The Second Summer of the Sisterhood (14 page)

T
ibby felt the heat of Alex’s body as he leaned close to her. His chin was probably less than six inches from her shoulder.

“I love this,” he said.

No, I love this,
she thought.

It was a series of fast clips of her mother not having enough time. It had been a setup, really. Tibby had told her mom she wanted to do an interview, and Alice had spent most of the weekend putting her off. First with the towel on her head and her toenail polish drying. “Honey, can we do it later?” Then poking her head out of the bathroom. “Sweetie, I just don’t have time this minute.” Then frustrated and shiny up to her elbows in pink ground beef, making hamburgers for the cookout. “Can you just wait till I’m finished making these?”

Tibby ran the clips shorter and faster as they mounted. Gradually she increased the speed of the video so her mother’s voice got higher and her movements increasingly jerky as the documentary progressed.

“Why don’t you throw this in?” he asked. It was a close-up of red Popsicle juice running down Nicky’s forearm.

“Why?” she asked.

“’Cause it’s a cool shot. Also, you don’t want it to get predictable.”

Tibby turned her face slightly, so she could see more of him. She was both awed and chastened. He was so good at this. Whereas her ideas were predictable.

Subtly he was pushing her past the pure slapstick humor she had begun with, toward a darker, more chaotic portrait. Tibby knew it was more cutting, but it was also more challenging.

For good measure, she threw in a random shot of a yellow patch of grass in her otherwise green backyard.

“Brilliant,” he said, nodding.

He was a good teacher. She was a good student. And Tibby felt some tiny, evil pleasure in the fact that Alex had taken such an interest in her movie, and that Maura had barely begun filming.

Tibby glided all the way back to her dorm on the word
brilliant.

When she got to her room, Brian was there.

“Hey,” she said, surprised.

“I came back. Is that okay?”

She nodded. Part of her wasn’t so sure.

“I wanted to see how your movie was coming.”

“Thanks,” she said. She knew the last time he’d come, he’d made himself indispensable to a local copy shop whose computer network had been on the fritz. At least he’d be working.

She looked at Brian’s thoughtless clothing. What was his home like that he seemed to want to be in it so little? She wondered, and yet she didn’t ask him about it, did she? For years his life had been a video game in front of a 7-Eleven. Now, it appeared, it was Tibby.

“I have to work a lot,” she said. “I’m supposed to show the first cut on Sunday. We’re giving a little film festival for Parents’ Day,” she explained.

“That’s okay. I have stuff to do too.” Brian settled himself on the floor with his notebooks and pencils to demonstrate.

Tibby set her computer up at her desk. She needed to lay in the soundtrack tonight. She had thought she knew what songs she wanted, but now that she’d seen what Alex was working on, she was worried hers were too . . . predictable. She thought of all his hand-printed CD cases. He probably knew all the musicians personally. She felt like a stupid teenybopper, buying her CDs at Sam Goody.

She set about finding some lesser-known songs from lesser-known bands. She could create a hodgepodge and vary the speed so the actual songs would be almost unrecognizable.

She played the sequence she and Alex had worked on. She played it over. She cued up the song she wanted and sped it up to herky-jerky speed. She was deep in concentration when she realized Brian was looking over her shoulder. She turned around, trying to block his view of the screen with her head.

“What?”

“Is that it?”

“A part of it,” she said a little defensively.

His eyes were troubled. “Do you think your mom might be upset if you show her in the bathroom with a towel on her head?” He asked it as a real question, not an accusation.

She looked at him as if he were some kind of doofus. “It’s a
film
. Her feelings aren’t the point. It’s supposed to be . . . you know, like, art.”

Brian wasn’t backing off, art or not. “But if she sees it, it might make her sad,” he said simply.

“For starters, she isn’t going to see it. Do you seriously think my mother would show up for Parents’ Day? She doesn’t have time to read my report card.”

“But won’t you feel bad, making a movie about her that you wouldn’t let her see?”

“I’m not saying I wouldn’t let her see it!” Tibby snapped. “It’s totally fine if she sees it. I don’t care. I’m just saying, there’s no way she’s showing up for the festival, so it’s kind of irrelevant.”

Brian didn’t say anything more, and he didn’t watch any more of her movie. Quietly he drew as she played a loud section of a song again and again and again at varying speeds. That night there wasn’t any whistling.

“I guess she’s still angry. I’m not sure. She isn’t talking to me,” Lena said, squeezing the phone to her ear with her shoulder as she used both hands to hang up blouses.

There was always so much clothing to put back. For every twenty pieces of clothing a shopper tried on, she usually bought about one. And when Lena had anything to do with it, she bought none. Lena had no knack for sales.

“What a surreal party. At least I got a lot of it on film,” Tibby said.

Lena noticed the disjointed music in the background. Tibby was too progressive to like anything that just sounded good.

“Did you film the argument?” Lena asked heavily. She wasn’t sure why the mothers’ discord bothered her so much. Well, unless you considered that it was all her fault. There was that detail.

“Some of it. By mistake I erased the end of it, though, when I was filming my mom racing around the house with a diaper wipe stuck to her heel.”

Lena laughed anemically. “Oh.”

“My mom is a freak. When I left, she was still rambling and muttering about how your mother should be more open with you. Like my mom would spend ten seconds telling me anything.”

Lena clamped a bunch of hangers under her arm. “Yeah,” she said absently.

There was silence on the other end.

Lena suddenly realized she had broken a basic rule. You could rail against your mother. You could listen patiently while your friend railed against her mother. But you must never rail against your friend’s mother or agree with aforementioned railing.

Lena hadn’t meant to do it, but it was too late now.

“It’s not like she’s the only freak,” Tibby said, a little quietly.

