The night of my birthday, Rachel rings my doorbell promptly at six thirty.
“Well,” she says, stepping into the house. “Uncle Fletcher is staying on Mom’s couch. Grandma Lois apparently refused to crash at Mom’s and instead decided she’s staying at the Standard.”
“The Standard? The one in West Hollywood?” I ask. Rachel nods. The Standard is a very hip hotel on the Sunset Strip. It has clear plastic pods hanging from the ceiling instead of chairs. The pool is packed year-round with twenty-year-olds in expensive bathing suits and more expensive sunglasses. Behind the check-in desk is a large glass case built into the wall where they pay young models to lie there by themselves and have people stare at them. You heard me.
“What on earth is Grandma doing at the Standard?” I ask Rachel.
She can’t stop laughing. “Are you going to be ready to go soon?”
“Yeah,” I say, heading off to look for my shoes. I call to her from the bedroom. “But seriously, how did she end up there?”
“Apparently, a friend of Grandma’s just told her about Priceline,” Rachel says.
“Uh-huh,” I call to her as I look under my bed for the other sandal I’m missing.
“And she went to the Web site and clicked on an area of the map that looked like it was halfway between us and Mom’s.” Rachel lives close to me in Miracle Mile, and my mother, once we all moved out of the house and she could downsize, found a place in the hills. Grandma could have easily stayed with any of us. We’re always within a twenty-five-minute car ride if you take back roads. And we always take back roads. I’d go so far as to say that finding the most esoteric way to get from one place to another is our family’s biggest competition. As in “Oh, you took Laurel Canyon the whole way? It’s faster to cut through Mount Olympus.”
“OK,” I say. I found the sandal! I walk out to the living room.
“And then she said what she was willing to spend.”
“Right.”
“And she agreed to stay at whatever hotel would be that cheap.”
“OK, but the Standard is kind of expensive.”
“Well, she must have been willing to pay a lot. Because that’s where they put her.”
“She was expecting, like, a Hilton or something, right?”
“That is my guess.”
I start laughing hard. My grandmother is a fairly hip lady. She knows what’s what. But she has the most delightfully curmudgeonly attitude toward things she calls “farcical.” The last time I saw her, I told her about how Ryan and I order pizza using an app on our phones, and she said to me, “Sweetheart, that’s farcical. Pick up the darn phone.”
“She’s not gonna like the lady in the glass wall.”
“No, she is not,” Rachel says, laughing.
“OK, I’m ready. Let’s get this over with.” I open the front door for Rachel, and then I wave to Thumper as I go.
“Happy Birthday, by the way,” Rachel says to me as we head to her car.
“Thank you.”
“Did you get my birthday voice mail?” she asks me.
“Yep,” I say. “Voice mail, text, e-mail, and Facebook post.”
“I’m nothing if not thorough.”
“Thank you,” I say to her as we get into the car.
It felt good to be bombarded with her happy thoughts all day. I had e-mails from friends. Mila took me out for Thai food. Mom called. Charlie called. It was a good day. But my brain was focused almost exclusively on how Ryan did not call. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. It shouldn’t still be a surprise. He told me he wasn’t going to call. But it’s all I can think about. Each time my phone beeps or I get a new e-mail, I hope. Maybe he won’t be able to resist. Maybe he’ll have to call. Maybe he’ll want to hear my voice.
It doesn’t feel like a birthday without him. He was supposed to wake me up by saying, “Happy Birthday, Birthday Girl!” like he does every year. He was supposed to take me out to breakfast. He was supposed to send flowers to work. He was supposed to come to my office and take me out to lunch. He used to put so much effort into my birthday. Specifically because he knew I hated birthdays. I don’t like the pressure to have fun. I don’t like to get older. And so he would distract me all day with special presents and thoughtful ideas. One year, he sent me to work with eight birthday cards so I could read one for every hour I was there.
Ryan should be making me dinner tonight. He is supposed to make me Ryan’s Magic Shrimp Pasta, which is, from what I can tell, just shrimp scampi. But it always tastes great. And we only ever have it on my birthday. And he always makes it so that I will look forward to my birthday. Because I get to eat Ryan’s Magic Shrimp Pasta.
He was able to take me out of my own head. He was able to make me happier, to change me into a happier person. And where is he now?
It occurs to me, however, briefly, that maybe he’s there. Maybe he’s at the party. Maybe everyone knows but me. Maybe he’s waiting for me.
