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“I wouldn’t be so sure,” I said darkly. “Dave Farouq El-Abar broke up with Tina today because she didn’t return his call.”
“That’s different,” my mom said. “It’s just plain rude not to return someone’s calls.”
“But Mom,” I said. I was getting tired of having to explain this stuff to my mom all the time. It is a wonder to me she ever got a single guy in the first place, let alone two of them, when she clearly knows so little about the art of dating. “If you are too available, the guy might think all the thrill has gone out of the chase.”
My mother looked suspicious. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. Your grandmother told you that?”
“Um,” I said. “Yes.”
“Well, let me give you a little tip my mother once gave me,” my mom said. I was surprised. My mom doesn’t get along so well with her parents, so it is rare that she mentions either of them ever giving her a piece of advice worthy of passing down to her own daughter.
“If you think there’s a chance you might have to cancel on Michael for Friday night,” she said, “you’d better cat-on-the-roof him now.”
I was understandably perplexed by this. “Cat on the whatta?”
“Cat on the roof,” my mother said. “You need to begin mentally preparing him for the disappointment. For instance, if something had happened to Fat Louie while you were in Genovia—” My mouth must have fallen open, since my mom went, “Don’t worry, nothing did. But I’m just saying, if something had, I would not just have blurted it right out to you, over the phone. I’d have prepared you gently for the eventual letdown. Like I might have said, ‘Mia, Fat Louie escaped through your window, and now he’s up on the roof, and we can’t get him down.’”
“Of course you could get him down,” I protested. “You could go up by the fire escape and take a pillowcase and when you get near him, you could throw the pillowcase over him and scoop him up and carry him back down again.”
“Yes,” my mom said. “But supposing I told you I’d try that. And the next day I called you and said it hadn’t worked, Fat Louie had escaped to the neighbor’s roof—”
“I’d tell you to go to the building next door and make someone let you in, then go up to their roof.” I really did not see where this was going. “Mom, how could you be so irresponsible as to let Fat Louie out in the first place? I’ve told you again and again, you’ve got to keep my bedroom window closed, you know how he likes to watch the pigeons. Louie doesn’t have any outdoor survival skills—”
“So naturally,” my mom said, “you wouldn’t expect him to survive two nights out of doors.”
“No,” I practically wailed. “I wouldn’t.”
“Right. See. So you’d be mentally prepared when I called you on the third day to say despite everything we’d done, Louie was dead.”
“OH, MY GOD!” I snatched up Fat Louie from where he was lying beside me on the bed. “And you think I should do that to poor Michael? He has a dog, not a cat! Pavlov’s never going to get up on the roof!”
“No,” my mother said, looking tired. Well, and why not? Her life’s essence was being slowly devoured by the insatiable fetus growing inside her. “I’m saying you should begin mentally preparing Michael for the disappointment he is going to feel if indeed you need to cancel on him Friday night. Call him and tell him you might not be able to make it. That’s all. Cat-on-the-roof him.”
I let Fat Louie go. Not just because I finally realized what my mom was getting at, but because he was trying to bite me in order to get me to loosen the stranglehold I had on him.
“Oh,” I said. “You think if I do that—start mentally preparing him for my not being able to go out with him on Friday—he won’t dump me when I get around to breaking the actual news?”
“Mia,” my mom said. “No boy is going to dump you because you have to cancel a date. If any boy does, then he wasn’t worth going out with anyway. Much like Tina’s Dave, I’d venture to say. She’s probably better off without him. Now, do your homework.”
Only how could anyone expect me to do my homework after receiving a piece of information like that?
Instead I went online. I meant to instant message Michael, but instead, I found that Tina was instant messaging me.
ILUVROMANCE: Hi, Mia. What R U doing?
She sounded so sad! She was even using a blue font!
FT LOUIE: I’m just doing my Bio. How are you?
ILUVROMANCE: OK, I guess. I just miss him so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I wish I had never even heard of stupid Jane Eyre.
Remembering what my mom had said, I wrote
FT LOUIE: Tina, if Dave was willing to break up with you just because you didn’t return his calls, then he was not worthy of you. You will find a new boy, one who appreciates you.
ILUVROMANCE: Do U really think so?
FT LOUIE: Absolutely.
