Girlfriend Material (2 page)

Third of all, I am not British aristocracy.

But ever since my mom had announced her determination to make me the Sancho Panza to her Don Quixote this summer, I’d been kind of thinking that maybe crossing the Mississippi would … I don’t know, transform me. I imagined that Sarah and her friends were a little like the characters in
The Sun Also Rises
. (Not the depressed and disillusioned by the war part, but the having fun and going everywhere together part.) And if
they
were like
them
, then maybe
I
could be like Lady Brett, and maybe instead of having a
good
summer of writing and playing tennis and hanging out with my best friend, I could have a
perfect
summer of being chic and irresistible with a group of really cool kids from New York City.

Which, while I hadn’t chosen it, was a trade I didn’t exactly mind making.

EVEN THOUGH I HAVE
my learner’s permit, you have to be twenty-five to drive a rental car. When we’d left the rental agency, I’d been pretty bummed about the prospect of a summer with no driving, but now that I saw what driving (“driving”) was like on Cape Cod, I didn’t mind not sitting behind the wheel.

The road we’d turned onto when we left Route 6 wasn’t really a road: it was more like a sandy driveway. Tacked up to trees alongside it were wooden signs with names on them.
Lipinsky. Charles. Boxer.
The signs pointed down roads that were, impossibly enough, even smaller and more overgrown than the one we were on.

My mom was driving at a snail’s pace, and every hundred yards or so she’d suddenly jerk the car sharply one way or the other to avoid a hole or a tree root she hadn’t seen until we were practically on top of it. I don’t usually get carsick, but if we had much farther to go, I was definitely going to need to get out and walk the rest of the way.

Suddenly she let out a shriek. “I knew I’d recognize it!” she said, pointing at a fork in the road up ahead. A small official-looking sign on the left read,
PRIVATE ROAD. NO BEACH ACCESS
. Just above this, tacked to a tree branch, was an even smaller sign:
COOPER-MELNICK
.

As soon as I read the word
beach
, my mind was saturated with the image of me and Sarah driving home from the beach while our adorable boyfriends sat in the backseat, planning what to barbecue for dinner.

It was an image my mom’s voice almost immediately dissolved. “I just hope you won’t be intimidated by Sarah. I know she’s a year older than you, and she’s applying early to Harvard and all of that, but you bring
so
much to the table, honey. I’m sure she’s really excited to have you as a buddy for the summer!”

Okay,
why
was my mother still talking? Because five seconds ago I’d been excited to see Sarah, and now she was making it sound as if Sarah was going to be
baby-sitting
me or something.

Suddenly my mouth felt dry.

My mom turned into the tracks and followed them for about a hundred yards. We crested a small rise, and then the house appeared almost out of nowhere. I’d been picturing, I don’t know, a mansion or maybe some super-modern glass box, but this was an older, wooden building. Or I should say building
s
. We pulled up to what

I guess was the main house, since it was much bigger than the other structure, which I realized from the shape was the garage. All the windows had window boxes that were practically bursting with brightly colored flowers. The whole setting was so beautiful and soothing that I was able to put my fears about Sarah out of my mind. It wasn’t as if she’d never met me before. I mean, we were
already
friends.

And since when did my mom have her finger on the pulse of normal human relationships, anyway?

I heard a voice shout, “They’re here!” as the front door shot open and a woman who had to be Tina came toward the car. A second later my mom had unbuckled her seat belt and then they were hugging. From the way the hug went on for longer than a hug hello normally does, and how Tina wasn’t just hugging my mom but was patting her back and talking softly to her, I had the bad feeling my mom was crying. I took as long as I could getting out of the car, and by the time I was standing next to it, my mom and Tina had let go of each other. My mom’s eyes were a little bloodshot, but if she’d been crying during the hug, she wasn’t anymore.

“Katie!” said Tina.

“Hi,” I said. I didn’t know how to tell her that I haven’t been called Katie by anyone but my family in about ten years.