Rachel turns on the radio, in effect blaring my own thoughts out of my head. I’m thankful. When we get off the main road, Rachel turns the music down.
“This isn’t going to be that bad,” she says, when she pulls into my mother’s neighborhood.
“No, I know,” I say. “It will be sort of like watching bad improv comedy. It’s unbearable but entirely nonthreatening.”
“Right, and if it’s any consolation, everyone is here because they love you.”
“Right.”
Rachel pulls up in front of my mother’s house. She turns the wheels in and yanks the emergency brake. The streets are steep and full of potholes. You have to watch where you park and where you step. I look out my window at my mom’s place. My mother couldn’t throw a surprise party to save her life. I can already see the shape of Uncle Fletcher’s bald head through the living-room curtains.
“All right,” I say. “Here goes!”
Rachel and I walk to my mom’s front door and ring the doorbell. I guess that’s the code. Everyone quiets inside. I don’t know how many people are in her house, but it’s enough to make a big difference when they quiet down.
I hear my mom come to the door. She opens it and smiles at me. I don’t know why I was getting so sentimental in the car. Ryan hasn’t made me Ryan’s Magic Shrimp Pasta the past two birthdays. We got into a fight about whether the shrimp was fully cooked, and he hasn’t made it since.
Rachel and my mother look at me expectantly, and then it happens, louder and more aggressive than I could have ever imagined.
“SURPRISE!”
I was expecting it, and yet it shocks me. There are so many people. It’s overwhelming. There are so many eyes on me, so many people staring. And none of them, not one of them, is Ryan.
I start to cry. And somehow, maybe because I know I can’t cry, because it will just ruin everything if I cry, I stick my head up, and I smile, and the tears recede. And I say, “Oh, my God! I can’t believe this! I feel like the luckiest girl in the whole world!”
• • •
When the fanfare dies down, it gets easier to process. People stop looking at me. They turn toward each other and talk. I go over to the kitchen to get myself a drink. I am expecting perhaps wine and beer, but right in front of me, on the kitchen counter, is a punch bowl.
Charlie comes up behind me. “I spiked it,” he says. I turn around to look at him. He looks much the same as when I saw him a few months ago. He’s filled out since he was a teenager, grown out instead of up. He appears to have become lax about shaving, and his greasy hair implies he may have become lax about shampooing, too, but his ice-blue eyes shine brightly. It feels so nice to see my brother’s face in front of mine. I hug him.
“I’m so glad to see you,” I say. “If this weird party had to happen, I’m glad it at least brought you home.”
“Yeah,” Charlie says. “How are you doing?”
“I’m OK,” I say, nodding my head the way I do. It’s still uncomfortable to be the one in crisis. Charlie is normally in some sort of dramatic trouble. I’m supposed to listen to his problems. Not the other way around.
“OK,” he says. He seems content to let that be it. He may feel just as awkward being supportive as I do feeling supported.
“So how was the flight?” I ask.
Charlie opens the fridge and grabs another beer for himself. He doesn’t really look at me directly. “Fine,” he says, as he twists off the cap and snaps it directly into the trash. Sometimes I worry that he is too good at flinging bottle caps where he wants them to go. It’s something that requires practice, and I worry about how often he practices.
“You’re hiding something,” I say. I pull the ladle out of the punch bowl and put some punch in a clear plastic cup. I’m pretty sure my mom shopped for this party at Party City.
“No, nothing. The flight was good. Did you see the streamers in the dining room?”
“Are you kidding me?” I say, defeated. “Now I owe Rachel five bucks.” I take a sip of the punch. It’s strong. It’s absolutely dreadful. “Oh, my God, you actually spiked this.”
“Of course I did. That’s what I told you.” Charlie pushes his way through the doors of the kitchen and heads back into the living room. I take another sip, and it burns going down. But for some reason, I keep the drink in my hand, as a line of defense against the litany of questions I’m in for. And then I barge through the doors myself.
It begins.
• • •
“So where is Ryan?” asks my mom’s best friend, Tina. I make up something about work.
Then my second cousin Martin chimes in with “How are things with you and Ryan?” I tell him they are fine.
There don’t seem to be many of my friends here. No one invited Mila, for instance. It’s just my mom’s friends and almost our entire family. I spend a half hour deflecting birthday wishes and questions about Ryan’s whereabouts as if they are bullets. But I know that Grandma Lois is the real person to fear. She has the most frightening question to ask me. If all of these well-wishers are evil mushrooms and turtles I must jump over and stomp on, Grandma is King Koopa, waiting for me at the end. What I find comforting about this analogy is that Rachel and Charlie are my Luigis. They will have to go through all of this on their own sometime in the future. Maybe they’ll do it differently from how I have, but most likely, the end will be the same.
