Gimme Everything You Got - Iva-Marie Palmer Page 0,7

seeing you tomorrow . . . um . . .”

“Susan,” I said. “Susan Klintock.”

“Susan, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

On my walk home, I was able to make my stomach flip over and over just by thinking about my name spoken in Bobby’s voice.

Susan, I’ll see you tomorrow.

My mom’s car was in the driveway, and I walked into the house with the same feeling I got when I broke curfew. Like my mom would smell the lust on me and be disappointed that I was so interested in a man. For all her concern about me knowing what the clitoris was, she mostly read self-help books with titles like How to Be Your Own Best Friend and said she wanted to find her whole self before she committed to anyone else again.

Even though Dad paid alimony and child support, Mom worked at a real estate title company as a file clerk in charge of all the documents or whatever from home sales. She wanted a job downtown as a title assistant for commercial real estate deals or something excruciatingly boring like that, and she was taking a bunch of dull classes at the community college to build her résumé. While Dad dated, Mom buried her head in textbooks. She almost never went out at night except if the college had a guest speaker she wanted to see. She had mostly stopped cooking except for casseroles she’d make on the weekend to last us through the week. She didn’t even have time to watch Charlie’s Angels with me these days.

She’d put men on the back burner, or on ice completely, and she almost never asked me about boys, either. It was like she thought our period talk and the anatomy lesson were all I needed. Not that I was complaining, necessarily. It’s not like I would have much to say if she did ask.

I went into the kitchen and saw Mom’s friend Jacqueline there, wearing a shiny gold blouse with a deep-cut neckline that showed off the big gold Capricorn medallion that hung to her breasts. Her hair was curled in glossy rolls away from her face, where her eyes were smothered beneath glistening purple eyeshadow. Mom’s textbooks were open and scattered across the kitchen table, along with what looked like the contents of Jacqueline’s makeup bag.

“Dierdre, I’m not saying you shouldn’t go to school. I’m just saying you shouldn’t go to school like that.” On the word “that,” Jacqueline gestured to what seemed like Mom’s whole body and every life experience and choice she’d ever made while living inside it.

“Jackie, I’m not going to school to catch a man,” Mom said. “I’m going to catch a better job and more self-sufficiency. I’m working on me.” She said this like she had to remind herself of these things, not just Jacqueline.

Jacqueline looked up and saw me, and her face dropped before breaking into a fake smile. I’d once heard her say to my mom how she’d give anything to have been born later because the “young girls are going to get to have all the fun now that everything is changing.” I wasn’t so sure about that, because I didn’t really know what things had been like before, or if I was having any fun, but regardless, she didn’t seem to like me.

“Susan, tell your mom a little lipstick wouldn’t kill her.”

“If it’s poisoned it could,” I said, grabbing the can of Cheez Balls off the counter and popping three into my mouth at once, which seemed to disgust Jacqueline.

“What happened at school today?” Mom asked, looking up briefly from her math book.

“We’re getting a soccer team. I’m going to try out.” If she asked more, I decided, I’d tell her about Bobby. Not all about Bobby, but I’d say, “Coach McMann seems nice.” Just so his name could float around our house.

Mom nodded. “Hmm, sounds interesting,” she said, but nothing else. I thought she’d be impressed, since I never went out for things. Tina’s mom had probably already started deciding where Tina’s trophies would go.

“Soccer?” Jacqueline said, and poured white wine into one of my mom’s Snoopy coffee mugs. (Mom had let Dad take the wineglasses.) The wine, Jacqueline had probably brought over. Mom didn’t drink all that often. “I know someone who played once. Such a rough sport. But you’re built for it.”

I ignored what had to be an insult as Mom said, “You’ll have to tell me how it goes, honey.” She scratched some numbers out on a legal pad