Firefly Lane (46 page)

"Tully, apologize?"

Kate couldn't help smiling. "I know. I know. But how come I always have to be the one to let things go? How come I always have to make the first call?"

"You just do."

It was true; always had been. Friendships were like marriages in that way. Routines and patterns were poured early and hardened like cement.

Kate went into the bathroom, brushed her teeth, and climbed into bed with him.

He turned off the bedside lamp and rolled over to face her. Moonlight shone through the window and illuminated his profile. He held his arm out, waiting for her to snuggle up to him. She felt a surge of love for him that was surprisingly sharp, given their years together. He knew her so well, and there was a cashmere comfort in that; it wrapped around and warmed her.

No wonder Tully had so many sharp angles and harsh edges; she'd never let herself be softened by love, wrapped up in it. Without kids or a husband or a mother's love, she'd grown selfish. And so, yet again, Kate would let go of her anger without an apology. She shouldn't have let it simmer so long anyway. It was remarkable how quickly time passed. Sometimes it felt as if they'd just had the blowup. What mattered now was not the words, spoken or withheld, but rather the years of friendship.

"Thanks," she whispered. Tomorrow she'd call Tully and invite her over to dinner. Like always, that would put an end to their fight. They'd move effortlessly back onto the road of their friendship.

"For what?"

She kissed him gently, touched his cheek. Of all the views she loved, this man's face was her favorite. "Everything."

On a gray, drizzly morning in mid-November, Kate turned her car into the middle school parking lot and joined the snakelike line of SUVs and minivans. In the stop-and-go traffic, she glanced to her right.

Marah sat slouched in the passenger seat, looking surly. Her expression and her mood had been dark ever since the blowup over the modeling class in New York.

Before, Kate now saw, there had been bricks between her and her daughter. Lately there was a wall.

Usually it fell to Kate to smooth over any of the rough patches in the road their family traveled. She was the peacemaker, the referee, and the mediator, but nothing she said had worked. Marah had stayed angry for weeks now and it was taking a toll on Kate. She wasn't sleeping well. It pissed her off, too, these silent treatments, because she knew Marah was manipulating her, trying to break Kate down.

"Are you excited about the banquet?" she forced herself to ask. At least it was something to say. The whole eighth grade was excited about the winter banquet, as they should be. The parents—including Kate—had expended a huge amount of effort to create a magical night for the kids.

"Whatever," Marah said, looking out the window, obviously searching for friends in the crowd of kids outside the school. "You're not going to chaperone, are you?"

Kate refused to be wounded by the remark. She told herself it was normal; she'd been telling herself that a lot lately. "I'm the decorations chairman. You know that. I'm hardly going to work on this event for two months and then not see our work."

"So you'll be there," Marah said dully.

"Dad and I both will. But you'll still have fun."

"Whatever."

Kate came to the drop-off lane and stopped. "The Mularkey family school bus is here," she said. Behind her, the boys giggled at the familiar joke.

"That is so totally lame," Marah said, rolling her eyes.

Kate turned to her daughter. "'Bye, honey. Have a nice day. Good luck on your social studies test."

"'Bye," Marah said, slamming the door.

Kate sighed and glanced in the rearview mirror. The twins were playing together in the backseat, making their plastic dinosaurs fight. "Girls," she whispered under her breath, wondering why it was that adolescent girls simply had to be mean to their mothers. Clearly it was normal behavior; she'd spent enough time with her friends and peers to know that. So normal it was probably part of evolution. Maybe the species needed girls who thought they were grown up at thirteen for some bizarre, hidden reason.

A few minutes later she dropped the boys off at school (kissed them both goodbye—in public) and began her own day. First off was a stop at Bainbridge Bakers, where she got a latte, then she dropped off some books at the library and headed down to Safeway. By ten-thirty, she was home again, standing in her kitchen, putting the groceries away.

Just as she was closing the fridge door, she heard the familiar
Girlfriend Hour
theme music coming from the TV in the living room, and she followed it. She rarely watched the show all the way through—how could she, with her busy schedule?—but she always turned it on so she knew what the episodes were about. Both Johnny and Tully sometimes quizzed her.

