Authors: Jenny Han
Mrs. Findley’s spaghetti is the Best Ever, capital
B
, capital
E
. She makes the sauce from scratch and everything—roasted tomatoes, fresh basil from her garden, sweet Italian sausage. Her secret ingredient is honey; it adds a sweetness to the sauce. Mrs. Findley’s spaghetti is my favorite. I know this is Mark’s way of making it up to me, and I want to say yes, but instead I say, “Nah, Mama’s probably already fixed somethin’ special for me.”
This is a bald-faced lie, and we both know it. Mama
hates to cook, and the only time she ever really bothers is when my daddy is at home. Daddy is in Atlanta on business for another week, so the best I can hope for is a peanut butter sandwich. And that’s only if Celia bought bread today.
But I sure as heck won’t admit any of that to Mark. I’ll probably be dining on Extra Crunchy Jif tonight, but at least I won’t have shamed my mama. Not that she would even be ashamed, but I know for a fact that she doesn’t like the neighborhood knowing our family business. Mama’s big on pride. She’s always telling me that a woman without pride is no woman at all. I know that I’m not a woman in the places that really count, but I can at least get the pride part right.
Mark shrugs, and says, “Are you gonna go to Sherilyn’s pool party next Saturday?”
“Yup.” Our friend Sherilyn Tallini has a pool party at the end of every summer, right before school starts. It used to be typical kid stuff—hot dogs and Sharks and Minnows and neighborhood moms wearing one-pieces with terry cloth cover-ups and matching terry cloth slippers. All except for Sherylin’s mom, who only wears string bikinis with maybe a sarong. All the other mothers smile and pretend to like Mrs. Tallini, but really they think she is
“attractive in a used up, tanning bed kind of way.” I know because I heard Mairi Stevenson’s mom say it at the Fourth of July parade last year.
Mrs. Tallini does have a tanning bed but, as I’ve heard my daddy say, she is “still one good-lookin’ woman.” If my mother heard him say this, she would skin him good, but fortunately for us all, Mama does not attend neighborhood functions.
I know what the other mothers think of Mama. They think she is stuck-up and pretentious. They think she thinks she is better than they are. And it’s true; she does. My mother, Grace, is very tall and very beautiful in an intimidating sort of way, the kind of way that says she knows it but doesn’t give a hoot. Mama’s hair is the color of wheat, the kind that gleams red and gold in the sunlight, and her eyes are dark green. My daddy calls her Grace Kelly, which Mama turns her nose up at because according to her, it’s far too conventional, but I know she secretly enjoys it. She says that Daddy is no prince, and if she’s gonna be compared to anyone, it had better be Lauren Bacall.
Daddy thinks that Mama is everything a woman should be: beautiful, clever, charming. Beauty has a way of making the bad things tolerable. When Mama tilts her green eyes
at you, it’s hard to remember why you were mad in the first place. That’s her special gift.
My mother is unlike every other mother in our neighborhood—she went to college up North, and she had the nerve to come back “all citified, puttin’ on airs like she’s Princess Diana.” (If you’re wondering how I know all this, it’s because adults think that kids can’t play and listen at the same time.) Mama grew up with a lot of the other mothers in our town, and you can just bet they were smug when she had to come back home.
Mama reads Foucault, not Danielle Steel, and she makes martinis, not green bean casserole. In the kitchen, there are poetry books where the cookbooks should be, and she doesn’t have a dish towel with mallard ducks on it or a ceramic magnet that says “Home Sweet Home” on our refrigerator. Mama is always telling Celia and me that we are worth twelve of this town, and that she’ll disinherit us if we don’t leave as soon as we graduate high school. Mama is halfheartedly invited to neighborhood parties like the Tallini’s, but she never fails to graciously decline and the other mothers never fail to be relieved.
Last year was the first year Sherilyn’s pool party was different. None of the other mothers were there, and Mrs. Tallini only came outside to serve lunch. I ate two pieces
of fried chicken as opposed to my standard four, because none of the other girls were eating anything. We didn’t play Sharks and Minnows, and all the other girls wore two-piece bathing suits and lay on deck chairs while the boys tried to splash them. I was the only one who wore the same one-piece bathing suit I had worn the year before. I told the other girls it was because I think bikinis are offensive and degrading to women, so I guess that means I’m stuck wearing my one-piece again this year.
