SN: watched Footloose yesterday. both versions. in your honor.
Me: and?
SN: they don’t make sense. you can’t have a local ordinance against dancing. that’s a restriction of our constitutional freedom of expression. not to mention the whole church/state thing.
Me: Groan.
SN: and even if you suspend disbelief on that MAJOR plot point…well…
Me: WHAT?!?!
SN: they just aren’t very good movies.
Me: Tell me how you really feel.
SN: but still, somehow I liked the idea of you liking them. does that make sense?
Me: Not at all, but I’ll take it. I’m having a shitty day. Considering hightailing it back to Chicago.
SN: NO!
Me: Ha. Love when your shift key comes out. And your day?
SN: my mom hasn’t left the couch once. brought her lunch. she didn’t eat it. so far gone she didn’t even look up at me.
Me: I’m so sorry. I wish I could help. What about your dad?
SN: he’s talking about sending her to rehab, but honestly, drugs aren’t really the problem. I mean, they are, but they’re more a symptom of the problem.
Me: What do you mean?
SN: she lost a kid. you don’t just bounce back from that.
Me: But she still has you.
SN: why was your day so bad?
Me: Nothing important. Just one of those days.
SN: don’t leave LA. please. you just can’t. promise?
I pause. What does a promise to Caleb mean? We’ve glided past his rejection of my coffee offer, have just dug in deeper, as if it never happened. Still, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that his complete unwillingness to hang out with me in real life doesn’t hurt.
Again today he didn’t say hello to me in the hallway. Just another phone salute.
I tell myself it’s because he’s scared of ruining our never-ending conversation, but I tell myself a lot of things I don’t actually believe.
So I lie.
Me: Promise.
When I get to work, Liam’s mom is behind the counter. Pure relief that I don’t have to face Liam. Instead of saying hello, she hands me a box of books, asks me to shelve them.
“Sure thing,” I say, looking through the pile. A lot of financial guides. Overnight Millionaire. Beat the Market. Money Now. I head over to the shelf that Liam’s mom has labeled GET RICH QUICK! and begin to sort the books alphabetically by author. For a second, I think about picking one up for my dad, but then I remember that (1) we are no longer on speaking terms, and (2) my dad could actually write one of these books, though it would be a bit short: Marry Up.
“I like your can-do spirit,” Liam’s mom says, since I shelve fast. Anything to keep busy. She smiles Liam’s smile at me. I’ve worked here for weeks now and I can’t remember her name. I just think of her as Liam’s mom, or sometimes, I guess, Mrs. Sandler. I bet if I ran into her somewhere else, un-bookstore-related, I wouldn’t recognize her. She looks a lot like the moms back home: no-nonsense hair, everything maximized for efficiency, not necessarily attractiveness. Like a real mom, not an aging actress.
I try to think about Caleb’s smile, but I’m not sure I’ve actually seen it. Which makes sense. SN is not exactly the smiley type. I can easily picture Ethan’s smile, though: how it unfolds across his face, from left to right, like a perfect sentence.
Clearly, I need to stop this Ethan obsession. Not healthy.
“You okay? You look a little…smeared,” Mrs. Sandler says, handing me a tissue. “You want to talk about it?”
Damn it. Forgot that I experimented with mascara this morning. Despite my protests that makeup and I are not friends, Agnes had promised that waving a wand against my eyelashes would change my life. Now it’s just unclear what’s smudged mascara and what’s bruising.
“Not really.” I wonder if Mrs. Sandler likes her son’s girlfriend, if she has ever met Gem. Does Liam have to keep his bedroom door open when she’s over? Somehow, I doubt it. Those are quaint Midwestern rules; they don’t apply in LA, where the kids openly smoke pot and drive fresh-from-the-dealership cars and have parents who will donate money to get them out of trouble. Liam’s mom probably buys him condoms, jokes over take-out sushi about not wanting him to make any Little Liams.
I think of Caleb’s mom, prone on the couch, so out of it she can’t be bothered to eat lunch. What did he bring her? I wonder what his mom looks like, if she too is tall and handsome. If she