What Would Emma Do? (20 page)

There is something about falling asleep in the late afternoon. You tend to have the same kind of dreams you do when you have a high fever, very vivid and very weird. This dream was no different.

In the dream I was walking around a city. It was one of those cities that can exist only in a dream. It seemed to be part Chicago, a dash of New York, and I’m pretty sure I saw the Eiffel Tower, too. In the dream this makes perfect sense somehow and doesn’t bother me. I’m walking around the city, and I know I’m supposed to be someplace. I’m a little late and a lot lost. I keep asking people for directions, but no one seems to want to help me. Then I spot this street musician who I think might be John Lennon, but then I realize he’s Jesus. Because it’s a dream, I don’t seem bothered by the fact that the Lord has become a busker. Eternity is a long time. Maybe he just felt like getting a job.

So I wait while Jesus finishes up his number, which is a sort of folksy blues song, and I ask him if he knows where I’m going. He points to the hat on the ground and I get the idea: no tip, no directions. So I fish through my pockets, and it is one of those awkward moments where I have twenty cents, which I know is too little, and a ten-dollar bill, which is a bit more than I want to spend for directions, even if the directions come from the Son of God. So I stand there for a while, because I know there is no way to ask for change. It’s not like I can pick up the hat and keep the change that’s in there and give him the ten. The streets are getting more crowded, and I realize I need to either move along or pony up. So finally (and with a bit of regret) I chuck the ten-dollar bill in the hat and wait for him to tell me where I need to go.

“The thing is, no matter where you go, there you are,” Jesus says.

I wait a bit, but then it’s clear that this is his idea of advice and this is all he’s going to say. I’m annoyed because if I’d known he was going to give cheesy guru hippie advice, then I would have only kicked in the two dimes. So I turn to walk away and I hear the squeal of tires and I realize that I’ve walked straight into the road and a car is going to hit me. Then I wake up.

“I’m home!” my mom yelled out.

I realized the squeal that woke me up must have been the screech of the door when she came in. I sat up and tried to rub the sleep out of my eyes. My mouth felt funky, and it tasted as if I might have been chewing on Mr. Muffles’s ears again. I scootched over to the end of the bed and tried to figure out what the whole thing meant. I always wanted to believe that if the Son of God appeared to me, he would have something useful to say. Or that it would be more impressive.

I stood up.

A religious vision.

That’s it! I did a little dance and gave a whoop.

I didn’t need to tell the truth about Darci and Kimberly. What I needed was for the truth to come out. Who did the telling wasn’t important. In fact, it might be better if it wasn’t me. People weren’t going to believe me anyway without Colin backing me up. I needed a way for Darci or Kimberly to be the ones to tell the truth, and I had a perfect idea for how that might work. It was time for someone to have a religious vision.

30

God, I get the importance of honoring one’s father and mother (although if you want me to honor my dad, you should have him come by once in a while) but I don’t think it’s asking too much for this to be a two-way street. As Aretha Franklin once said:

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Find out what it means to me

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Take care, TCB

Oh, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me.

Now, I’m not so interested in the sock-it-to-me bit, but I wouldn’t mind if once in a while my mom treated me like I wasn’t a complete infant.

The idea was brilliant. I was starting to think the dream itself might have been divinely sent to give me the idea, because truly the plan was inspired. If I could get Darci or Kimberly to come clean, I didn’t need to worry about any of the downsides of me being the one to tell. I just needed to convince them that their immortal souls were in peril. My best bet would be with Kimberly, as I wasn’t sure Darci had a soul. How exactly I was going to do this was where the plan got a bit vague.

Implementing my plan might call for reinforcements, which would be difficult, as my reinforcement list was getting smaller all the time. It was also hard to plan the next step, because my mom was mad at me for not starting dinner.

