Always Something There to Remind Me (11 page)

“I don’t even know what that means.”

I laughed. “It means they will make it so that if a cursor runs over the picture your name will pop up.”

He shrugged. “I doubt we have the same friends.”

“I dunno, hon.” I shrugged. “I’m friends with both of them. So is Jordan. And probably a lot more people than you think.”

He remained unconcerned, in the way that only a very confident person can be.

“There it is!” Cam cried, digging through the drawer. “Got it!”

“Stand still, Dad. No, wait, smile. That will look hilarious!”

“That’s great, since
hilarious
is usually the look I’m going for.”

“Not to worry,” I said to him, knowing the girls were about to be very disappointed. “The camera battery is dead.”

“
What?
” Cam looked as if I’d just slapped her. “What do you mean, the battery’s dead?”

“Remember when you took the camera to Tristan’s birthday party and then lost the charger in your room and swore up and down you would find it and recharge the battery?”

Understanding dawned on her face. “Oh, yeah.”

“Yeah. And I asked you again and again to do that?”

Amy put her hands on her hips. “We’re going to
miss
this picture because of that?”

Cam looked guilty.

Rick looked smug.

Amy looked like she was struck by a great idea. “Oh, no, we’re not!” Faster than I would have thought possible, she whipped her phone out of her pocket and whirled around to take the picture of a surprised Rick.

“Whoa!” Cam said admiringly. “That was
smooth
.”

Amy nodded and punched a couple of buttons. “And now it’s uploaded.” She looked at her father. “So don’t get any ideas about taking the phone away.”

“Way to
go
!” Cam held up her hand and Amy high-fived her. “Now get me!”

Amy took several pictures of Cam hamming it up, then handed the phone over so Cam could get the same pictures of her.

I watched with pleasure as the two of them communicated with the same kind of shorthand Jordan, Theresa, and I used to have in high school. Understanding so deeply imbued with private jokes, late-night talks, favorite songs, and shared secrets that words were almost unnecessary.

They could have kicked serious ass on
Password
.

Rick, meanwhile, had disappeared into the bedroom and emerged several minutes later in basketball shorts, a tank top, wet hair, and—it was undeniable—a certain glow to his skin.

“You look radiant,” I said to him.

“Very funny.”

“Actually, I’m serious.” I looked to the girls. “What kind of mask was that?”

“Dead Sea mud,” Amy said.

“The stuff you got in New York last month,” Cam added.

“Wow, that’s right, I forgot all about that.” How I’d forgotten a thirty-dollar mud-mask-treatment purchase, I don’t know, but this experiment with Rick had reignited my feeling that it was worth it. “Go rinse off, let’s see how pretty you look.”

“How do you know when it’s time to rinse it?” Cam asked.

“The guy at the store said you rinse when you can’t smile anymore.”

“So, like, when you’re totally depressed?” My daughter had a gift for joking with a straight face, but the hard mud certainly helped.

“How about now?” I suggested.

She did smile then. “Fine fine fine!” She hooked her arm through Amy’s and they ran off to the bathroom, where their laughter was amplified tenfold.

“Too bad they don’t get along,” Rick said, nodding in the direction of the laughs.

“I know.” Truly, it made my heart soar to hear the girls having so much fun. “It’s torture that we force them to be together like this.”

He smiled and came to me, draping his arm across my shoulder and steering me toward the couch. “If only there was
some
way we could make sure they’d always have each other. Like sisters.”

I bristled. And it was unfair because he was completely, totally, one hundred percent right.

And he was completely, totally, one hundred percent within his rights to try and get an answer to his proposal.

But I just couldn’t give him one.

“They
are
like sisters,” I deflected. “It’s wonderful how close they are. They’ll always have each other, just like Jordan and me. No matter what.” God, it sounded so
pointed
when I put it that way, even though I hadn’t intended for it to.

Of course, it
was
pointed, so it didn’t matter whether I meant for it to
sound
that way or not.

And he knew it.

“Nice rebound,” he said sagely.

