Chapter Twenty-Two #2
The house she indicated was painted blue, with a cute front porch. A tabby cat, skinny and narrow eyed, crawled under it upon spotting us.
Lana reached down, gathering up her bag. “Be right back. This should only take a sec.”
She started up the stairs. At the top she stopped, pulling a key from under an empty flowerpot before going inside.
For a moment, Ben and I just sat there. Then he said, “So. Would we call this awkward or intriguing?”
I turned around in my seat, realizing again the reassurance in just saying what you were thinking. Even if I didn’t do it myself. “Awkwardly intriguing?”
“Seriously, though.” He scratched his chin. “Should I be pretending we weren’t hanging out last night? I mean, what’s the protocol here?”
“You think I know?”
He thought for a moment. “Well, we could ask someone. But then, of course, they’d know, which would defeat the purpose.”
“True.”
“That’s one argument for keeping it quiet. No threat of gossip.”
“Are we making a list?”
He shrugged. “We could. We’ll need more than one item, though.”
I thought for a second. “The subterfuge is kind of fun.”
“You’re referring to the window crawling and roommate dodging?” I nodded. “Item three: It might make things weird at work.”
“It is a very sensitive dynamic,” I agreed.
“Then it’s decided. Should we shake on it?”
I stuck out my hand. He did the same. As his fingers closed over mine, I expected the contact to feel much like this discussion: practical, void of emotion. But when our palms touched, there was definitely a charge. Maybe why I held on for a little longer than I would have otherwise.
Just then a car turned in beside us. It was a small red sedan with a dent in one door. A woman with streaky blond hair was behind the wheel, a pair of large sunglasses parked on top of her head. She swiveled toward us, eyes narrowing.
“Shit,” Ben said under his breath.
Bang! went the car’s door as the woman got out. She had on low-slung jeans, a ribbed tank top barely covering her stomach. It inched up as she bent to my window. “Hello?” she said. “Who are you?”
“Shannon, hey,” Ben said. She flicked her gaze at him. “Ben. I work with Lana at the Egg.”
She looked back at me. Then I heard the front door creak open.
“Mom.” Lana was on the porch. A few T-shirts were draped over her arm. “Do you know where my black jacket is?”
“Hey, you.” Shannon’s body language eased as she turned, her voice growing noticeably warmer. “I didn’t know you were coming by.”
“Just grabbing some stuff. Have you seen it?”
“It might be in my room.” Shannon pocketed her key ring, which had a big pink leather tassel on it. “Let me look.”
She headed up the stairs, where Lana was now gesturing us to come in as well. I waited for Ben to get out of the car first before following.
The house was small. As soon as we walked in, we were in the living room, where a ceiling fan ticked over a leather couch draped with a sari-like fabric, an overstuffed chair, and a table piled with mail and catalogs.
Lana had moved to a nearby bedroom, where she was bent over a bed, packing a small green hard-shell suitcase. “Almost finished,” she called out as Ben and I stood there awkwardly. A large canvas duffel sat at her feet. “Can you grab this other bag?”
This was a one-person job. We both went anyway. Other than the bed, unmade, the room featured a bureau cluttered with cosmetics and hair products. In a frame, leaning against a set of hot rollers, was a diploma: BLY HIGH CLASS OF ’25. Her middle name was Amelia.
“Where you staying?”
I jumped. Her mom was in the doorway, a beer dangling from one hand. Her resting face was not warm, the hard set of her jaw unmistakable. Like something coiled, ready to spring.
“With some friends.” Lana continued to stuff clothes into the suitcase. “But I’m looking for my own place.”
“You don’t have to move out,” her mom told her.
A beat. Then Lana said, “Yeah. I do.”
Shannon sighed, then looked at me and Ben. “You see that? I give her a roof over her head, free food in the fridge. When I was eighteen, nobody was volunteering to support me. I already had a kid of my own.”
I wasn’t sure how we were supposed to respond to this. Sympathy? Empathy? I had the feeling that whatever I chose, it still wouldn’t be what she wanted to hear. And I’d only been here a few minutes. I couldn’t imagine that dynamic being all you knew.
Lana zipped the suitcase shut, then turned to me. “Can you take this? I just need to grab some stuff from the bathroom and I’ll be ready.”
I nodded, reaching to take the handle. It was heavier than I expected, making me wobble as I turned to the door. Shannon stepped aside, but just barely, to let me pass. I could feel her eyes on me, and not in a nice way. Say what you would about my mom, but she’d never been scary.