Kate hitched her leg over the end of the sofa and sat down.

On-screen, the theme music died down and Tully walked onto the cozy, we're-just-a-couple-of-girls-hanging-out-in-your-family-room set. As usual, she looked beautiful. Last year she'd decided to let her hair grow out into a sleek shoulder-length bob, and she'd returned to her natural reddish-brown color. The sophisticated girl-next-door cut and color only emphasized her high cheekbones and chocolaty eyes. A few well-placed shots of collagen had given her perfect lips, which she coated in just a hint of gloss but almost no color.

"Welcome back to
The Girlfriend Hour,
" she was saying now, trying to be heard over the din of applause. Kate knew that people sometimes stood in line for six hours to be in the studio audience, and why not?
The Hour,
as it was called by fans and media alike now, was fun and breezy and occasionally even inspiring. No one ever quite knew what Tully would say or do next. It was part of what kept people tuning in, and Johnny made sure that everything ran like a well-oiled machine. True to her word, Tully had made them all rich, and Johnny, in turn, always made Tully look good.

Tully sat onstage, in the cream-colored chair that was hers. The pale color made her look more vibrant, larger than life. She leaned forward to talk intimately with both the audience and the camera.

Kate was instantly hooked. While she watched Tully reveal her makeup and hair secrets to the rest of America, Kate paid bills and dusted the Levolor blinds and folded laundry. After the show, she clicked off the television and sat down again to work on her Christmas list. She was so engrossed in this project, it took her a moment to realize her phone was ringing. She glanced around, saw the cordless phone on the floor under a pile of Legos, and answered it. "Hello?"

"Kate, is this you?"

"Yes."

"Thank goodness. It's Ellen, from Woodward. I'm calling because Marah isn't in her fourth-period class. If you forgot to sign her out, that's—"

"I didn't forget," Kate said, realizing how sharp she sounded. "Sorry, Ellen. Marah is supposed to be in class. Let me guess: Emily Allen and Sharyl Burton are absent, too."

"Oh, boy," Ellen said. "Do you know where they are?"

"I have a pretty good idea. When I find them I'll call you. Thanks, Ellen."

"Sorry, Kate."

She hung up the phone and glanced at the clock: 12:42.

It didn't take an advanced degree to figure out where the girls were. Today was Thursday, the day the new movies opened at the Pavillion. Coincidentally, that new teen queen—Kate couldn't remember her name—had a new movie out.

Kate grabbed her purse and headed out, pulling into the Pavillion lot at just before one. Trying not to be royally pissed took some real effort, and by the time she'd spoken to the manager, walked through the darkened theaters, found the girls, and herded them back into the lobby, she was losing the battle.

But her anger was nothing compared to her daughter's.

"I can't
believe
you did that," Marah said when they reached the parking lot.

Kate ignored the tone and said tightly, "I told you you could see the Saturday matinee with your friends."

"If my room was clean."

Kate didn't bother to answer. "Come on, girls. Out to the car. They're waiting for you at school."

The girls climbed quietly into the backseat, murmuring how sorry they were.

"I'm not sorry," Marah said, slamming her door and yanking her seat belt into place. "We only missed dumb old algebra."

Starting the car, Kate drove out of the parking lot and onto the main road. "You are supposed to be in school. Period."

"Oh. Like
you'd
never take me out of class to see a movie," Marah said. "I must have dreamed I saw Harry Potter on a school day."

"In the no-good-deed-goes-unpunished category," Kate said, trying not to raise her voice.

Marah crossed her arms. "Tully would understand."

Kate pulled into the circular drive in front of the middle school and parked. "Okay, girls, they're waiting for you at the office."

Emily groaned. "My mom's gonna flip out."

When they were alone in the car, Kate turned to her daughter.

"Dad would understand," Marah said. "
He
knows how much movies and modeling mean to me."

"You think so?" Kate pulled out her cell phone and hit the speed-dial list, then handed it to Marah. "Tell him."

"Y-you tell him."

"I didn't skip school and go to the movies." She held the phone out.

