Notes on a Near-Life Experience (20 page)

“Oh, yes. Maggie. Is good to meet you. I am Paloma.”

“It's nice to meet you, too. Thank you for coming to Keatie's game.”

“Oh, yes. I love the game,” Paloma says, smiling.

They all stand there, grimacing awkwardly. I decide to rescue them.

“Mom, can I get the blanket out of the car? It's a little bit chilly.”

“Of course. The keys are in my purse.” She returns to our chairs and begins digging through her purse.

“Dad, you should probably sit on the other side of the field next time. Especially if you're going to bring Paloma. Just so things aren't so creepy,” I tell him.

“Oh… right.” He looks more annoyed than embarrassed.

The game is eventful. Keatie scores a goal. So does her friend Chewy. Paloma really seems to enjoy herself. She yells out what I assume is encouragement in Spanish to Keatie until halftime, when Keatie asks Dad to tell her to stop. Dad reads a book for most of the game, calling out, “Nice work, Keatie!” or “Way to play!” whenever Paloma nudges him.

The team is up by one goal until the last ten minutes of the game, during which the other team scores twice. At this
point, Keatie kicks Mason, her teammate, for not blocking one of the goals. Because of this she gets a red card, a penalty for unsportsmanlike behavior, which means she can't play for the rest of the game. This causes Allen to go crazy.

“He's on her team,” Allen yells at the ref. “We're okay with kicking on this team. We let 'em kick each other. You can't red-card her for kicking someone on her own team.”

That, of course, upsets Mason's father, who gets up in Allen's face for not protecting his kid.

“Your kid can't play. He sucks. What do you want me to do about that? We're here to win games,” Allen yells at him. Which begins a brief yelling match, which ends with Allen's being escorted off the field, which causes several concerned parents to approach Julian after the game and ask if Allen's temper is always an issue.

When Mom brings out a big cooler of orange slices and juice boxes and hands them out to Keatie's teammates, Keatie tries to convince Mom that Mason should not be allowed to have his, but Mom gives him his drink and orange slices anyway. Once snacks have been distributed, Mom takes Allen aside and gives him a lecture. “I honestly don't know what has gotten into you,” she says. “Sweetie, what is your problem?”

Allen shrugs, mumbles something.

I wait and watch, hoping my mom will figure it out. I want her to see through him and just know, the way she always seemed to know what was wrong when I was little. I at least want her to show that she knows how to ask real questions and get real answers. But she doesn't. Not this time.

“You need to get this under control, Allen.” She ruffles his hair and smiles. Then her cell phone rings. She looks at it and says, “I need to take this call. But this conversation is not over.” She's wrong; it is. She flips open the phone and walks away. When she does, I catch a glimpse of Allen's face. He looks like a little boy; he looks hurt and scared.

Somewhere in the middle of the chaos, Dad and Paloma left. They didn't say goodbye or good game, they just left. “Typical,” my mom says when I point this out to her.

M
Y MOM CALLS ME TO SCHEDULE A TIME TO GO SHOPPING FOR
a prom dress.

“How about Friday after school? From two-thirty to fivethirty?” she asks.

“Okay. I guess that's fine. Can Haley come, too?”

“Well, I wanted to see you and have it be just the two of us …” She pauses, waiting for me to say something.

I want Haley to come, but I don't want to hurt Mom's feelings. I wait.

“But Haley's practically family, so I guess that's fine.”

“Okay, I'll ask her…. She might not even be able to come.”

“I'm going to have Suzanne schedule this, though, so even
if Haley can't come, are we still on?” Suzanne is her new assistant.

The day Mom told us about Suzanne, she was so excited. “Now I'll be able to be at home more again,” she told us. But every parent I know who has an assistant is never home. And it's usually their assistants who call to tell the kids not to wait up.

But back to the issue at hand. Shopping. Mom is waiting for an answer. “Yeah, sure,” I say.

I have an appointment to go shopping with my mother. I wonder if I should start scheduling more time with her— maybe that's how I'm supposed to do things now. Maybe I just missed the memo.

I
AM ON THE PHONE IN MY BEDROOM TALKING TO
H
ALEY, AND
I hear noise coming from down the hall. Keatie and Allen are arguing, which almost never happens.

“I'll call you back in a minute, Haley.”

I walk out to the living room and find Keatie standing in front of the TV, blocking Allen's view of it, crying.

“What's going on?” I ask.

“I'm trying to watch TV and Keater's freaking out,” Allen tells me.

“He's trying to watch
Seinfeld,
” Keatie sobs.

“What's wrong with that?” I ask her.

“It's not
Jeopardy!
” she says. “In this family we watch
Jeopardy!
at seven-thirty.”

“I don't feel like watching freaking
Jeopardy!
” Allen says.

“Mia, tell him,” Keatie begs.

I can see what's going on. Things I am afraid to see are laid out in front of me in Keatie's scared, sad face. If we don't watch
Jeopardy!,
she thinks, that's it. Everything is gone. Keatie finally sees what's happened, and she's trying to hold on to what she knows, what's left of certainty, and for her, it's
Jeopardy!

