Kathy drove me to the mall early on the morning of the Back-to-School Fashion Show. If she had any idea her only daughter wasn’t a virgin anymore, she didn’t let on. And I certainly wasn’t going to tell her.
“Being alive,” she sang along with Barbra. “Being aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive.”
I was so giddy, I nearly joined in. I didn’t want to go there with Kathy, but I couldn’t wait to share the big news with Drea. She’d be so proud of me! I’d proven I was over Troy by getting under someone else! Maybe I could hit her up for some techniques. Surely someone who’d subscribed to Cosmo for over a decade had a tip or two to share.
I was already fantasizing about our next tryst. I was counting on Drea and Gia being so caught up in fashion show chaos that they wouldn’t even notice if I disappeared for an hour … or two … or long enough for Sam to drive the Chevette somewhere we couldn’t be caught with our pants down in broad daylight. Having sex in the parking lot was reckless and risky in a way neither one of us was accustomed to. But achieving an uninhibited level of solitude wouldn’t be so easy. Jersey was already the most densely populated state in the country even without the influx of a billion out-of-state bennies every Friday through Sunday in the summer …
“Cassandra!”
My Sam Goody fantasies were making it tough for me to concentrate on making minimal conversation with my mother.
“What?”
“We need to go shopping before you leave for school next week,” she said. “Get you all the dorm room essentials!”
“Not necessary,” I said. “Dad and I already took care of it.”
She slowed down as she approached the pedestrian drop-off.
“When?”
“A few weeks ago, when we were buying stuff for the guest room at his condo,” I said. “I just made it easy by getting two of everything.”
I’d picked a jewel-toned paisley bedspread because it was more sophisticated than the pastel florals I’d grown up with. Simone Levy from Rochester, New York, was a little irritated that I hadn’t waited to consult her on our shared room’s aesthetic, but that was her own fault for waiting over a month to write me back.
“So, your dorm room at school will have the exact same decor as the guest room at your father’s?”
Two bedspreads, four decorative pillows, two area rugs, two desk organizers, two trash cans.
“More or less.”
“No!” She accidentally honked the horn, startling us both. “Your dorm room will not be a facsimile of your father’s guest room…”
Honestly, she seemed more upset about my duvet than she did about the divorce.
“But you’ll like it, Mom,” I said. “It’s blue. Which, apparently, is your favorite color.”
Kathy was too exasperated by the shopping trip with Frank to pick up on my sarcasm.
“I hope he kept the receipts, because it’s all going back,” she said. “You need a fresh start at school, Cassandra. You need to put the past behind you and move forward toward an uncertain future…”
When her voice quavered, I realized we weren’t really talking about duvets anymore.
“If we put history totally behind us,” I said, “how do we learn anything about ourselves?”
For two years I was with someone who never laughed at my jokes. Sam Goody—who, again, was nothing, nothing like Troy—laughed at all my jokes. But if I had ignored history and pretended like I hadn’t spent two years with a boy who never laughed at my jokes, I might have set myself up to make the same mistake again. What a tragedy it would be if Kathy called it quits after twenty years only to end up with another well-intentioned but clueless man who thought her favorite color was orange.
“At forty-five, I thought I already knew everything I needed to know about myself,” she said. “But I was totally wrong.”
When she laughed at herself, I knew it was okay to laugh with her. Was it a coincidence that my parents and I were embarking on new phases in our lives at the same time? Or was it my impending departure that inspired them to start over again? The Volvo had come to a stop, but I didn’t want this conversation to end. I was ready to finally ask these questions, but I guess Kathy wasn’t ready to answer them.
“Just don’t settle for the first duvet that comes your way,” she said. “Even if it’s really comfy.”
“I’m not settling,” I said, thinking of Sam Goody. “I promise.”
Kathy angled closer to me. I braced myself for the insult, thinking for sure she was about to chastise me for not putting peroxide on my piercing. Instead, she planted a light kiss on my cheek.
“Your father and I love you very much.”
I was almost too overwhelmed by this unusually affectionate gesture to assure her I loved them too.