Watch Me Disappear (9 page)

Missy and I made plans to hang out the next afternoon. She thought she could put together an outfit for the party using some of her mom’s stuff. When I hung up the phone, I went upstairs and looked at my dress again. I am starting to get my hopes up for this party, and even for the start of school, just a few weeks away.

Chapter 6

The first time I meet Missy’s mom, she is in her studio painting. Her studio is an airy room on the second floor—a spare bedroom, really—with enormous windows that flood the room with light. There are potted plants everywhere, a wind chime mounted just outside one of the windows tinkles in the breeze, and the gauzy blue curtains flutter. She is working on a still life of broken pieces of pottery arranged on a table near the window. Missy inherited her hair and her height from her mother. She stands at her easel with her back to us, an enormous men’s oxford shirt as her smock, bare feet peeking out of flowing, wide-legged pants, the image of some serene goddess at work. We watch her quietly for a moment, and then Missy taps at the doorframe. Her mom turns around to reveal the round swell of a pregnant belly. Before I can react, she’s embracing me.

“Lizzie!” she says. “You are exactly as Missy described you. I’m so happy to meet you.” Her stomach feels hard against mine as she puts her arms around me.

“It’s great to meet you, too, Mrs. Howston,” I manage to say.

“Oh, no! You have to call me Anna,” she says. “Mrs. Howston is my mother-in-law.” She laughs. “So you two are putting together a flapper costume today?” she asks, stepping back from our prolonged hug.

I nod.

“I think you’ll find everything you need, although you’ll have to do some rummaging. A lot of that stuff hasn’t gotten unpacked, and I feel less inclined by the day,” she says, patting her belly. She sighs and turns toward her canvas. “What do you think, Mis? Better?”

Missy walks over to look at her mother’s painting. “Hmm. I do like the way you’ve brightened the colors,” she says after a moment.

“Missy is my consultant,” Anna says, casting me a smile. “Well, I have some more to do here, and then it’s time for my midmorning nap.” She fakes a yawn and then turns back to Missy. “How do fajitas sound for lunch?”

“That’s great, mom,” Missy says.

“Ok for you, Lizzie?”

They eat fajitas for lunch. I love it. We don’t eat Mexican food ever at my house. My mother thinks it’s too fattening and low class. “Yeah, that’s fantastic,” I say.

In the attic, Missy moves boxes around, but I am still distracted by the news that Anna is ready to pop any day now.

“You didn’t tell me your mother was pregnant,” I say.

“Really? No. I must have told you,” Missy answers.

“I think I would remember.” I wonder if Missy hasn’t mentioned it because she’s embarrassed or something.

“Well, I guess I’m so used to her being pregnant now that I didn’t think to tell you.” She moves aside a few more boxes. “When she first found out, I told everyone.”

“Wow. So how do you feel about it?” I know how I would feel. I would be pissed. I mean, my mom barely has enough affection for two kids. If she had another baby, I’d end up being a full-time nanny. Not that it would ever happen anyway, because my mom had her tubes tied right after I was born. In her words, two are enough.

“Are you kidding? I’m so excited! I’ve always wanted a sister or brother.” She looks at me and I can see from the smile on her face that she is sincere.

“But did your parents plan this?”

“Oh, yeah. My mom has wanted this for years, but she didn’t want to do it while my dad was still in the army. I guess it was pretty hard on her when I was little and he was deployed, and anyway, with a war going on, it was just too scary. But as soon as he got out, they got busy. Hey, I think I found the right boxes,” she says, kneeling down and pulling open the top of a large box labeled “Costumes.”

“But how old is your mom?” I ask. However nonchalant Missy is about her family situation, I’m having a hard time taking it in.

“Thirty-seven,” she says, pulling various pieces of clothing from the box. “Look at this!” She holds up a leather vest with fringe on it. “My cowgirl vest! I wore this to school every day in the third grade.”

“Wait, your mom is only thirty-seven?”

“Yep. She was a child bride.”

“She had you when she was twenty?” I ask, trying to sort out the math in my head.

“Yep. My parents were childhood sweethearts, but my dad is a few years older than my mom.”

“Wow.”

