Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [27]
“How about this black jacket?” Mom asked.
“Old.”
“You have some nice sweaters.”
“Not from the top row. Those are going to Goodwill.”
She raked through the hangers. “You should wear that little pink blouse I bought you last year. The one with the little white buttons. ”
“Absolutely no blouses.”
“This?”
“No.”
“This?”
“Okay, that.”
Zoë sat at my desk chair watching our little operation. I eyed her suspiciously. I sometimes feared she was taking notes.
Growing up, Zoë had lived in NewYork City, D.C., and Chicago, where she graduated from high school. Her personal geographic bearings were far encompassing, the borders of Ohio proportionally insignificant. As if Zoë’s wanderlust hadn’t been enough, we now had Eli, who’d spent six weeks backpacking through Europe and an entire semester studying art history in Italy. I felt positively provincial sandwiched between this tête-à-tête of expatriates. Both my brother and I lived within an hour’s drive from home and were always visiting. I’d naively believed that if I were geographically close to my family we’d stay emotionally close. Our mutually single lifestyles had kept that illusion alive temporarily. Now Mom had Mr. Moore and her new career as a Luna Lady, Brian had Marie and his textbooks, and I had the feeling I’d missed something.
It wasn’t that I’d never dreamed of travel. I’d indulged fantasies of living a more exciting life in the city by applying to schools in Boston and Pittsburgh and Chicago, but they all rejected me. Once settled in Copenhagen, I was resigned, happy with my small-town routine like a cat or a retiree. But now, watching my mother reorganize my underwear drawer while explaining that I wouldn’t get those fuzzy balls on my silk panties if I let them air out instead of putting them in the dryer, I wondered if the closeness of family wasn’t a little suffocating.
“I should warn you,” Mom said, taking the exit that led home.
I blew my nose. “Ward me what?”
“I’ve been doing some reorganizing.”
“In the house?”
“Well, yes. In your room, actually. Sally Linden called last week requesting an order for Luna Lady Bubble Gum Bubble Bath, and when I went over, she actually ordered a whole anti-aging facial set. Then she calls me a week later wanting to know if I’ll do a Luna party. Ten women came—that’s twice as many as usual. I’ve been so busy I don’t even have time to substitute teach anymore.”
“What does that have to do with my room?”
“It’s a mess. I meant to clean it, but I got so busy this week with the wedding. Marie wants to hang bulbs from trees at the reception— so we went to Internet for ideas.”
My mother always spoke of the Internet as though it were a being one should consult with deference and awe.
“I have just the bulbs she needs. The wedding planner wants her to rent them, but what they charge for every little thing is outrageous! So I tell her that I have these bulbs in the attic, and I was going to try to get them, but I can’t get up there without moving everything in your closet.”
“You went into the attic?”
“No,” she said, offended that I would suggest such a thing. “I wouldn’t go up there. I was waiting for you.”
It had snowed in my hometown the night before. Battery-powered candles lit each window of our house, casting slants of buttery light onto the square bushes, the square patch of lawn. Mom paid a man to manicure our bushes year-round. She took pride in appearances.
The aroma of cinnamon, the striped wallpaper, and the ticking of the kitchen clock were so familiar I felt as if I were a little girl again. The nostalgia was a reflex, a brief but pleasant emotion that took me by surprise every time.
Upstairs, the sentiment quickly vanished. Madame Luna had pitched camp in my bedroom. My bookshelves had been cleared, their contents relegated to cardboard boxes lined up on the floor. A filing station had supplanted my old nightstand, and deliveries bearing the Luna Lady emblem covered my bed. The bulletin board that used to hold pictures from high school and then from college now displayed