Her mom laughed. “Honey, you do not.” She stepped into the room. “Nana would have loved your dress. Stand up. Let me see.”
“Not right now.”
Her mother held out her hands and made a slight gesture with her fingers as if to say, Yes, now. “Come on, let me see how you look.”
Jane’s voice grew harsher. “I said not now, okay?”
“Okay,” said her mother, taking a step back. “Well, Richard should be here any minute, and then we’ll go downstairs and get a cab, okay? And Simon’s going straight there, right? I’m so looking forward to meeting him.”
Her mother’s poor choice of words was the last straw.
Straight? Straight?
Jane shot out of the chair. “No, Mom, Simon is not going straight there, okay? Simon’s not going straight anywhere. We broke up, okay?”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me?” Her mom’s face was the picture of concern, and she took a step toward Jane. Jane opened her mouth to explain just as the buzzer rang, signaling that the doorman was sending someone upstairs. “That must be Richard. I’ll go let him in and come right back.”
Of course. “You know what, Mom, don’t bother coming back, okay?”
Standing at the threshold of Jane’s room, her mom hesitated. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I’m just…Just go and have a glass of wine with your boyfriend and enjoy your evening, and don’t even pretend you care about what’s going on with me, okay? You’re in love.” She threw her arms in the air and grinned maniacally in an exaggerated portrait of a happy person. “Wonderful! I’m thrilled for you.”
Her mom frowned and crossed her arms. “Jane, I’m sorry you and Simon broke up. I wish you had told me about it.”
“Oh, really, Mom? You wish I had told you about it? When, exactly? When was I supposed to have a minute of your precious time to tell you what’s going on in my life?” As if to prove Jane’s point, there was a hesitant knock at the door of the apartment. She watched her mother’s internal struggle as she tried not to show how much she wanted to answer it. Finally, her mom called in a loud voice, “Just a minute!”
“Would you go, already?” Jane could feel her face contorting into something ugly as her eyes began to sting. “You’ve made it totally clear that all you care about is Richard, so don’t stand there and pretend you want to talk to me when all you want is to be with him.”
“Jane, that’s completely unfair. If something happened with Simon, I want to know about it. But I can’t leave Richard standing out there in the hallway.”
Now Jane was truly sobbing, but she felt like they were tears not of sadness but of fury. “Just. Leave. Me. Alone!”
Her mom stared at her, a bewildered expression on her face. Finally a second knock on the apartment door decided her. She turned and headed into the hallway. “This conversation isn’t over,” she said as she left.
Jane didn’t bother to correct her. She knew that as soon as her mom was with Richard, she would be too distracted to remember what Jane had said.
JUST AS JANE had suspected, when she came out of her room, her mother and Richard were each holding a glass of red wine. Her mother must have just said something funny, because Richard was laughing.
He gave Jane one of his usual greetings: a wave and a nearly whispered hello.
Maybe that had been her mistake. Maybe Jane should have gone out with someone who didn’t talk. After all, if you never spoke, how could you utter the sentence, I’m gay?
There was a moment of silence, but even though Jane’s mom looked at her over her wineglass, she didn’t ask if she could talk to Jane privately. Jane could practically hear her mom’s thoughts.
It’s not polite to have a chat with Jane while Richard’s waiting. We’ll talk another time.
Yeah, like never.
“Well, shall we go?” asked Jane’s mom.
Richard nodded.
“Fine,” said Jane.
She tried to find comfort in the fact that she wouldn’t be the only one without a date tonight. Now that Colin had turned out to be a sleazeball, and Victoria and Jack had broken up, the Darlings were going to be one another’s dates. Which was how she’d always imagined tonight anyway, before all of their stupid boyfriends and almost boyfriends and gay boyfriends had come along. Really, there was something right about the three of them being one another’s dates for an evening dedicated to celebrating Nana. After all, it had always been the three of them with Nana when she was alive.
So if there was something right about how tonight was turning out, why was everything feeling so wrong?
