Untethered (8 page)

L
indy stayed for Sunday dinner (Morgan's lasagna for Char and Allie, a tall glass of water and another glass of wine for Lindy), and after, she insisted on helping with the dishes despite Char's protests that she could handle the kitchen on her own.

“Oh, no,” Lindy said. “After all you've done for my family, it's the least I can do.”

Before Char could tell herself not to take the comment the wrong way, Allie turned to her mother and said, “I still don't see why you can't move back here,” continuing, it seemed, a conversation that Char hadn't heard the beginning of. “My whole life is in this house. In this town. My school, my friends—”

“And
my
whole life is in California,” Lindy responded.

“You know people here, though,” Allie said. “And it would only be until I finish high school.” She picked up a kitchen sponge from the edge of the sink and ran it under the water.

Lindy stepped to her daughter and put a hand on her cheek. “I know this is hard,” she said. “It is for all of us. But I'm your mother.
And I live in California now. So, you live in California now, too. It may not be what you want, but—”

“Now?”
Allie said. “I live in California
now
? You said you'd think about June. So I can finish school.”

“I meant figuratively,” Lindy said.

“So, I can stay? Till the end of school?”

“Well, I haven't quite gotten things organized for you to move in yet,” Lindy said, going back to the table for more dishes. “I've been working on reeling in a few new clients for destination weddings. If I win those jobs, I'd be gone for a week at a time for each event. You're not old enough to stay alone while I'm away, and I'd really rather not withdraw myself from consideration if I don't have to.”

She returned to the kitchen and bent to load the dishwasher. “So, for now, I think it's probably easiest to have you here.”

“Oh,” Allie said. She stared at the sponge in her hand.

Lindy laughed. “Were you hoping for an argument?”

“No, I just—”

Turning to Char, Lindy said, “I assumed you'd like the company, but I could speed things up on my end, if you need me to. Get a nanny to stay while I'm away—”

“Mom! A nanny? Come on!”

“I'd love the company,” Char said. “For as long as—”

“Perfect,” Lindy said. “Everybody wins.” Allie was about to respond when Lindy clapped her hands, glanced around the tidy kitchen, and said, “Well! It looks like we're all set here.” Checking her watch, she said, “I should send a few e-mails tonight, so I'd better go. I'll call a cab.”

“Don't be silly,” Char said, “we'll take you. In fact, we'll let Allie be the chauffeur. She's quite good.”

“Oh, she told me,” Lindy said, but her tone revealed she didn't
believe it. “We didn't have this graduated license thing in my day. And I can't say I like the idea. A fifteen-year-old behind the wheel? In the winter?” She looked at her daughter and shuddered dramatically. “Do you mind if I wait until summer to see your driving skills? You don't want your poor mother to go gray.”

“Mom, I've driven a million times in the snow.”

“Not with me.”

Allie opened her mouth to speak, then shook her head and walked to the door.

On the way to the hotel, Char asked what Lindy's plans were for the following day. “I thought you might want some time to yourself,” Lindy said, “so I was thinking Allie could come to the hotel.” She peered at Allie in the rearview mirror. “We could make a day of it. Lunch, massages, mani/pedis. There's a new day spa just down the street. You probably know that—”

“But tomorrow's Monday,” Allie said. “I have school.”

“Oh, I'm sure they're not expecting you anytime soon,” Lindy said.

“I never miss Mondays.”

One of the rules of the tutoring program was that any student—tutor or tutee—who missed school during the day was not allowed to show up at the tutoring center that afternoon. Almost immediately after meeting Morgan, Allie had refused to stay home on any Monday, no matter how sick she felt. She might have lain on the couch or in bed all weekend, too ill to move, but by Monday morning, she would be up and dressed and calling to Char that it was time to go.

They had made a pact, the two girls: they would never miss the chance to be together. Bradley and Char had tried to appeal to Allie's sense of responsibility to not spread germs in class. But the
school only prohibited kids from attending if they had a fever, Allie would remind them, holding the thermometer out victoriously. “See? No fever!”

“In every other house in America, these conversations go the opposite way,” Bradley said to Char one Monday morning after they had lost another battle to keep their teenager home and in bed. “We're the only parents in the nation trying to talk our kid
out
of
going to school.”

“There might be similar conversations at the Crews' house,” Char told him, “except I'm guessing that when Morgan's sick anywhere close to a Monday, she just guts it out and keeps her mouth shut.”

Char and Bradley wondered if they should alert Dave and Sarah about the girls' promise. Morgan had evidently gone to school on several Mondays with bad stomachaches. But a stomachache wasn't contagious. And Morgan had them “all the time,” Allie told them. “It's a stress thing.” If the Crews kept her home every time her stomach hurt, she would never go to school. Char and Bradley decided that until Allie confessed to Morgan's attending school with something more serious, they would keep the girls' secret.

“Morgan will understand,” Char said now, glancing in the rearview mirror at the dark circles under Allie's eyes. “Your mom's right. No one will expect you to be at school this week, or at tutoring, including her. And a few days of rest might be a good idea.”

“Exactly,” Lindy said. “Sleep in, and then have a relaxing spa day with your mom. It'll be fun.”

Allie shook her head. “Tomorrow's Monday. I'm going to school.”

“But I flew all the way up here to be with you,” Lindy said.