Regardless, I figure I’d better get it all over with, so I go looking for Grandma. When I find her, she is sitting on the sofa by herself. I take an extra big gulp of punch before I sit down next to her. It stings on the way down.
“Hi, Grandma,” I say, hugging her. She can barely lift herself off the couch, so I do most of the work. It seems to me, when you get older, your body goes one of two ways: pleasantly plump or spritely skinny. My grandmother went pleasantly plump. Her face is round and gentle. Her eyes still twinkle. If it sounds like I’m describing Santa Claus, that’s because there is a bit of a resemblance. Her hair is wild and bright white. Her belly, however, does not shake when she laughs like a bowl full of jelly. And I think that’s an important distinction.
I sit down a bit too close to her, and the couch starts to sink in the middle. We’re both gravitating toward the center. But it seems rude to move over.
“Honey, move over,” Grandma says to me. “You’re dragging me down off the couch.”
“Oh, sorry, Grandma,” I say, as I slide to the middle. “How are you?”
“Well, the cancer’s coming back, but other than that, I’m fine.” My grandmother always has cancer. I don’t actually know what this means. She’s never really clear on it. She just says she has cancer, and then, when you ask her about it, she won’t pin down what type of cancer or whether she’s actually been diagnosed. It started after my grandfather died six years ago. At first, we would get up in arms every time she said it, but now we just let it go. It’s a weird family quirk that I don’t even notice until there’s another witness to it. A few Thanksgivings ago, we invited Ryan’s friend Shawn to join us, and as we all got into the car on the way home, Shawn said, “Your grandmother has cancer? Is she OK?” And I realized that it probably seemed absurd to him that she had announced she had cancer again and no one batted an eyelash. I get the distinct feeling she is hoping for cancer so that she can be with my grandfather.
“And things are good at home? With Uncle Fletcher?” I ask.
“Things are fine. I’m boring, Lauren. Stop asking about me. What I want to know is—” Here it comes. The moment I have been dreading. Here it comes. “When are you and that handsome grandson-in-law of mine going to give me a great-grandkid?”
“Well, you know how it is, Gram,” I say, sipping the punch to buy myself some time.
“No, honey, I don’t know how it is. You’re thirty years old. You don’t have all day.”
“I know,” I say.
“I’m not trying to be a pain. I just think, you know, I’m not going to be around forever, and I’d like to meet the bundle of joy before I go.”
Whether she has cancer or not, my grandmother is eighty-seven. She may not be around for many more years. It suddenly occurs to me that I am the only way she will ever meet a great-grandchild. Uncle Fletcher doesn’t have any kids. Rachel isn’t going to have one anytime soon. Charlie? Please. And because my marriage is a colossal failure, because I’m so disconnected from my own husband that I don’t even know where he lives, she may never get that chance. Me. I’m the reason she won’t meet the next generation. I could give that to her, if only I’d been good at being married, if only I’d succeeded.
“Well,” I say, drinking the last of the punch in my cup, “I’ll talk to Ryan.”
“You know, your grandfather said he wasn’t ready for kids.”
“Yeah?” I say, relieved that she is talking about anything other than me. “And how did that go?”
“What could he do?” my grandmother says. “It was time to have kids.”
“Just that simple, huh?”
“Yep.” Grandma pats my knee. “Things are a lot simpler than you kids make them out to be. Even your mother. Sometimes, I swear.”
“Mom seems to be doing OK,” I say. I look across the room and see her talking to an older gentleman. He’s tall and handsome in a silver fox sort of way. He’s looking at her as if she has a secret and he wants to know what it is. “That isn’t Bill, is it?”
Grandma squints. “I don’t have my glasses,” she says. “Is it a handsome man?”
“Yeah,” I say. “In an older sort of way.”
“You mean a younger sort of way,” she jokes.
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s what I meant.”
“If he’s looking at her like she’s a hamburger and he’s on a diet, then yes. That’s Bill. I met him earlier today, and he kept staring at your mother like they were teenagers.”
“Oh,” I say. “That’s cute!”
Grandma waves me off. “Your mother is almost sixty years old. She’s no teenager.”
“Do you believe in love, Gram?” Why am I doing this? I’m feeling a bit buzzed, to be honest—that’s probably why I’m doing this.