“Allen, please, just watch
Jeopardy!
It's what we've always done. She just wants things to be normal, you know. For her,
Jeopardy!
makes things normal.”

“I am
not
watching
Jeopardy!
” he says. After a brief pause, he adds, “There is no more normal here.”

When Keatie hears this, she sinks to the floor. The energy drains from her body. When she looks up at me, her face is blank.

O
N
F
RIDAY
, M
OM PICKS ME AND
H
ALEY UP AFTER SCHOOL
right on schedule. She kisses us both on the cheek as we get into the car.

“Where do you want to go?” she asks.

“Fashion Island,” I tell her. “It's got the best stores.”

“Fashion Island it is, then,” she says.

I turn on the radio, looking for a good station. Mom gets a call on her cell phone and turns the music off. I try to talk to Haley about the state tennis tournament (she's ranked third in the entire state this year), but my mom shushes me, so we sit and listen to her talk about the Ravenberger account, whatever that is, for the twenty-seven minutes it takes us to get to the mall. When we pull into the parking lot, Mom asks if she can call the person back “in five.”

Mom talks on the phone from store to store to store, nodding at the dresses she likes, making faces at the ones she doesn't.

“Who's the obnoxious lady on the phone and what has she done with your mother?” Haley whispers as we examine the fabric of a red lace dress.

“I have no idea, but I'm so glad to be getting some quality mother-daughter-Ravenberger bonding time in. I was feeling so deprived. I'd almost forgotten how much the Ravenbergers mean to me.” I am wondering the same thing as Haley, though: Who is this woman? And, more importantly, why did she make such a big deal about this whole dress-buying thing if she was just going to talk to someone else the entire time?

We put three dresses on hold at three different stores. Mom finally gets off the phone while we are at Nordstrom.

Because Mom's been on the phone, Haley and I have set up a routine of trying on all the dresses we pick and only showing her the ones we like so we don't have to interrupt her as much. So when we find the perfect dress—a black backless spaghetti-strapped one that barely zips up but looks damn good on—we have agreed that it is
the Dress
before Mom has even seen it. Haley goes out to the racks to find my mother, who has taken it upon herself to pick out some dresses for me, too.

“Maggie, we've found it,” I hear Haley saying as she leads Mom back to the dressing room. “It's
the Dress
.”

When Mom enters the dressing room and sees me in the
Dress, she drops her pile of pink, lilac, and baby blue gowns on the floor, sinks onto the dressing room bench, and closes her eyes.

Haley looks at me, confused. I look at her and shrug. We both watch Mom, waiting for some kind of clue as to what is going on. She opens her eyes; they are red and teary.

“Do you like it?” I ask.

Mom looks at me, at the Dress. “That's the dress you want to wear?” she asks, her voice tight.

“I think so,” I say.

“It's the best one she's tried on,” says Haley.

Mom doesn't say anything for a while.

“You look like a slut,” she finally says.

“What?” My mother has never called me a slut before. She's never really made any comments about my clothes, except to tell me I look nice or to let me know when I've left a tag on or something. She's never seemed to care what I wear. I mean, I don't usually wear halter tops and miniskirts or anything like that to school, but I don't wear baggy sweatsuits, either. Sometimes I wear sexy-ish clothes, sometimes I don't.

“You're fifteen years old,” she says.

“Almost sixteen,” I remind her.

“You are fifteen years old,” she repeats. “You're just a little girl and you want to wear that? You want to go out in public like that? When did this happen?”

Haley looks scared. I am scared. I have no idea what is going on. And why is she calling me a little girl?

“What's wrong with the dress? It's long. It's not even strapless. It's not like my boobs are falling out of it. Mom, you're acting crazy.”

She stands up. “I will not buy you a dress like that, Mia. You are not an adult, you are not a prostitute, and you aren't going to dress like one. Find something else.” She hands me the pile of pastel gowns she dropped on the floor and leaves the dressing room.

“What just happened?” whispers Haley.

“I have no idea.”

We leave the mall twenty minutes later carrying a pale pink dress with cap sleeves and a long, straight skirt, the dress Mom liked best, which, compared with the black dress, strongly resembles a pink Hefty bag.

I suspect that some strange alien workaholic nun has possessed my mother's body. Because she is not in her right mind, I can't be expected to do what she wants me to, right? Desperate times call for desperate measures, so I resort to emergency tactics, more specifically the old ask-the-parent-who-is-more-likely-to-give-you-what-you-want-and-leave-the-other-one-out-of-it maneuver.

I call Dad after Mom drops us off; she has to go back to work to handle some kind of crisis. “I was wondering if you could take me shopping for a prom dress. Mom doesn't have enough time to go with me.”

On Saturday my dad picks me up thirty minutes later than the time we agreed on, and Paloma is in the car with him. I sit in the backseat while Dad and Paloma chat in Spanish. From
what I understand, and from the frequent mention of the word
prom,
I gather that he is telling her how prom works. When we get to the mall, I lead them straight to the black dress. I try it on, just to make it seem like I am really shopping.