The Awesome Girl's Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men (7 page)

“Lisa?” came Thursday’s voice.

“Thursday?” I said, confused, because, “Aren’t you in China?”

“Yes, but I’m about to get on a plane now. My mom was in a car accident. A really bad one. And they don’t know if she’s going to be okay.”

There was naked terror in her voice and I didn’t know what to say. I wished she’d called Sharita instead, because Sharita wasn’t the daughter of
stern immigrant Republicans who didn’t believe in saying “I love you.” I asked her, “Did you call Sharita? You should call Sharita.”

“She wasn’t in her room.”

“Well, fuck, then I guess all I can say is I’m sorry, dude. I hope she’s okay.”

Thursday sounded more confused than sad, like she was trying to figure out how her otherwise charmed life had taken this turn. “Yeah,” she said. “Me, too. I’ve got to go. They just made the boarding announcement. Thanks, Lisa.”

Then she hung up and I wondered why she thanked me, since I’m fucking useless in a crisis. I felt a little mad at myself then, a microcosmic preview of how I would feel three years later when I blew it with The One.

This call happened just two months before the Sweet Janes, my high school band from Orange County, scored a record deal, two months before I came out to my parents, and two months before I dropped out of Smith College.

SHARITA

I
wished Marcus had given me his e-mail address, because I had been playing phone tag with him ever since the first night he called. It seemed like every time I decided to turn off my ringer to get work done, that’s when he would decide to call.

And then when I got his message and called him back, I’d get his voicemail. Real frustrating, and we still hadn’t been able to schedule happy hour drinks.

So when my phone rang in the middle of lunch, which I was eating at my desk, I picked it up on the first ring, hoping it was him. But it was Risa.

“Hey, girl,” I said, picking up. “You’re not canceling for
Stargate
on Tuesday, are you?”

“No, we’re still on,” Risa said. “What you eating for lunch today?”

“I’m not going to tell you,” I answered.

“McDonalds?” Risa asked. “Burger King?”

“No,” I said, feeling more than a little accused. Being friends with Risa was like being friends with the food police.

“What else is over by where you work?” Then she remembered. “Eww! You’re eating Boston Market? That’s, like, a million calories. Gross.”

I stabbed at my Boston Market macaroni, taking another bite anyway. I could and usually did point out that Risa’s habit of smoking was more gross and would kill her a lot quicker than my own thirty or so extra pounds, but I needed to get back to work, so I just asked, “Is there a reason you’re calling?”

“Yeah, I was counting the shit on my fingers, and did you know that today isn’t just the anniversary of Thursday’s mom’s death, but it’s, like, the tenth anniversary?”

“We should do something for her,” I said, putting my fork down.

“Yeah, but what do you do for the tenth anniversary of a death? You can’t exactly pick up a gift for that shit, right?”

We’d had a similar conversation ten years before when Risa had shown up at the front door of Tyler House. I had been watching
ER
, sitting in one of the living room’s sofa chairs with many of my housemates sprawled out around me on the floor and the two couches. Most of the houses at Smith were converted mansions and, therefore, when people came to visit they had to ring a doorbell. But we’d all been surprised when it sounded that night.

“Who’s ringing the doorbell during
ER
?” one of the Asian pre-meds asked.
ER
hour was sacrosanct among the pre-med students and often the only time they came away from their constant studying to do something even halfway social.

“I’m on door duty,” a square-faced blonde said from her position on the second couch. She was still wearing her riding boots from her after-dinner horse ride on the chestnut she kept stabled at Smith. They thunked against the hardwood floors when she jogged to answer the door.

“Sharita, it’s Lisa!” the girl who answered the door called out.

A few schoolgirl giggles rose up around me. Whip thin with a spiky hairstyle that made her look like the Ghanaian female version of David Bowie, Lisa was what was referred to at our college as a BDOC or a Big Dyke on Campus. And since our first year, my fellow Smithies had treated her like the rock star she fully intended to become someday.

In fact, it surprised me to see Lisa standing in the hallway outside the living room without her guitar, which she carried around with her everywhere mostly for effect. Her band was still back in California, but she claimed that carrying the guitar made girls both lesbian and LUG (lesbian until graduation) swoon.

“Hello, white girls!” Lisa called out from the hallway, even though there were also two Asian women in the small crowd of Smithies watching the TV.

Lisa was a whiz at delivering an insulting line in a way that only produced giggles from her insultees. “Hi, Lisa!” they all called back.

Mind you, these were the women who would grow up to become some of our nation’s most respected leaders and power-listers. But all pajamaed up in front of
ER
, they were reduced to giggling fans when Lisa entered the scene.

I got up to go talk with her in the hallway.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “
ER
’s on.”

“Sorry I’m making you miss your doctor show, but Thursday just called. Her mom’s in the hospital. It’s bad. Like, really bad.”

“Oh,” I said, thoroughly chastened. “We should do something.”

“Yeah, I know,” Lisa agreed. “But what?”

THURSDAY

S
o this was how I spent the anniversary of my mother’s death: checking my cell phone. I checked my phone when I came back from pouring my morning coffee in the lunchroom; I checked my phone when I returned from my morning constitutional in the restroom. Then I went to ask my co-worker for a file that he needed for insurance purposes but that I also needed to update a contract. We talked over the problem for a full two minutes before he agreed to hand deliver it to my cubicle when he was finished with it. And as soon as I touched back down at my desk, I checked my phone again, but Caleb still hadn’t called.

