Learning to Swim(34)

It was enough to send me spiraling back to this dismal place people referred to as Earth. I felt as if I might actually lose the baloney sandwich Alice had made me for lunch. The ride home was a blur of self-recrimination. After all, I had been through this a million times with Barbie. I should've known better than to pin my hopes on a guy who belonged to someone else.

When I stormed into the apartment, I prayed that my mom would be off with Ludwig somewhere so I could go to my room and sob in peace. But there she was, sprawled out on the couch in her bathrobe and blowing her nose as if she had the flu or something. Her eyes were red and puffy, and her mascara was smeared and running down her face.

Oh no.

“Tom is such a jackass!” she exclaimed, waving a tissue around in the air.

Apparently, this was replacing “hello” in the Rogers household.

Barbie choked up some phlegm. “He said he needed time to think. Can you believe it? He said seeing you last night made him realize that there were other people's lives at stake here, not just him and me.”

“Are you pinning this on me?” I began to bawl. My overwhelming dismay was enough to make Barbie stop crying. Not that I was dense enough to expect my mom to be there for me in my time of need, but I really couldn't handle being blamed for the end of her relationship when in reality I had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Of course not,” she said. “He's just a jackass.” She got up and kissed my forehead. “I'm sorry, Steffie. I'm so sorry for everything. You were right. He was a jerk and I had no right to bring him into our home.”

“That's not why I'm so upset!” I was panting more heavily than a greyhound on a racetrack. “I just saw Keith and Mora making out.”

“Oh no!” my mom shrieked. After all, if anyone could understand how terrible it was to see the man I was planning on making my soul mate in the arms of his betrothed, it was my mother. “What happened?” She handed me her box of tissues.

“They were kissing in the woods by Tippecanoe.” I grabbed a tissue and blew my nose. “It wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't just been with him last night.”

Barbie looked confused. “Last night? I thought you were at bingo.”


“After I saw you with, well, the jackass, I went over to Alice's house, but she wasn't home. Keith showed up and we started talking, and, well, one thing led to another and…” I hesitated.

My mother's eyes grew as big as saucers and she dropped her tissue. “You did it?” she whispered. And then she screeched: “Please tell me you had enough common sense to use protection!”

“No!” I shouted, horrified that Barbie was even thinking what she was thinking.

My mother held a hand to her chest and fell backward on the couch. “I'm so not ready to be a grandmother,” she said.

“For God's sake, Barbie. I haven't even kissed him. We held hands.”

“Held hands?” she asked. “That's all you did?” Was it my imagination, or did she sound disappointed?

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, he told me stuff that no one else knows. I thought it meant something. Something big.”

“Jackass!” my mom exclaimed.

“But he's not.” I flopped down next to her. “At least, I didn't think so. He seemed so sweet, you know? So sincere.”

Barbie sighed and shook her head. “They're all the same.”

But were they? Or was it just my mother and I who were the same?

“How could I have been so stupid?” I asked out loud.

“Honey,” my mom said, “I've been asking myself that very question all day.”

“But it really seemed like he cared about me.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I never want to talk to him again,” I announced.

“I feel the same way,” Barbie said.

All of a sudden, the phone rang and we both jumped. Jumped. She scrambled for her cell, me for the landline. Mother-and-daughter hot-potato phone.

Although it was for me (obvious, since we were not being serenaded by Beethoven), I didn't pick up. Instead, I hovered over the answering machine, listening as Keith said something had “come up” and he couldn't make our lesson that night.

Afterward, Barbie said, “You would've gone to him if he'd asked you, wouldn't you? Even after seeing him with his girlfriend.”

I wasn't sure. I knew one thing for certain, though: I would've traded anything to go back in time and relive the previous night.

Barbie shook her head. “See, Stef? It's not always easy to walk away.”

That was when it occurred to me: once upon a time, my mom was just like me. She probably fell for a guy with a girlfriend, and before she knew it, it was neither the guy nor the girlfriend who was consuming her, but the disease of love lunacy. And if I wasn't careful, I would end up like her, sitting on an old couch in a crappy apartment, next to my fatherless daughter, who was showing signs of inheriting the family illness.

But I was not my mother. And I wanted to prove it to myself somehow.

First I went into her room and dumped all her lingerie back in her drawer. Next I went back into my room and put my swimsuit on under my clothes. And then I told my mom I needed to get some fresh air.