I Was Told It Would Get Easier(36)

I’d duly wandered onto my Facebook page to see who was still around. Not as many as you’d think. Several of us had stayed in New York after graduation, including me, but after two-plus decades, most of us had abandoned the city for more affordable digs. I reached out to David Millar, who was in Philadelphia; Helen Gonzalez, another friend, was teaching at Vassar, for crying out loud; and of course my best friend, Amanda. I’d stayed in touch with her anyway; that one was a no-brainer. She’d married another college friend, actually, which was efficient and helpful of her. She and Robert were still in Manhattan, having had the good luck to buy a brownstone before the market went bananas. For once the stars had aligned and all of them had been excited to get together.

Now we were going to have drinks with David Millar before having dinner with my dad, which had seemed possible when I set it up, but now seemed like an exhausting overreach. But I could tell Emily was still vexed with me about disappearing that morning, so I took a very deep breath and pulled it together. Maybe it’s not lifting a car off a small, bloodied child, but it felt pretty heroic to me.

While I got dressed I asked Emily about the tours I’d missed, the rest of the American University tour and Johns Hopkins. She seemed more enthusiastic about the bus trip in between, to be honest.





EMILY


Mom thinks more about Valentina than she does about me. Maybe she prefers her because she’s essentially a mini her, whereas I am a failure. She asked me about the tours, of course. I told her the truth: I liked Johns Hopkins a lot, but then I checked the admissions requirements and there’s no way. Never mind. I liked Philadelphia in general; it’s a city I could totally see myself living in one day. Not that I can really imagine living anywhere except where I live and maybe some TV town like Stars Hollow. Then I told her about the bus, and it’s possible I seemed more into the bus than anything else on the trip so far. Sorry not sorry.

Mom was trying really hard to keep it light, especially as she was attempting to do a cat-eye eyeliner for the first time in several years, but eventually she couldn’t hold it in.

She blurted out, “Do you have any sense of what you might study, yet?”

I shook my head.

“Lots of places don’t make you pick a major, right?”

I nodded.

“So you could choose a college and then take a gap year, and not pick a major until the end of the first year, so that would give you actually three more years before you need to decide what you want to study. You could even take a year off after high school and go live in London.” She paused. “Or somewhere else, doesn’t have to be London. Who knows what you’ll want by that point?”

Probably just to shoot myself, but I didn’t say that. “Mom, I don’t want to put off my future, I want to start living it. I’m not sure what to study yet.”

This shut her up, as I knew it would. She’s trying hard to be cool, my mom, but I could see the warring impulses on her face. It is a face I’ve been studying closely for sixteen years, after all. On the one hand she’s worried I’ll end up living in the garage because I can’t support myself, and on the other she doesn’t want to be the kind of mom who pushes her kids too hard and drives them away. Remind me not to have kids; it’s hell on your figure and gives you heartburn.

Eventually her good angel won. “Fair enough, baby. You’ll let me know when you work out what you want.” She went back to trying for that perfect cat eye.

I wanted to say, Mom, you’ll be the second person to know, after me. But I’m not sure she isn’t tired of hearing it.





JESSICA


I managed to get dressed for dinner without grilling Emily more than once, which I think is a bit of a triumph. Of course, I had a headache, which weakened me. And I’m nervous about seeing David Millar this evening, because he was the first guy I dated in college, and Emily doesn’t know that.

David and I met literally on the first day of school. He sat next to me in a lecture, and by the end of it I was more aware of him than I’d ever been of any man in my life before. Not that I’d known many men, to be fair, I was all of nineteen and I’d only lost my virginity the previous year, but still. There was something about him that appealed to me on a cellular level, and by the end of the first week we were having the kind of sex I’d only seen in movies. He blew my tiny little mind, and I blew his tiny little mind, which is even hotter, as you know. We spent so much time in bed we both got a C in that class, and it was totally worth it.

But anyway, it’s not like I can lean over and say to Emily, Hey, the guy we’re seeing later is a sexual god, would you like to hear some of his moves? Would you like to hear about all the places we had sex? Would you like to hear about how hot sex can be between two nineteen-year-olds who are insane with lust and in peak physical condition? She’d probably take a crowbar to the hotel window and throw herself out.





EMILY


It turned out that old friend of Mom’s was actually good looking, in an older-teacher-the-moms-flirt-with kind of way. We have a biology teacher like that; it’s hilarious. They think we don’t notice, but please . . . biology isn’t that funny.

Mom also thinks I didn’t notice she put makeup on and got dressed more carefully than usual. I didn’t say anything, just loaned her my mascara, and then some makeup wipes when she got it all over her eyelids. Honestly.