by Abbi Waxman
“Your niece says hi and that she loves you.”
“Of course she does. I’m adorable.”
“Nicer than me, for sure.”
“Shit, hang on a minute.” The phone clattered, and there was a long gap where Lizzy went AWOL, so I put the phone on speaker and laid it on the bedside table.
Emily was flicking around the unfamiliar menu with ease and found a marathon of Friends. I think it might be a law that at least one channel needs to be playing Friends at all times. I’m showing my age; thanks to the internet, I guess everything is playing everywhere all the time. If I were the editor of TV Guide, I’d be reading up on how buggy whip manufacturers retrained for the future. I watched the show lazily and wondered how it was still funny, twenty years after I first watched it, mildly stoned and sitting on my tiny apartment sofa in New York. I’d been the same age as the characters, and in some ways it felt like an alternative version of my own life, with better lighting and wardrobe.
I watched Jennifer Aniston and tried to decide if I’d been able to warn her about the future—Hey, good news, you’re going to marry Brad Pitt, but then it’s all going to fall apart, and the world will spend the next twenty years obsessing over whether or not you’re going to have a baby and end up collectively feeling sorry for you—would it have changed anything? Does knowing something in advance make it more or less likely to happen?
I often find myself musing on useless things like that, because I can’t help thinking how weird life looks in reverse. When I was Emily’s age, I thought I was going to become a world-class athlete and a Supreme Court justice, but neither of those things panned out. A relatively happy, professionally successful single mother of an unfriendly only child . . . the seventeen-year-old me would not have been impressed. She had much higher hopes for herself. I looked over at Emily and wondered what hopes that sixteen-year-old had for herself. I hope hers work out better than mine.
My sister reappeared. “Sorry, Teddy threw up.”
“From strep?”
“Yeah . . . I guess I overdid it on the consolation ice cream.”
I smiled at the phone, like my daughter did. “You lead a very exciting life.” I was getting tired and wondered if I could persuade Emily to go for room service instead of going out.
“True story.”
“Didn’t you have news? You texted me.”
“I did?” She paused. “Nope, I have no idea what it was.”
“Probably not that you’re pregnant then, you’d remember that.”
She laughed. “I hope so. Oh, wait, I remember. I spoke to the other Jessica, not the Harvard Dropout Jessica, but the other one, Moldy Nose Ring Jessica . . .”
“I know which Jessica you mean . . .” (Jessica was a very popular name when I was in school. I was Pushy Jessica; let’s not dwell on it.)
“And she said Tim Martinez was getting divorced.”
“And this is news because . . .”
“Because you guys dated in high school.”
I frowned. “And so . . . what? I’m supposed to move back home and marry my high school boyfriend?” All I remembered about Tim Martinez was that his was the first erect penis I’d ever seen. The rest of him was far less memorable, which didn’t bode well for a reunion tour.
“No, silly. He’s in Los Angeles.”
I sighed. “I don’t have time to date, you know this.”
“Your vagina is going to close up.”
“It’s not, because that’s not how biology works, and also I didn’t say I didn’t have time for sex. I have sex.”
“With whom?”
“None of your business.”
I suddenly realized Emily was looking at me and frowning. I shook my head at her. “I don’t really have sex. I’m lying to your auntie so she’ll stop bugging me to date someone.”
“You don’t have time to date,” said Emily, returning to her screen.
“I told her that.”
“You don’t have time for anything,” she added, swiping upwards like someone flicking dust.
“I’ve got to go, Liz,” I said. “Was there anything else?”
My sister sighed. “No. Call me tomorrow.”
“I will, let me know about the audition.” A national ad campaign was a lot of money; it would make a real difference in their year.
“Okay.”
We hung up and I tried to decide whether to ask Emily what she meant by saying I never had time for anything, and then decided against it. If I took the bait every time she dangled a potential argument in front of me, I’d have been hooked and landed years ago. We can always argue later, and probably will.
EMILY
So I borrowed a math shirt from Casper, and Einsteins turned out to be really fun. Who knew? I mean, math is okay, I don’t hate it, but you know. We ordered Fermat’s Prime Burgers, Fibonacci Fries, and Infinite Shakes, which came with endless refills. This last part prompted a totally ridiculous argument between Casper and Sam (falling mother kid; he and Casper are at the same school) about whether or not milkshakes could be truly infinite, because that would also mean infinite cows, infinite vanilla plantations, and infinite refrigeration, and Will and I sat there and did our best to not get a headache. I realized I wasn’t mad about any of this; maybe college wouldn’t be so bad. Assuming it’s mostly hanging out with smart people and eating themed food. There’s probably more to it than that.
JESSICA
Emily seemed to be having a good time with the other kids, and I’m not exactly miserable myself, hanging out with several of the parents and eating Cartesian Chili and Newton’s Apple Pie. I was a little bit worried the servers were going to deliver the pie by dropping it on our heads, but they handed it over in the usual way.
I mentioned my concern to Jennifer, Casper’s mother, and she looked at me quite seriously. Mind you, she looks serious most of the time; it might be a job requirement if you teach at Caltech.
