The Light of Paris(31)

“And do you care?”

“Weirdly, I do. Stupid, right? I haven’t lived in that house basically since I left for college.”

“Eh, people get weird about real estate. Don’t take it personally, though. Your mom just wants to get out of there. It’s a lot of house for her to manage.”

“And she’s moving into an apartment building? I can’t imagine it.”

“It’s condos. And all the Garden Society dowagers move there.” Sharon’s coffee arrived, and she took a stack of packets, shook them, and poured the entire pile into her coffee, rendering it ninety percent sweetener and ten percent liquid. “Betsy Lynn is moving there, too, and I am sure her neighbors are thrilled, because those dogs she has yap all the livelong day. Anyway, enough about her and her problems. I’m so glad you’re in town.”

“Me too,” I said, surprised to find I actually meant it. My visits to my mother had always been plagued by her criticism and my desperate efforts to please her, but this time felt different. I felt like I had nothing to lose, like it was easier to shake off her complaints about my clothes, my hair, my weight, like it wasn’t my problem. “What about you? Have you been here since high school?”

“Nah, I did a little bit of wandering. Followed Phish around for a couple of years, lived in San Francisco and made a lot of merry. Then I met my boyfriend when I was visiting back here and I decided to stay.”

Our food arrived and we settled ourselves under our napkins, shifted our plates around, made space for the accoutrements of breakfast while I pictured Sharon dancing in muddy fields, or walking along the streets of San Francisco, a little loose and free, like a flower child twenty years too late. “I have to say, I can picture you much more easily doing those things than I can seeing you living here. This place is so . . .” I struggled for a word to describe how I had felt at the luncheon the day before, the strange combination of shame for myself and mourning for all of us, and failed.

But Sharon knew what I meant, or seemed to. “Parts of it, sure. The parts you and I grew up in. But it’s not all like that. There are a million great shops and restaurants and amazing live music—my boyfriend’s a musician, which is basically why I became a real estate agent. Someone’s got to pay the bills, you know? He stays home with the kids.”

I nearly choked on my eggs. “You have kids?” I asked, wheezing as politely as I could as I took a sip of water to recover. On our senior retreat, I’d watched Sharon carve a bong out of an apple from the dining hall and then lead a group of girls straight past the chaperones’ rooms to get high in the woods. And now that girl changed diapers and rocked babies to sleep.

“Sure. Twin boys. They’re almost two. Kevin is home with them during the day while I’m working.” She paused between bites and shot me a wicked grin. “You’re surprised? I don’t strike you as the maternal type?”

“Well . . . not really. I mean, I didn’t really know you well in high school, but . . .”

“Ah, don’t worry about it. Most of the rumors weren’t true, but the sentiment behind them was. Honestly, I was glad to have the reputation I did. Kept me an arm’s distance from being caught up in the perfect circle. I don’t know how you survived it.”

“The perfect circle? What do you mean?”

“You know. Ashley, Ellen, Audrey, Emma, you. All those bitches with their perfect hair and their Add-A-Pearl necklaces. Not that you’re a bitch. I never understood what you were doing with them anyway.”

“No idea. I have never had perfect hair, and I was always losing my Add-A-Pearl necklace. I don’t know why they let me hang around with them. Probably I just made them feel better about themselves.” I felt a little shudder of shame saying it, as though I had been hiding the truth from myself for years. Apparently, my life’s purpose was to cling desperately to people who thought they were too good for me, because I believed it too.

Sharon snorted. “It should have been the other way around. I remember your paintings from the Senior Art Show—they were amazing. Are you still an artist?”

“Not really,” I said. “No. I mean, I wasn’t ever an artist. I was just playing around.” I had told Miss Pine the same thing, but it sounded different this time. Those were my parents’ words, not mine. I hadn’t been playing around. My creativity had mattered to me.

“That’s too bad. You were good,” she said. “Anyway, I always suspected you were cool, despite the necklace and the company you kept. Glad to know I wasn’t wrong.”

Pulled out of my art-soaked memories, I blinked slowly at Sharon. She had thought I was cool? She, who wore a leather jacket and Doc Martens with her uniform, who had driven her date to prom on a motorcycle, who left campus during lunch (very much against the rules) to smoke (very very much against the rules) and eat pizza with the public school boys (very very very much against the rules)—she thought I was cool? Had she really been so wrong about me? Or had I been wrong about myself?

“So,” I asked, clearing my throat and changing the subject before the silence became awkwardly long, “what’s it like working with my mother?”

Sharon carefully cut her pancakes, obviously considering how to respond. “Your mother is . . . intense.”

“If by intense you mean overly critical and negative, then yes. She is.”