“I know, right? Makes me wish I had a childhood sweetheart. I guess we’ve missed the age cut-off for that, though.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Shoot! This box is just kid stuff. Somewhere over here there’s a box of my mom’s dress-up stuff, costume jewelry, stuff like that.”

I haven’t been very helpful. I kneel down beside Missy and start combing through the boxes she set out. I want to hear more about her parents’ romance, but I don’t want to seem too nosy, so I drop it. Eventually we find a couple of boxes full of Anna’s old dresses and random adult-sized costumes. By the time we emerge from the attic for lunch, Missy is wearing a gold lamé dress that drapes at the neck and falls to the floor with a slit up to the middle of her thigh, elbow-high black gloves, a black boa, an enormous rope of fake (but convincing) pearls, a “hat” made of black feathers mounted on a hair comb that sits slightly askew on her head and looks like some wild bird—Anna tells us at lunch it is a cocktail hat that she wore to a wedding in England—and strappy black stilettos. She also found one of those long cigarette-filters that you see women holding in old movies.

“I’m going to have to practice if I want this to look natural,” she says, balancing the filter between her fingertips and bringing it up to her lips.

I think the hat is too much, but Missy is in love with it. That’s the thing about Missy; she doesn’t take herself too seriously. I mean, take away the hat and she looks like Nicole Kidman going to the Oscars. Add the hat and she looks like a cross between a celebrity and a lunatic. Missy tries to dress me up, too, but I only wear the wacky bits of apparel long enough to humor her, and then I put them back into the boxes where she found them.

“Come on! Live a little!” she says, when I take off the bowler hat she placed on my head.

I roll my eyes.

She pretends to pout. “You’re no fun,” she says.

She’s right. I’m not much fun. I put the hat back on. “There. Happy now?”

She smiles. “You should wear hats. You look good.”

“Yeah, sure,” I say. But I am flattered by the compliment. Actually I do think I look good in hats, but I’m not brave enough to wear them because I’m afraid people will think I’m trying to look cool or be too stylish or something. Even in the winter or at the beach, I resist wearing hats, which I realize is foolish—think how much warmer my ears would be, how much less sunburned my face and neck. I just don’t want to draw attention to myself.

We eat lunch with Anna in the small backyard. It is all fenced in, but the landscaping is a crazy, overgrown tangle of flowers and leafy plants. The picnic table on the patio is under a pergola covered in climbing roses. It’s magical, and I say so.

“We’re lucky,” Anna says. “I’m not much of a green thumb, but this garden was a major factor in choosing this house. I can’t tell weed from flower, so it’s getting out of control, but I like it.”

We eat chicken fajitas and drink limeade and breathe in the scent of roses. I never want to leave.

“So Missy tells me there was some excitement at the concert the other week,” Anna says after we eat. She leans back in her chair and rests her hands on the shelf of her stomach.

“Uh, yeah,” I say. Of course Missy told her mother about Maura and that whole affair. She probably tells her mother everything. Missy and Anna actually have the relationship my mother wants with me and Mrs. Morgan wants with Maura.

“I have to say, I can’t understand why you two want to go to that girl’s party,” she says.

“Mom,” Missy says, half-whining, “everybody is going.”

“My parents are making me go,” I say.

“Ah, yes. And I hear your parents are also eager to meet us.”

“Yeah, it’s a policy they have. I had to beg to come over here today. They want to know my friends’ parents.”

“Well, that’s smart,” Anna says. “We love to know Missy’s friends’ parents. Besides, that’s the only way old geezers like us meet new people. You become a parent and suddenly all of your friends are the parents of your kid’s friends. That’s how it works.” She laughs.

“I guess soon you’ll be making a whole new round of friends, then,” I say, nodding toward her belly.

“We’ll be the old folks at all the kiddie birthday parties and school events. All the young couples will seek out our sage advice,” she says, laughing some more.

“Oh please,” Missy says. “No one will believe you’re old enough to have a seventeen-year-old at home. And then they’ll be jealous. You have a built-in babysitter.” Missy turns to me. “Everyone always thinks we’re sisters.”

Anna does look young, until you look closely around her eyes and mouth. Besides, the age difference between Anna and Missy is only slightly greater than the age difference between Missy and her new sibling will be. It isn’t hard to imagine them passing as sisters.

“I don’t know, Mis. I feel old.”