Marah took it, put it to her ear. "Daddy?" Marah's voice instantly softened and tears filled her eyes.

Kate felt a clutch of jealousy. How was it that Johnny had maintained such a lovely relationship with their daughter when it was Kate who was practically the kid's indentured servant?

"Guess what, Daddy? Remember that movie I told you about, the one where the girl finds out that her aunt is really her mom? I went to see it today and it was totally . . . What? Oh." Her voice fell to a near-whisper. "During fourth period, but . . . I know." She listened for a few moments and then sighed. "Okay. 'Bye, Dad." Marah hung up the phone and handed it back to Kate. For a split second, she was a little girl again. "I can't go see the movie this weekend."

Kate wanted nothing more than to seize the instant's possibility and pull Marah into her arms for a hug, to hang on to her little girl for just a moment and say,
I love you,
but she didn't dare. Motherhood at times like this—most times—was about the steel in your spine, not the bend. "Maybe next time you'll think about the consequences of an action."

"Someday I'll be a famous actress and I'll tell the TV that you were totally no help at all. None. I'll give all the credit to Aunt Tully, who believes in me." She got out of the car and started walking.

Kate followed, fell into step beside her. "I believe in you."

Marah snorted. "Ha. You never let me do anything, but as soon as I can I'm moving in with Tully."

"When hell freezes over," she muttered under her breath. Thankfully, she and her daughter had no more opportunity to speak. When they stepped into the school, the principal was waiting for them.

The summer before Marah started high school was hands down the worst summer of Kate's life. A thirteen-year-old daughter in middle school had been bad; in retrospect, though, it looked a hell of a lot better from a distance. A fourteen-year-old girl getting ready for high school was worse.

It didn't help that for the last year Johnny had been working sixty hours a week, either.

"You are not going to wear jeans that show the crack of your butt to school," Kate said, striving to keep her voice even. In her busy end-of-the-summer schedule, she'd budgeted four hours to buy Marah's school clothes. They'd been in the mall two hours already and the only thing in their arms was hostility.

"Everyone is wearing these jeans at the high school."

"Everyone except you, then." Kate pressed a pair of fingertips to her throbbing temples. She was vaguely aware of the boys running through the store like banshees, but she let that go for now. If she was lucky, maybe security would come and lock her up for failing to control her children. Right now a little solitary confinement sounded heavenly.

Marah threw the jeans on a rounder and stomped off.

"Do you even know how to walk away anymore?" Kate muttered, following her daughter.

By the time they were finished, Kate felt like Russell Crowe in
Gladiator
: beaten, bloodied, but alive. No one was happy. The boys were whining over the
Lord of the Rings
action figures she'd denied them, Marah was fuming over the jeans she hadn't gotten and the practically see-through blouse that had also gotten away, and Kate was angry that school shopping could so drain her energy. The only good news was that she'd drawn her line in the sand and defended it. Kate hadn't completely won the day, but neither had Marah.

On the drive home from Silverdale, the car was divided into two discernible halves: the backseat was noisy, boisterous, and full of fighting; the front seat was frigid and silent. Kate kept trying to make conversation with her daughter, but every sentence was an unreturned volley; by the time they'd turned down the gravel driveway and parked in the garage, she felt utterly defeated. That vague triumph over holding the line, being a mother and not a friend, had lost its luster.

Behind her, the boys unhooked their seat belts and climbed over each other in their haste to get out. Kate knew that whoever got to the living room first controlled the remote.

"Take it easy," she said, glancing at them in the rearview mirror.

They were tangled together like lion cubs trying to crawl out of a hole.

She turned to Marah. "You got some lovely things today."

Marah shrugged. "Yeah."

"You know, Marah, life is full of—" Kate stopped herself midsentence and almost laughed. She'd been about to offer one of her mother's life-is speeches.

"What?"

"Compromises. You can go around seeing what you did get, or you can focus on what you didn't. The choice you make will ultimately determine what kind of woman you become."

"I just want to fit in," Marah said in a voice that was unexpectedly small. It reminded Kate how young her daughter really was, and how frightening it was to start high school.