There was a lot of heavy sighing and talk about how it wouldn’t hurt me to pull my weight around the house. Considering that she’s always talking about how she wants me to stay in Wheaton, you would think she could make me feel more welcome. However, I knew there was no point in arguing the case, particularly if I wanted her to let me participate in track. I needed to be at the meet this Saturday. It was regionals. I apologized for being an ingrate and began to bustle around making dinner. I suggested that she have a seat in the living room and that I would pull together some pasta. I didn’t once mention that since she’s the fan of Rachael Ray’s
30-Minute Meals
, she would be the one better suited to this task.

My mom sat in the living room, watching me make dinner. Whenever I caught her eyes, I would shoot over an adoring daughter smile. I filled a glass with crushed ice, a slice of lemon, and water and brought it over to her. I gave a small bow, more as a sign of respect than anything else, but it might have been going too far.

“What did you do?” my mom asked, giving me a sideways look. “Are you in trouble at school?”

“No. I just realized you were right, I should have made dinner.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I can be nice, you know.”

“Oh, I know you can be nice. I’m just wondering what you’re hoping to get from it.”

“Thanks a lot, Mom. You make me sound like a really great person. I can be nice just for the sake of being nice, you know.”

I could tell she didn’t believe me. I went back to the kitchen and loaded up the plates with spaghetti. I delivered them to the table with a flourish.

“How are things at school?”

“I’m
not
in trouble.”

“I’ve noticed Joann hasn’t been around much.”

“Yeah.” I twirled the spaghetti around on my fork and tried to figure out how to explain it.

“One of those things where you’re both mad and you’re not even sure why you’re mad anymore?”

I looked over at my mom, surprised.

“I wasn’t born a mom. I went to high school myself.” My mom put her fork down and pushed her chair away from the table. “Did I ever tell you why I left Wheaton?”

“No. I figured you wanted to do something different.”

“Sort of. When I was in school, I had a crush on Thomas Evers.”

“Reverend Evers?” My mouth curled up in disgust, and my mom burst out laughing.

“He wasn’t a reverend then, he was just Thomas. He was two years ahead of me, and he was handsome and popular, and I think every girl in school had a thing for him.”

“Did he do that nasty Donald Trump comb-over thing back then?”

“No. He used to keep his hair cut really short, sort of like a military buzz cut. He had this great body because he played every sport. He worked out all the time.”

“Mom, I’m eating here. Could we please not talk about his body?”

“Fair enough. Take my word for it: Thomas was attractive. I thought about him all the time, mooned around, wishing he would notice me.”

“Mooned?”

“Not dropping-pants moon, mooning meaning I liked him, but he didn’t know I was alive. I used to write him these long poems where I would describe how much I loved him. Really bad romantic poems. They were a bit steamy.” She blushed. “At any rate, Sheila Hunter found one of the poems. It must have fallen out of my notebook. We had math together.”

“Sheila Hunter? Isn’t that Mrs. Evers?”

“It is now.”

“Oh my God. She gave him the poem, didn’t she?”

“Worse. She read it out loud in the cafeteria.”

“No!”

“Yes. I wanted to crawl under the table and disappear.”

“What happened?”

“Not much really happened. I was a freshman and Thomas was a junior. He continued to pretend I wasn’t alive. People teased me about it. They used to call me Lord Byron.”

“I saw that nickname in your old yearbooks. I thought it was because English was your favorite subject.”

“Nope. It came from my poetic ability.” My mom made finger quotations around “poetic ability.”

“That must have sucked.”

“Thomas and Sheila started going out that year. When I look back at high school, I realize I spent most of my time hating being there. I couldn’t wait to leave. I knew I wanted to live someplace where no one knew about the poem incident. I wanted a fresh start.”

“I completely get that.”

“But that’s the thing. I thought if I moved away, I could move away from all of it, but the memories were still with me. The fact that I was shy and awkward didn’t change just because I changed locations. I made the same mistakes, but in a new place with new people.”

“No matter where you go, there you are,” I said.

My mom looked over and broke into a smile. “That’s right, pretty wise words. How did you get so smart?”