“I’m not sure that story isn’t apocryphal, anyway.” She reached for her phone, presumably to look it up.
“Well, it doesn’t really matter if it’s true or not, does it?” I asked. “It only matters if they need a reason to drop food on customers’ heads.”
She regarded me curiously. “Why would they do that?” I suddenly realized she had no sense of humor at all, and probably regarded me as a subject for study.
I began to regret opening the topic. “Uh, because customers can be really annoying? Didn’t you ever work as a waitress?”
She shook her head, and a little flare of doubt appeared in her eyes. This was a challenging conversation for her, apparently. The flowchart hadn’t prepared her for this one.
I wrinkled my eyebrows. “What did you do in the summers and through college? I did waitressing, some of my friends worked in hotels . . . you know?”
“I interned at NASA.”
“Oh.”
“And then after high school I worked on my dissertation whenever I could, of course.”
“Of course.”
She tried. “In the last summer of college I worked at Disneyland.”
“Dressed up as a character?”
She shook her head again. “No, rewriting their security system.”
There was a pause. Then I said, “Does Casper have any brothers and sisters?”
“Yes, a younger sister. Wendy.”
“And is she into geology, too?”
“No, not at all. She’s more normal.” She paused. “She’s into Latin.”
I studied the other woman carefully; was she actually joking now? “Isn’t Casper normal?”
Her face was still completely devoid of expression. “Well, he’s obsessively into geology, math, fractals, and cross-country running. There aren’t any other kids like him at school, so I’ve always assumed he wasn’t normal.” She paused. “In the nonjudgmental sense
of the term. Not usual. Uncommon.”
I nodded. “Fair enough. Maybe he should go to Clarence Darrow, like Will. There are probably lots of kids like him there.”
“Yes, almost certainly, but then Wendy would be at a different school, and the disadvantages of two different commutes would outweigh the benefits of going to Darrow.” She smiled, finally. “We ran the numbers.”
There wasn’t a great deal I could say to that, so I turned to Lisa, who was the mother who’d danced overenthusiastically on the first night. She’d been quiet throughout this exchange, focusing on her pie and coffee. “And your son? He’s at school with Casper, right?”
“Yeah, they’re friends. They’re co-presidents of the Fibonacci Society.”
“Is that the math club?” I won’t lie, I was super proud of myself for correctly remembering who Fibonacci was. I could just as easily have asked if it was an Italian cooking club.
Lisa nodded.
“And they need to share the presidency?” I was really struggling. Did Emily’s school even have a math club? I resolved to ask later. “There’s that much to do?”
Lisa nodded. “Oh yeah. Math Olympiad is a real thing.” She lowered her voice. “Last year the team from Westminster tried to mess with our team by slipping them a printout of pi to three hundred digits with two transpositions.” She was clearly scandalized. “They couldn’t put it down until they found them.”
Jennifer nodded. “Who could?” And then she asked me, “And what’s Emily into?”
I hunted for the waitress, needing more pie. “Her phone. Her friends. Netflix.”
They were fascinated. “Oh . . . she’s normal.”
I nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
“Lucky.”
I thought about their brilliant children with their assured futures and tried not to be envious. “I guess so.”
16
EMILY
Back at the hotel, Mom was all bent out of shape.
“Emily,” she said from the bathroom. “Does your school have a math club?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “We came in third in the Math Olympiad last year.” I snorted. “Darrow won, naturally.”
“Do you know any of the girls on the team?”
“No, they’re seniors. There’s one junior on the team, I think. Not sure.”
I checked my phone. I’d posted pics from the dinner, and all my friends had commented. I liked all their comments, added responses, and opened the group chat. The general consensus was Will was cute and I should go for it. There was also a subthread about whether Casper was cute, in that supernerd, suddenly-cute-best-friend way you see in movies. We know a lot of boys, despite the all-girls school vibe, because we went to regular elementary and stayed friends with those boys. Sienna and Francesca both have serious boyfriends—well, as serious as you get at sixteen, which isn’t as serious as adults think, although yes, hooking up—and Ruby dates whoever she wants to. I’m not all that interested . . . At least I wasn’t. Will really is cute, and anyone who pulls out a Twix at the right moment deserves consideration.
Mom appeared from the bathroom, still dressed. “Do you belong to any clubs?” She’s stuck on the club thing, god only knows why.
“No, Mom. You know that.”
“Is there an engineering club? You could start one.”
I rolled my eyes at her, clichés be damned. “Mom, and commit social suicide? Are you out of your mind? Why don’t I start an Asperger’s Virgins Club?”
“Asperger’s isn’t funny, Emily.”
“Yes, Mom, in the context of a club, it’s funny.”
“Well, I think you should engage with school a bit more.”
She has got to be kidding. I gazed at her, exasperated. “What are you talking about? I’m taking three AP classes and the rest are honors. I’ve got SATs in three months and haven’t gone out during the week this entire year. I couldn’t be more engaged in school, and I couldn’t be more freaking miserable about it.” I flapped my hands at her and noticed a broken nail. I was falling apart.