“Well, then,” Missy answers, “we’ll take care of cleaning up and you go rest.” She starts gathering plates, and I happily assist.

Back inside, I finally get a chance to look around. The entire house is as enchanting as Anna’s studio and the backyard. Over the kitchen sink is a beautiful stained glass window. Houseplants and knick-knacks from their world travels decorate every corner and cubby. Books line shelves, nest in piles by the sofa, and cover the coffee table. It is my dream house.

After cleaning up, Missy and I settle in on the couch in the living room. It’s soft, worn-in, old brown leather. We sink into the cushions and Missy talks about the developments in her burgeoning romance with Wes. They went to a matinee on Sunday and then out for coffee. She talks to him on the phone every day.

“Last night, we talked all night,” she says. “And I’m supposed to go with him and his friends for a hike tomorrow.”

“That’s cool,” I say.

“Yeah, but here’s the thing. I don’t think he’s ever kissed anyone.”

Neither have I but I don’t say so. I wait for Missy to continue.

“I don’t know how to initiate that, you know?” she says. “And I think maybe he’s too shy.”

I think about Missy’s braces and the merciless teasing of kids who had braces back in middle school. I had been convinced that people with braces couldn’t kiss anyone. I have since learned otherwise, but still, kissing a mouth full of braces just doesn’t sound appealing to me. Maybe Wes feels the same way.

“Yeah, but on this hike, his friends are going to be there. It’s not like you’re going to the woods to make out,” I say.

“We might be alone sometimes.”

“I guess you just have to see how it goes,” I say. I hear a clock chime in the front room. “Damn! What time is it?”

“I think it’s 2:30,” Missy says.

“I’m late.” I push myself off of the couch. “My mom’s probably waiting at Gram’s house.”

“Oh, right,” Missy says.

I make a mental note to wear a watch when hanging out with Missy. It is easy to lose track of time with her. The last thing I need is to give my mom more reasons to dislike her, especially now that I’ve been inside her house. Whatever my mom thinks, Missy and her family are exactly the kind of influence I need in my life.

*          *          *

 “Your grandmother was just telling me how lovely Missy’s family is,” my mother says when I come rushing, somewhat out of breath, onto the porch.

“You’ve met them?” I ask, confused.

“Oh, yes,” she says. “And that house belonged to an old friend who was devastated to have to sell it after thirty years, but then she met the Howstons, and she was happy to have such a nice family moving in. She’s in one of the high rises now.” Gram says, rocking back and forth on the glider.

“The Howstons apparently had a meet-and-greet when they first moved in,” my mother says. “Gram says they invited the whole neighborhood.”

“It was very nice,” Gram says. “Has she had the baby yet?”

“Uh, no,” I say, wondering if Gram already told my mother that Anna was pregnant and if so how she took the news. “I guess she’s due in like three weeks.”

“Ah. That’s nice.”

“Well,” my mother says, “we’d better get home. You’re late, you know.”

I had hoped she hadn’t noticed. Gram, like my dad, can be a great distraction to my mother.

“See you in a few days,” my mother says to Gram.

“All right.”

“Don’t fall asleep out here.”

“I’m old, Beth, but I’m not an idiot.

My mother wastes no time with her reprimands once we’re in the car. She doesn’t like my new habit of lateness. She isn’t sure she likes the idea of my hanging around with someone whose mother will be too busy with a new baby to pay attention to a teenager. She will not be letting me go to Missy’s again until she’s met her parents. And why haven’t I mentioned how tired Gram is looking?

“You know the whole reason we moved here was to take care of Gram. She’s not exactly young,” my mother says.

“I know.” I also know it won’t help to point out that Gram likes Missy and her family or that I hadn’t noticed that Gram seemed especially tired lately. It also won’t help to suggest that maybe Gram is just tired of my mother’s company, because let’s face it, what adult wants to be told what to do? I let my mother rant and watch the scenery roll by.

“If you want to have Missy come here, fine,” she concludes as we pull into the driveway, “but we have to meet her parents before you go there again. Do you hear me?”

I nod and get out of the car.

*          *          *

I’m sitting in my room trying to focus on the last of my summer reading when the doorbell rings. A minute later I hear Maura’s sticky sweet voice greeting my mother. Then she calls up the stairs for me to come down.