Girlfriend Material

by Melissa Kantor

“Jamie’s so lame,” I said.

  “Why would you say that?” asked my mom. “He’s a lovely man.”

  Now I was really getting irritated. It was one thing for Jamie to flirt with my mom, another for my mom to defend him to me.

  Plus, I happen to hate the word lovely.

  “What do you mean, he’s lovely?” I said. “He’s not lovely. He’s trying to get with another man’s wife. That’s, like, the opposite of lovely.”

  “Katie, you’re just being paranoid,” she said. “We’re old, old friends.” Paranoid? Paranoid? Paranoid like when I thought it was significant that Adam didn’t tell Lawrence I was sitting in the restaurant with him? Was that the kind of paranoid my mother meant? “It’s weird, Mom. You’re married.”

  “I know I’m married, Katherine.” My mom only calls me Katherine when she’s completely annoyed with me. “Believe me, I’m spending a lot of time thinking about the fact that I’m married.”

  I don’t know if I would have gotten so mad at her if I hadn’t been so wildly pissed off at Adam even before the conversation started, but unfortunately I was, and I did.

  “Oh really, mom? That’s what you call spending all your time talking with Jamie and Henry and Tina about life in New York—‘thinking about the fact that you’re married’? If you’re so bored and unhappy in Salt Lake, why don’t you do something about your life instead of just pretending you’re still some twenty-something single woman living with your friends in New York?”

  “I’m not pretending anything, Kate.”

  “What are you going to do, leave Dad for Jamie? Be somebody else’s wife? Why don’t you take some responsibility for your choices instead of blaming it all on Dad and the fact that you’re married to him?”

  Her mouth dropped open. “You don’t know anything about what you’re saying,” she said.

  “All you want is some guy to make you feel important. Did it ever occur to you to maybe be a better role model for your daughters?” Even as the words came out of my mouth, I realized how absurd they were. I mean, it wasn’t my mom’s fault that I’d been so happy when I’d thought Adam liked me. And it certainly wasn’t her fault that he’d turned out to be with someone else.

  “You watch your mouth, young lady!”

  But I was on a roll. It felt so good to be yelling, I couldn’t have stopped if I’d tried. “No, no I won’t watch my mouth. ‘Buy me this! Buy me that!’ That’s all you ever say. And then when Dad works hard to buy you the stupid stuff you want, you’re like, ‘Why are you working so hard? You should be admiring me more!’”

  The last word had barely left my mouth when I felt my mother’s hand smack against my cheek. The sound echoed in the air, sharp as a gunshot.

  My mom and I looked at each other, then she folded her arms across her chest. “Don’t speak to me until you’re ready to apologize,” she said.

  I was crying, and it wasn’t just because she’d hit me. I couldn’t believe what I’d just said to my mom—it was really awful. But I couldn’t take it back either. Just thinking about what a mean daughter I was made me cry even harder.

  My mom stared at me. “I mean it,” she said. Then she walked off the deck and up to the main house without another word.

  I didn’t see my mom for the rest of the day, which may have had something to do with my hiding out in the Cooper-Melnick den watching old movies. At around four o’clock my phone rang, but it was Meg so I didn’t pick up. I could already hear her lecturing me like some mini-mom. An hour later, when my phone rang again, I did pick it up. I knew my dad would at least listen to my version of the argument.

  “Hey, Daddy,” I said.

  “Kate, I’m very disturbed by the things you said to your mother today,” he said.

  Of course. Nothing could unite my parents so effectively as the malfeasance of one of their daughters. Years ago, Meg took the car without permission (and without a license). The whole time my parents were outlining her punishment to her, they sat so close to each other and agreed with one another so passionately, you would have thought they were renewing their vows.

  “Let me get this straight—you’re mad that I told your wife not to flirt with another man?” This was really too much.

  “Kate, that is not your place. You have no business implying your mother’s behavior is inappropriate.”

