Roomies

by kindle@abovethetreeline. com

  Sitting here on the couch alone while my mother is on yet another date with a man I will probably never meet, I think, This is why I’m looking forward to popcorn popping. To maybe staying up late talking and watching bad movies. To having a roomie. Most of the time at home these days it’s me, myself, and I. I thought my mother would want to try to clock in more hours with her only child this summer—and, in fact, dreaded the prospect—but the shore real estate market is actually doing okay. It seems when people are broke they still take vacations, just cheaper ones, and she’s a real estate agent who does a lot of business in rentals. There are signs all over town for her agency, with her picture on them, and a part of me thinks she sees them more as ads for herself than for her professional services. They seem to work really well on both fronts—attracting clients, dates, and clients to date.

  My phone is sitting on the couch next to me but I turn it over so that I can’t be distracted by any of its blinking lights. I’m not sure why, but tonight I actually want to be alone. Just me and the real housewives. But I’m halfway through another episode before it hits me that it is another episode and that I somehow missed the scene where the two women who were catfighting made up even though I’ve been sitting here the whole time. Something must be wrong with my brain because it is thinking about things it shouldn’t be. Things like Mark and the frog, neither of whom I’ve seen in a few days, and for some reason that has me bummed on both counts. Also, my dad and how maybe going to college in the same city where he lives is a bad idea. Because what if I can’t walk down the street without checking the face of every man who passes by to see if it’s him and whether he even recognizes me? What if I start stalking his art gallery like some crazy person? I close my eyes and try to picture his face and then—bam—it’s morning.

  I wake up on the couch and flip my phone over. It’s blinking like crazy. There’s an e-mail from Lauren and I open it—before I read Alex’s or Justine’s or Morgan’s texts—and think, Okay. Good. We’ve stabilized.

  My mother is actually making breakfast and whistling and when I walk into the kitchen, I feel the need to ask, “Are we alone?”

  “Of course we’re alone,” she says. She likes to believe she never brings men home but it’s not true. I used to keep count, used to daydream about one of the handsome ones becoming some sort of father figure. Back then my mom was still young enough, having had me right out of college, that I believed we could start all over again with a new father. I’d imagine us moving out of the condo—with its split-level layout that I always thought was cool until I spent time in houses that had big living areas that seemed to draw families together almost magnetically. I imagined us someplace bright and airy, someplace that wasn’t so cut up, so divisive, so annoyingly appropriate for my mother and me, who cannot seem to connect at all.

  But I don’t fantasize about new dads or new houses anymore. Not when it’s easier to fantasize about leaving.

  My mom puts a plate of scrambled eggs and some kind of fake bacon in front of me and I pick up a fork with sore hands. I spent my entire shift yesterday digging out rocks for a new garden bed alongside the house, hauling them away to the truck—even pocketing a small one whose weight had surprised me—then digging some more. I enjoyed the work at first, but when Tim said, “Well, no one’s here at the house today so we can make as much noise as we need to,” it all started to feel much more tedious. I really wanted to see Mark again, even if I was pretending I didn’t.

  More proof: I’ve been looking at that silly rock on my windowsill way too often.

  “I don’t know if it’s going to work out with this one,” my mom says, and for an irrational second I bristle, thinking she’s talking about Mark. Then I come to my senses and study her. Something about her body language—loose, sexy, dreamy—makes me not believe her.

  I ask, “Why not?”

  She slides into the seat next to me at the table. “I think he’s married.”

  “Mom!” I scold. I’m not sure whether I’m angrier that she went out with a married man or that she told me about it.

  “What?” She sips her coffee. “You’re not a child anymore.”

  I manage a bite. “Still…”

  “Well, anyway. It’s too bad. I’d love me a nice hedge fund manager.” She shrugs, then says, “I’ve got a showing,” and heads down the hall for the bathroom.