“Genetics,” I said. “Apparently bitchy genes can also be passed down: Darci is just how you describe her mom.”

“Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“You’re doing that cliché thing again.”

“Do you know why they don’t send mules to college?” my mom asked.

“Nobody likes a smartass?” I said.

This joke has been knocking around our house for a long time. My mom raised her fork in acknowledgment and we shared a smile. I watched her eat. I tried to imagine what it would be like to have someone read your hot love poems out loud. I felt bad for my teenage mom. She looked up and noticed me watching her.

“I’m sorry things got so messed up,” I said.

“Sometimes a wrong turn leads us to exactly where we need to be, not where we wanted to be. If I hadn’t gone to Chicago, I wouldn’t have met your dad.”

“That might have been a good thing.”

“But then I wouldn’t have had you.”

“And you wouldn’t have had to drop out of college and move back here. You could have done anything you wanted.”

My mom stood up suddenly and came over to my seat. She kneeled down so we were face-to-face. She took my chin in her hand and forced me to look her straight in the eyes.

“Never think for a minute that I regret having you. You are the thing I am most proud of in my life and the best thing that has ever happened to me. From the moment you were born, I knew my destiny was to love you with my whole heart. If I could do anything I wanted, anything in the whole world, then I would choose all over again to be your mom.” She paused and looked at me, her face serious. “No matter what questions you have in life, the one thing you should never doubt is how much I love you.”

My throat felt tight, and I could feel the tears in my eyes. I knew if I said anything, I was going to start crying and this would turn into one of those made-for-TV movie moments. My mom didn’t break eye contact for a long time. Finally she leaned over and kissed my forehead and went back to her chair. We didn’t say anything else for the rest of dinner. I stood up to clear the dishes, but she waved me off and started to collect everything off the table.

“I owe you an apology,” she said.

“For what?”

“Sometimes parents want so badly to save our kids from getting hurt that we make a bad decision. I’ll call Coach Attley and ask him to put you back on the team. You’re a smart girl. You’ll make the decisions that are right for you. I need to remember that they’re your decisions to make now.” She looked over her shoulder and gave me a smile as she left the room. I could hear her piling the dishes in the sink and the water running. I stood up and followed her into the kitchen.

“Mom?”

She turned off the water and faced me.

“I was being nice earlier with dinner and everything because I was hoping to convince you to call Coach Attley. I wasn’t doing it just to be nice.”

“I figured you had your reasons.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well then, we’re both sorry, so let’s call it even, okay?”

I stepped forward, and my mom and I hugged. It had been a long time since we’d had a good hug. I squeezed her tight.

“You’re a good mom,” I whispered into her hair.

“I’ve got my moments.” She gave me an extra squeeze and let me go. “Why don’t you go for a run? You’re going to have to get yourself into shape if you want to be ready for the meet on Saturday.”

“You sure?”

“Be home by eight.” She looked at me. “And when I say eight, I mean eight, not eight fifteen or eight thirty. This touching mother-daughter moment doesn’t mean I’m getting soft on curfew.”

“I would never think of you as soft.” I promised, holding my hand up as if I were taking a pledge. As I turned and headed out, my mom gave my butt a slap with her wet towel.

31

God, you used to show up all the time down here. Burning bushes, visions, pillar of clouds, personal messages to your chosen. Lately you seem to be keeping your appearances to things like showing up on the side of a grilled cheese sandwich. I’m all for a good melted cheese sandwich (especially if you make it with like a stick of butter and that otherwise nasty Kraft cheese that comes in the plastic wrapper), but I’m thinking you can do better than revealing your likeness on the side of toast. It’s like Madonna choosing to play in a mall food court. Way beneath your level, is what I’m trying to say. Maybe like some bands, you don’t want to be bothered with taking the show on the road anymore. Fair enough. So what I’m wondering is, would it bother you if I worked a little miracle magic on my own? Think of it as me being like one of those tribute bands—never as good as the original, but if you can’t see the original, not half bad.