“Of course I do!” she says. “What do you take me for? Some sort of coldhearted monster?”
“No, I just mean . . .” I look at my mother again. She looks really happy. “Isn’t that great? How in love they seem?”
“It’s farcical,” my grandmother says. “She’s almost eligible for social security benefits.”
“Did you love Grandpa the whole time?” Maybe she didn’t. Maybe I’m just like her. Maybe she’s just like me. Ending up like my Grandma would not be so bad.
“The whole time,” she says. “Every day.” OK, so maybe not.
“How?” I ask her.
“What do you mean, how? I had no choice. That’s how.”
I look up at my mom, a woman I respect and admire. A woman with three kids and no husband but, at fifty-nine, a new boyfriend. My mother is going to have sex tonight. She’s going to have the kind of sex that makes you feel like you invented sex. And my grandmother is going to lie in her hotel room, convinced she has cancer, so that she can one day soon be with the man she had no choice but to love, the man who took care of her and stood beside her until the day he died, the man who gave her children and came home every day and kissed her on the cheek.
I don’t know where I fit in. I don’t know which one of these women I am. Maybe I’m neither. But it would be nice to feel as if I was one of them. That way, I’d have a road map. I’d be able to know what happens next. I’d be able to ask someone what I should do, and they could answer me, truly answer me.
If I’m not one of them, if I’m my own person, my own version of a woman, in my own marriage, then I have to figure it out for myself.
Which I really don’t want to do.
• • •
I’m just coming out of the bathroom when I finally see Rachel again.
“You owe me five dollars for the streamers,” she says.
“I’m good for it,” I say.
“How are you holding up?”
“You mean with the charade?”
“Yeah,” she says. “And the rest of it.”
I breathe in deeply. “I’m good,” I say. I don’t know what the actual answer is. I don’t think it’s that I’m good, though.
“Have you met Bill yet?”
“No.” I shake my head “But he seems nice from afar.”
“Oh, he’s totally nice. And he treats Mom like she’s a princess. It’s kind of weird. I mean, it’s great. But then also you’re, like, ‘Ew, Mom.’ And Mom just eats. It. Up. Ugh, you know how she is, you know? It’s like, she just loves the attention.”
“Well, you know Mom,” I say. “I’m going to get another drink.”
Rachel and I head into the kitchen. When we burst through the double doors, we catch my mom and Bill kissing. Bill pulls away, and Mom blushes. I’m nearly positive that his hand was up her shirt. Rachel and I just stand there for a moment as Charlie comes bounding in from the living room and crashes into the back of us. Mom starts fixing her hair. Bill is trying to act normal. It’s easy for Charlie to put together what he’s just missed. It’s entirely PG-13. But it’s a mother and her boyfriend being walked in on by three adult children, so it’s uncomfortable.
“Hi, kids,” my mom says, as if she had been doing the dishes.
Bill puts his hand out to introduce himself to me. “Bill,” he says, grabbing my hand and shaking it hard. His eyes are green. His hair is salt-and-pepper gray, although more salt than pepper. He’s got one of those megawatt smiles.
“Lauren,” I say, making eye contact and smiling, like I’ve been taught to do.
“I know!” Bill says. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Ditto.”
“Rachel, will you help me bring this cheese platter out into the living room?” my mom says.
“Yeah, OK,” Rachel says, smiling and taking so much delight in the awkwardness of this that you’d think she’d have brought popcorn. She picks up a tray and heads out with my mother.
“I just came in for a beer,” Charlie says, grabbing another one out of the fridge and heading back out. He doesn’t even take the time to snap the cap in the trash. He’s out of here in two seconds flat. Now it’s just Bill and me.
“Happy Birthday,” Bill says.
“Oh, thank you very much,” I say. Why is this so awkward? I guess I don’t usually meet any of my mother’s boyfriends. I mean, I know she’s had them, but they don’t often last long enough to get invited to a birthday party. “So you’re a mechanic?” I ask. I don’t know what else to ask.
“Oh, no,” Bill says. “We met at the mechanic. That’s probably where the wires got crossed. No, I’m a financial adviser.”
“Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. That’s funny. What a random thing to think you were.”
“No problem,” Bill says. “I’d love to think of myself as a mechanic. I can’t fix a goddamn thing.”
“Not a leaky-faucet-fixing kind of guy?”
“I can help with your taxes,” he says. “That’s the kind of guy I am.”