  I check my phone—there’s a new text from Alex confirming plans to meet up on the beach tonight; multiple texts from the girls asking me about a bonfire/fireworks party for the Fourth and do I want to go?—and then go back to reread Lauren’s e-mail. I start typing with my thumbs.

  Dear Lauren,

  Football? Really? Well, I’ll give it a try. My father was a big football fan, according to my mother—

  (What I don’t type: who rants, when she’s drunk, about how pathetic it was that he thought being a football fan could hide the fact that he was gay, prompting me to roll my eyes and say, “Mom, gay men can like football!”)

  —so maybe some appreciation has been passed down. Mostly, when I watch it, I think, Man, that’s got to hurt.

  I have two jobs, actually. I babysit for this super-rich family when the parents want to go out, which is often. And I work at a landscaping company, where I basically haul rocks out of more super-rich people’s yards. But I am learning a lot, which is good because I’m going to be in the landscape architecture department at school. There aren’t that many programs nationally. My mother’s not entirely thrilled with the fact that it’s on the opposite coast but what can you do? Do you know what your major is going to be?

  EB

  PS My father owns an art gallery in San Francisco, called The Wall. Have you ever heard of it or maybe seen it?

  I think about hacking off that PS and filing it away under TMI. But it’s not like I wrote, “And if you have, do you think you could maybe, I don’t know, go ask him if he’ll cough up a couple grand so I don’t have to take out such big loans? Thanks.”

  I hit Send. What have I got to lose?

  When I meet Tim at the garden, he’s talking to Mark, who is holding a frog. “We found it!” Mark says to me, grinning ear to ear. The frog—a chubby army-green specimen—pulses in his hands.

  “Cool,” I say, and then he thanks Tim and walks off with the frog.

  Tim finally shows me the designs for the new garden bed, including a graphed map of what’s going where and also a drawing made with colored pencils. He says most people do stuff like this on computers now but he still likes to do it by hand. I’ve tried and failed to draw plants myself a few times; I guess I’m not artistically inclined, at least not that way. But I look at his plan and I can see how it’s all going to come together, with a cool weeping false cypress as the focal point and two neat evergreens that also seem to cry or cascade. More evergreens will crawl on the ground, and they’ll eventually work their way toward a brick border and then tumble over. In between, colorful grasses and flowering bushes like rhododendrons guarantee bursts of color.

  “What do you think?” Tim asks, and I say, “I love it.” Then I remember what he’s told me, about how it’s simply not possible for me to love everything he does. So I add, “If it were me, I’d probably get rid of one of these and this.” I point to a hydrangea plant that seems lost and to a whole cluster of wild grasses.

  “Why?”

  “Too much going on. They’ll stifle each other in a year or two.”

  Tim smiles and says, “Let’s get going. Client’s coming plant-shopping.”

  Great, I think. Annoying blond mom from the window wants to get her hands dirty. But then Mark comes out of the house and flashes a credit card in the sun and says, “Mother’s under the weather,” in a fake snooty voice. At least I hope it’s fake.

  “So you’re in charge?” Tim asks.

  “I’ve been given a carte blanche.”

  “Fair enough.” Tim nods toward the truck. “Let’s go!”

  Mark and I follow and he whisper
s to me, “What’s a cart blanche?”

  I laugh and say, “It means you can do anything you want.”

  “Really?” he says, all flirty, and I have to look away when I say, “Yes, really.”

  We spend the next hour, Mark and I, catching glimpses of each other between rows of shrubs and racks full of hanging plants. He mimics the poses of some garden gnomes and of statues of boys holding lanterns and I laugh and I know that Tim is sort of onto us, but I decide not to care.

  When the stuff Tim has picked out is rung up, it’s an awful lot of money but Mark hands over the credit card and signs for it like it’s no big deal at all. “What do your parents do?” I ask before I realize it’s probably rude.

  “Oh,” Mark says. “Well, Mother works very hard at not working. She is, in fact, so antiwork that she insisted I quit my usual summer gig, painting houses, so that I can enjoy being a man of leisure this summer, possibly for the last time in my life.”

