“IT’S A CLOSET,” SAYS MY MOTHER.
“It’s a guest room and a closet,” chirps Emerson. “A Groset. Hey, Andrew! I just came up with a new word!”
My brother moves off toward the kitchen, leaving Mom and me alone in the closet doorway. She gives me a dubious look, then steps all the way into the small space and sits on the bed. I can tell she’s still angry with me from the way the corners of her mouth keep twitching.
“How is this better than being at home?” she asks, her voice a flat line.
“Uh, because it’s in a city full of fun stuff to do? And I get to spend some time with Emerson. I won’t see him much after I go back to school.”
I prepared that argument and it seems to be a good one: Mom’s expression warms up.
“Well, I’m glad you two are having fun together,” she says. “Are you able to sleep in here?”
I’m about as able to sleep in here as I am anywhere else, which means not very able at all. I shrug, and Mom sighs because her Shrug-to-English language skills are excellent.
“Did you bring melatonin? Because I’ll buy you some if you didn’t.”
“That would be great. Thanks.” I try not to use the stuff if I don’t have to, but sometimes I have to. Like tonight, when I know what Thought Worms will slither toward me when I close my eyes: Luna and the strangers and the sound of that bus with its brakes like a trumpeting elephant, and also Jamie and Max. Jamie in the museum and Max in the coffee shop. Oh, and that dad and his daughter, Sophie. I could go on. I usually do.
Mom’s gaze settles on my suitcase, which feels like a third person in the room. “I’m still not sure why you didn’t unpack when you first got home.”
“I was busy Christmas shopping,” I say, which is true but not a good enough reason and we both know it. How do I explain it to her when I can’t explain it to myself?
“But certain things must be dirty.”
“Aren’t you glad Santa brought me new socks and underwear?”
My mother shakes her head and sighs again. I can tell she wants this to be a special night despite the annoyances of having this quirky and unpredictable daughter. “Well, you look nice,” she says.
I’m wearing a vintage 1970s dress I bought at a flea market in Paris called Les Puces de Saint-Ouen. It’s navy silk with tiny polka dots and a white belt. I got the dress thinking I’d wear it to school when I went back, because it’s the kind of thing I always wished I could wear to school. But now that I have it on, I know there’s no way. This looks like I’m trying to be someone else. Of course, everyone wants to be someone else, but you’re not supposed to be obvious about it.
“Thanks,” I say, and go to find my coat.
After we get to the restaurant, the hostess leads us to a booth which I’m pretty sure is the same one we sat in two years ago. This is a holiday tradition for Mom and me: early dinner and a Broadway show. Every year, even if we have family visiting or the weather is terrible. She always makes it happen. I really, really love that she does that, but of course I never tell her.
We sit, and my mother takes her napkin and opens it onto her lap, which reminds me to do the same.
“So what exactly have you been doing in the city?” she asks.
“I went to the Met yesterday,” I reply, quickly curating my experiences over the last forty-eight hours. Mom nods in approval of this time well spent, and now that I’ve set things up nicely, I go in for the shot: “I’d like to stay for New Year’s, if that’s okay.”
My mother’s face sinks and she’s about to say something I don’t want to hear, but then a waiter comes over and introduces himself. She orders a glass of wine and I get a Shirley Temple, which is always my special-occasion drink, mostly just for the cherry.
“What’s his name?” asks Mom after the waiter leaves.
“Whose name?” I ask, confused.
“Kendall,” says Mom, actually rolling her eyes at me. “I’ve raised three sons. Two of whom were girl-crazy and the third of whom was boy-crazy. I know when there’s something going on.”
The problem with parents is that they can make the phrase something going on sound disgusting.
“It’s Jamie, a guy I met last summer, and we kept in touch when I was away. We’ve become friends.”
I try really hard to hide the excitement and hope in my voice, and probably fail.
It must be weird for my mom, me being almost eighteen with a zero balance on my dating record. Sullivan and Walker were demigods in high school. They had so many girls coming in and out of our house, I had a full makeup collection accumulated by the time I was twelve. Emerson’s been a serial monogamist since ninth grade; he had boyfriends every year for a full year each, until sophomore year in college and meeting Andrew.
Fortunately, my mother had already passed on all her advice about men to Emerson, so it was no big deal that I wasn’t dating.
“Do you like boys or girls?” she asked me once when I was fourteen. Ari had just slept over and I was standing at the window, watching her car drive away.
“Boys, definitely,” I’d said.
“It’s okay if you like girls. Emerson cleared the way for you on that. Or if you like both, that’s okay. It’s also okay if you’re not sure.”
“Mom. Stop being so evolved. I like boys.”
“I’m glad you know,” she’d said, but then I could still see the next question hovering in her head like a comic book thought bubble. Then where are the boys?
