The Snowball Effect (7 page)

K
ara called me at work the next morning. “Christine wants to have a reunion dinner with the Old Crew.”

It had been only a couple of weeks since graduation, but of course Christine wanted to have a reunion dinner.

“When?” I asked.

“Tonight at Lobster Larry's.”

“Tonight?”

“Lainey! Come on. It'll be fun.”

“How will it be fun?”

“You'll get to see me.”

“I can see you without Christine and all her jock friends.”

“Please?”

I sighed. “All right. We'll be there.” I answered for myself and Riley. We were the kind of couple that had been together so long, our friends didn't call us up and
say, “Come to a party; bring your boyfriend too.” If you invited one of us, you were inviting both of us.

The Old Crew was how I'd met Riley. Kara joined the volleyball team in ninth grade, and that's when she became friends with Christine and all of Christine's friends. I'd been Kara's best friend for years and wasn't about to let her ditch me for a bunch of jocks, so I latched onto their group. The Old Crew also consisted of a bunch of guys from the boys' soccer team, including Riley and Christine's boyfriend, Wallace.

When I got home from work that afternoon, I found a note from Vallery on the kitchen table. Actually, it was more like a calendar, with her name and my name written on alternating days.

I went into the living room and found Collin on the floor watching cartoons and singing his favorite jingle, the one for Sparkly Clean dish detergent.

“Enjoy your feast—then cut the grease! CUT THE GREASE!” He loved the jingles that rhymed.

Vallery lay on the couch behind him with a wet washcloth on her face.

“Hey, Collin,” I said. “How was your day?”

“I had a Bad Morning,” he said.

“What happened?”

He shrugged.

“But you're having a Good Afternoon?”

He nodded. “I shut my fucking mouth and had lunch. Like a good boy.”

I kissed him on the forehead. “You know that's a bad word.”

“Vallery said it.”

“Don't say it again. Okay?”

He nodded. I eased myself up on the couch by Vallery's feet.

“How was your day?” I asked Vallery. I was kind of being sarcastic, since I already knew it had been awful.

“Screw you,” she mumbled. “I've heard that stupid jingle seventy-five million times.”

“Aren't you going to ask how my day was?”

“You work at the
mall
. I know how your day was.”

I reached over and yanked the washcloth off her face. “What's up with the note on the table?”

“I think we should have a schedule. You keep Collin one night and I'll keep him the next night; otherwise I'm not going to get any friggin' sleep.”

“That sounds fair.”

“So you agree to it?”

I nodded. “Sure. You've really had a bad day, huh?”

“I'm still adjusting.”

“Well, I'm here now, so why don't you take a break? Get out of the house or something?”

“Are you serious?” she asked.

“Yeah. Go get something to eat or take a walk or whatever. We'll be okay.”

Vallery sat up and kissed me on the cheek. Then she grabbed her purse and headed out to the Mustang.

“Where's Vallery?” Collin asked.

“I don't know. Going back where she came from?”

“Really?”

I shrugged. “No. Probably not.”

I figured Vallery wouldn't come back anytime soon, and I was right. When Riley came over to pick us up for dinner, Vallery still wasn't home. Unfortunately, Collin having a Good Afternoon was no indication that Collin would have a Good Evening, and I was really worried about taking him to the restaurant.

“I have Collin,” I said to Riley when he walked in, “so we should take the Grand Am.”

“Vallery go back to Texas?” he asked.

I grinned. “I made that joke earlier.”

He sighed and shook his head. “Guess I need to step up my act.”

Riley put Collin's shoes on and we went out to the car. I tossed the keys to Riley and helped Collin into the backseat. When I tried to cross the seat belt over his booster seat, he smacked my hand away.

“Collin,” I said, and gave him Carl's Look of Doom. “I need to buckle you in.”

“No.” He yanked the strap away from me.

I yanked it back. “You need to let me buckle it. We're going for a ride.”

“No.”

“Fine. Fly out of the car. See if I care.” I slammed the door and started to climb into the passenger seat.

“What are you doing?” Riley asked. “That's not safe.”

