What a Girl Needs (18 page)

“Mom!”

“Well, I’m only saying you need to see it from their point of view.” I stand in the sun and relish my freedom. “The owner of the restaurant did mention that you left $20 without getting your meal.”

“Only you would see the bright spot in my day, Mom.”

“That was very generous of you, dear. You could have snuck out. It reminds me that I raised you right.”

I feel the need to defend Brea and myself. “Mom, there is no way Miles could have physically gotten into that tank. It’s like he temporary flew or something. I cannot explain it. Does the video show how he got into the aquarium?”

“Welcome to little boy motherhood. Do you remember that kid who climbed into the claw game? That was physically impossible, too. Never underestimate the sheer determination of a boy who thinks he must try something new.” My mom leads me to her car and presses the button with a chirp to unlock the doors. “Once, your brother Dave climbed out of the second-floor window onto the roof to catch a helium balloon. He jumped off the roof, and praise the Lord, he landed in a tree. I found him dangling by his belt ten feet in the air.”

“You never told me that story!”

“That’s why you have to pray without ceasing. Without divine intervention, I don’t know how any typical boy makes it to adulthood. It’s one of God’s mysteries—to this mother at least.”

I just laugh thinking about my brother. He’s a bus driver with a wife and a small son. He loves his job. He knows his place in the world, driving college students around their campus. Maybe I just think too big. “Mom, you were happy being at home your whole life?”

She smiles as she sits in the driver’s seat. “I never wanted anything more. From the time you graced us with your presence, you wanted…you just wanted more.”

I used to take that as a compliment.
Did I go past my allotment of lifetime joy and received my gifts in full because I asked for too much? Maybe I was never meant to be married at all, and I forced it on Kevin and this is my punishment. “Do you think since I made my choice for marriage, I should lean into it fully? Maybe if I take some cooking classes and learn to do more things like you do, I won’t feel so restless.”

My mom laughs. She actually laughs at my tender moment.

“Oh,” my mom says, pressing her hand to her chest. “You were serious.”

I blink back the moisture pooling in my eyes and my mom’s expression softens, so that the lines near her eyes crinkle with genuine concern.

My mom’s CRX is pristine, with leather so waxed one glides into the bucket seat as if there’s silicone on your bum. That’s the impossible secret about my mother. I never see her clean a thing, and yet everything around her sparkles. She has some kind of gift, like King Midas. Instead of turning everything to gold, she leaves everything in sparkling, spotless order. This is a genetic gift that was not handed down to me.

Mom stops at a stoplight and glares at me. I know that disappointed look. It’s the same one she gave me right before she told me old boyfriends got married, and she’d hand me the paper with a photo of the virginal bride, who was not me, alongside an old beau.

“Mom, I know, all right? I know. I could have been killed, but everything’s fine now. If I take some culinary classes, maybe I won’t be so disappointed with staying home all day. You and Brea did it. How bad could it be?”

“It’s not why I’m concerned. Your phone started buzzing, and I thought Kevin might have been texting.”

I shake my head. “Kevin hates to text. He’ll always call, unless he’s trying to keep quiet in a meeting and wants to snark on a superior.”

“Kevin will do that?” My mom’s face scrunches up in disbelief.

“He’s not as innocent as he looks. Trust me.”

“Speaking of innocence, when I read the texts. Three of them,” she says, looking over her glasses pointedly. “They were from Seth Greenwood.”

My throat catches. My mom is not a fan of Seth’s, but seriously, does she know me at all? “What? I’m suddenly the wanton woman because I have no job? Slap an
A
on my shirt, why don’t you?”

“Never mind. I simply wrote him back and reminded him that my daughter was married, but then he texted again. He said your old boss, Purvi, is back in town and would it be okay to give her your number? I told him that would be fine and no more communication was necessary.”

I laugh. “Of course you did.” I try to explain further, lest my mother think I’m starring on an episode of
Scandal
. “Seth wants me to help him with Arin,” I say truthfully. “I guess things are tough with them, and I thought—I don’t know what I thought.”
Maybe I was slightly flattered.
“I tried to avoid him, Mom, I swear, but maybe there’s some part of me that felt superior to Arin, which made me feel some part of
Successful Ashley
rather than
Failure Ashley
. And right now, all I feel is
Failure Ashley
.”

“You make it sound as if you’re two Barbie dolls. I’m curious, what would
Failure Ashley
wear?”

I hold up my wrist as far as it will reach. “Black. She wears a lot of black and migrates to Starbucks, hoping to find someone who can speak technology to her and make her feel like less of an alien.”

“You realize that’s all in your head. The old Ashley who left here would have taken the bar exam. She would have risked it, even though she was only planning to stay in Philly temporarily. It would have been a notch in her lipstick case.”

“Uh, I think that’s a sex reference, Mom.”

“Well, you know what I mean.”

“I thought I could help Seth and Arin, and maybe that’s why God allowed me back home for a time. I was misguided. Then, I thought I could help support Brea, and her son ended up in the drink. Again, I was misguided. Finally, I tried to put my personal feelings aside and help Matt propose. That led to personal injury, so I don’t know. I have no better idea about my life’s purpose here than I did in Philadelphia. It’s not the setting, Mom. It’s me.”

“Well, in Matt’s defense, Ashley, everything seems to lead to personal injury with you. Remember that time you tried to get attention from that boy and wore floaties into the pool when you were thirteen?”

“Can we not bring that up?”

Mom starts to laugh, and soon she’s in full-fledged giggles. “The look on your face when you got stuck in the filter with that big orange blob on your arm. The whole pool emptied out when you started screaming.”

“It was traumatic. If I’d been a toddler in floaties, I would have gotten proper sympathy and been pulled out by my parents.”