“I’m not trying to—”

He put his finger to my lips. “I know what you’re doing. You’re mulling. It’s what you do. Admittedly, it’s hard to be patient while you mull in a situation like this, but I’m trying.”

I looked into his eyes and felt better. “I appreciate it.”

He smiled, and everything about him was warm. “Good. You pain in the ass.”

We both laughed and sat down on the couch, where we passed the rest of the evening companionably. No arguments, no problems, no passion, no steam … just … peace.

And I had to wonder if I was foolish in even wondering if that was enough.

*   *   *

When I was a kid, my friends and I used to hang out at Montgomery Mall and go to Woolworth’s to buy Village Naturals beer shampoo, Maybelline Kissing Potion, Bonne Bell Lip Smackers (they were $2.50 then for the big size), and all the other products we saw advertised in
Tiger Beat
,
Teen
, and
Seventeen
that promised to make us more beautiful and irresistible to boys.

The mall has changed quite a bit in the past thirty years; Woolworth’s is gone, as are Waxi Maxi’s Record Shop, Peoples Drug Store, i Natural Cosmetics, the Magic Pan, and the Roy Rogers fast food restaurant. Now there’s California Pizza Kitchen, Ann Taylor, Steve Madden, Coach, and Nordstrom. It’s gone from a typical seventies suburban hangout to a pretty high-end shopping galleria.

And for her sixteenth birthday, Nordstrom Café was where Amy decided she wanted me to take her and Cam for lunch.

Nordstrom Café is awesome, I’m always surprised how much I like the food there, but Amy is not a fool—she knew if she got me into Nordstrom, she would leave with a nice bagful of things from the Brass Plum area. Cam did too. Look, I can’t wear most of that stuff myself anymore, but it
is
fun to buy it.

So after a small shopping extravaganza, we made our way to the café with our bags and sat down in a big round booth that had enough room for us
and
our purchases.

“I’m totally wearing this blue shirt to school tomorrow,” Cam said, stirring her tomato soup with a crust of bread.

“Wait, the blue shirt?” The blue shirt was kind of low in the front. It was for nighttime. Or maybe for someone older. Why had I allowed her to get that blue shirt? “That’s not really appropriate for school.”

“It is if you want Mason Bindeman to notice you,” Amy said with a giggle.

“
Who
? Mason
who
?” It sounded like a soap opera name.

“Bindeman,” Cam said, with a touch of exaggerated patience. “He’s a senior. I have, like, two weeks to make an impression before he’s gone forever.”

“Oh. I see. And I just purchased an incredibly low-cut shirt to help you achieve that.”

She smiled and reached over to pat my arm. “Thank you, Mommy.”

“You were taking advantage of my momentary lapse in maturity.”

Cam nodded. “I’ve learned to spot those and get while the getting’s good.”

“And
you
were complicit in this,” I said to Amy, remembering how she’d pointed out the cute little pastel cardigans they had hanging on a rack near the dressing room.

Amy smiled. “Did I do something wrong?”

I sighed. This was an argument for another day. Tomorrow, to be specific. Not now. “So who is
Mason
? Wasn’t it some guy named Phillip last week?”

“Ugh, he is
such
a jerk.” Cam rolled her eyes. “We went out for, like, ten minutes and he expected me to totally give it up.”

“He expected—”

“She
didn’t
,” Amy said quickly, and suddenly I wished Rick were here to mediate this conversation.

“Well,
duh
, that’s my point,” Cam said. “If he can’t understand why I might want to wait a
little
bit longer, then forget it.”

“How much longer?” I found myself asking.

Cam leveled a gaze of pity on me. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to.”

All right, if my mother had asked the same question of me at the same age, what would I have said? At sixteen Nate and I were seriously hot and heavy together wherever we could find a little privacy. It was a wonder I’d never had a pregnancy scare. No matter what happened during the day, or even during the night, I always knew that at the end of it, there would be no stresses, no Real Life issues, no big problems—at the end of every night the only thing that was looming was the fact that we were going to have steaming hot sex.

And it occurred to me, at this inopportune moment, that I really missed that.