“Well,” Allie began, and Char peered out the windshield to see how far they were from the hotel. She pressed the accelerator,
trying to get them to their destination before Allie could say too much. She wasn't keen on witnessing the fallout after Allie made the obvious argument that her mother had some nerve complaining that they wouldn't get to spend time together, when she had had the entire day to see her daughter, yet hadn't bothered to show up until late afternoon. Lindy didn't take accusations well, whether they were grounded in truth or not.

Allie leaned forward, between the seats, and put a hand on her mother's forearm. Char winced in anticipation. It wouldn't be beyond Lindy to change her flight and leave the following day in response to being called out by her daughter.

But instead of challenging her mother, Allie asked her, “Why don't you come? To tutoring, I mean. You could see Morgan again, and the place where I spend my Monday afternoons. You could borrow Char's car, I bet. Or take a cab, if you don't want to drive in snow. We could ride back to the house together for dinner.”

Char turned to her side window and pretended to take a long moment checking her mirror so the others wouldn't see her face. In all the months Allie had been tutoring, Char had always picked her up after. The community center wasn't terribly far from the house—certainly a distance a teenager could walk on her own. And Allie had many friends who were already driving, and could easily have given her a lift.

But Char had never been willing to give up the chance to hear Allie rattle off every last detail of her session with Morgan. She would say more about it over dinner, to fill in her father, but she was never more animated about it than in the car. Some of the magic wore off once they pulled into the garage.

Bradley had mentioned many times how envious he was that Char got to hear the “first-look tutoring report-out,” as he called it.
A few times, he had teased that he was thinking of leaving work early on a Monday to hear the initial account himself. But he wouldn't dare follow through. She had earned it, he told her.

Never had Allie gotten a ride from someone else. It had always been Char.

Char swallowed hard and made herself turn her head to regard the fatherless girl in the backseat. “Always” and “never” didn't have a place in their lives anymore.

Lindy chuckled and patted her daughter's hand as though she were a toddler asking to be flown to the moon. “I hardly think I need to see her for the third day in a row, as nice a little girl as she seems to be. And I've been inside the community center more times than I care to remember.”

“They totally renovated it,” Allie said. “Last year. You won't recognize it.”

“Mount Pleasant–quality renovations?” Lindy asked, still chuckling, “I think I'll pass.”

Allie sat back.

“And anyway,” Lindy said, “I'm not sure that continuing this tutoring situation is such a good idea. Char tells me you only got credit for it for the fall semester.”

Allie found Char in the rearview mirror. Char lifted her shoulders:
She asked
.

“With everything else you've got going on,” Lindy said, “all of your advanced placement classes, and soon you'll be starting field hockey—”

“It's soccer in the spring,” Allie said. “Field hockey's in the fall.”

“Oh, of course,” Lindy said. “I knew that. The point is, I'm not sure you have time to waste on something like this—”

“Waste?”

“You know what I mean, darling. Colleges are a lot pickier now than they were when I was your age. You have to be very careful about how you spend your time if you hope to get into a good school.” To Char, Lindy said, “A friend of mine was telling me about it. It's really gotten so much more competitive.”

Char nodded as though Lindy were telling her something new. As though Char hadn't spent two hours in the fall with Allie, Bradley, and the high school guidance counselor discussing Allie's college options and what it would take for her to get into her top choices.

Lindy turned to the backseat. “We need to think about what the best use of your spare time is, that's all I'm saying. It seems it might be wiser to spend those hours studying for the SATs, or—”

“Those aren't until next year, Mom.”

“Or doing extra math problems, or something.”

“I have an A in math! And I can't just quit tutoring, now that the new term has started. If you didn't want me to do it, you should have said something before I signed up again.”

“Well, I didn't know you had signed up again,” Lindy said. “Now that I'm going to be more involved, I think we need to discuss it. We don't have to make the decision now, but—”

“What do you mean, you're going to be more involved?”

“I'm your mother, aren't I?” Lindy asked, as though that answered the question.

When they reached the hotel, Lindy and Allie embraced outside the car before the teenager climbed into the front passenger seat. Lindy started walking toward the hotel, but then turned back to the car, came closer, and motioned for Allie to put her window down.

Leaning in, Lindy kissed her daughter on the cheek. “I don't mean to suggest you're not doing fantastically well. You are, and I'm
very proud of you. You didn't hear the women talking today at the house, but Morgan's mother was telling the rest of us how impressed she was with you and”—she closed her eyes—“your friend . . . ?”

“Sydney,” Allie said. Char heard the annoyance in the girl's voice at her mother's failure to remember the name of the girl who had been her best friend all her life.

Lindy either didn't recognize her daughter's irritation or she ignored it, and her response was breezy, unapologetic. “Right,” she said. “How impressed she was with you and Sydney. How mature you both are. How responsible and well-behaved. She's right, of course. You are all those things.

“And I told her that it's precisely because you're so mature and responsible and well-behaved that I can work away in my office in Hollywood without having to be distracted by thoughts about the trouble you might be getting into up here. I can't tell you how lucky I feel, to be free of that kind of concern, and to be able to concentrate on my own life down there.”

Lindy glowed at her daughter, completely missing that she had just admitted to being relieved to not have to spend time thinking about her when they weren't together. Char didn't miss it, and she winced as she studied Allie, hoping the girl had heard only Lindy's intended compliment and not the presumably unintended confession.

No such luck—Allie's shoulders lifted and her upper body stiffened. She took in a breath and turned her face to her mother. Char prepared herself for the blast.