The Summer Before Boys (16 page)

T
here is still a war going on. It's on the news every day. Eight hundred and forty-one United States military have died in Iraq—this year alone.

And my mother is not one of them.

But hardly a day goes by I don't think,
She could have been
. Or that somebody else's mother or father is. It took me a long time after my mom got back, to not wake up in the middle of the night and worry if she was home or not. I can't even admit how many nights I crawled into my parents' bed.

“Peter's dad is going back,” I say to my mom. “He wants to go back.”

We are baking in the kitchen, like it's the most ordinary thing in the world, but it isn't. Not for me. My mom is here.

“I heard that too,” my mom says.

“But why would he do that?”

We are making cupcakes for my class because tomorrow is my birthday. I'm going to be thirteen. My mother puts down the bowl and wipes her floury hands on her pants, just like she tells me not to do but these days she probably wouldn't say anything. Little things like that don't bother her anymore. If there has been any change, my mother is calmer since she's come home.

“I don't know, sweetie, and I imagine it's hard for Peter and his mother, but we should all be grateful there are soldiers like that.”

“I am.”

I am pulling apart the little paper liners and placing them one by one into the baking pan while my mom is stirring, a blue one, a red one, a yellow one. “Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“Mom?”

This time she just waits for me to talk. “Do you think it's silly that Eliza and I still play make-believe?”

“No, not at all,” my mom says. “Sometimes when I was sitting for hours, waiting for incoming wounded, I thought I was going to go crazy, just waiting. Feeling scared—not knowing what was going to happen. Or what I was going to see.”

“You were scared?”

“Sure, sometimes. So I would just play a game in my head, like pretending I was somewhere else. Doing something else.”

We are ready to pour the batter into the little paper cups. “Hold the pan still,” my mom tells me and she lifts the big bowl.

“Like what?” I ask.

“Well, I used to imagine I was at a dance, like a high school dance, with Daddy like when we were young. I used to think about what shoes I would be wearing, what color my dress was. What my hair looked like—you know.”

“Did it help?”

“Definitely, I know it did.” My mom fills each cupcake cup to the top and then puts down the bowl.

“Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I ask you another question?”

“Surely.” My mom opens the oven, slides the two cupcake pans inside, and shuts it with her foot.

“When you were my age, were you boy crazy?”

“No, I don't think so,” she answered. “I was a bit slow in that department. I think I was still only interested in my Cabbage Patch dolls in seventh grade.”

“Your what?”

She is smiling. “Wanna see them?”

“Really?”

“Sure, in the attic. C'mon.”

So while my cupcakes are baking, we climb up the pull-down stairs and my mother shows me her Cabbage Patch doll collection, all their clothes, little boots, thermal blankets, hair clips—because, boy, do these dolls have hair—pink pacifiers, even make-believe diapers. My mom could remember not only the name each doll came with, but also the name she chose when she sent back the “adoption papers.”

This afternoon, my last afternoon as a twelve-year-old, my mom and I sit cross-legged on the attic floor and we play. We are making up stories for what each doll has been doing all these many, many years, as my mother says. One of them, Gillian, just got married to her college sweetheart. Don is now a retired fireman who likes to take his boat out fishing. The one with the purple boots is a Vegas showgirl named Allison who just signed a modeling contract with Wilhelmina. The one with the dark hair is Tyler. He is a sports announcer now.

And nobody is happier today than I am, sitting up here with Mom, except maybe Gillian, and Don, and Allison, and Tyler.