“We’re so glad you and your mom are here!” She said it nicely, like she really
was
glad my mom and I were invading their summer, then reached out and gave me a huge hug. “Thanks for having us,” I said. It was funny to see my mom and Tina next to each other. My mom not only colors her hair blond, she wears it straight and kind of feathered back from her face, while Tina’s curly hair has streaks of gray in it, and she didn’t seem to have combed it that morning. Tina was wearing faded jeans with a hole in the knee and a tank top, while my mom had on a pair of crisp white pants and a pale pink sweater set. I could
not
imagine them as college roommates. Tina was so urbane, my mom so suburban. What could they ever have had to talk about?

The door opened and a man came out. Like Tina, he was in jeans and flip-flops. His hair had a little more gray than hers, and he wore hip, tortoiseshell glasses. Neither Tina nor Henry looked anything like any of
my
junior high history teachers.

“Hi,” he called, walking toward us. “How was the trip?” A minute later he was hugging my mom, and I had the awful feeling that she was going to start crying again, but she didn’t.

“We’ve met before, but it’s been a long time. I’m Henry,” he said, extending his hand to me. Like Tina, he seemed honestly glad to see us. “You must be starving.”

“We stopped for lunch,” said my mom. “But I wouldn’t say no to a snack. How about you, Kate?” Usually my mom calls me Katie. I figured maybe she was trying to send a message to Tina and Henry that they should call me Kate. It was nice of her to do that, since she knows I think Katie is a babyish nickname. Her trying to communicate that information to Tina and Henry without embarrassing me made me feel a tiny bit bad about how, basically, I hadn’t spoken to her for the past seventy-two hours.

“Sure,” I said, following the three of them into the house.

I didn’t know what to expect from the interior of a house belonging to New Yorkers with “old family money” (which, according to my mom, was what Tina and Henry had). I wondered if it would be super chic with, like, only one piece of furniture in each room and enormous modern art everywhere; but it was nothing like that. We passed through a living room with big comfy-looking couches and pale wooden floors. There was a vase filled with fresh flowers on a grand piano, and a wooden rocking chair, but most of what you noticed were the books. One entire wall of the room was built-in bookcases, only even with all the shelves there wasn’t enough room for the books. They were everywhere— the couches, the floor, even the bottom step of the staircase had a couple of ancient paperbacks stacked on it. I’m a total book junkie, so a house overflowing with books is basically my idea of heaven. I wanted to stop and see what the titles were, but Tina led us straight into the kitchen. It was sparkling clean and white, and it seemed to be all windows. There were enormous sliding-glass doors that led to a deck overlooking the water. Even on an overcast day like today, the room was dizzy with natural light.

As we sat on the deck eating brie-and-pesto sandwiches, I could tell that Sarah and her friends weren’t going to be the only bright spot in my summer after all. Tina and Henry asked me tons of questions about myself, and when I mentioned that back in Salt Lake I’d been playing a lot of tennis because of wanting to be in good shape for the team in September, Tina said she was sure I wouldn’t have a problem finding a regular game with someone. She said tennis is practically the official past-time of Dryer’s Cove.

“And you had to give up your writing class,” Tina said. “That was such a nice thing for you to do for your mom.” She smiled at me and reached across the table for the hand that wasn’t holding my sandwich. Then she gave it a little squeeze.

“Um …” I said. The combination of the beautiful house and view and Tina and Henry’s enthusiasm for our visit and the delicious sandwiches was making me a little embarrassed about how ungracefully I’d behaved since my mom announced the change in my summer agenda. I wished Sarah would arrive so we could flee her parents and their guilt-inducing sympathy.

As if in answer to my silent plea, a car pulled into the driveway with a band I didn’t recognize booming on the stereo.

Tina rolled her eyes, I guess at the volume. “That’s Sarah,” she said. “She worked a little later than usual today.”

