Girlfriend Material (17 page)

“I know,” said Jenna. “Each time I see it, I can’t believe it.”

Standing there with the two of them, the memory of the whales still alive on the back of my retinas, I felt happier than I could ever remember feeling. It was like my whole life had been leading up to that moment of the whale bursting out of the sea, drops of water shimmering off as it leaped to the sun. It made me want to be a great writer, to find the language to capture and communicate the feeling of perfect calm I was experiencing.

“Remember last summer when we came with Biff and Molly, and Molly puked the whole time and missed the whales?” said Sarah.

“Oh God,” said Jenna. “I forgot about that. But I thought she ended up getting to see a whale at the end.”

Sarah shook her head. “That was another trip. When she took the Dramamine.”

“Poor Molly,” said Jenna.

“Who’s Molly?” I asked. I wondered if she was someone else they went to school with who summered up here. Maybe she’d become one of my new friends too.

“Adam’s girlfriend,” Sarah explained.

Still under the spell of the whales, I wasn’t quite following the conversation with my whole brain. “Adam who?” I said.

“Adam Carpenter,” said Jenna. Then she punched me lightly on the arm. “Adam Adam. Our Adam.”

“Oh,” I said, suddenly interested. I still didn’t know anything about Adam’s dating history—here was clearly my chance to find out. “Adam went out with a girl named Molly?”

I swear, I hadn’t meant my use of the past tense as a challenge, just a statement of fact. Adam used to go out with a girl named Molly. Now he was on a fishing trip thinking about me.

“Not
went
,” corrected Jenna. “
Goes
. She spends the summer in New Hampshire with her family, but I think she’s probably coming up in August like usual.” She looked at Sarah to confirm.

“Far as I know,” said Sarah.

It was like they were speaking a million miles away. I could barely hear them.

“Are you okay?” said Jenna. “Are you feeling sick?”

My knees were soft, and I wondered how much longer they would be able to support my weight. Adam had a girlfriend?
A girlfriend?
“I’m fine,” I lied.

“That’s what Molly said,” said Sarah, slipping her hand under my elbow. “Then she went down below and we never saw her again.”

“Let’s get you to a seat,” said Jenna, taking my other arm.

The three of us slowly made our way downstairs to a seat.

“I’ll get you a ginger ale,” said Jenna. “You look pretty green.”

As she walked away, Sarah said, “You’ll feel better as soon as we get on land.”

“Sure,” I said, wishing the thing that was making me sick were as temporary as our whale watch. “Sure.”

There were no more whale sightings for the rest of the trip, so it didn’t matter that Jenna and Sarah and I stayed below deck. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the back of a bench, half hoping and half fearing I’d hear more about Molly.

They didn’t mention her again, though. Not then, and not on the ride home. I know because even though I pretended to be asleep, I was listening the whole time.

IT RAINED NONSTOP
for the next two days. I hoped wherever Adam and Lawrence were that it was raining there too, that their tent and their sleeping bags were soaked, that their boat had capsized. I hoped Adam got trench foot or whatever it is you get from wearing wet socks and shoes for too long.

I hoped he got gangrene.

I threw out
A Moveable Feast
. At dinner with her parents and my mom and Jamie the day after our whale watch, Sarah invited me to a movie with her and Jenna, but I was so afraid that if I went they would mention Molly
(Isn’t she doing a modeling shoot at the end of the summer? Remember when she got that award for being the smartest, funniest person in the junior class? I can’t recall—was it freshman or sophomore year that they were voted couple most likely to live happily ever?)
that I said I was still feeling sick from the boat trip.

It wasn’t a lie either. I felt like such an idiot. I ran our time together over and over in my head until it felt as grainy as an old family movie. Why had I kissed him that night at the beach? Had he even wanted to kiss me back or had he just wanted to be polite? But if he’d just wanted to be polite, what about our day in Provincetown? What about
I like you too
?