Turns out, they were in Ireland. Or at least, one was. One named Declan who made soccer, I mean football jerseys look hot. One who saw our group staying at the local hostel and realized this was his chance to notch an American girl. He honed in on my friend Chloe first, when we were all hanging out at a pub, but his friend Daniel beat him to her. I was next in Declan’s line of sight. Sometimes you’re happy to be in the line at all.
If my mother were a different person or I were drinking a Monaco (beer and grenadine syrup; that’s an alcoholic Euro-version of a Shirley Temple and sure, I drank those like soda), I would tell her about Declan and about the blanket on the grass on the hill. How Chloe wished she hadn’t slept with Daniel but I didn’t regret Declan. I knew it wasn’t going to be the same as it is in movies, and besides, I liked it. I especially like that it’s done and now I have some nice pictures of him in my phone.
The drinks come and we sip. I’m worried that she’s going to ask me more about Jamie and I won’t be able to tell her without spilling the story about Luna and I don’t want to go there right now. Must deflect.
“So what did I miss at home the last few days?”
A shadow flickers across Mom’s face and she sits up straight. For my mother, a good attitude always starts with better posture.
“Well, let’s see,” she says, placing her drink carefully on the table. “Walker had a big fight with Sully shortly after you kids left. Sully and Amy went back to Baltimore earlier than they’d planned. And Walker’s been in his room ever since.”
“Oh, Mom. I’m so sorry.”
She shrugs. “That’s Walker.”
I could fill in the rest. That’s Walker, my son who dropped out of college and still lives at home, working at a snack foods warehouse.
“He’ll find his path,” I say to my mom, and she nods, biting her lip. It’s an empty cliché so I want to fill it with something real. “Aren’t you glad I went away? So maybe I won’t be like him?”
Real does not always equal comforting. My mother is crying a little now. I can actually be so stupid.
“Kendall,” she says, dabbing her eyes with the corner of her napkin. “I am glad you went away. But you and Walker are different people.”
Of course we are, but the ways we’re alike—they’re not good ones. Walker was diagnosed with ADHD when he was eight. It took them until I was twelve to figure it out, because I wasn’t jumping on chairs or jabbing other kids in the crotch with pencils (my brother did that a lot). I wasn’t hurting anyone and in fact I was doing the opposite, crying every night because somebody said something that hurt me. In the mornings, I didn’t want to go to school, tired of trying so hard and failing so often, and knew I was the stupidest kid in the class. I fell further and further behind, especially with math or anything I had to memorize. They called me spacey, a daydreamer, scattered. Eventually there was a new word: inattentive, which explained things but didn’t fix them.
Medication was a patchwork quilt of treatment for Walker. Something would help for a while, until it didn’t. Sometimes it helped too much, turning him into a pleasant pod-person version of my brother. Eventually, he got in trouble for selling his pills to his friends. After everything they went through, my parents didn’t want to reopen that Pandora’s box with me. Maybe when I turn eighteen, I’ll explore the medication thing for myself.
“Of course we’re different people,” I say.
“Yes,” agrees Mom. “Different people, different paths.”
Over here in Kendall-land, a Thought Worm bursts forward, toward the light.
If things work out with Jamie, it’ll be a million times easier to go home and back to Fitzpatrick. I know it won’t solve all my problems—I’m not that person, thank God—but I’ll be part of something. As a girl with a boyfriend, I’ll fit in better. But if things don’t work out, maybe I don’t have to go back yet . . . or at all. I can stay in the city with Emerson and Andrew. I can get a job to help them pay rent. I’ll fix up the Groset real nice and get my GED. Emerson’s a teacher! He can help me. I can still go to college, just later and on my own terms when I feel totally ready.
It’ll be a smart move, a wise move, and won’t be a form of procrastination at all, I swear.
Wicked is amazing, obviously. At intermission I flip through the Playbill and think of all the other ones I have at home. Mom comes back from the ladies’ room and as she sinks into the red velvet seat next to me, I notice she’s been crying again.
“I know the line was long down there, but it couldn’t have been that traumatic,” I joke.
This does make her laugh. “I was thinking as I was waiting,” she says. “What you said before about the Movable School and not ending up like Walker. It was a no-brainer to send you, really. I know how hard it’ll be for you to go back to Fitzpatrick.”
It must be the Wicked effect. She’s suddenly seeing me as Elphaba, complete with green skin and awkward witch’s hat, a girl who doesn’t belong anywhere.
This is my window: I can pitch the idea of staying with Emerson. We’re all warm and fuzzy right now and even though she wouldn’t agree to anything, a seed would be planted.
But the lights start to dim and Mom reaches out to squeeze my hand.
“Stay for New Year’s,” she says. “Make the most of it.”
I squeeze back. That’s the closest I’ll get to saying the things I want and need to say to her, for now.