“You wanna walk over to Sherilyn’s together?” Mark asks.
“Yeah, okay,” I say.
“Okay, then, see you later.” He pauses. “And, Annemarie, sorry about what I said before. I didn’t mean it.”
He meant it. Some girls are pretty, and it’s like they were destined for it. They were meant to be pretty, and as for the rest of us, well, we get to exist on the outer edges of life. It’s like moths. They’re the same as butterflies, aren’t they? They’re just gray. They can’t help being gray, they just are. But butterflies, they’re a million different colors, yellow and emerald and cerulean blue. They’re pretty. Who’d dare kill a butterfly? I don’t know of a single soul who’d lift a finger against a butterfly. But most anybody would swat at a moth like it was nothing, and all because it isn’t pretty. Doesn’t
seem fair, not at all.
Mark heads for home, and I watch him go, feeling the lump in my throat grow. I never knew love felt like cancer of the throat. Before he turns the corner, he waves and I wave back.
It’s not like I’ve never liked a boy before. There was Sherwood Brown, who I met at camp last June. He was staying with his grandma all summer, and we smiled at each other every day at camp. He and his friends would splash me and my friends in the pool, and sometimes he even sat next to me on the bus when we went on day trips. When I told him I liked him, he said he kind of liked me too, but his grandma would whup him good if he ever brought home a white girl. I went home and told Mama, and she laughed until tears ran down her face. She said Sherwood Brown had better learn to stand up to his grandma, or he’d be a little girl his whole life. I decided then and there that I wouldn’t be talking to Mama about boys, not ever.
And of course there was Kyle Montgomery, the best-looking boy in our grade. All the girls like Kyle Montgomery. Even the teachers like Kyle. Us girls pretend-swoon when we see him in the hallways. The one time he caught my best friend Elaine Kim and me doing it, he winked at us, and then he turned bright red. We like Kyle because he’s out of
our league; he’s out of everybody’s league. Plus he’s fun to giggle about. I don’t know of any girl who wouldn’t die for a chance to walk down the hallway with Kyle Montgomery.
Kyle Montgomery is tall, and he has nice eyes. You know the kind of eyes that always look like they’re smiling? Well, Kyle has them, and he really does smile an awful lot. His jeans always fit just right, and he is the best basketball player our school has ever seen. So like I said, everyone likes Kyle, and I did my fair share of liking him too a few years back.
But this is different; this is Mark. This is Mark Findley who knows my favorite ice cream flavor (Rocky Road) and how I like my pizza (extra cheese, pineapple, and mushroom); Mark who pulls splinters out of my feet when I go barefoot in the summer; Mark who helped me bury my gerbil, Benny, when he died. This is Mark who was sitting next to me on the bus that time I threw up in third grade. He didn’t even say a word when some splashed on him; he just wiped it off and asked me if I was okay.
One of the things I like best about Mark is his family. The Findleys are the kind of family you only see on black-and-white reruns late at night. At Christmastime, Mrs. Findley makes cinnamon cookies out of piecrust and real whipped cream to put on top, and Mr. Findley used to take Mark and Celia and me sledding at Clementon
Park. (This was before Celia decided she was too grown up to have fun.) Mrs. Findley always says that she wishes she had a daughter just like me, and that my mother is the luckiest woman alive for having
two
lovely daughters. Mrs. Findley thinks I am lovely. When we were little, I secretly wanted the Findleys to adopt me, but now that I’m older, I suppose I would settle for being their cherished daughter-in-law.
When I get home, I go straight to my bedroom and call Elaine. Elaine Kim moved to our neighborhood last December. Everyone wanted to be her best friend because she was new and from New York City, but she chose me.
I say, “Elaine, I have some news.”
“What?” she says, and I can hear the TV in the background.
I pause. “I think I’m in love … with Mark.”
“Yeah, I know,” Elaine says. I can tell she is watching TV and not paying attention to me, and I am annoyed.
“I said, I think I’m in love with Mark,” I snap.
“I said, I know!” Elaine snaps right back. I love that about her.
“How did you know? You couldn’t have known. I didn’t even know.”
“Come on, Annemarie. I’m your best friend. I know stuff about you that nobody knows, not even you.”
“But
how
did you know?”
