Chapter 5
IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL DAY FOR A LONG DRIVE, ALL BLUE SKIES AND FLUFFY white clouds, a perfect seventy-two degrees—lucky for me, because the air conditioning in my car wasn’t functioning properly. I was feeling good in my newly thrifted white T-shirt dress as I steered my Honda alongside the Allegheny River toward the highway on-ramp. One eye on the road ahead, I selected Leigh’s Spotify mix, You Aughts to Know, a compilation of the greatest hits from our college days. She had sent it to Geeta and me on that revitalized text thread, making me wonder if Geeta’s optimism was perhaps warranted.
As Sean Paul sang “Get Busy/Like Glue,” I thought about the wild house parties we used to have. We used to be so tight, the three of us. There was even a moment right after college, when Geeta was working around the clock at an elite consulting firm, that Leigh and I were the two closest members of our friendship triangle. Back then, she was a low-level gallery assistant. She didn’t talk about all the cool people she was “collab-ing” with, the way she did now. We used to take field trips to the Korean bath house in Flushing, where we’d get massages and then go out for dim sum.
Things changed around the time Leigh’s mom died. That was when she moved to LA to be closer to Seattle, where the rest of her family was based, and to enroll in art school. It was time to get serious, she told me. She had a plan and was sticking to it. Leigh started taking longer to return my calls. For a while I wondered what I had done to put her off, but then it occurred to me that I hadn’t done anything. She was transitioning to a new phase of life and I simply didn’t make the cut.
My wrist started vibrating. It was my watch, informing me that my mother was calling. I fumbled my “decline,” then accidentally picked up. Suddenly, the nostalgic melody gave way to Ann Green in surround sound.
“What’s doin’, Jen?” my mom asked.
“I’m in the car,” I said. “On my way to my college reunion.”
“You’re talking on the phone when you are driving?” She was suddenly in full-on panic mode. “I’ll hang up. I’ll go.”
“Mom, it’s fine. Miracle of Bluetooth! What’s up?”
“Is he with you?”
I let off a sigh of frustration. Ten seconds into the call, and we were on to the only thing on her agenda these days. “Hal?” I said. Ever since this past winter, when he’d shelved our very short-lived engagement, my mom couldn’t even say his name. Come to think of it, I hadn’t said his name in a little while. Hal and I had barely made eye contact in the days following his great reunion flake-out, but I was not about to tell my mother that she was right about him. I thought about lying and telling her he was with me, but then remembered I was a grown woman and ought to stand in my truth.
“No, Mom. Hal is not with me today.” I tried to speak firmly, enunciating my ts. My former therapist, Joyce, a caftan-loving woman I’d stopped seeing when I lost my radio job and the health insurance that came with it, had told me that I needed to set better boundaries with my mother.
“Why not?”
“He had work to do.”
“What is he working on?”
“His book.”
“How’s it coming?”
I wasn’t about to engage in this line of inquiry. Plus, I didn’t know the answer to her question. “It’s my reunion,” I reminded her. “He didn’t even go to Coleman.”
“Well, maybe you’ll meet somebody at the reunion,” she said.
“I’m not going there to meet somebody,” I said, gritting my teeth. “I’m going to spend quality time with the people I already know.”
“Is Geeta going to be there?”
“Of course. We’re staying together in our old place.”
“She’s such a nice girl. So brilliant!” My mom’s opinion of my best friend had skyrocketed in recent years, in direct proportion with Geeta’s fame and success. “And Leigh? Is she still a—?”
“A lesbian?”
“No,” said my mother, even though I was sure that was exactly what she meant to say. “I meant, is she still an artist?”
“Of course she is still an artist,” I said robotically. “As Leigh likes to say, art isn’t something you do, it’s who you are.”
“Isn’t that nice,” she said in a tone that indicated that she didn’t find Leigh’s success nice at all. She was a practical woman with a considerable amount of skepticism for pursuing careers in the arts. “I saw her picture in the Times a little while ago. She looked... different. I always thought she was cute, but now she’s quite striking.” There was a moment of silence as my mother’s meaning set in. “Striking” was another way of saying “pin thin.” My mother had an unhealthy fixation on my friends’ body mass indexes.
“I’d prefer if we didn’t comment on other people’s appearances,” I said, trying to put Joyce’s advice to use once again.
“I can’t say that someone is striking anymore?” my mom asked with genuine bewilderment. “Is that a new banned word?”
“Forget it. I’ll them you send your regards,” I said.
My mom sighed. “Your father and I were talking, and we just want you to know that we love you.”
“Thanks,” I said, waiting for the next blow.
“We know there are better days ahead.”
“Okay, thanks for the unsolicited fortune-telling session,” I said. “You know, next time you call, you can ask how I’m doing.”
“Jen, that’s not fair. I wish you’d ever tell me.”
The second I hung up, I regretted my knee-jerk defensive attitude. My mom and I might not have been as close as we once were, but she still cared about me. She just had a terrible way of showing it.
My former celebrity crush was singing about girls who become lovers turning into mothers. I couldn’t believe how I failed to notice the misogyny in this lyric when I first heard it. Did he mean that they turn into mothers in general or that they turn into their mothers? Was I turning into Ann Green without even realizing it? No, no, no, not if Hal could help it. I wouldn’t be turning into a mother at all, let alone my own mother. I cranked up the volume and kept right on driving down the ribbon of highway.