Bill puts his arms behind him on the counter and rests against it. The way he relaxes makes me relax but also makes me realize that he wants to talk to me for a while. He’s getting comfortable. This is . . . I think he’s trying to get to know me.
“And you work in alumni relations, right? That’s what your mom told me.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I like it a lot.”
“What do you like about it?”
“Oh, well, I like interacting with the former students. You meet a lot of people who graduated recently and are looking for guidance from older alumni, and then you also get people who graduated years and years ago and are looking to mentor someone. So that’s fun.”
“You’re inspiring me to call my own alma mater,” he says, laughing. “Sounds like you’re doing some good work.”
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say Bill was married for a long time and my mom is his first, or one of his first, girlfriends since his wife passed away. This is all very new to him.
“So you have kids of your own?” I ask him.
He nods, and his face brightens. “Four boys,” he says. “Men, really. Thatcher, Sterling, Campbell, and Baker.”
Oh. My. God. Those are some of the worst names I have ever heard. “Oh, great names,” I say.
“No,” he says. “Their names suck. But they are family names. My wife’s family. My late wife, rather. Anyway, they are good kids. My youngest just graduated from Berkeley.”
“Oh, that’s great,” I say. We talk about Rachel and Charlie, and then, predictably, we get to the topic of my mother.
“She’s really something,” Bill says.
“That she is,” I say.
“No, I’m serious. I’m not . . . I’m not well versed in the dating pool. But your mom really gives me hope. She makes me excited again. Is that OK to say? Is that weird that I said that?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s nice to hear. She deserves somebody who feels that way about her.”
“Well,” he says, “you know what that is, right? From what your mom tells me, you and Ryan are quite the pair.”
It’s all too much. My mother in love. This man baring his soul to me for no good reason. Ryan not being here. It’s all too much. I walk over to the punch bowl and pour myself a cup. It’s almost full, the punch bowl. My mom must keep refilling this thing. Get a grip, Mom. No one likes the punch. I take a sip, instantly remembering how strong and foul it is. I chug the whole thing, forcing it down and putting the cup back on the counter.
Bill looks at me. “You OK?” he says.
“I’m fine, Bill.” Everyone needs to stop asking me that question. My answer isn’t going to change.
• • •
I’ve had two more cups of punch by the time the cake comes out. My breath, at this point, seems flammable. As my mother and the rest of my family join around the cake, the candles sending shadows flickering high above, I look around and have this moment where I feel as if I can see very clearly what a shit show my life has become.
I am turning thirty. I am thirty. And I’m celebrating, not with the man I have loved since I was nineteen, but with Uncle Fletcher, who is staring at me from across the table. He just wants the cake. This isn’t what thirty is supposed to look like. It’s not what thirty is supposed to feel like. By thirty, you’re supposed to have things figured out, aren’t you? You’re not supposed to be questioning everything you’ve built your life on.
I blow out the candles, and things start to get a bit hazy. My mom starts passing out cake. Uncle Fletcher takes the biggest piece. I accidentally drop mine on the floor, and since no one seems to notice, I just leave it there. It’s a terrible thing to do, but I get the feeling that if I bend down, my mind will go all woozy.
Eventually, Rachel comes and finds me. “You don’t look so great,” she says.
“That’s not a pleasant thing to hear,” I say.
“No, I’m serious,” she says. “You look kinda pale.”
“I’m drunk, girl,” I say. “This is what drunk looks like.”
“What were you drinking?”
“The punch! That deliciously horrendous punch.”
“You drank that?”
“Wasn’t everyone drinking it?”
“No,” Rachel says. “I couldn’t get even a sip down. It was nasty. I don’t think anyone here was drinking that.”
I look around the room and notice for the first time that no one is holding anything other than glasses of water or beer bottles.
“It did seem weird that it was always full,” I say.
Rachel calls for Charlie. He strolls over as if it’s a favor.
“What did you spike the punch with?” she asks him.
“Why?”
“Because Lauren has been drinking it all night.”
“Uh-oh,” he says playfully.
“Charlie, what did you put in it?” Rachel’s voice is serious now, and at the very least, I can tell she doesn’t think this is funny.
“In my defense, I was just trying to liven up what we all knew would be a rather lame party.”
“Charlie,” Rachel says sternly.
“Everclear,” he says. The word hangs there for a little while, and then Charlie asks me, “How much did you drink?”
“Four glasses-ish.” It would be a hard word to say if I felt entirely in control of my faculties. As it is, it comes out with a lot more “sh” sounds than I mean for it to.