  “Sounds dramatic,” I say as we follow Tim to the truck.

  “Yes,” he says, “and terribly boring. I’ve read like twenty novels so far this summer. Not that reading is boring. I mean, I love to read, but you get my point.”

  “Sure.”

  He looks me right in the eye, as if to confirm that I really got the point.

  Noted, I try to say with my eyes. Loves to read.

  Then he says, “And Dear Old Dad is a money manager. You know, a Wall Street type.”

  Of course he is, I think. Half of Tim’s clients are.

  “What about yours?” Mark asks me, and I say, “My mother’s a real estate agent and my father owns an art gallery in San Francisco.” I add, “They’re not together.” Then feel like I have to say, “He’s gay.”

  For a second it looks like Mark thinks I’m joking but then I guess he sees it in my face that I’m not. He says, “He’s probably way more fun to hang out with than my dad.”

  I shrug and say, “Wouldn’t know.”

  I should have totally deleted that PS.

  MONDAY, JULY 8

  SAN FRANCISCO

  I don’t know what a panic attack is, technically, medically speaking, but I think I have something like one on Monday night. I’m lying there in my bed listening to P.J. softly breathing, and Gertie not-so-softly snoring, and there’s a crushing feeling, a sort of pressing, on my chest and neck. It comes from nowhere. I mean in the sense that when it starts I’m not having consciously anxious thoughts.

  About, for instance, moving out. The nights ahead of me during which I will not be kept awake by Gertie’s snores. The days of not having to do five thousand dishes. How my clothes won’t smell like Francis spit-up.

  How I won’t be taking my familiar bus to Galileo come fall, or seeing Zoe waiting for me there in the courtyard.

  How, considering I’m only going across the Bay, my life is about to change in more ways than I can imagine.

  Leaving home for freshman year was never my plan. I thought I’d take care of some gen-eds at State and live with my parents and save money. The scholarship came into the picture so suddenly and now everything is…

  I get out of bed because I actually feel like I might let out a little scream and I don’t want to scare the kids. The living room is lit up by the streetlamps, and I can hear the rumbling of a late L car going by. Sometimes, when I have to get up in the night to pee and I pass by the living room, I’ll stand there for a minute. And I’ll look at it and have this sensation of: contentment, peace, safety. Home.

  That’s the feeling I want now. So I stand and look. But pretty soon I have to grab a pillow off the couch and sort of bite it, stuff it in my mouth. I’m not exactly crying, but I’m not exactly not crying.

  How can I leave?

  It’s not a question with a rational answer. Because, of course, I have to leave and I’m going to leave. It’s happening, Lauren. Grow up. It’s twenty-five miles. I press my face into the pillow awhile and try to take better breaths. Eventually, I start to calm down, but not enough to sleep.

  I creep back to the room to grab my laptop and distract myself online.

  There’s an e-mail from Keyon. The subject is spud head. The e-mail reads:

  You know that Potato Head you got at the GW? I’m sitting here watching channel 9 w/ my ma and someone is on there w/ a potato just like it and it’s worth like 65 bucks.

  He includes a bunch of links that go to toy collector sites, where Mr. Potato Head, among other things, is highly prized.

  I write him back.

  Neither Mrs. nor Mr. Potato Head is for sale. Interesting, though. Especially that you watch Antiques Roadshow. “With your ma.” You know you love it. Don’t worry, I won’t tell. See you tomorrow.

  That feels good. Better, anyway, than pacing the floor with a pillow in my mouth.

  Keyon and I have kind of had this e-mail thing going ever since our microwave trip. At first he was trying to text me all the time and finally I was like, look, I’m on the lowest text-per-month plan there is and also I have to text on the number pad and am awful at it, and gave him my e-mail address. He said, “I can e-mail from my phone, so all the same to me.”