  It wasn’t like I didn’t already feel bad about what I’d said to my mom. And who was my dad—the whole reason my mom was unhappy in the first place—to tell me I was the one who had upset her. “How about your behavior, Dad? How about how you never do anything she asks you to?”

  “How about you don’t talk to me that way, Katherine.” My dad was really mad now, and I had the feeling that if we hadn’t been separated by the better part of a continent, he might have slapped me too.

  “Whatever, Dad,” I said. “It’s your messed up life.”

  As if he and my mom had compared notes, he echoed her threat to me. “Watch your mouth, young lady,” he said. “You’re treading on very thin ice.”

  “Yeah, well, I gotta go,” I said. I was crying again, which was completely infuriating.

  I hung up the phone and took Casablanca off pause. Ingrid Bergman’s beautiful face filled the screen. “Play it, Sam,” she said.

  A shadow filled the doorway, and for a brief second I thought it might be my mom, but it was Sarah. “Hey, can I join you?” she asked, which was nice considering it was her house and everything.

  “Sure.”

  Given that I hadn’t talked to my best friend in over a week, the guy I’d thought was about to declare his love for me actually loved someone else, and both of my parents thought I was some kind of bad seed, there weren’t many people in my life for me to watch a movie with.

  I moved the empty DVD case to the arm of the couch to make room for her, but Sarah stayed where she was. It seemed kind of strange, but I figured it was none of my business if she liked to watch TV standing in doorways. Just as I reached for the remote control, she suddenly blurted out, “I’m really sorry. About how I acted.” Then she added, “When you first got here.”

  “Oh.” I thought I should say something more, but I didn’t know what, so I just said, “It’s okay.”

  She made a face. “Not really,” she said. “I’m kind of embarrassed. It’s just …” she took a deep breath. “My mom was all gung ho about our being friends and it felt like there was all this pressure and … I don’t know. It’s not an excuse or anything. I should have just given you a chance, not made you prove how cool you are, you know?”

  She was so gracious about apologizing, it made me want to be gracious back. I tried to picture what I would have done if my mom had announced that some random girl was coming to Salt Lake for the summer and I was expected to be her best friend while her mother had a nervous breakdown in my living room. “Don’t feel bad,” I said. “Seriously. If the situation had been reversed, I would have acted way worse.”

  “Well, that’s nice of you to say,” said Sarah. “But I’m still sorry.”

  “Thanks,” I said. It was funny: I’d thought things with me and Sarah were okay, but now that she’d apologized, I realized her saying she was sorry was kind of a relief.

  “So,” she said, dropping onto the sofa next to me, “what are we watching?”

  “Casablanca,” I said.

  “Oh, I love this movie.”

  When it ended, Sarah stretched her legs out in front of her and sighed contentedly. In spite of all the bad stuff that had happened over the past few days, Sarah’s apologizing and our watching the movie together made me feel a little content, too. “It’s the best,” she said.

  “I never get why Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart don’t end up together,” I said. “She doesn’t love the other guy.”

  “You’re a romantic,” Sarah said.

  I couldn’t help the snort that escaped when she said that. Could you be a romantic when you’d been falling for someone else’s boyfriend? I was prett
y sure we had other names for that … .

  “So, can I ask you something?” She sounded surprisingly hesitant for Sarah. I wondered if she was going to confide in me about Lawrence. On the one hand, I wanted us to be friends. On the other hand, I wasn’t really up to hearing Sarah talk about how hard it was to have a guy you don’t like that much be madly in love with you.

  “Sure,” I said. “Well … I had this feeling about … something, and then my mom kind of confirmed it without realizing. I mean, she thought I knew.”

  Was this going to be about my mom and Jamie? I felt my stomach clench, remembering Jenna’s comment the first day we’d met. So, your parents are getting divorced? What had Tina told Sarah?

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “The thing is, you seemed kind of shaken up when we talked about Molly, and then last night my mom mentioned that you and Adam went to Provincetown on Friday. And that you were … talking in Adam’s car Thursday night when she and my dad came home.”

  My stomach didn’t unclench now that it was clear she wasn’t going to ask something about my parents. If anything, it just got tighter.