Richard hailed a cab and held the door for them, letting Jane and her mom get into the car before he slipped in beside Jane’s mother. Jane looked out the window, wishing she were anywhere but where she was: trapped in a cab with her mother and her mother’s boyfriend. Not that it would have helped if she could have been someplace else. What she really wanted was to be someone else. Like the old lady crossing the street in front of them. Or the man who owned the newsstand on the corner. She pictured him going home to his happy, loving family at the end of a hard day selling papers and candy.
Here’s what he’d never had to deal with: a gay guy dumping him.
Her phone buzzed. Simon. It had to be Simon. And he was texting because…
Because what, exactly? What did she expect Simon to write?
hey, jane! it’s simon. 4 a second there, I thought I wuz gay, but it turns out im not. can u forgive me?
She dug into her bag and took out her phone. One new text message. And it was from…
Her mother?!
She looked over at her mom sitting beside her, her phone in her lap. Why had her mother texted her instead of just saying whatever she had to say? Jane didn’t even know her mom knew how to text.
She opened her phone.
i wish u would tell me what happened.
Jane shook her head. Despite how bewildered she was by her mother’s chosen method of communication, she typed back, u wouldn’t understand.
They were sitting close enough that Jane could feel the muscles moving in her mother’s arm as her mom typed, try me.
Well, it wasn’t like she could keep what had happened secret forever.
simon dumped me.
Her mom wasn’t nearly as fast a texter as Jane, and it took her a minute or so to enter her answer: i’m really sorry.
Jane didn’t type anything back. A moment later, her mother wrote, r u ok?
Jane shrugged, then typed, i guess.
what happened?
Where could she possibly begin? Certainly not in a text.
it’s 2 complicated 2 explain.
i wish you’d try.
when? u r always w/richard. As she typed, Jane was practically growling with frustration.
Out of the corner of her eye, Jane could see her mother shaking her head while she wrote her response. whenever i try to make plans w/u, u r always busy. u r either on the phone or w/your friends.
Suddenly Jane remembered the first night she’d hung out with Simon, how her mother had come into her room and tried to talk to her. Jane had been too busy texting to have a conversation. Okay, maybe her mom had a point. But she wasn’t always busy. Her mom was busy too.
u don’t want 2 make time 4 me w/o richard.
For the first time, there was a long pause before her mother started typing. Several minutes passed before her mom’s response buzzed in Jane’s phone.
i wanted u and richard to get 2 know each other. i m really sorry if i made u feel like i didn’t have time 4 u. u r the most important person in the world 2 me. can we spend the day 2gether 2morrow, just u and me?
Jane glanced over at her mom and saw that there was a tear running down her cheek. She felt awful, but it wasn’t just because her mother was crying. It was also because of what she was about to write. victoria and natalya are sleeping over 2nite. we r supposed to go out 4 lunch 2morrow.
She heard her mom c
huckle as she read Jane’s text. Then she wrote, see?
For the first time since Simon had broken up with her, Jane smiled. sorry.
Shaking her head slowly, her mom wrote, u don’t have 2 b sorry. i know your friends r important 2 u.
could we have dinner instead? Jane typed back.
There was a moment of silence, and then Jane’s mother said, “Richard, I need to reschedule our dinner for tomorrow.”
“Sure,” answered Richard.
A second later, Jane’s phone buzzed. Let’s have dinner 2morrow. just the 2 of us. sound good?
sounds great, replied Jane. Then she slipped her phone back into her bag.
Her mom reached over, took Jane’s hand, and gave it a squeeze. “It’s a date,” she whispered.
Jane had to laugh. She’d been planning on a date with her über-hot boyfriend, and instead she was getting a date with her mom. She thought of all the things she had to tell her mother. Her and Simon. Victoria and Jack. Natalya and Colin.
It was going to be a long dinner.
VICTORIA COULDN’T BELIEVE she was supposed to go out tonight and see people, to have a good time. All she wanted to do was sit in her room in the dark with the covers pulled over her head.