She wasn’t hearing me. “Some of these kids have all these extracurricular activities, you don’t do any of that stuff. How’s that going to look on your college applications?”
I started to feel a bit attacked. “Mom, this is my life, remember? I have two evenings a week when I’m allowed to go out, and one full day to have fun. I have homework every evening and Sunday afternoon, so out of three hundred and sixty-five days a year, I have, like, seventy something to myself.”
My mom raised her eyebrows. “See, you’re good at math!”
I blew my lid, a little. “Mom! School is a full-time job, and I’m supposed to also read, do sports, and have some type of social life at the same time.” I could feel my face getting red, but she was really pissing me off, and I’d been in such a good mood. “I don’t know what the other parents said, but I’m doing my best here and I hate school and everything about it, so the fact that I even go every day is a miracle of courage and you should really be handing out medals and those silver blankets they give out after marathons. I can’t wait to be done, can’t wait to have a choice about where I go every morning, like you do.”
She looked at me for a minute. Then she said, “You think I have a choice? If I don’t go to work every day, we don’t eat. I have clients who expect me to show up in court, I have colleagues who expect me to be ready, I have no choices at all. I have responsibilities, I have expectations to meet, not to mention a child who wants the latest phone.”
That was unfair. My phone is totally over a year old, but I decided not to mention this, as she was getting that look on her face that means she’s actually pissed, not vaguely irritated.
“Plus,” she continued, her voice getting louder, “do you think I pay those extortionate school fees so you can waste time? The whole point of going to that school is so you can go to a good college. You work hard because that’s how you succeed. That’s what life is, hard work and self-improvement.”
I stood up, facing her across the bed. “Why do adults talk such shit about mindfulness and living in the moment, and at the same time point us all in the same direction and tell us to run as fast as we can to get ahead? Do this, you’ll be able to level up to a good high school, do this, you’ll be able to get into a good college where, if you work hard, you’ll be able to get a good job, where you can work harder and get a better job. When are we supposed to start actually living?” I realized my voice has gotten louder, too, but I don’t care. “And if working hard means I get a job like yours, I don’t think I want it. You just told me how stressful and hard it is. If that’s adult freedom, it sucks. You’re going to work until you keel over and die of a stress-related heart attack? What kind of life is that?”
“It’s my life. I live this way so you can have choices.”
“Well, stop then! You chose to have me. I didn’t ask you to work so hard. Maybe I’d rather have a crappier phone and more of you. Will’s family has less money than we do, but they’re much happier.”
Mom was silent for a moment. “You don’t know anything about their family.”
“No, but I know a lot about ours. It’s small, it’s unhappy, and I can’t wait to get out of it.”
And then I went into the bathroom and shut the door, so she couldn’t see how much I regretted everything I just said.
JESSICA
I walked out of the hotel, tipping my head back so I didn’t start crying. Emily and I had a truly terrible argument, which, I’m ashamed to say, I totally started. I could see the words flying out of my mouth, arcing across the room like arrows, knowing they were wrong, and not able to stop myself. It’s like they say, a scared dog is more dangerous than an angry one.
Dani and Chris were sitting outside the hotel on the edge of a fountain, smoking cigarettes. Wait, no, it was only Dani who’s smoking and she was vap
ing; it’s not 1995. I walked over and joined them.
“Please tell me I’m not the only one who just said regrettable things to their teenager.”
Dani handed me the vape pen. “Have some pot.”
“We’re not in California anymore, Dani, it’s illegal here.”
She regarded me pityingly. “Dude, inhale. The New Jersey police have enough to do without busting middle-aged women for inhaling water vapor.”
I shook my head. “I get randomly drug tested.”
Chris got up and headed into the hotel. “I’ll get you a drink,” he called over his shoulder. “They don’t test for that, which makes no sense.”
I sat there in silence until he returned. He handed me a generous scotch on the rocks and spoke. “I’d like to say I’m here because my son is meditating in our hotel room and wanted silence in order to better access his deep and abiding connection to me, but actually he’s sulking about some kind of raspberry pie, and I had to leave before I walloped him. I didn’t even see it on the menu.”
I took a big swig of scotch and felt it burn down my throat. “I think it’s a kind of mini-computer, rather than an actual pie.”
Chris’s face cleared. “Oh. That makes more sense. He kept saying he could keep it in his pocket, and I kept saying his grandmother wouldn’t like that, and instead of explaining it to me, he yelled.”
Dani exhaled a plume of vapor that twisted and disappeared like the cloud it was. “I asked Alice if she had a good time at dinner, and she bitched at me for ten minutes. The last thing she said was that I have no idea what it’s like to be young, because it’s been so long since I was.” She inhaled again. “She’s not wrong, but she doesn’t have to be such a cow about it.”
I giggled suddenly. “It really is a different world, but they’re mean to us in exactly the same way we were to our parents. It’s not like they’ve come up with new, high-tech material.”
“You don’t understand me,” said Chris.
“All the other mothers said yes,” said Dani.