Shannon took a sip of her beer, looking at me and Ben. “You guys are cute. How long you been together?”
So much for subterfuge. Adults always made assumptions, though.
“Actually,” I said, my face flaring hot as I glanced at him. “We’re…”
“Friends,” Ben added. “I’ll just…”
“Right,” I jumped in, making my feet move to follow him. “Let’s go.”
At the car, I popped the trunk with the key fob and Ben and I loaded up the bags. A quick glance over my shoulder confirmed Shannon was watching us from the nearby window, her beer to her lips.
“That was tense,” I said quietly.
“So is the relationship.” He shut the trunk, then lowered his own voice. “As interactions go, though, that one wasn’t bad.”
“No?”
He walked over to the back passenger door, pulling it open. I got in as well. Then he said, “She’s come by the Egg before, looking for Lana. Loudly. And not sober.”
“Yikes.”
“Her boyfriends are worse, though. From what I’ve heard anyway.”
It was difficult not noting the plural. I thought of Lana sneaking onto the couch those nights, wondering where else she had gone for refuge. She was working so hard for a place of her own to build around that piano bench. I wanted it even more for her now.
The door banged. Then she was coming down the steps, a large tote over one shoulder. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s hit it.”
I glanced in my side mirror as we pulled away. Shannon was still in the window, although now just a shape, no details. At least for me. I had the feeling Lana knew every inch of what was enclosed there, whether she liked it or not. But she was facing ahead, not looking at her mom at all.
“Can I tell you something?” I whispered as the girl from the phone store disappeared into the back storeroom.
Ben nodded.
I lowered my voice even more. “I didn’t really want to get a phone today.”
“Okay. Can I tell you something?” He moved a little closer. “I did not need to go to the post office.”
I glanced at Lana, who was sitting outside on a bench. “You didn’t?”
“Nope. I mean, I did have something to send off for school. But I did that, like, last week.” He looked at her as well. “She’d never admit it. But she doesn’t like going home alone.”
“Okay,” the employee said, returning. She had jet-black hair, the ends tinged with blue, as well as a nose piercing. Her bright yellow tee said, I CAN HELP! “With your family’s plan, you have two options. Free or not free.”
She put two boxes down in front of me. One was the newest model, the other a knock-off brand I didn’t recognize.
“Free,” I told her, although I could have upgraded with my money from the Egg. And just like that, I was back in the world.
Technically. Really what happened was that she activated the phone and synced it with the cloud, at which point I turned it off again. I wanted truly connecting to be up to me.
Outside, Lana was studying her own screen. “You want us to come to the post office with you?” she asked Ben.
“Nah,” he told her. “Just be a sec.”
He walked toward it, sliding in the door as an elderly couple exited. I wondered what he’d do to kill time inside. Read flyers? Check out available stamps? Such a small, silly thing to make someone feel good, or at least better.
Lana went back to her phone, eyes narrowed. When I took a spot next to her, I saw it was full of texts from MOM. None were answered.
“You okay?” I asked, just as yet another popped up. Come on baby, it read. Don’t be stubborn.
She looked up at me. “You don’t have to ask me about her, you know. The mother thing is not reciprocal.”
“I know,” I said immediately, although I had not actually made this specific connection. “I just thought you might want to talk. Or something.”
She sighed, flopping back against the back of the bench. “What’s to discuss? She’s a selfish person. Always has been. When I was a kid, all she did was pawn me off on other people so she could be with whatever loser she was seeing.”
I kept quiet. I’d learned that getting personal info from Lana was tricky: The more interest you showed, the less she’d reveal. Never before had I had to fake apathy as encouragement. But then I’d never known anyone like her, either.
“And now,” she continued, “she claims she wants to take care of me. It’s a little late for that. Also, she’s lying. Staying there isn’t free—she’s always demanding money.”
“That’s messed up,” I ventured.
“It is.” She crossed her legs, then her arms. Sometimes body language is everything. “And the thing is, we both know it’s all bullshit. That even if I did stay there, it would eventually end up with fighting or the police being called over or whatever. But she lies anyway.”
Police? I thought.
“And that’s the worst part. If you suck at being a mom, at least own up to it. Don’t pretend to be something you’re not.”
She had a point. And in making it, I realized something about my own mom.
Yes, she had left, and of course it hurt.
She wasn’t there for the day-to-day, sure, and she’d missed a lot by choice.
But if she said she’d show up—for holidays, at the airport when I flew in to meet her at one hotel or another—she always did. It counted.