“Yes. No. I mean, no.” Lena was trying to get a slippery blouse onto a hanger. She’d never been good at doing two things at once.

“And maybe you shouldn’t have tricked her into telling you about that guy.”

“Tibby, I didn’t trick her.” Lena stopped herself. Yes, she had. “I mean, I’m sorry if I tricked her, but still, she didn’t have to—” By mistake, Lena pushed a number with her cheek.
Beeeep.

“She didn’t have to what?” Tibby snapped combatively. “Tell you all that stuff you were trying to get her to tell you?”

“No, I mean . . .”

“Excuse me. Uh, hello?” A woman was waving at Lena from a fitting room. Lena could hear her voice and see the arm.

In her anxiety, Lena let the blouses swish to her feet. She stepped on the arm of one. “Tibby, I—I can’t—”

“The sad thing is, my mom was trying to be big pals with you.”

Lena’s frustration bubbled over.

“Tibby! I’m not criticizing your mom! You’re the one making a film of her trailing a diaper wipe around the house!”

Tibby was quiet. Lena felt horrible. “Tib, I’m sorry,” she said gently.

“I’ve gotta go. Bye,” Tibby said, and she hung up.

The four of them had a policy that they never hung up on each other, no matter how mad they were. Tibby had come about as close as you could get.

“Excuse me?” the shopper called again.

Lena felt like crying. She dragged herself over to the fitting room. “Yes. Can I help you?”

“Do you have these in the next bigger size?” The woman waved a pair of pants over the curtain.

Lena grabbed them and headed for the racks. Women always seemed to bring the size they wished they were to the fitting room, rather than the size that would actually fit. Lena fetched the pants in a twelve.

“Here you go,” she said.

A minute later the woman appeared in the twelves. She had faded red hair and a pale complexion. “What do you think?” she asked Lena, looking hopeful.

Lena was preoccupied. She was still staring at the phone as though it had pinched her. “Well, I’d say they look a bit tight.” Lena tended to favor truth over charity.

“Oh. Maybe you’re right.” The lady disengaged quickly from the mirror.

“I think we might have them in a fourteen,” Lena offered.

The woman didn’t seem to want to consider that. She left a few minutes later without buying anything. Better not to buy anything than to face life as a size fourteen when you believed you were a size ten.

Lena still held the phone as she watched her sole customer trudge out of the store. Maybe it wasn’t such a mystery why Lena didn’t earn any commissions.

Carmen punched her mother’s cell phone number into her own cell phone. She stuck a finger in her free ear to lessen the noise of the coffee shop.

It wasn’t in service. Christina had turned it off. Unbelievable! What if Carmen were in an accident? What if she were lying by the side of the road, bleeding? She wished she
were
lying by the side of the road, bleeding.

“Is everything okay?” Porter asked.

Carmen realized she had inadvertently been making a by-the-side-of-the-road-bleeding face.

“Yeah.” She tried to rearrange her face. “I just can’t get hold of my mom.”

“Is it urgent? Because we could . . .”

No, it’s not urgent,
Carmen felt like snapping at him.
I have nothing to say to her at all. I just want to bother her and ruin her date.

Porter’s lips were moving and he seemed to be suggesting some possible course of action, but Carmen wasn’t listening.

She waved her hand. “It’s fine. It’s nothing.” She stared grimly at her pink milk shake.

“Okay, well . . .” Porter pushed his own milk shake glass aside. To his credit, he didn’t make a loud burbling, sucking effort to get at the last bit. He got his wallet. “The movie is starting in fifteen minutes. We should probably get going.”

Carmen nodded blankly. Her mind was already fixed on another subject. Her mother had been whizzing around the house all day like Martha Stewart on amphetamines. She had repapered the shelves in the kitchen and arranged tulips over the mantel in the living room. Carmen had figured Christina was just shedding happiness and beauty all over the world, but now she had a darker suspicion. What if Christina had said okay to Carmen’s 10:20 movie because she secretly intended to bring David back to the apartment? What if they were going to . . .

Okay, no. Carmen didn’t need to think about that.

But seriously, did her mother think it was okay to just bring a guy back to her apartment—to
Carmen’s
apartment and—and—

Carmen was mad now. This was not okay.

She put her palm to her head. “You know what, Porter?”

He looked at her doubtfully, check in hand. “What?”

“I think I have a sinus infection.” She could have just said headache, but this sounded more authentic. “I’m thinking I should probably skip the movie tonight.”

“Oh. That’s too bad.” He looked disappointed. And for the first time he looked like it might have dawned on him that he was getting jerked around.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She
was
sorry. She didn’t want to be the jerk jerking him around.

“I’ll give you a lift home, then,” he mumbled, standing up.

“I could just walk,” she mumbled back.

“I’m not going to let you walk home if you’re sick,” he said. There was a glint in his eye that challenged her. It conveyed some kind of understanding.

A few minutes later she let herself into the apartment with a self-conscious amount of noise. She considered being quiet, but God knew what she’d see if she didn’t give a little warning. She banged the door shut behind her. She jangled her keys again. She took several strides into the living room and jangled them yet again.

Silence.

They weren’t in the kitchen or the living room. That basically left Christina’s bedroom, the worst of the alternatives. Carmen sucked in her breath and ventured that way, not quite sure what she would do when she got there.

Her heart pounding, she entered the short hallway that led to the bedroom. One step. Two.

She stopped. The door was open, she could see that now. Christina’s bed was just as she’d left it—piled high with rejected date outfits.

“Hello?” Carmen called out in general. Her voice cracked. She sounded pathetic.

There was nobody there. Even though that should have made Carmen happy, it made her sad.

She sat stiffly in the kitchen. She realized after a while that she was still gripping her bag and her keys.