Her mom was being incredibly nice. She’d even tried to cook Victoria, Jane, and Natalya dinner Friday night, an effort that had ended as badly as Victoria’s relationship had. Still, it was the thought that counted, and Victoria’s mom was trying to think of every way possible to cheer Victoria up. Victoria had completely lied to her, had utterly violated the trust her parents placed in her, and now she was letting her mother take care of her as if she were some kind of Daughter of the Year.
Just one way her life totally sucked.
With less than an hour before she was supposed to meet Jane and Natalya at Barnard, she looked at herself in the mirror. The pink dress that had seemed so cheery when she’d picked it out at Act Two now seemed like an insulting reminder of how happy she’d once been. When I wore this dress, I was the kind of person who believed in pink.
She wished there were a color called sad. Now, that was a fashion statement she could get behind.
Looking in the mirror, she couldn’t believe how puffy her eyes were. With her humiliating pink dress and her swollen eyes, she felt like some kind of tragic mix-up of a before-and-after picture from an April Fool’s Day issue of Seventeen. The dress says, I am in a relationship, but the face says, I will be alone forever. Thinking of magazines reminded her of all the times she’d read that cucumbers have antipuffiness qualities. She put down her unused mascara and headed into the kitchen to find a culinary cure for her ugly face.
As she was standing at the kitchen counter slicing the one limp cucumber she’d found in the fridge, she heard the front door to the apartment being opened, and then her sister’s enthusiastic voice calling, “Hello! Anyone home?”
Before Victoria could answer, Emily was standing in the kitchen, an overnight bag slung over her shoulder. She saw that Victoria was standing at the counter and clapped her hands in excitement.
“Ooooh, I so clearly picked the right time to come home. What are you baking?”
Victoria looked at the slices of cucumber lying on the cutting board in front of her, then turned to her sister. “My eyes.”
“Um, gross.” Emily dropped her bag on the floor and grabbed a bottle of seltzer from the fridge. “What’s wrong with chocolate-chip cookies? And why are you all dressed up?”
“I’m going to the opening for Jane’s grandmother’s paintings.”
“Right!” Emily nodded, then took a swig of seltzer directly from the bottle.
Victoria wrinkled her nose. “Now who’s gross?”
“I’m going to finish it,” Emily assured her, pulling a chair out and sitting down. She watched as Victoria sliced two more pieces of cucumber. “Seriously, what are you making?”
“Seriously, these are for my eyes. They’re all puffy.”
“Let me see.” Emily studied Victoria’s face for a minute. “They are kind of puffy. What happened?”
“Jack and I broke up.” Victoria was proud of how matterof-fact she sounded. Up until now, she hadn’t even been able to think, much less say, that sentence without bursting into tears.
Emily literally choked on her seltzer. Leaning forward, she coughed for almost a full minute. Victoria watched her sister without really responding to the fact of her choking. It was as if there were a wall of glass between her and the rest of the world, a fact she noted without really caring about it. Then she picked up two slices of cucumber and, leaning against the counter, pressed one to each of her eyes.
“I’m choking here,” Emily informed her once she caught her breath.
“Not anymore,” Victoria pointed out, not lowering the cucumbers. Their silky cool surfaces felt wonderful against her hot, scratchy eyes, and she had no doubt that what she was experiencing was their gentle healing power.
“I’m really sorry,” Emily said. “About your breaking up. It seemed like he made you really happy.”
At Emily’s sincere assessment of how Jack had made Victoria feel, Victoria’s eyes immediately brimmed with tears. She flipped the cucumber slices over and pressed them more firmly against her lids.
“So, I mean, can you tell me why?”
Without removing the slices from her face, Victoria launched into the story about everything that had happened between Jack and her. When she got to the part about pretending to go to Hamlet, Emily literally gasped.
For the first time since she’d started talking, Victoria lowered the cucumbers from her eyes. “I know,” she said solemnly. “And don’t tell me, because I already know that I have to tell Mom the truth.”