“Because it’s a total cliché; of course you like Mark. He’s the boy next door, the boy you’ll measure every other boy against. It was only a matter of time.” Just because Elaine’s father is a psychiatrist, she thinks she knows everything.
“Mark doesn’t live next door,” I mutter.
“Down the street, whatever. Same thing.”
“Okay fine, if you know so much, what am I going to do about it?”
“What are you going to do?” she repeats. “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”
“I want him to like me back. I want him to look at me the way he looks at Celia,” I say, lying back on my pillow and staring at the ceiling. There is a massive spiderweb in one corner.
“Hmm, that could be hard. Celia has, like, actual breasts, remember?”
“No, I forgot, but thank you for reminding me.”
Elaine decides that I should talk to my mother. According to her, while other mothers are clueless, mine understands these sorts of things. Elaine idolizes my mother,
maybe because hers is so unlike mine. She is the only one of my friends Mama can stand, because she is from New York and because Mama thinks she has “moxie.” But I think it’s because Elaine acts like Mama is a movie star, and Mama loves it when people are smart enough to know she is something special.
I know better than to ask Mama about Mark because I know exactly what she will say. She will say that Mark is sweet in a prosaic sort of way, but I can do better because I am extraordinary. And then I’ll start to think that maybe Mark really is sort of prosaic, and I’ll never be able to see him in the same way ever again.
I don’t tell Elaine this though. I like the way Elaine looks at Mama. I wish I still looked at Mama that way. Sometimes I do, but it’s getting harder and harder.
Even though Mama messed up that one time I told her about Sherwood Brown, that doesn’t mean she won’t come through this time. You never know. People can surprise you. And I mean, life is all about second chances, right?
After Elaine and I hang up, I go to Mama’s room.
My mother is reading in bed, with her feet propped up on a silk pillow. It is turquoise with little orange tassels. “Shug, don’t slouch,” she says, not lifting her eyes from the page.
I roll my eyes and sit on the edge of the bed, at her feet.
“Mama, when’s dinner?” I ask. I know full well she hasn’t cooked any.
She looks up, surprised. “You know your daddy’s away on business, and your sister’s at Margaret’s, so I didn’t bother with dinner. You fix something up for yourself; I’m not hungry.”
“Mama!”
“What?” she says absentmindedly. She reaches for the wineglass on her nightstand and turns the page of her book.
“Mama, I need to talk to you. I need some advice.”
Mama takes a long sip of wine. “Okay, Shug,” she says. “You have my complete and undivided attention. What’s going on?”
“Well, the thing is, I like someone. A boy,” I say. “But I don’t think he likes me.”
Mama nods. “Who is this boy?”
I hesitate. “Mama, you can’t tell anyone.”
“All right.”
“You have to promise, Mama.”
“I promise. I shan’t tell a soul.” She crosses her heart.
“Well, okay. It’s Mark.” I watch her hopefully.
Mama finishes her wine, and says, “Mark Findley … Hmm … yes, he is a charming boy.”
Hope begins to flutter in my chest like a little bird. See, all
she needed was that second chance. Mama knows all about men, maybe she really could help me decide what to do.
“But, Shug, I sure hope your babies take after our side of the family and not his. His mama is just as common as coal.” She winks at me and goes back to her book.
Sometimes I hate my mother so much I can’t breathe.
“At least Mrs. Findley makes dinner,” I spit out.
“Why, Miss Annemarie, are you mad at me?” She’s mocking me, and it only makes me madder.
“You’re just jealous of Mrs. Findley; that’s why you say ugly things about her. And coal isn’t common. It’s a precious resource.”
“Shug, I was only joking. You know I’ve always been fond of Mark, and I think his mama is really very sweet,” Mama says. “If you want Mark, you go and get him. I didn’t raise my daughters to be pacifists. Make love or make war, Shug, but make somethin’ happen. And you’ve got hands; you can fix your own dinner.”
“Fine!” I leap off the bed and storm out.
As I stomp down the stairs, as loudly as bare feet on carpet will allow, I hear my mother call, “Love you too, baby mine.”
My mother has never forgiven Mrs. Findley for being the kind of mother I have always wished for.
Elaine once asked me why Mama calls me Shug. I said, “Have you ever read
The Color Purple
?” She said no, and I said, “Well there’s this character named Shug, Shug Avery …” I tried to explain, but I guess I didn’t do a very good job because she looked at me like I was crazy.