  It’s weird but also fun. Weird because when we’re at work it’s like the e-mails don’t exist; we’re all about sandwiches and salads and maybe some commiserating about difficult customers. Fun because between work and the kids and getting time in the chem lab when I could, I spent my entire senior year with virtually no interesting contact with cute boys. And I have missed it.

  Working through my accumulated e-mail has a calming effect. It’s a fairly mundane task, given that so few real people write to me.

  There is one from Zoe—about some Galileo grads party on Saturday night. She always knows these things I don’t, probably through Twitter or whatever she’s always checking on her phone. I almost missed the senior trip because the whole event was planned on Facebook and I’m not on it. E-mail, IM, and research are about my limit. Meanwhile, Zoe’s made all these short films she puts on YouTube and can text faster than she can type.

  I can’t help but think our friendship has suffered. When she and her boyfriend from all of junior year, Buck, broke up, I found out two days after the rest of the school. “Didn’t you see my tweet about it?” Zoe asked me, in tears. And I know she’s hurt that I don’t watch all her videos, which I’ve heard around school are pretty good. I’ve known her so long and she’s always done creative stuff, and maybe I take it for granted. She says she understands, but, you know, the videos mean a lot to her and I’d be hurt, too. Maybe I can block out some time soon to catch up.

  I do hope Ebb isn’t one of those people who are constantly attached to their phones, texting from two feet away.

  I meant to reply to her last e-mail sooner, but I had to go on a Costco run with my mom, which involved waiting for new tires for the van. While we waited, we played “Mother May I” with the kids in a deserted office supplies aisle. When that got boring for them, we wandered around. All this summer stuff was out, including swimsuits, and there was one I thought would look great on Mom. I held it out to her.

  “Look at this,” I said. “It’s cute, it’s your color, and it would hide your ‘problem areas.’ ”

  She laughed, her fingers grasped in Francis’s little hands while he looked out from the front-facing baby carrier that was strapped onto her. “That will be perfect for all the beach vacations I’ll be able to take in about twenty years.”

  And I don’t know, for some reason that made me feel really bad. Like depressed. I love my little brothers and sisters. It’s not that. But lately I have this constant awareness of what my parents, what all of us, have given up to have them, and how much more road there is ahead. I mean, Francis isn’t even walking yet! Sometimes it feels like it will never end, ever, and though I can see a light at the end of the tunnel for me, and it’s close, I can’t see it for my parents.

  I feel sad about them getting old. Imagining them old before Francis even starts high schoo
l. Dad never getting to retire. Mom going back to work when Francis starts preschool. It’s so… relentlessness. Life, I mean.

  Anyway.

  I can’t think about that right now, not more than I already have.

  So after the Costco day, I went into the insurance office at seven in the morning to do some filing before lunch at the sandwich shop, where Keyon excitedly told me about his big Goodwill moneymaking plan. Mikey said he’d try to text Keyon when something good gets put out—or when it comes into the donation room, if he notices. “Collectibles,” Keyon said. “You could help me figure out what’s worth anything, then we could sell it online.”

  “Is that, like, okay to do?”

  “Yeah,” he said with an emphatic nod. “I got it all worked out with Mikey so it’s straight up. If he notices good shit, he notices it. If we get there in time we get there in time. If not…” He shrugs. “And we pay the Goodwill price. Not like we get it for free.” He put his palm on his chest. “Hey, it’s me. I’m not about to take from the needy, right?”

  He’s so cute, I thought.

  Then a customer interrupted us, and then it was the weekend.

  Because the weekdays are so insane, weekends are sacred in our family. We basically spend the whole thing in some version of togetherness, and there’s lots of cooking and eating and being outdoors and watching movies and bending rules about bedtimes and sugar.

  No Internet on the weekends. Dad even turns his BlackBerry off and puts it in a drawer.

  Zoe would die.

  And this is why I don’t have a huge circle of friends. Between school, work, and family, when would I see anyone? Never, that’s when. If Ebb expects that I’m going to be this fun roommate who’s always up for partying and going out to coffee and wandering Telegraph Avenue, she’s going to be disappointed.