want a macaron?” I pull out one of the extras that I was bringing home for Mom and Dad.
“Oh, thanks.” She takes a bite, and her eyes widen. I want to say, I know. But with all the months gone by, I don’t. Because maybe I don’t know. Not anymore.
“So French class?” she says. “We both did the summer-school thing this year, huh?”
“Right, you were in Portland. At a music program?”
Her eyes light up. “Yeah. It was intense. Not just playing, but composing and learning about different facets of the industry. We had these professionals come in to work with us. I composed an experimental piece that I’m going to produce at school next year.” Her whole face glows. “I think I’m going to major in music theory. What about you?”
I shake my head. “I’m not sure. I think I like languages.” In addition to Mandarin, this fall, I’ll take French, along with another Shakespeare class with Professor Glenny. Intro to Semiotics. And African Dance.
She looks up, hesitates for a second. “So, no Rehoboth Beach this summer?”
We’ve gone to the same summer house since I was five. But not this year. “Dad was invited to a conference in Hawaii, and he convinced Mom to go with him. As a personal favor to me, I think.”
“Because you’re going to Paris.”
“Right. I’m going to Paris.”
There’s a pause. In the background, I can hear the neighbor kids splashing around in the sprinklers. Just like Melanie and I used to.
“To find him.”
“I have to know. If something happened. I just need to find out.”
I brace myself for Melanie’s derision, for her to scoff or laugh at me. But she just considers what I’ve said. And when she says the next thing, it’s not snide so much as matter-of-fact: “Even if you find him. Even if he didn’t leave you on purpose, he can’t possibly live up to the person you’ve built him into.”
It’s not like the thought hasn’t occurred to me. I get that the chances of finding him are small, but the chances of finding him as I remember him are even smaller. But I just keep going back to what my dad always says, about how when you lose something, you have to visualize the last place you had it. And I found—and then lost—so many things in Paris.
“I know,” I tell Melanie. And it’s weird because I don’t feel defensive. I feel a little bit relieved because it almost seems like Melanie is worrying about me again. And also relieved because I’m not worrying about me. Not about this, anyhow. “I don’t know that it matters.”
Her eyes widen at that. Then she narrows them, looks me up and down. “You look different.”
I laugh. “No. I still look like me. It’s just this outfit.”
“It’s not the outfit,” Melanie says, almost harshly. “You just seem different.”
“Oh. Well . . . thanks?”
I look at Melanie, and for the first time, I notice how she seems. Which is utterly familiar. Like Melanie again. Her hair is growing out and is back to its natural color. She’s wearing cutoff shorts, a cute embroidered tee. No nose rings. No tats. No multicolored hair. No slutty-chic outfits. Of course, just because she looks the same has no bearing on whether she actually is the same. It hits me that Melanie’s year was probably was just as tumultuous as mine in ways that I didn’t understand, either.
Melanie is still staring at me. “I’m sorry,” she says at last.
“For what?” I ask.
“For forcing you to cut your hair in London when you weren’t ready. I felt so bad when you cried like that.”
“It’s okay. And I’m glad I did it.” And I am. Maybe he never would’ve stopped me had I not had the Louise Brooks hair. Or maybe he would’ve, and we would’ve exchanged actual names. I’ll never know. Once accidents happen, there’s no backtracking.
We both just stand there on the sidewalk, hands at our sides, unsure of what to say. I hear the neighbor kids yelp in the sprinklers. I think of me and Melanie when we were younger, on the high dive at the pool in Mexico. We would always hold hands as we jumped, but by the time we swam back up to the surface, we’d have let go. No matter how we tried, once we started swimming, we always let go. But after we bobbed to the surface, we’d climb out of the pool, clamber up the high-dive ladder, clasp hands, and do it again.
We’re swimming separately now. I get that. Maybe it’s just what you have to do to keep above water. But who knows? Maybe one day, we’ll climb out, grab hands, and jump again.
Twenty-nine
New York City
My parents want to drive me to JFK, but I’ve made plans to spend the day with Dee before I go, so they drop me off at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. I’m going to take the train—my first train in a year—to Manhattan, and Dee will meet me at Penn Station. Tomorrow night, I catch my flight to London and then onward to Paris.
When my train is announced, we walk toward the platform. Dad taps his toes impatiently, visions of Maui golf courses dancing through his head. They leave on Monday. Mom just paces. Then when my train’s headlights are visible in the distance, she pulls a box out of her purse.
“I thought we weren’t doing presents this time.” Last year, there’d been the big dinner out, lots of little last-minute gadgets. Last night was more low-key. Homemade lasagna in the dining room. Both Mom and I pushed it around our plates.
“It’s less for you than for me.”
I open the box. Inside is a small cell phone with a charger and a plug adapter.
“You got me a new phone?”
“No. I mean yes. I mean, your old phone, we’ll unfreeze the plan when you get back. But this is a special quad-band phone. It definitely works in Europe. You just have to buy a . . . what are they called?” she asks Dad.
“SIM card.”
“Right.” She fumbles to flick open the back. “They’re very inexpensive, apparently. So you can get a local number anywhere you go and have a phone if you need one, and you can call us in an emergency or text us—but only if you choose to. It’s more for you, so you have a way to reach us. If you need to. But you don’t have to—”