“We were trying to figure out why you were screaming. Besides, no one could lift you. They were all laughing too hard—oh Ashley, the way you tried to get attention. I thought some of your outfits were wild, but you really did give us some great times.”

“Good times at my expense!” I remind her why the joke is lost on me.

“The other mothers asked me why you’d put them on—I had to defend myself, explain that I’d taught you to swim. I had no idea why you’d put them on.”

“You always had my back, Mom.”

“Now, you know I did, but my point is, you did some crazy things. Maybe God wants you to worry about what’s next for you, and not busy yourself with other people’s issues.”

“Why can’t I move forward, Mom? I’m a terrible housewife, and now, truthfully, I’m not sure Kevin even wants to have kids. I’ve wasted two years when I should have taken the bar right away.”

“Because you’re always afraid to make a mistake—don’t you get it Ashley? Trying to be perfect doesn’t save you from any of life’s humiliations, so you need to be willing to make them. If Pennsylvania’s bar is a waste of time, it’s really just another something to put on your resume.”

I can’t get past the wasting of two years. That I’ve been in a holding pattern for two years—as if I never left.

“I’m more concerned that we haven’t seen Kevin out here. Is everything all right with you two?”

My wrist pain suddenly gives way to my real fears. Is there a reason Kevin sent me out here alone? Are all men like Matt, only less honest about it?

“Oh look.” My mom swerves the car as she sees a
Hair & Nails
sign. “I’ll bet they can fix your hair without an appointment.”

“Here?” I ask. “It’s dingy. Looks like the kind of place that doesn’t have real beauty accreditation.”

“May I remind you that you didn’t have any kind of accreditation either, and they can’t muck it up worse than Ronald McDonald Red.”

“I suppose you’re right.” It’s pretty bad that everyone has equated this hair color with the McDonald’s clown, separately.

“Ashley, if you go home looking like that, your father will think you’ve lost all sense of well-being, and since you haven’t been working, he will be convinced you’re going to hell in a handbag. Besides, my friends might recognize you from the news with the red.”

“Ah, so that’s it. I’ve only been with you for two hours and already you want to distance yourself.”

As my mom opens the door, there is much chattering in a foreign language—followed by giggling, the universal language. “How we help you?”

“My daughter needs her hair dyed.”

More giggling. “She do herself?”

“Yes, she did it herself. Can you fix it?”

“We do it. You want pedicure while you wait? What color you like?” The gal leads my mom to the display of nail colors. My mom, who has probably never had a pedicure in her life, gets hustled back to a massage chair, and before she can answer, they’ve got the water running and the vibrating chair fired up.

“You want manicure, too?”

“What?” My mom tries to decipher the woman’s English.

“She wants to know if you want a manicure, too,” I translate, after years of mani/pedis.

“Oh, no,” my mom says. “I think the pedicure will be quite enough.”

She has picked a clear polish off the rack, and I chastise her. “Mom, that’s topcoat. Pick a color. Live a little.”

“I’m not taking color advice from the likes of you, thank you.”

The salon is cluttered with hair products and ancestor shrines, but I focus on none of that. I close my eyes, and when I open them again, I’m a brunette. A brunette with a lot of unfinished business, but a brunette nonetheless. Sometimes, you have to be grateful for the small things. A good hair day is nothing to sneeze at.

‡

A
s I enter
my mother’s house, and all its old, familiar smells, it occurs to me that maybe I never wanted the big career that I worked so hard for. Maybe all I wanted was to feel important—and I’ve found out that doesn’t come from being a star attorney. It certainly doesn’t come from having obnoxious hair or being someone’s wife.

“Ashley, your father will be home soon. Can you put your stuff in your old room? Fish and Clara are staying in your brother’s room.”

I nod. My mom has an agenda of course. She’s the hospitality queen and they have friends staying—this takes priority over their long-lost daughter coming back into town—especially without my husband. The roots of my discontent are suddenly starting to show like ugly growth before a touch-up.

I drop my handbag in my old bedroom and plop myself on the family futon. My room, the den now—my dad’s man cave—though he was too lazy to paint, so it’s a pale pink man cave, which takes some of the testosterone out of it. It does have a red and gold San Francisco 49ers’ poster, clashing over the top of it, a wooden case of empty beer bottles, and a deer head plastered above them. Poor deer. It’s disturbing to think of an animal missing its head, and to have it summarily attached to a bubblegum pink wall is the height of indignity. My dad’s flat screen is too big for the room, and so it feels like you’re in the first row of an IMAX theater while you try to watch.

I text Kay that I won’t be there for dinner—that’s enough explanation for now.

My mom appears in the doorway and smiles, “It’s good to see you back where you belong. I’m going to get dinner started—your dad is late, so it must have been a good boat show.” As she disappears, I wonder at her ability to enjoy the simple things in life—making dinner, my dad coming home from the boat show.

Being here makes me miss my own home—which I normally regard with disdain. Kevin’s parents bought it for us as a wedding gift. It’s a dumpy, little rancher with a sagging roofline and more mold than ten-year old cheese in an abandoned mousetrap. But it was free.

All you can really say when someone gifts you with a mortgage-free home is
thank you
. With a big grin. Even if you’re thinking,
I hope this place comes equipped with copious amounts of bleach, because it is disgusting and bears a striking resemblance to a house I saw once on “Hoarders.”

Life, and ugly encounters, has taught me that you can’t say everything you think. Even if you think people might really need to hear the truth. It’s not my place to tell them that truth. Granted, it should be, but it isn’t. As in the case of Kay’s engagement to Matt Callaway.

So, my house… Philadelphia is a real estate paradise with an enormous amount of history and style behind its architecture. There are converted fire stations, brick walk-ups, historical Victorians, former carriage houses, Cape Cods, incredible bungalows and stunning, new condos.