Misty (Wildflowers 1)

"I know what you mean," Jade said after a beat of silence.

I looked at Cathy. She shook her head.

"You can talk, can't you?" I asked her.

She looked at Doctor Marlowe for rescuing, but Doctor Marlowe didn't say a word.

"Yes, I can talk," she said in a voice barely above a whisper.

"Good, because I was beginning to wonder if you would be telling your tale in sign language."

Jade laughed again. We were beginning to look at each other more and more like two people do when they think similar thoughts, and I was thinking we might even become friends.

"I know divorce is no big thing these days. My school counselor actually said that to me! But I couldn't help feeling that I somehow looked different to everyone, now that it was being broadcasted on Gossip F.M. I know I walked differently with my head down, avoiding the looks other kids gave me. What I hated the most, I guess, were the looks of pity. I snapped so hard and viciously at my friend Darlene when she offered me sympathy that she practically ran away.

"I really felt miserable. My grades, which were getting pretty bad as it was, took another dive, so my counselor called my mother who decided she had better do something.

"Most of the serious conversations about my schoolwork that I had in my house, I had had with my father. Daddy would call me into his office and ask me to sit and then he would get up and walk around his desk and begin with something like, 'I was young once and I wasn't any poster child for the best behaved by any means, but sometime along the way, I realized I had better get serious about myself or I would end up in Nowheresville.'

"That's a favorite expression of his," I explained, "Nowheresville. For a long time, I actually believed there was such a place and looked for it on the map."

Jade's smile softened. Star shook her head and leaned back while Cathy suddenly clasped her hands and planted them firmly in her lap. She looked like she was holding on to herself, as if she expected her body might just decide to go floating away at any moment. I couldn't wait for her story.

"Anyway, my mother, who hated serious conversations, tried to play the role of Daddy this one particular afternoon. I didn't know whether to laugh or feel sorry for her. She certainly tried to get me to feel sorry for her.

"'I know what you're doing,' she said. She actually started by sitting behind Daddy's desk and then got up the way he always did. At least she knew the stage positions.

"'You're trying to make me feel guilty about all this. You're punishing me,' she cried.

"My mother doesn't actually cry real tears. She grimaces a bit, but not too much because her beauty guru told her that scowling and grimacing will deepen wrinides or even create them. It weakens the face in the same place so much, it makes grooves, she said. She told me this so I wouldn't grimace or scowl as much as I do.

"'How am I punishing you?' I asked her.

"'By embarrassing me!' she wailed. 'You're doing miserably in school just so the administrators will talk about you and call me, and then they'll blame it all on my problems with-your father. I know about these things. I read an article in Good Housekeeping. Actually, the article was about stress and its effects on the complexion, but it included a situation like this as an example. Divorced women age faster if they're not careful!' she emphasized. 'It's a proven, cosmetic fact.'

"As my mother ranted and raved about my grades, the calls from the school, her stress and embarrassment that day, I suddenly realized how selfish she was and how selfish Daddy was. Neither of them were as concerned about my happiness as they were about their own. I made the mistake of telling my mother that and she nearly blew a false eyelash. Then she went into a list of her sacrifices that stretched from one side of the house to the other.

"The best one was the claim that she was still very much a young and beautiful woman, but she was holding off involving herself in any new romance for my benefit, until I, not her, had adjusted to the new situation. According to my mother, men, who had found out about her new unmarried status, were circling the house like a war party of Indians, waiting to shoot their Cupid arrows through the windows and into her mushy heart. In short, all these lonely days and lonely nights were my fault. Get with it, Misty, I chanted to myself, accept and enjoy their divorce so Mommy Dearest can start dating."

Jade laughed the hardest yet. Star's smile was a lot friendlier and Cathy suddenly looked like she was actually enjoying this. I glanced at Doctor Marlowe. Her eyes were darker, focused, her continually changing thoughts rolling together into a ball of rubber bands behind that intense scrutiny of the four of us.

I sat back, sipped some lemonade, and continued.

"Of course, Mommy felt she had to do something serious. I thought she might go as far as take away my lipstick, which she had chosen for me and which I didn't really use much, but she surprised me with the threat to take away my phone. I knew it was an empty threat because if there was one thing my mother hated, it was my friends or anyone calling me on her phone. She was the one who got my father to have my own phone installed when I was only eight.

'She can barely hold a thirty-second

conversation!' he bellowed. 'Why does she need her own phone?'

"Mommy wouldn't argue with Daddy much. She would say what she wanted and then sulk until he gave in, which he most always did.

"It was funny, because when I did get the phone, I used to sit and stare at it and wonder who I should call.

If I called anyone, I would ask how she was and what she was doing and the other person would answer in monosyllabic 'Okay. Nothing,' and then I would hang up. If my phone ever rang, I would practically jump out of my skin.

"'If your next set of grades aren't improved, the phone comes out of your room,' Mommy declared and felt confident she had fulfilled her responsibility. I could just picture her at lunch in a fancy restaurant proudly telling her friends how severe she was and how she had established new rules."

Even Doctor Marlowe risked a small smile. She knew my mother well and she knew I wasn't exaggerating all that much.