Amy must have misinterpreted the look on my face, because she gave a shout of laughter and said, “Ohmigod, Erin, she’s totally
kidding
!”

I looked at Cam and could tell, I knew right down in my heart, that that was the truth. She wasn’t anywhere near the same place I’d been at her age. My daughter—and Amy, her best friend and potentially my future stepdaughter—was not emotionally and physically entangled with anyone, much less one guy who, two years into a seriously intense relationship, could dump her and leave her to twist herself into some damaged version of herself. A version that would take years to make right.

If, indeed, she could ever do it.

Fortunately, Cam and Amy were on such a shopping and eating high that they didn’t pay much attention to my lagging reaction, so I was able to sit back and watch them, incredibly glad for the knowledge that they were going to be all right in a way I never would be.

To tell the truth, I envied them more than a little bit. They were so pure, it was obvious just looking into their eyes that they had never known even an inkling of the agony of that particular heartbreak.

Someday they would, of course. Everyone goes through it, at least to a certain extent, don’t they? But watching these children talk a mile a minute and laugh so hard they couldn’t breathe filled me with both happiness and melancholy.

How different would I be, if I’d never met Nate? Might I have had a normal dating life like Cam and Amy did, flitting from one guy to the next, never getting too serious or too invested in one while I was still so young? Who would I be if I hadn’t endured the heartbreak of losing Nate and losing that part of myself that was built around him?

There are philosophical people out there—Jordan probably among them—who would argue that it was all important to making me the person I am today. And I guess that’s true; what I went through definitely did contribute to who I am today.

But the thing no one understands when they say that is that I honestly think I might be a
better
person if I hadn’t gone through that. Less neurotic, less afraid, more open to both people and experiences.

“
Mom!
”

I don’t know how long she’d been trying to get my attention. That was probably just the second time she’d called me, but I’d been so lost in my melancholy that it really felt like I was being sucked back into my body from some weird astral travel. “Sorry, what?”

“Where
were
you?” Cam asked, and the look in her eye told me she’d picked up on the fact that it was more than just your usual run-of-the-mill distraction.

“Actually,” I said, remembering something I’d heard a long time ago about telling as much truth as possible rather than telling a flat-out lie, “I was thinking about when I used to come to this mall as a kid. Just about your age, in fact.” There was a rainy afternoon Nate and I had come—I can’t remember why now—but later that night his friend had died in a car accident after they’d all gone to a party. I tried to push the thought out of my head. “It was pretty different here then,” I concluded lamely.

“It’s so weird that we’re hanging out in the same mall you used to come to,” Cam said, if not oblivious then at least losing interest in my nostalgia. Thank God.

“My grandmother is always talking about how different the town my dad grew up in is,” Amy said, taking a crunch of her garlic bread. “All I know is that if that dinky Maine town was as boring today as it was when
he
grew up there, I’d go crazy every time I had to visit!”

“You know,” I said, seizing the opportunity to keep us on a new subject, “you’re probably right. Rick’s told me about it. No malls, just a little drugstore and an outpost of Sears. You’d definitely hate that now.”

“There wasn’t even a traffic light,” Amy said to Cam. “You know how the joke is that a town’s so small there’s just one light?” She shook her head. “There wasn’t even that.”

At the moment, that little lakeside town in Maine sounded idyllic to me, but there would be no point in saying that to the girls. Instead I just nodded and sipped my Pellegrino.

Soon they were off on another subject, and I tried to keep my attention on the conversation, even though part of me was lost in the past.

That’s when I realized that part of me would probably always be lost in the past. That just seemed to be my personality: I was the one who couldn’t stand change, who could miss something as innocuous as a bedspread if it was suddenly gone after a year of use. No wonder I was thinking of Nate so much now—someone was offering to put a new bedspread on me and it was making me think of the ones that had been there before.

Particularly that first one. Maybe with a pale blue gingham pattern that was soft and neat and homey and orderly all at the same time.

So maybe it wasn’t Nate I missed at all, so much as the firstness of him, and the sad fact that I’d never gotten a chance to say good-bye before he was hauled off to Goodwill.