All weekend, the letter sits on my bed. I pick it up every few hours, just to look at it, like I used to do with the ring Nick gave me, before I gave it back.
I avoid Mom. I stay in my room, watch television, and eat there too. She thinks she won our argument, but I’m not giving in that quickly. And I listen to music, loud music, opera music I know she hates, like the Queen of the Night’s Vengeance Aria, which has four high Fs in about two minutes. I listen to that over and over. But Mom’s working most of the weekend, so she’s out. It’s no fun not speaking to someone if they don’t even know you’re not speaking to them.
But Sunday morning, we collide in the kitchen.
My mother sells real estate, or she tries to. She also sells Emma Leigh cosmetics—that company that awards its top sellers a purple Mustang convertible. Mom got one of those a few years ago—the high point of her existence (we had a party with purple streamers and purple foods, even the meat). Mom didn’t work right after Dad left. She just sat in this house, doing her nails, waiting for Dad’s monthly alimony checks. Then I guess Dad wised up, so she had to get a job. Or rather, she got her real estate license and started selling Emma Leigh. She’s out of the house a lot now, which is great, but she must not sell much, considering she’s still completely on the dole from Dad. Once, years ago, I opened one of his monthly checks, and I almost fell over at the amount. Dad might as well be one of those guys in Utah with two wives.
Anyway, the kitchen. Today’s Sunday. Mom has open houses most Sundays, so after I hear the garage door go down, I head for the kitchen, planning to sit there for the approximately nineteen seconds it takes to consume my lunchbox-sized, fat-, sugar-, and taste-free key lime yogurt (90 calories). I open the fridge.
When I close it, she’s there.
“Oh!” I say, forgetting I’m not speaking to her. “Thought you left.”
She’s carrying a pink plastic lawn flamingo she named Harold and dresses in little costumes: a ghost on Halloween, a leprechaun on St. Patrick’s Day, which is how it’s dressed right now. “I went to change Harold into his Easter bonnet. Want to help?”
For this chore, she has on a blue crop top that manages to show off both her boobs and her (pierced) belly button, denim butt shorts, and cherry red platforms. Mom is thirty-seven, but she looks twenty-five and dresses like thirteen. She tried to get me to call her Val in public, so people wouldn’t know she was my mother. But I said that would just be too alternative universe.
“No, that’s okay.”
“You always used to help me with Harold.”
Yeah, I thought it was cute when I was, like, seven. I remember I’m not speaking to her and turn and head for the table, so she’ll remember too.
But she puts Harold down and follows me. I sit, and she’s behind me, touching my hair, acting like Friday never happened. “Time for a little trim!”
“I got my hair cut last month.” Then I add, “The day before auditions.” You know, just to remind her.
She ignores that, running her hands through my hair. I know her nails are blue without even looking.
Sheesh—why’d I have to look?
“I know,” she says, “but how about something different this time. Like layers.”
Something different being secret code for, I really hate the way it looks now.
When Mom and I can’t talk about anything else, we talk about beauty products. Beauty products mean something to Mom. She thinks if I’d just take her advice on beauty and fashion, my life would be better. I used to think so too, but now I think it would be better if she left me alone.
“I don’t want layers,” I say. “You talked me into layers once, and they made me look like a marigold.”
“Long layers. And we can go together and get our nails done. It’ll be fun.”
Fun for her because whenever we go out together, all the salespeople and hairdressers crowd around, talking about how we look like sisters. “No, thanks.”
Mom was a great beauty in college. She was homecoming princess her freshman year, and rode down the street on a float, waving. I’m sure Mom would have come back the next year and been queen.
But by the next year, she’d managed to hook Dad, and she dropped out of college, anyway, so she never made it to queen.
When I was a homecoming princess last year at school, she said, “Maybe you’ll be queen next year,” even though the best you can be is a princess, unless you’re a senior. She couldn’t just be happy about that.
“I like my hair the way it is now,” I say.
“Sometimes a person needs a change.”
“I know. That’s why I want to go to Miami High School of the Arts.”
“Caitlin, that school is in a bad neighborhood in downtown Miami.”
Translation: She’s afraid there’ll be black kids there.
“I’m trying to protect you. I wouldn’t feel right sending a sixteen-year-old there.”
Translation: It will inconvenience her.
“The other kids are sixteen too. Some are fifteen.”
I wait for her to say I’m a young sixteen, which translates to, If I’m pretending to be twenty-five, you can’t possibly be sixteen. Wait for it.
“Yes, but you’re a young sixteen, Caitlin. You’ve been sheltered and haven’t always had the best judgment.”
“Sheltered?” But I know the translation for that too.
“You’re going to throw Nick in my face forever, aren’t you?” I say.
“I’m not throwing anything in your face. I haven’t said anything about that … boy for months. But I do wish we could talk about it. You’re always so secretive. I didn’t even know you were dating someone else.”
“Who said I am?”
“Shelley Silverberg said she saw you in a car with some boy in a football jersey.”
Why do grown-ups always call guys “boys”? “It wasn’t Nick. God, why do you always have to assume—?”
“Because we don’t talk. That’s why I thought it would be fun to spend a day together, catch up on things. I don’t know anything about your life, Caitlin.”
“I don’t want to talk to you about guys. The only thing in my life that’s important is the only thing you don’t want to talk about—singing. That’s my life.”
“You’re in chorus at school. But I don’t see why you should put yourself at risk, going downtown.”
“Because I’m serious about singing. I want to do it for a living.”
She sighs. “Singing isn’t a practical career choice, Caitlin. How will you support yourself?”
“By singing. It’s what I’m good at.”
“Maybe it’s time to forget chorus and concentrate on your studies.”
I want to ask her why? Why? So I’ll end up in my thirties, collecting child support like her? No thanks. I want to do something with my life.
“I guess if it doesn’t work out, I can always sell makeup,” is what I manage.
I turn and scrape my yogurt cup. It takes everything I have not to turn around, not to do the usual Caitlin thing and try to smooth things over, say I didn’t mean it.
I did mean it, and some things shouldn’t be smoothed over.
We stand there a full minute, and I wait for her to leave. But instead, she strokes my hair. “Long layers, Caitlin. Think how pretty it could be.”
Opera_Grrrl’s Online Journal
Subject: Ryan Seacrest is my life raft!
Date: April 19
Time: 7:40 a.m.
Listening 2: American Top 40
Feeling: Determined
I am sitting, listening 2 AT40. None of my friends know I do this, but every Sunday morning, I sit for 4 WHOLE HOURS and cram so I can know which songs are popular (inc. the artists’ names) ............... instead of which songs were popular in 1850!
Problem: I *hate* the Top 40. I don’t even know how they got 2 *be* the Top 40. Even the type of music they play on the University of Miami station would be better, but that’s not what average kids listen 2. And I want 2 be average.
I just *know* if I went 2 Miami HS of the Arts, I wouldn’t have 2 do this anymore! I could actually *admit* 2 liking opera. I could admit 2 not being average.