My mom wasn’t home when I got back from school that day but, wanting to be true to my promise, I left her a note telling her David had asked me to prom and that I would like her to come dress shopping with me if she had the chance. I wondered if she would even come home before Saturday to get the note. Even if she didn’t, it was none of my concern because I had upheld my part of the bargain and I was going dress shopping tomorrow night, with or without her.
To say that I was feeling slightly less than happy with my mother would be an understatement. I couldn’t seem to figure out what bothered me most about her choice: the fact that it was so horribly wrong or the fact that she felt the need to cut me out of her life to live one that she thought was more exciting. If it weren’t for David holding my hand through the past few days, I wouldn’t have known how to cope with everything.
With my note taped to the refrigerator and my homework all finished, I decided to paint for a while. I kept my phone beside the easel in case David called and dove into painting something very green-something the same color as his eyes. Only minutes into the painting, my phone began to vibrate, instantly catching my attention. I wiped the paint off of my hands hastily and picked up the phone only to see an unfamiliar number on the screen. I hesitantly flipped the phone open to see who my mysterious caller was.
“Hello?” I asked cautiously. No one ever called me, since no one really had my number.
“Amelia?” It was a voice I knew I recognized but couldn’t quite place a face with.
“Yes?” I answered, trying to sound politely confused.
“It’s Nate.” So that’s where I’d heard the voice before. Nate sounded slightly distressed, and I couldn’t understand why he’d be calling me unless something had happened to Karen.
“Is she all right?” I asked instantly, finding that I actually cared about the girl’s well-being.
“I guess so,” he answered without much enthusiasm. “I wouldn’t really know. I haven’t seen her since the last time I talked to you.”
“What?” I asked astonished. I knew her mom had given in pretty easily, but I hadn’t expected her to go back on her word. I figured that she would just be a bit more strict than she had let on.
“She never lets me see her… but it’s hard to exactly say she’s keeping her from me, because every time I want to come over, she has a really good excuse.” Nate sounded weary, as if his constant efforts to see Karen had worn him out. “First it was a doctor’s appointment, then she wasn’t feeling well enough to have any company, now she’s saying that Karen needs her rest to regain her strength… I mean, maybe this is all true, but it’s just so convenient that this all happens every time I try to see her.”
I closed my eyes, trying to think of some way to help the situation. “Have you asked her mom about this? Confronted her to see if she really is lying?”
“No… I don’t want to sound too pushy. After all, Karen really could be feeling sick, and I don’t want to make it worse by forcing her to see me.”
“Well, have you tried talking to Karen?” I suggested, though I was sure he had definitely tried that.
“She won’t answer her phone,” he said with a sigh. I mulled this over for a moment, trying to think of some way around this.
“Nate, you’re just going to have to be the grown-up here. You need to tell her mom that you want to see Karen and call her out on this. Ask her if she’s lying to you. It may seem a bit direct, but if you don’t do it now, her mom will just keep phasing you out until you’ve lost interest.” I wasn’t really sure I was giving him sound advice, but it was the best solution I could see to the problem.
“I think she’ll let me see her eventually. I think she’s just trying to keep me away until after prom… she thinks it’ll be too much for Karen to handle.”
I sighed, seeing his point. “Just try what I told you and I’ll try to think of a better solution in the meantime,” I said reassuringly, feeling a bit like Dear Abby.
“All right,” he answered, sounding like he didn’t have much faith in my solution. “Thanks again, Amelia.”
After I got off the phone with him, I couldn’t help but feel like this was largely my fault. After all, I had been the one who suggested they talk to her mother in the first place. And now Nate didn’t see Karen at school or at home. He just didn’t see her at all. And it was because I had given them the alternative of having her go back to being homeschooled. It was another brilliant idea from Amelia Marie Bedford.
Thursday the 15th arrived with as much gusto as a Thursday could muster. It was one day closer to Saturday, which made me feel a bit more excited about the coming prospect of actually going to prom. At first I hadn’t been amazingly excited about the whole thing, but the fact that I’d actually get to participate in a normal human experience was something I was greatly looking forward to.
I went downstairs after pulling on what I figured would be my normal wardrobe from then on. My jeans and colored tank tops perfectly suited my personality-the real me that it had taken so long to find-unassuming but well adapted. I smiled at my own comparison and pulled an apple out of the fridge. As I closed the heavy white door I glanced at my note to see if it had moved at all, only to find a new piece of paper stuck to the fridge with the simple words “I’d like that” scribbled in blue pen.
I stared at the note for a while, trying to determine if I was just really sleepy, or if my mom had actually said she’d like to spend time with me. I turned this over in my mind as I made my way to school that day. It felt almost surreal as I pulled into the parking lot. Today was the first day of my new life. David and I had reached an understanding that we could both live with: I had made a human connection so utterly and deeply significant to me that I might actually make it out of high school with some sanity, and I was coming to school today without the burden of other people’s problems on my shoulders. Granted, I was worried about what would happen with Nate and Karen, but the situation was entirely out of my hands. All I could do for them was attempt to keep dispensing sound advice.