  When I didn’t respond, Sarah continued. “Is there something going on with you guys?”

  Remembering how I’d once imagined this conversation going, I really felt for a second like I might puke. He likes me. He’s thinking about me on his fishing trip. I think we might be falling in love … .

  “Not anymore,” I said. I’d been facing the blue screen of the television, but now I turned to face Sarah. I steeled myself to witness our mutual content evaporate. Molly and I are like sisters. How could you mess with Adam; he and Molly are the most devoted couple since Romeo and Juliet. Get away from me you tacky slut.

  But she didn’t say any of that. Instead she just let out a long low whistle. Then she said, “Are you okay?”

  I totally did not want Sarah to see how upset I was about Adam, but a second later my chin was quivering, and a tear ran down my cheek and into my mouth. “I’m not crying about Adam,” I said as about a million tears lined up to follow the first one. “I’m just having a really bad day.”

  “Sure,” said Sarah. “I totally understand.” She reached behind her for a box of tissues, then handed it to me. “Thanks,” I said, taking one out and blowing my nose. “Do you feel like talking about it?” I shook my head. The whole thing was so humiliating, what was there to say?

  Sarah shrugged and patted me on the knee. “For what it’s worth, those Carpenter boys are deadly,” she said. “I have kind of a monster crush on Adam’s brother, David.”

  “Really?” I was so surprised I stopped crying for a second. I totally could not imagine a guy Sarah liked not liking her back.

  “Oh God,” she said, half smiling, half wincing at something. “It’s soooo bad. He’s just this total outoorsy, hunky … man.” She shivered as she said the word, and I knew that if Lawrence could have heard and seen her right now, he would have realized he didn’t have a chance. “David Carpenter,” she said. I remembered how I’d just wanted to say Adam’s name the other day, and I knew that was what Sarah was doing now.

  She continued, “He’s got this girlfriend at Columbia.

  She’s older and just, like, perfect.”

  “But you’re perfect,” I said. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I was embarrassed to have said them, but I also knew they were true. Sarah was so pretty and cool and chic and sexy. She was …

  She was Lady Brett Ashley.

  Sarah laughed. “Well, David doesn’t seem to think so.”

  “He’s crazy,” I said.

  “Totally,” Sarah agreed.

  “Do you think there’s any ice cream?” I asked.

  “My dad always has ice cream in the house,” said Sarah. “It’s like a holy law with him.”

  “I feel I need some ice cream,” I said.

  “If you don’t need ice cream,” said Sarah. “Who does?”

  “Exactly.”

  We spent the rest of the afternoon eating ice cream and watching To Catch a Thief. And even though I was pretty sure my heart was broken, it ended up being not such a bad day.

  WHEN THE MOVIE ENDED, Sarah and I went out for pizza, and when we got back, all the grown-ups were out. I was sleeping when my mom came in, and she was already gone when I woke up. I felt bad about our fight. I knew I had to apologize, but I felt like I needed to do it in person, and we weren’t exactly seeing a whole lot of each other. When my phone rang at nine, I thought maybe it was her calling, but it turned out to be Natasha’s mom asking if I could do a lesson at ten. I headed up to the main house to look for my mother, but there was just a note from Tina to Sarah saying she and my mom and Henry had driven Jamie to Provincetown so he could catch the ferry to Boston and they’d be back by lunch.

  Since the note didn’t say that Tina and Henry would be back but my mother would be accompanying Jamie back to Boston and then to their new life together in New York, I couldn’t not face the fact that my accusations had been just as outrageous as both of my parents had said they were.

  * * *

  Supposedly I was teaching tennis to Natasha, but in reality I was just giving myself whiplash. Every time I heard a guy’s voice, I’d turn my head, looking for Adam. Finally, as I was looking toward the pro shop thinking I’d heard not Adam but my mom, Natasha returned a lob right onto my left cheek.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah, sorry,” I said, rubbing my cheek. “I’m just a little distracted.” Like that wasn’t totally obvious.

