When Mom hugs me like this, I pretend I’m an adult already, just fluttering in and out of her life for a quick visit. That way she’s happy to see me, every time. And while Mom hasn’t exactly spelled it out, I’m guessing she probably likes pretending she’s my friend rather than my mother. She always says being a mom has aged her like nothing else. I know she misses when she was young and free to go wherever she wanted, to do exactly as she pleased.
Which is, incidentally, kind of how she got saddled with me.
The thing is, I don’t have another parent. I don’t know if Mom ever wanted there to be another parent, or if she was dead set on handling things herself. She doesn’t really talk about why it’s just the two of us, and I don’t ask. All I know is, she’s really glad I’m almost grown and out of the house.
That makes two of us.
Mom sits across the table and picks up the menu, her eyes skimming back and forth, probably ping-ponging between the only two entrees she ever orders.
“How’s school?” she asks.
“Busy,” I respond from behind my menu.
This is the answer Mom likes best. If I say “easy,” Mom will berate me for being lazy and not pushing myself. If I say “hard,” that’s even worse, because “public schools aren’t supposed to be hard, Ivy.” But “busy” is good. It means I’m staying above water but swimming like hell under the surface.
“How’s work?”
“Busy,” Mom says, sighing heavily.
“Did you finish the hotel this week?”
She shakes her head and pulls a file from her bag, then opens it flat on the table between us. It’s a blueprint for the boutique hotel she’s rebuilding in Pacific Heights. Mom’s finger lands over the central staircase.
“The balustrade rails are spaced one inch too wide,” she grumbles. “Three and a half inches. That’s city regulation. We’ll have to redo all of them.”
“Shit.” I twist my head, following the staircase on the design as it wraps around to the second and third floors.
Mom leans back in her chair and folds her arms. She’s flustered, of course. But she also looks secretly happy whenever she talks about work like this. The page in front of us represents an entire hotel thatshedesigned. With construction crews working under her direction. It must feel amazing to create actual jigsaw pieces of the city, crafting doorways and window frames and staircases that could be here for hundreds of years after she’s gone.
I push the file gently back toward her. This is exactly the kind of thing I want to bring to a Chez Moi lunch once I get into the Paris College of Art, or even later, when I’m off working on my own stuff. I don’t actually know what it is I want todo with art yet. But that’s what study-abroad programs are for, right? Someday, one way or another, I’ll have an impressive showcase of work I can nitpick and complain about. Something that proves to Mom that the things I’m doing are important too.
“You know…” I say. “We’re actually getting pretty far on the yearbook layout.”
“Mm.” Mom stares into her water glass.
“Most of the filler pages are done, which is where we get to be really creative.”
Mom snorts.
“What?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Oh, it’s just…yearbooks are like grade-school dioramas, aren’t they? You can call them creative, but they can’t really escape their form. I mean, who’s looking in a yearbook for anything other than their own photo?”
“Sometimes yearbook layouts can be artistic,” I say carefully. My hands twitch over my bag. Before I can stop myself, I’ve pulled my laptop onto the table, exactly where Mom’s blueprint was. I don’t even have to click to find the document—it’s always the first thing waiting on my desktop. I rotate the screen to my mom and sit back in my chair.
She flicks her eyes to me. “What is this?”
“It’s the yearbook,” I say. “This one’s not like a diorama, Mom. Go ahead. You can scroll through it.”
She sucks her teeth for a moment, then finally leans toward the screen, scrolling and scrolling and scrolling—
“You’re going too fast,” I blurt out.
Mom sighs. “Ivy, this is how I look at things. Do you know how many seconds a work of classical art gets appreciated for in a museum?”
“You’re not even giving it fifteen seconds,” I argue. “And this is your kid’s work. Don’t you think parents should spend a little more time looking at stuff their kids made?”
“As opposed to a piece of actual art?” Mom raises an eyebrow. “God, I hope not.”