I met David in the parking lot, and his warm smile was not lost on me. It was as if he too could see the future stretching out before us, full of the unknown and the exciting prospects that youth offers. I slipped my hand into his as we walked into the busy school, talking quietly about the various trivial plans that prom entailed: what color would my dress be, could he get his tie to match, what time he should pick me up. As much as I’d always made fun of other people for wasting their breath talking about those kinds of things, it felt nice to worry about something so unimportant. My decision on what color dress I would wear to prom probably wouldn’t affect the rest of my life, so it was a decision I was willing to make without much thought.
The day passed quickly and uneventfully, which made me happier than any excitement-filled day could have. I said good-bye to David in the parking lot and drove home, wondering if my mom would really be there waiting for me. There was no black car parked across the street when I pulled up, so at least I was safe on that account.
As I walked through the door, I dropped my black backpack on the carpet, peering into rooms as I made my way toward the kitchen. I found her there, sitting at the table with her head in her hands. She instantly brightened when I walked into the room, even if her smile was less than heartfelt.
“You’re going to prom,” she said with all the pride of a mother who’d finally married off her spinster daughter.
“Yep,” I said awkwardly. Though I felt that people were just instinctively good at things that should come naturally, like kissing and spending time with their families, my mother and I seemed to lack that natural ability to make small talk with one another. We got into her white SUV and drove through the winding roads of Thousand Oaks to the mall where my future prom dress was hiding. We didn’t say much in the car on the way there, though she made a comment about an old song on the radio, saying that she could remember listening to it as a teenager.
The mall was relatively crowded for a Thursday, though I attributed that to the upcoming prom. Teenagers roamed the tile walkways in groups, and most of them, I noticed, were not with their mothers. Then again, when had I ever done things the way everyone else did them? We searched through a few of the big department stores, thumbing through racks of hot pink silk before my mom finally asked what should have been an obvious question.
“What kind of dress are you looking for, Amelia?” She always liked to use my name when she spoke to me. When I was younger she told me that she had loved the name Amelia and had wanted to change her name when she was little. I figured that’s why she always used it whenever she could. She loved the sound of it.
“I’m not sure,” I said honestly. It was rare for someone to ask me what I wanted, and even more rare for me to think about my own personal preference. After years of being a clone of whoever I worked for, it was difficult for me to determine what I, myself, actually liked and disliked.
“Well, what color do you want?” she asked, examining a pale blue dress. I thought of David’s eyes for a moment and seriously considered saying green, but I quickly decided against it, knowing the color would wash me out. I thought about colors that had appealed to me when looking through magazines, and things I’d seen in my everyday life that had caught my eye. The only thing I could think of was a word and not a color. Unassuming. That was what I wanted. And once the word came to me, the color did too, something that could be appropriately elegant while still remaining unassuming.
“I want a champagne colored dress,” I said finally. My mom looked at me skeptically for a moment.
“That’s not exactly a popular color, Amelia,” she informed me, and as I looked around at the racks of dresses, I could see that she was right. The closest thing this store offered was a sort of off-white or pale yellow. Not quite champagne. We looked through a few more big department stores before finding a store that carried only prom dresses. Surely this store had to hold the dress I was looking for. Browsing through the racks for only a few minutes, I found it. I found my size and put it on in the dressing room, examining myself in the mirror.
It was a floor-length silk gown that hugged my curves nicely. It had thick straps that crisscrossed in the back, and a sweetheart neckline. It was perfect, and it was champagne.
The grand total came to $300, which I paid myself, much to my mother’s protests. As a compromise she insisted that I let her buy the champagne heels to match. And with our purchases made, we were on our way home, our little mother-daughter bonding experience at an end. As we were stopped at a particularly long red light, however, my mother unexpectedly said, “I’m not a bad person, you know.” Caught completely off-guard, I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. I hadn’t accused her of being a bad person-I’d just bought my prom dress and minded my own business. “I make bad decisions sometimes, but parents are people too, Amelia.”
I had no idea where this was coming from, but I decided it was something she needed to get out, so I simply said, “I know,” afraid that any other response would spark the wrong reaction.
“I don’t want you thinking I’m a bad person. Some people just deal with heartache differently.” Now I was starting to feel I knew what she was talking about, but I still couldn’t be sure.
“You mean Dad?” I asked as innocently as I could. I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, my mother whom I’d never really had a relationship with. Her short, dark brown hair was cut in a bob, and her nails were always perfectly manicured. She was always well put together, never showing any vulnerability to me or anyone else. And here she was, crying in the driver seat of her white SUV. Not overly dramatic, heartrending sobs, but just a few, silent tears that she quickly wiped away.
“Sometimes when you face rejection it leaves you changed, and no one can bring you back to where you used to be, but that doesn’t mean you should stop trying,” she said cryptically. And that was the end of our conversation. She didn’t say another word, and I didn’t try to coax anything else out of her. I wasn’t exactly sure what I would say if I did speak. We murmured the appropriate “that was fun” and “let’s do that again sometime” phrases that are polite after such an outing and then went our separate ways, back to interacting through post-it notes again. At least for a while.