Hope and Other Punch Lines(39)

“Hi!” I say, like I’m only thrilled to see Mel, not like she brings with her an avalanche of discomfort and mixed feelings. It’s weird even by Oakdale standards that she’s my second 9/11 widow of the day. Three if you count Noah by proxy for his mother. I don’t remember the last time I was in the same room as Cat’s mom, mostly because I didn’t realize there would ever be a last time at her house. I miss the Gibson-Hendersons. I miss Cat’s little brother, Parker, who was born obsessed with his big sister and always begged us to let him play too. We did, but Cat came up with wicked ways to torture him—made him walk the plank when we were pirates, forced him to paint our toenails and massage our feet when we played boss. I even miss Stewart, Mel’s husband, who walks around with noise-canceling headphones and has probably said a collective total of fifty words to me in all the years I’ve known him.

I want some of Mel’s famous challah french toast. I want to scratch their dog, Rusty, right behind his left ear. I want to help Parker with his word search homework. I want to rewind Cat to who she was before so I can go back to being such a natural part of their household that I can eat their cereal straight out of the box and if I’m still there at six o’clock, an extra dinner plate is automatically set at the table.

“Abbi! Come give me a hug! It’s been too long!” Mel’s arms are outstretched, her voice completely at odds with her face, which is streaked with mascara. She’s been crying. Haven’t we all, I think unkindly, a split second before I realize that it’s not fair for me to be angry at Mel just because I’m angry at Cat.

Still. Hasn’t she noticed I haven’t been over for a while? Does she miss me too?

I give Mel a quick hug. I look at my mother over Mel’s shoulder, and she widens her eyes at me.

“Hey, sweetie. Can I ask you a question? And please, be honest. I promise Cat won’t get into any trouble. And you won’t either.” Mel wears a sad smile, pinched at the corners, like it hurts to hold it in place. “You don’t have to cover for her. I just need to know the truth. Was Cat really with you the other night?”

“Which night?” I ask this like we still hang out all the time, like there’s any shot that we were in the basement eating popcorn. Like I even know what she’s talking about. It would be much better if my mother were the one to blow the whistle on this whole thing.

“Well, last Thursday, and then this past weekend,” she says.

“I was with Cat on Saturday night.” This is, of course, the truth. Or part of it, anyway.

“You were? Here?” Mel takes a sip of coffee, waits me out. She’s known me since I was a baby. She’ll wield her silence like a weapon until I talk.

As much as my mom complains that Mel’s über-stay-at-home-mommy-ness makes her feel bad about herself, Mel’s skills have been helpful over the years. She used to sew Cat and me matching Halloween costumes and help me with science fair projects. In elementary school, she’d film all the class plays, even the ones Cat wasn’t in, add in cool graphics, and then email them to the parents who couldn’t make it because of work.

She claims that the community rallied behind her after Cat’s dad died and that she’s happy to pay it all forward now that she has the time and resources. I can’t lie straight to her face, which is almost as familiar as my own mother’s.

“No,” I say.

“Then where?”

“This guy Moss’s house?” I say it like a question. I don’t use the word party. That word scares pretty much all parents except mine. You say “party” to Stewart, for example, and he freaks out, starts asking for names and telephone numbers and addresses. When he used to ask where we were going, Cat would say “A bunch of us are hanging out,” which we thought was an ingenious euphemism. Cat is forbidden to date until she is eighteen, an age that has always felt hilariously old. Of course, that hasn’t stopped her. Not that she sneaks out to go on actual “dates,” which connotes movie tickets and hand-holding and reservations. She sneaks out to be looked at and lusted over and then, if she feels like it, to hook up. Messy kisses and more, in cars or in boys’ basements or in the backs of movie theaters, all of which we used to talk about afterward in graphic detail. Technically I’m not breaking a single rule, she’d say to me. What I did was definitely not dating. Come to think of it, I probably learned the art of the lie by omission by spending the last decade with Cat.

“Was there drinking?” Mel asks. I picture Cat unsteady on her feet, how she smiled at me like for a moment she might have forgotten the past year. My mom nods at me encouragingly, as if to say, It’s okay. Just tell the truth.

“I mean, there were some people drinking. I didn’t see Cat drink, if that’s what you’re asking,” I say, attempting to get by on the technicality because I did not actually witness Cat bring bottle or cup to her lips. For a second there, I even considered playing dumb, saying something like Well, even teenagers need to stay hydrated, ha ha, but that would make me too much of a jerk. I like Mel. In eighth grade, she once used our emergency key to get the math homework I had forgotten and hand-delivered it in time for seventh period. Maybe I like her even more than I like Cat.

“I…,” Mel says, trailing off. She looks into her coffee cup. “I’m worried about her. She hasn’t been herself lately.” I think about Cat’s face on Saturday night, when I said I’m not sure I actually know you anymore. She flinched. Despite that single flicker of fear and the drunken sheen, she looked exactly like the old Cat. Confident, undeterred, like the world bends to her and not the other way around.