Both Charlie and Rachel join together, albeit by accident, to say, “Shit.”
Charlie follows up. “I honestly thought some people might have a glass or two, tops.”
“Dudes, what is Everclear? Why is this a dig beal?” I’m not entirely sure I said that correctly just now, but also, I’m starting to feel like if I did mess it up, it’s funny, and I should keep doing it.
“It’s not even legal in every state. That’s how strong it is,” Rachel says to me. Then, to Charlie, she adds, “Maybe we should take her home.”
For once, Charlie doesn’t disagree. “Yep.” He nods. “Lauren, when was the last time you puked from drinking?”
“From huh?”
“From drinking.”
“I have no idea.”
“I’m going to tell Mom you aren’t feeling well,” Rachel says. “Charlie, will you get her into the car?”
“You guys are being such dillyholes.” Whoa. Not a word. But should be. “Someone write that down! D-I-L-L-Y—”
Rachel leaves as Charlie takes my arm and directs me toward the door. “I’m really sorry. I swear, I thought people would realize that it was strong and not drink that much. I thought maybe Uncle Fletcher would have a glass or two and start dancing on the table or something. Something fun.”
“Dudes, this was totally fun.”
“Why do you keep calling me dudes?” Charlie asks.
I look at him and really think about it. And then I shrug. When we get to the front door, my mother and Rachel cut us off.
“Mom, I’m just gonna take her,” Rachel says.
But my mother is already feeling my forehead. “You look clammy, sweetheart. You should get some rest.” She looks at me a moment longer. “Are you drunk?”
“Yep!” I say. This is hilarious, isn’t it? I mean, I’m thirty years old. I can be drunk!
“I spiked the punch,” Charlie says. You can tell he feels bad.
“With what?” my mom asks him.
Rachel cuts in. “It was strong, is the point. And Lauren didn’t know. And now she’s had a bit too much, and I think we should bring her home.”
“Charlie, what the fuck?” my mom says. When my mom swears, you know she means business. It’s sort of like how you know to be scared of other moms when they use your full name.
“I thought it would be funny,” he says. “No one was drinking it.”
“Clearly, someone was drinking it.”
“I can see that, Mom. I said I was sorry. Can we drop it?”
“Just get her home,” my mom says. My mom doesn’t really yell. She just gets really disappointed in you. And it’s heartbreaking sometimes. I feel bad for Charlie. He tends to get it more than the rest of us. “When will Ryan be home to take care of you?” my mom asks.
Rachel cuts in. “I’ll stay with her, Mom. She’s just drunk. It’s not a big deal.”
“But Ryan will be there, right? He can make sure you’re on your side, you know? So you don’t choke on your own vomit.” My mom doesn’t really drink that often, and because of that, she thinks everyone who does is Jimi Hendrix.
“Yeah, Mom, he’ll be there,” Rachel says. “I won’t leave until he gets there.”
“Well, then, you are going to be there for a loooooooooooong time,” I say.
“What?” my mom asks.
Rachel and Charlie try to stop me with “Come on, Lauren,” and “Let’s go, Lauren.”
“No, it’s cool, guys. Mom can know.”
“Mom can know what?” my mom asks. “Lauren, what is going on?”
“Ryan left. Vamoosed. He lives somewhere else now. Not sure where. He said not to call him. I got Thumper, though! Woo-hoo!”
“What?” My mother’s shoulders slump. Rachel and Charlie shut the front door, dejected. We were almost out of here scot-free.
“He left. We don’t live together anymore.”
“Why?”
“Mostly because the love died,” I say, laughing. I look around, expecting to see everyone else laughing, but no one is laughing.
“Lauren, please tell me you’re joking.”
“Nopes.”
“How long ago was this?”
“A few weeks or so. Coupla weeks. But did you hear the part about how I got Thumper?”
“I think we should take Lauren home,” Rachel says, and my mom looks as if she’s about to argue with her but then doesn’t.
She kisses me on the cheek. “One of you will stay with her?”
Both Charlie and Rachel volunteer. So cute. Cutest little siblings.
“All right,” my mom says. “Good night.”
They both say good night, and as I’m just out the door, I call to my mom, “I accidentally dropped some cake into the corner over there.”
But I don’t think she hears me.
Charlie and Rachel put me in the backseat, and I can feel just how tired I’ve been this whole time. We hit a red light, and I hear Charlie tell Rachel to take Highland to Beverly Boulevard, and then he turns toward me and suggests I get some sleep. I nod and close my eyes for a minute, and then . . .