“What?!” Emily’s face was the picture of shock. “Are you completely insane?”
“No!” Victoria tossed the warm cucumber slices in the trash, then grabbed two fresh ones from the cutting board. “I’m just completely tired of feeling guilty every time I’m with her.”
“Listen to me.” Emily leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “I know you never take my advice, but just this once, please. Trust me. You lied. You didn’t get caught. Thank your lucky stars and move on.”
Victoria couldn’t believe it. Her big sister was encouraging her to lie to her parents. Suddenly she remembered something. “Wait a second. How come when I bagged on the community center thing you were all, What’s your problem? Why are you just doing what Jack wants you to do? And now you’re all, Yeah, go for it. Lie to mom and dad! ”
Emily rolled her eyes. “Vicks, I didn’t want you ditching your commitments just to be with some guy. That’s completely different from wanting to do something and, you know, bending the truth so you can do it.”
When Victoria responded, “Bending the truth?” in an incredulous tone, Emily gave her a somber look. “This above all: to thine own self be true,” she recited. Then she pointed her index finger at Victoria. “That’s from Hamlet, by the way.” She paused and smiled archly at her sister. “But I guess you knew that already.”
Ignoring her sister’s teasing, Victoria placed fresh pieces of cucumber against her eyes, tilted her head back slightly, and continued telling her the story.
“Ouch,” said Emily when Victoria got to Lily’s repeating what Jack had said about their having nothing in common.
“Thank you!” said Victoria. It felt good to be reminded of what Jack had said behind her back. The anger was a welcome change from sadness.
“So then what happened?” asked Emily.
“I don’t know. We had this fight, and then he said, ‘Maybe it would be better if we just broke up,’ and I said, ‘Maybe it would.’ And so we did.”
“Wow.” There was a long pause. Then Emily asked, “Do you think…I mean, I know he did it first, but maybe you didn’t need to go straight to DEFCON One?”
“I don’t even know what that means,” answered Victoria, not removing the cucumbers from her eyes.
&nb
sp; “It’s…just a way of saying ‘going nuclear,’” Emily explained. Then, as if she realized her explanation hadn’t been particularly illuminating, she said, “I just mean, why did you let him break up with you?”
“Are you kidding?” Victoria pulled the cucumber slices off her eyes and stared at her sister. “I didn’t let him break up with me. He broke up with me. Period. You can’t not let someone break up with you if he wants to break up with you! What could I have done when he said, Maybe it would be better if we just broke up? Was I supposed to say, No it wouldn’t?”
“Well…yeah,” Emily answered slowly. “I just think, you know, you supposedly care about this guy, and then for some reason he floats this thing about breaking up—”
“Floats this thing? For some reason?” Victoria echoed, incredulous. “What are you talking about? What reason besides wanting to break up would make a person say, ‘I think we should break up’?”
“I don’t know!” Emily snapped. “Maybe he was embarrassed. Maybe he thought you wanted to break up with him. I don’t even know the guy. I just know that if you care about someone, you don’t break up over some dumb fight. In the hallway, no less.” She shook her head, as if amazed by nothing so much as Victoria’s shabby etiquette. “It sounds like you were kind of harsh.”
“Harsh? Harsh!?” Victoria slapped a cucumber slice on the counter. “And it’s not harsh to bad-mouth your girlfriend behind her back?!”
“Well, I mean, it wasn’t nice of him to say something like that,” Emily admitted. “But it’s not like he said he hated you.” She thought for a second. “And anyway, it’s kind of true, isn’t it? I mean, you guys don’t seem to have that much in common. Do you?”
Victoria pointed at Emily, forgetting in her frustration that she had a cucumber slice in her hand. “I was trying to have things in common with him, okay?”
“You can’t try to have things in common with someone,” said Emily. “That’s not a relationship; it’s…I don’t know, it’s a job interview.”
“You make it sound like I did something wrong when he broke up with me. I’m the victim here, Emily.” She pointed her finger at her chest to illustrate who she was talking about.
The Darlings in Love Page 21