“Oh no, it sounded like he liked you,” my sister, Janine, said when I called her after work on my drive back to North Hollywood. We always called each other on the anniversary of our mother’s death, but we never spoke about it or admitted that this was why we were calling. Talking to each other about our mother was just too painful, and we had come to a silent agreement not to bring her up anymore.

“But I’m surprised by your reaction,” my sister said. “It’s not like you to sweat a guy.”

“I’m not sweating him,” I said. “I’m just ready for something more, and I thought he liked me. He laughed at all my jokes and said that he wanted to come see me perform.”

“Well, don’t let him see your routine,” Janine said. “All your jokes are about how bad black men are. That’s not a good look.”

“Whatever, Janine,” I said. “
The Awesome Girl’s Guide
says there’s nothing wrong with aggressively being yourself.”

“I’m not saying don’t be yourself, I’m just saying—where are you going, Gavin? Come back … S-word, Bem! Bem, can you come watch your son?”

I could hear Gavin burst into tears on the other side of the line. “Mama!” he said, wailing like he was auditioning for one of the kids in
Sophie’s Choice
. “I want Mama! No! No! Mama!”

“Mama’s talking to Auntie Day, honey,” Janine answered, her voice pleasant enough, but then she yelled even louder. “Bem! Can you come down here?”

More crying from Gavin, but no answer from her husband, Bem.

Janine had simpered and cooked her way into the heart of her Nigerian fellow chemical-engineering major back in college and was now married with two kids. She often complained bitterly about how though she and her husband were at the exact same place in their careers, she was still doing all of the cooking plus most of the child rearing and housework, while Bem sat around “decompressing” after work.

“Get a divorce lawyer and serve him,” I said right after Gavin had been born and Bem informed Janine that the men in his family didn’t change diapers. “What’s the point of having a husband if he’s not changing diapers? He’s basically a sperm donor who also expects you to cook his dinner for the rest of his life.” But Janine didn’t listen to me and now look at her.

“For F-word sake,” Janine said with a heavy sigh. “I have to pick him up or he’ll be all traumatized because I didn’t comfort him within five minutes or whatever. Gotta go, sorry.”

She hung up before I could answer, which left me feeling a little bewildered as I tossed my cell and hands-free earphone back into my purse. I mean, if I could listen to that exchange and still feel my relatively new desire for a husband and family of my own burning strong, then maybe I really was ready to settle down.

If only Caleb would call. I started rummaging around my purse to dig my cell back out and check my messages again. I could just feel the phone on the tips of my fingers when—

Don’t be pathetic.
Unbidden, my mother’s voice sprang into my head. No, not her voice, but her words. Her dying words.

The freeway faded into the background, and I could see myself getting off the plane to JFK from Detroit, which was where I had connected after my flight from China. It was early in the afternoon, almost a full day after my father had called to tell me about my mother’s accident.

But instead of my father, I found his personal assistant, Brenda, waiting for me at the gate when I walked off the plane. That was back when they still let people wait at the gate for you, just a year before 9/11.

I slowed. “What are you doing here?” I asked her.

Coltishly thin, light-skinned, and perfectly coiffed in a chignon, pant-suit, and expensive perfume, Brenda would strike anyone as the exact opposite of my plump, mud-brown, all-natural, hemp-clothes-wearing former Black Students Alliance president mother, who always smelled faintly of sandalwood oil.

Which is why Janine and I had been so surprised to figure out a few years prior that Brenda was also my father’s mistress.

One Monday, not knowing that it was a federal holiday (one of the those only acknowledged by schools, banks, and the post office with days off), my father had come home during the time that my mother usually drove us to Choate. Janine and I had been coming down the stairs for breakfast, still dressed in our pajamas, when we had caught our dad coming through the front door. He reeked of Chanel No. 5, an old-school scent from the generation of perfumes that clung to anything or anyone its wearer touched.

We knew this, because Brenda had hugged us good-bye on plenty of occasions and left us smelling of her.

“Where have you been?” Janine asked him, her voice small.

“At the studio,” my father answered. “Here, you two come down, so I can come up. I need a shower and nap bad.”

The stairs were too narrow for two sisters and a father to pass in opposite directions.

So we came down and I even said, “Sleep tight, Daddy,” as he climbed the stairs, the scent of his lies trailing behind him. My sister and I, despite having caught him together, never talked about our twin realization to each other. I think we both thought that to say it out loud, even just to each other, would only widen the rift between our parents, perhaps even destroy our family. We didn’t know back then that our family unit had already been tagged for demolition.

“Rick is at the hospital with your sister,” Brenda informed me, brusque and business-like. “He didn’t want to leave your mother’s side.”

If she was bitter about that, she didn’t let it show on her face.

“Fine,” I said. “I don’t have any other way to get to the hospital, so let’s just go, I guess.”

“Rick wants me to take you home first. He needs you to pick up a few things for your mother,” Brenda said.

I wanted to ask, “What things?” because I couldn’t think of anything that would be more important than seeing my mother. But distaste and hope argued with me. Distaste put forth that I didn’t want to have a conversation with my father’s mistress about my mother. It felt wrong in every way. And hope pointed out that my mother must be out of the ICU if my father wanted me to bring a few of her things to the hospital.