“Then you buckle him in.”

Riley shook his head and twisted around in his seat. “Come on, Collin. We're going for a ride. We need to be safe.”

I sat in the front seat and rolled my eyes as Riley coaxed Collin into sitting still while he buckled him in.

“You just have to know how to talk to him,” Riley said as he turned back around. I rolled my eyes again. I'd just tried
the same thing
and it hadn't worked.

Riley turned the key. Nothing happened.

I sighed. “I'll get it.” Riley popped the hood, and I jumped out of the car and jiggled the battery wires.

Collin sang along with the radio the entire way to Lobster Larry's. I kept switching stations, trying to find something he didn't know so we could get a moment of silence, but he seemed to know every word to every song ever recorded. Ever.

Riley parked. I got out and opened Collin's door.

“Play Baby?” he asked as I unbuckled him.

“All right,” I said. When Collin wanted to play, usually that meant he was in a good mood and he wouldn't start screaming. Usually. I had no desire to deal with a screaming kid in a restaurant, so I picked him up out of the car and carried him on my hip like he was a baby.

Since we got there late, the Old Crew already had a table. Christine hadn't been expecting Collin, and there were only two extra seats. It didn't matter anyway since
Collin had to sit on my lap. Like a Baby. Whatever. Fine.

Christine jumped up and hugged me. It had been only two weeks, but she was already fatter than at graduation. “Fatter” probably wasn't the proper terminology to use, since she was pregnant. But Christine was kind of chubby even when she wasn't pregnant. “I'm so sorry,” Christine whispered in my ear.

“Not now,” I whispered back. I absolutely didn't want any displays of sympathy there at Lobster Larry's.

I sat down next to Christine, with Baby Collin on my lap. Christine tried to say hi to him, but he had his head buried in my boobs and wouldn't answer her.

I waved at Kara sitting on the other side of the table. She was wearing a mechanic's button-down shirt that said
DEAN
over her hot-pink tank top.

“Who's Dean?” I asked.

She looked down at the shirt and rolled her eyes. “Nobody,” she said. She shot Christine a look, so I guessed they'd already had this conversation. “I bought this from the thrift store.”

“To give the illusion that she has a hot mechanic boyfriend,” Christine added.

“It's just a shirt.”

For as long as we'd been friends, Kara had never had a real boyfriend. She'd been on a few dates, but that was about it. Christine was firmly convinced that Kara was a lesbian. Until I started dating Riley, she'd thought Kara and I were a couple.

There hadn't been a tremendous turnout for the reunion dinner. Kara sat between Joe and Owen. Joe had been on the soccer team with Wallace and Riley. Owen didn't play soccer, but he had dated a girl on the volleyball team with Kara and Christine. After Owen and the girl broke up, everyone at the lunch table liked Owen better, so he stayed and she left. Claudia and Jamie, both volleyball alumni, sat on the other side of Owen. There was a guy I didn't know next to Jamie. Probably her boyfriend. Christine had a strict rule against extraneous girlfriends and boyfriends at Old Crew events, but no one really paid much attention to her.

The waitress came and took our drink orders and dropped off a stack of small plates. The plates at Lobster Larry's were all different colors, and Christine rearranged them and passed them out so that they were in order of the colors of the rainbow. We studied the menu. The waitress brought a basket of biscuits. I fed one to Collin. Kara whipped out her cell phone and called her mother to consult her on what she should order for dinner. “What was that thing I liked when we came to Lobster Larry's that one day?” she asked. “Was it the popcorn shrimp?”

Riley was already deep in conversation with Jamie's new boyfriend. I nudged Christine and pointed to Kara on her cell phone.

“Jeez, did she call her mom again?” Christine asked. We both laughed.

I felt like it was my turn to talk. The obvious thing to
do would be to ask her how the pregnancy was going, but every time I did that, she just went into way too much detail and grossed me out. Before I could think of something polite to say, Christine spoke again.

“So you're raising Collin now?” she asked.

“Um, no.”

“I can't believe you didn't invite us to the funeral.”