He certainly hadn’t acted like someone who was just being polite. I remembered his hands on my face in the car that night.
I can’t stop kissing you.

Why not, Adam? Because as long as your tongue’s in someone’s mouth, you can’t talk about your
girlfriend
?

By Tuesday morning I was in the worst mood I’d been in for as long as I could remember. I knew Adam and Lawrence were coming back today or tomorrow, and just the idea of seeing Adam made my stomach knot up. What was I supposed to do when we all met up at Larkspur or The Clam Shack: feign interest in his fishing trip? Suddenly the fact that he hadn’t told Lawrence he was with me in Provincetown made perfect sense. Of course he’d wanted to keep it secret—I was like his mistress or something.

I tried to think about how Lady Brett Ashley would have handled things if she’d found herself in my situation, but it was impossible. Lady Brett is never the
other
woman, she’s always
the
woman. I mean, I’m not holding her up as some kind of moral compass, what with her having a lot of affairs and cheating on her fiancé all the time and everything. But the point is, she was never a victim.

How I’d managed to go from jaunty, potential girlfriend to victimized piece on the side, I’ll never know. But here I was.

As if to mock my sour mood, the sun was shining brightly. When I went outside to go for a run, in the hope that endorphins pumping through my system might make me not feel like killing myself, my mom was sitting on the deck with her cell phone on her lap. I wondered if she was waiting for my dad to call, and for the first time since she’d dragged me across the country, I actually felt a little bit sorry for her. I mean, okay, it was annoying that she was so desperate for her husband’s attention she’d go to these absurd lengths to get it, but wasn’t it kind of lame that my dad wouldn’t just give her the attention she wanted without her begging for it? Would it have killed my dad to, like, take his wife out for dinner once in a while or tell her she looked beautiful or just buy her a dozen roses if that’s what she wanted? I mean, yes, it’s dumb to want a watch or a pair of diamond earrings or a compliment about the sofa’s new slipcovers as desperately as my mom appeared to want these things, but she
did
want these things and he
had
married her.

How did you end up as a forty-five-year-old woman sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring like you were still in high school? “Hi, honey,” said my mom, turning around at the sound of the door sliding open.

“How’d you sleep?”

“Okay,” I said. I gestured at the phone. “Are you waiting for Dad to call?”

“No, Jamie, actually,” she said. “He went to town to buy fish for dinner tonight, and he’s going to call and tell me what’s available.”

How creepy was it that my mom was waiting for a guy other than her husband to call? Was
anyone
faithful anymore?

“Jamie’s so lame,” I said.

“Why would you say that?” asked my mom. “He’s a lovely man.”

Now I was really getting irritated. It was one thing for Jamie to flirt with my mom, another for my mom to defend him to me.

Plus, I happen to hate the word
lovely
.

“What do you mean, he’s
lovely
?” I said. “He’s not
lovely
. He’s trying to get with another man’s wife. That’s, like, the opposite of lovely.”

“Katie, you’re just being paranoid,” she said. “We’re old, old friends.” Paranoid?
Paranoid?
Paranoid like when I thought it was significant that Adam didn’t tell Lawrence I was sitting in the restaurant with him? Was that the kind of paranoid my mother meant? “It’s weird, Mom. You’re married.”

“I know I’m married, Katherine.” My mom only calls me Katherine when she’s completely annoyed with me. “Believe me, I’m spending a lot of time thinking about the fact that I’m married.”

I don’t know if I would have gotten so mad at her if I hadn’t been so wildly pissed off at Adam even before the conversation started, but unfortunately I was, and I did.

“Oh really, mom? That’s what you call spending all your time talking with Jamie and Henry and Tina about life in New York—‘thinking about the fact that you’re married’? If you’re so bored and unhappy in Salt Lake, why don’t you do something about your life instead of just pretending you’re still some twenty-something single woman living with your friends in New York?”

“I’m not pretending anything, Kate.”

