mom does not shop at Wegmans on Monday afternoons. She has a very specific shopping schedule she picked up from some self-help organize-your-life website, and she follows it religiously. Sunday night is for clipping coupons, planning the week's menus, and writing up the shopping list. Monday night after dinner is for shopping. By that time in the evening, most people are long since done running errands, and she can get in and out with ease. My mom is very proud of this schedule and its efficacy, and she would never dream of messing it up by doing something wild and crazy like shopping between the hours of four and seven— prime shopping hours for people on their way from work or school.
And yet here she was.
I had no idea how I was going to explain the way I looked. None. Every synapse in my brain was tap-dancing, but I was coming up completely blank.
This was so, so bad.
"Hi, Mom," I said with a weak smile.
She smiled back.
Wait—she smiled back?
"Cara, you surprised me! What are you wearing? Is this for your French final?"
I couldn't believe it. It was just like in old cartoons. The sky opened up, the sun shone its light on me, and a choir of angels sang "Hallelujah." My mother—my wonderful, loving, trusting, incredibly perfect mother—had given me a way out. She was getting the best Mother's Day present ever this year.
I released all my tension into a laugh, hoping it didn't sound too maniacal.
"Oral presentation," I said. "French pop culture. There's this whole 'emo' movement going on there. It's here, too, but bigger over there." I gave a sweeping gesture to indicate my raccoon-makeup eyes, my clingy tee and hoodie, my black skirt, my fuchsia zebra-striped leggings, my boots, and my wrist warmers. My abused blanket of a coat was back in the car. "I figured I'd add visual aids."
"I hope you got a good grade, because you look ridiculous. What would someone think if they saw you?"
"That I obviously had some kind of school project?" I offered.
Mom laughed. "Come on, let's go home. You'll want to wash up before Karl sees you." She started pushing her cart, then remembered I'd been headed inside. "Did you need to get something?"
"Just a snack."
"Don't bother. I got all your favorite things." As I accompanied her to her car and helped her load the bags into the trunk, Mom explained the inexplicable. "Shelley got a twofer coupon to P.F. Chang's, so we made a day out of it. Manis and pedis, then lunch. Very decadent. I knew I wouldn't want to come back out later, so I decided to suck it up and shop a little early. It really was nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be."
For me either, I almost chirped. Somehow I refrained.
I cranked the radio on the ride home, singing and dancing along in a state of sheer euphoria. Claudia didn't answer her phone, but I left a giddy voice mail. I swore Karl should take me to Atlantic City immediately and pass me off as twenty-one, because I was clearly the luckiest human being in the world.
I pulled into the driveway right behind my mom and grabbed two grocery bags to take in. I could've carried thirty—to me they were light as air. We walked into the house laughing about some ridiculous story Shelley had told Mom about the cockatiel Shelley's husband was trying to get to speak, but the moment we stepped over the threshold, Karl boomed from upstairs.
"Harriet?"
A cold shower of fear washed over me, and my laughter dried up in my throat.
Karl never called my mother Harriet. He loathed the name. That's one of the main reasons he jumped at the "Helloooo/ Lo-Lo" thing. He so actively disliked my mother's name that he couldn't say it with any kind of affection whatsoever. If Karl was calling Mom Harriet, things were about to get very ugly.
Mom and I exchanged a worried glance, then she called up as brightly as possible, "Yes?"
"Please tell me when your daughter gets home," he said.
The wave of fear became a tsunami, and I suddenly couldn't breathe.
He'd referred to me as "your daughter." My mom's daughter. Not his. And in that moment I knew exactly what had happened. It was so stupid. I knew it was out there—a time bomb waiting to explode in my face—but I'd been so wrapped up in the drama and excitement of Archer and Nate and the Ladder that I honestly hadn't