impossible to tell if that one line—If that’s what you want—was typed in bitterness or sarcasm or resignation. And some nights Jewel still cries for Mallory, and I don’t take it personally because I know she means Mallory at her best. Who wouldn’t miss their mother at her best?
But there have been unbroken weeks of peace since then, during which time I’ve dated Michael like an ordinary girlfriend, returning to my own apartment, taking out my own garbage, and leaving the laundry and homework to him.
My work e-mail is finally up, and I start taking care of business, humming along happily with the rhythm of my new, nicely boring life.
I carry my phone with me all morning, waiting to hear Michael’s court news. It buzzes in my pocket when I’m at the coffee machine, and I nearly scald myself slamming the pot down to answer it.
“Well?” I ask without preamble.
“It’s done,” he answers, sounding weary with seventeen years of dramatic personal history.
“You sound like The Sopranos,” I say, and he obliges me with a laugh, then says in a cartoon Jersey accent: “You take care of that thing with the guy like I asked you to?”
I respond in kind, “I delivered the package.”
Now we laugh together, and say our good-byes once more, because we’ll see each other at night.
Angel shows up at my door that night to pick me up, as prearranged, so she can practice driving. I swear she looks taller every time I see her.
“Nice,” she says as I lock my door behind me.
I let her take me shopping in the weeks after that one November weekend, allowing myself to be used as a life-size doll to mend some seriously broken fences.
Tonight I’m wearing a dress we picked out together, once the spring clothes hit the stores: it’s fluttery, with a subtle yellow-and-green floral pattern. It’s got a deep V at the neck, and though I swear it feels too short, Angel insists it’s perfect. The green, she tells me, brightens up my dark blond hair. It’s what my mom always called “dishwater blond.”
Nice, Sprite, my brother says in my memory, on my prom night, when I came down the stairs to Pete.
“Your car, madame,” Angel says, smirking at my wobbly navigation down the stairway in these spiky green heels she talked me into.
On the drive we talk about the weather, how it feels to be twenty-seven—old, but not doddering, I report—and the various dramatics at her school, onstage or in the hallways.
I’m not fooled into thinking our connection is magically healed by spiky green shoes. It was always easy to be girlfriends when I was not in charge of her, and that’s what we’re playing at right now.
It will do. Don’t borrow trouble, my mom would say.
We pull up to Michael’s dad’s East Grand Rapids house, the edges of the lawn bright with daffodils. I navigate the flagstone path gingerly. The evening chill has already begun to descend, and goose bumps race across my bare legs.
For a flash before we walk in, I want a cigarette, so I rush myself across the threshold, past that thought, and when I hug Michael just inside the door, I know I don’t smell like an ashtray. His hand brushes my nicotine patch when he lets go, and he smiles at me, squeezes my hand.
“You look terrific.” He looks at Angel. “Good job.”
Dylan and I exchange a high five; Jewel hugs my waist, and I ruffle her hair.
Mrs. Turner appears from the kitchen, dusting off her hands. “I made your favorite lasagna. Now go on in and have some punch.”
She rushes me toward the dining room, and everyone clatters in behind me. I stop in the doorway to gasp. Jewel crashes into me from behind.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY CASEY reads the banner, decorated with copious amounts of glitter and paint. There are wrapped presents on the sideboard underneath it.
“Did you make that?” I ask Jewel, as if it could be anyone else. She wrinkles her nose under her glasses and beams like a twinkling star.
At dinner, we all try not to watch Angel eat, because from what I hear, nothing sets her off more. There’s not much on her plate, but the food actually does seem to be disappearing. Michael told me that after a fraught, high-volume argument Angel agreed to talk to the school counselor, a young woman she’s always liked, about why she doesn’t want to eat. That, along with her triumphant performance in The Miracle Worker, seemed to allow Angel