“What are you going to do, leave Dad for Jamie? Be somebody else’s wife? Why don’t you take some responsibility for your choices instead of blaming it all on Dad and the fact that you’re married to him?”

Her mouth dropped open. “You don’t know anything about what you’re saying,” she said.

“All you want is some guy to make you feel important. Did it ever occur to you to maybe be a better role model for your daughters?” Even as the words came out of my mouth, I realized how absurd they were. I mean, it wasn’t my mom’s fault that I’d been so happy when I’d thought Adam liked me. And it certainly wasn’t her fault that he’d turned out to be with someone else.

“You watch your mouth, young lady!”

But I was on a roll. It felt so good to be yelling, I couldn’t have stopped if I’d tried. “No, no I won’t watch my mouth. ‘Buy me this! Buy me that!’ That’s all you ever say. And then when Dad works hard to buy you the stupid stuff you want, you’re like, ‘Why are you working so hard? You should be admiring me more!’”

The last word had barely left my mouth when I felt my mother’s hand smack against my cheek. The sound echoed in the air, sharp as a gunshot.

My mom and I looked at each other, then she folded her arms across her chest. “Don’t speak to me until you’re ready to apologize,” she said.

I was crying, and it wasn’t just because she’d hit me. I couldn’t believe what I’d just said to my mom—it was really awful. But I couldn’t take it back either. Just thinking about what a mean daughter I was made me cry even harder.

My mom stared at me. “I mean it,” she said. Then she walked off the deck and up to the main house without another word.

I didn’t see my mom for the rest of the day, which may have had something to do with my hiding out in the Cooper-Melnick den watching old movies. At around four o’clock my phone rang, but it was Meg so I didn’t pick up. I could already hear her lecturing me like some mini-mom. An hour later, when my phone rang again, I did pick it up. I knew my dad would at least listen to my version of the argument.

“Hey, Daddy,” I said.

“Kate, I’m very disturbed by the things you said to your mother today,” he said.

Of course. Nothing could unite my parents so effectively as the malfeasance of one of their daughters. Years ago, Meg took the car without permission (and without a license). The whole time my parents were outlining her punishment to her, they sat so close to each other and agreed with one another so passionately, you would have thought they were renewing their vows.

“Let me get this straight—you’re mad that I told your wife not to flirt with another man?” This was really too much.

“Kate, that is not your place. You have no business implying your mother’s behavior is inappropriate.”

It wasn’t like I didn’t already feel bad about what I’d said to my mom. And who was my dad—the whole reason my mom was unhappy in the first place—to tell me I was the one who had upset her. “How about your behavior, Dad? How about how you never do anything she asks you to?”

“How about you don’t talk to me that way, Katherine.” My dad was really mad now, and I had the feeling that if we hadn’t been separated by the better part of a continent, he might have slapped me too.

“Whatever, Dad,” I said. “It’s your messed up life.”

As if he and my mom had compared notes, he echoed her threat to me. “Watch your mouth, young lady,” he said. “You’re treading on very thin ice.”

“Yeah, well, I gotta go,” I said. I was crying again, which was completely infuriating.

I hung up the phone and took
Casablanca
off pause. Ingrid Bergman’s beautiful face filled the screen. “Play it, Sam,” she said.

A shadow filled the doorway, and for a brief second I thought it might be my mom, but it was Sarah. “Hey, can I join you?” she asked, which was nice considering it was her house and everything.

“Sure.”

Given that I hadn’t talked to my best friend in over a week, the guy I’d thought was about to declare his love for me actually loved someone else, and both of my parents thought I was some kind of bad seed, there weren’t many people in my life for me to watch a movie with.

I moved the empty DVD case to the arm of the couch to make room for her, but Sarah stayed where she was. It seemed kind of strange, but I figured it was none of my business if she liked to watch TV standing in doorways. Just as I reached for the remote control, she suddenly blurted out, “I’m really sorry. About how I acted.” Then she added, “When you first got here.”