I was really surprised that a girl like Sarah, who went to a fancy Manhattan private school and had old-family money and a summer house, would have to have a summer job, but then Henry explained, “She’s interning at the Dryer’s Cove historical society. I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it.”

“Oh yes,” said Tina, smiling at me. “She’s
really
excited about your being here.”

“Me too,” I said, glad that Sarah felt the same way about seeing me as I felt about seeing her.

As soon as Sarah appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, I knew I’d been right about my chic summer with New Yorkers. She had on a pale green T-shirt dress that clung to her (perfect) curves. It was the kind of dress you’d see an A-list Hollywood starlet relaxing in while she takes the kids for a stroll on her private island off the coast of Tahiti.

For a second I was surprised by how different she looked. She was a lot taller than I was, and her hair wasn’t curly anymore; it fell in soft waves down to her shoulders. “Hey,” I said. “Hey,” she said, her back to me as she slid the door closed.

I don’t know if it was her being so pretty or just the fact that I hadn’t seen her in a decade, but I suddenly felt awkward. Was it okay to hug her hello?

My mom clearly wasn’t having the inner dialogue I was. She pushed her chair away from the table and crossed the deck to where Sarah was standing. “Sarah, you’ve gotten so big,” she said. “I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve seen you!”

“Hi, Jane,” said Sarah. She didn’t hug my mom back so much as she briefly draped her arms around her. “Sweetheart,” said my mom, turning around to face me, “don’t you have that present for Sarah?”

For the first time since she’d arrived, Sarah actually made eye contact with me. I smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back. It was hard to qualify the look she gave me, but something about it made me feel less like an old friend and more like a stain she’d discovered on an expensive item of clothing.

There was a beat of silence, and I realized everyone was looking at me. “Oh,” I said. “Yeah, I do. But it’s, um, packed.”

Sarah, who hadn’t seemed excited by the announcement that I had a gift for her, wasn’t exactly devastated by the news that it was currently inaccessible.

“It’s a shirt, just like Katie’s,” said my mom, forgetting, in her enthusiasm, not to use the nickname that made me sound like the six-year-old I’d been the last time Sarah and I shared a roof. “She thought you’d like something truly Utah!”

Now everyone was looking at my University of Utah shirt as if they expected it to do something emblematic of my home state (like maybe take a second wife or something).

Okay, for the record, when I’d bought Sarah a replica of the red T-shirt I was wearing, I hadn’t gotten it for her because I thought it was
truly Utah
. I just figured, I don’t know, it’s a shirt I’ve had for a long time and it’s faded in this fairly cool way, and I thought maybe Sarah might like to have a nice soft faded T-shirt, and
why was this suddenly such a BIG FRIGGIN’ DEAL?!

Incredibly enough, my mother was
still talking
. “Katie wears her shirt all the time. You’ll be two peas in a pod, right?”

Sarah didn’t say anything. Was it possible she just thought my mom’s question was a rhetorical one?

“Honey, you’re not working tomorrow, are you?” asked Tina quickly.

“Why?” asked Sarah. The way she glanced briefly at me before looking at Tina made me feel self-conscious about my ponytail. Not that my hair exactly frames my face the way Sarah’s blond tresses do, but at least when it’s not up in a lumpy ponytail it doesn’t make my head look like a mishapen bowling ball.

“I thought you could take Kate to the club, introduce her to everyone.”

“It’s supposed to rain,” said Sarah. “Again.”

“I heard it’s supposed to clear,” said Tina.

Okay, maybe I’d been misreading Sarah’s behavior up until now, but I was most definitely
not
imagining how firmly Tina was talking to her daughter. If Sarah was, in fact, “so excited” to have me on Cape Cod, why was Tina talking to her as if money was going to be changing hands over me sometime before July Fourth.
Let’s cut to the chase, Mom. What’s my being nice to this girl with the tragic hair and total lack of fashion sense worth to you?