  “Do you want to take a break?” she asked.

  Since Mr. Davis was off somewhere, no doubt screaming into his cell phone at some hapless employee other than me, it wasn’t like we couldn’t take a break. Still, I felt a little bad about once again taking the man’s money and not teaching his daughter tennis.

  “Umm …”

  “Five minutes,” she said. She held up her hand, the fingers spread wide as if to show me what five was.

  What the hell. It wasn’t as if we were training for the U.S. Open or anything. “Sure,” I said. “Five minutes.”

  “So,” she said when we were sitting side by side on the bench, “what’s on your mind?”

  I couldn’t help laughing. Here was Natasha trying to get to know me. “Just stupid stuff,” I said.

  “Like …” she prompted.

  No way was I going to confess to a thirteen-year-old girl what had happened with Adam. “Like I had a big fight with both my parents.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Natasha. “I know about that. My dad and I are basically in a perpetual fight.”

  No, really? “Because he’s so into your being a tennis player?”

  Natasha continued. “Because he’s so into my being everything I’m not.”

  “Such as …”

  She ticked every word off on a finger like each was an item on a shopping list. “Popular, adorable, a jock, a cute guy’s girlfriend. You know, life as your basic, average, unrealistic teen movie.”

  “So what are you,” I asked, “if you’re not those things. Like, what are you into?”

  “Nothing that involves the kids at my school,” said Natasha. “The girls are total bitches and the boys are retarded.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said, “I can’t argue with the boys being retarded part.” Natasha laughed. “But you still didn’t answer my question.” I pushed her gently in the shoulder. “What do you like?”

  Natasha thought for a second. “I like writing poems. My mom doesn’t mind, but it drives my dad crazy. He’s all, ‘What thirteen-year-old girl doesn’t want friends and a boyfriend? Why do you spend all your time holed up in your room?’”

  Considering where my latest foray into boyfriends had gotten me, I couldn’t have disagreed more emphatically with her parents. Being holed up in your room was definitely where any sane thirteen-year-old girl should be.

  “That’s so cool that you write poems,” I said. “I’m a writer too.” Nata
sha looked at me, and for the first time there wasn’t even the hint of a scowl to be found on her face. “Not poems, though,” I added. “Short stories.”

  “That’s cool too,” said Natasha, and she nodded approvingly.

  We sat there without talking, but the silence felt comfortable, not awkward. “So why don’t you just tell your parents you don’t want to play tennis?”

  Natasha toyed with the strings of her racket. I could see her debating whether or not to tell me something, then she started talking. “It’s just … you know how they used to do human sacrifices in ancient times?”

  “Okay, I have no idea where you’re going with this.”

  “Just hear me out.” She looked up from her racket. “Tennis is like my sacrifice to my dad. If I take a couple of lessons a week, then he just bothers me about tennis. You know, ‘Natasha, why aren’t you practicing more? Natasha, why don’t you take another lesson this week? Natasha, why aren’t you entering the club championship?’” She snorted after she said club championship. “But if I don’t take lessons, then he gets on my case about everything. ‘Natasha, why aren’t you outside enjoying this beautiful day? Natasha, wouldn’t you like to have some of your friends over? Natasha, why don’t you let your mother take you for a haircut and buy you a beautiful dress for the Labor Day dance.’” She was shaking her head at the thought of his haranguing her.

  I remembered what my mom had said about my helping Natasha get closer to her dad, but given her description, what I really felt like doing was helping her get farther away from him. Still, I tried to think of something that might help them communicate. “Maybe you could show him your poetry or something?”

  Natasha laughed. “My dad thinks poets are weird, that they all just grow up and stick their heads in the oven, like Sylvia Plath. No, it’s better this way. Trust me.”

  “Well, what if you formed a writers’ group with some people at your school. That way you’d both be happy. You’d get to write, but you’d be out of the house with other kids, like he wants you to be. That’s what my writing teacher told me to do.”

  “And did you do it?” asked Natasha.