“I, uh, didn't send out invitations or anything.”

“We all would have been there for you. Kara made it sound like you didn't want us there.”

“Sorry. Next time I'll send out a group email.”

Christine glared at me. She didn't know how to deal with my sarcasm. “Anyway, your mom didn't leave him to you? You're almost eighteen.”

“He's not a piece of jewelry or something.”

Collin squirmed on my lap. His hand gripped my stomach.

“So who'd she leave him to?”

I sighed. “My sister.”

Christine's eyes widened. “You have a sister?”

“Yes, I have a mysterious sister no one's ever heard of before who's suddenly back in town. Just like on a soap opera. Call me Lainey St. James, okay?”

“I don't watch that show. I like
Days of Our Lives
.”

Collin's grip on my stomach tightened.

I stroked his hair. “Baby Collin,” I whispered, “you're hurting Lainey.”

He slid out of my lap and disappeared under the table.

Christine looked down at the floor. “Do you think he was listening?”

I shrugged. “He was sitting right here.”

“I guess he's pretty upset.”

“It's Collin,” I said. “He's usually upset.”

“But he's like an orphan now.”

“Jesus Christ, Christine,” Wallace interrupted. “Can you talk about something else?”

I tried to catch Wallace's eye to whisper a thank-you to him, but he didn't look back up from his menu.

 

Our food came. I'd ordered chicken strips as usual, and french fries for me and Collin to share. I bent down and pulled up the tablecloth. “Come up and eat some chicken?” I asked, but I knew he wouldn't.

He shook his head. He'd found a toy car on the floor, and he drove it up and down the table legs.

“You want to eat down there?” I asked. He nodded. I slipped him chicken and french fries under the table. And that's how we got through dinner. You didn't expect Collin to behave like a normal kid. You adapted.

Of course we couldn't just leave when we were finished eating; we had to sit and “catch up” for another hour, like we hadn't spent the whole dinner doing that. At one point Riley switched seats with Claudia because she wanted to talk to me. Fortunately she didn't want to have an awkward conversation about my mother. Instead, we had an awkward conversation about this new cosmetics
company she worked for. She tried to convince me to have a “beauty party.” I knew I wouldn't, but I told her I'd think about it, and she gave me a business card. Then she went around to the other side of the table to sit next to Kara and presumably have the exact same conversation.

At the end of the night, Collin didn't want to come up from under the table, so we said our good-byes from our seats. Joe and Claudia left first, then Owen, then Jamie and her boyfriend. As I bent down under the tablecloth and tried to convince Collin that he'd love to go home and watch endless amounts of TV, Kara walked over to our side of the table and raised her carry-out container. “I got the apple pie à la mode for my dad,” she said. “I have to get home before it melts.”

She bent down and waved at Collin. He ignored her. Riley bent down and started talking to Collin. Kara and I hugged. “Thanks for coming out,” she said, and then she left.

Thanks for coming out!
That had been what all of Mabel's church friends would say to Mom whenever Mabel dragged her anywhere after Carl died. Like they had to acknowledge what an effort it had been for her to leave the house, and practically congratulate her for it.

I wasn't getting like that, was I?

No. I wasn't. I'd never liked hanging out with all Kara's Old Crew friends anyway. Kara knew that, so she had thanked me for coming out anyway. That wasn't weird. I wasn't weird.

Riley's coaxing didn't work on Collin either, and he finally reached under the table and pulled him out.

“NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!” Collin screamed as Riley carried him from our table to the door. Every single person in Lobster Larry's looked up and watched us walk out.

We'd parked next to Christine's van. As Riley fought to buckle Collin in, Christine pulled me aside.

“Thanks so much for coming out tonight,” Christine said.

“Yeah. Thanks for inviting us.”

“You sure have your hands full, huh? Is Collin going to camp or a playgroup or anything over the summer?”

“He's doing some enrichment program at the school. But that doesn't start for a while.”

“Well, if you ever want to go on a playdate,” she said, and made a pretend telephone out of her thumb and pinky, “call me. Some of the girls in my moms' group have kids Collin's age.”