Page 42 of Kitten

I became uncomfortable. Mothers to me were an inappropriate choice for coffee-table conversation, the intimacy it forced akin to divulging your bowel movements. I drank too quickly and burned my tongue.

“Sorry, I’m rambling. Moms, right?” Isabelle gave a smile of encouragement. With horror, I became certain that James had told her what he told me, that we’d get along, only he must’ve mentioned something about our mothers. The betrayal was enormous. I felt better now about ignoring his calls, of which there were now three.

“You might not relate,” Isabelle spoke quickly. “I just thought—what you said to my mother at dinner, it was brave. I felt like it was personal. Sorry, am I being intrusive?”

“I don’t know, a bit,” I said. “It’s okay. I was intrusive at that dinner. I’m sorry, I don’t know how to talk about this kind of stuff.”

“That’s okay. It’s not why I wanted to get coffee. I feellike I’m screwing this up. I just wanted to be friends. It sounds pathetic, I know, but it can be pretty lonely to be twenty-six and still live with your parents.”

“Do you think you’ll ever move back to the city?”

“I hope so. I mean, I’d like to, but I have this feeling that if I move back, something terrible will happen. I don’t know if James told you”—I nodded, she gave a small smile—“yeah, I had to leave for some health stuff. I just feel like it’ll happen again if I go back. That’s not fun to admit. It’s easier here, people are less crazy. I guess because they’re all old people or kids.” She laughed. “But I love this place, I really do. It’s just lonely.”

“It would be nice,” I said, “if you could skip the stage between being a kid and an old person.”

“Exactly. I want to be retired. Give me a comfy bed to lie on and a nice view. That’s all I need.” Her smile straightened. “God, is that depressing?”

“No, it sounds nice.” I didn’t say that it seemed to me she already had the life she described. What she really wanted was something else, but neither of us knew what that was.

“Well, anyway.” She cleared her throat. “When are you heading back?”

“At the end of the week. James is back on Thursday, and we’ll leave sometime on Saturday, I think.”

“Wish you two could stay for longer.”

“Me too,” I said. Then, against my expectations, my resolve loosened. Like James, Isabelle possessed a self-insistent honesty that was difficult to resist. It was the confidence of somebody who for their whole life had been important, if not to their family, then to the world.

“I feel the same way about the city,” I let myself admit. “I get anxious when I think about really living there. When I was a student, it felt like I could always take everything back and just go home.”

“I know it’s not technically the fashionable thing to do,” said Isabelle, “but can’t you still?”

“My mother and I aren’t speaking.” I’d broken my own rule, but Isabelle was looking at me with such sympathy that I felt it was okay, just this once, to speak about my mother. “I really disappointed her by moving away in the first place.”

“That’s awful,” Isabelle said, voice soft. I didn’t realize how nervous I’d been that she would, like James, jump to cast my mother as wrong. The simplicity of her comment loosened the rubber band inside me. She added, “It’s hard to do anything when you know your mother’s mad at you.”

I lifted the mug to my lips. The cocoa had condensed into a small lump at the bottom of the cup. Sticking my tongue out to rescue the dregs, I felt very close to crying. It was true. My mother was mad at me, and I couldn’t do anything about it.

I put my cup down, and Isabelle put her hand on mine. It comforted me. She did. I let her.

—

After Isabelle left, I walkedto a grassy knoll and sat with my legs crossed. The air cooled. Next to my feet, two beetles were deep in battle, seemingly to the death. One was much bigger than the other. I felt embarrassed for the smaller beetle for taking on such a dubious challenge. Already he was being overpowered.

I searched for Isabelle on Instagram. A notification of her follow request came through while I was zooming in on her profile picture, a grainy shot of her laughing with her hand over her mouth. I let it sit for two minutes before accepting.

A new post popped up from Lou. I felt weird liking it just a few seconds after she’d posted, like I was obsessed with her. But she liked it when people were obsessed with her, so I figured it was okay.

The post revealed her new apartment, clearly bigger and more to her taste than Anna’s. She had two new roommates. One was a girl named Becca, whose bright red hair I recognized from Lou’s other posts. In one of the photos, Becca lay curled on a green velvet couch with some guy called Nicolo, who had a familiar cartoonish face. He appeared to be both Becca’s boyfriend and Lou’s third roommate. Lou captioned the photoset:breaking: hot LES couple adopts a third.I zoomed in on Becca and Nicolo. It was true, they were attractive, but only if you were open-minded about it. Then I realized why Nicolo looked familiar. He was the Italian man who’d hit on me at Lou’s birthday party last spring.

My chest panged. Suddenly I wanted very much to be back with Lou in our terrible apartment, discovering curls of her dark hair in the corners of my room. Did I even thank her for the birthday cupcakes? I pictured Lou buying Becca cupcakes and felt sad. Even worse was the idea of Lou doing anything for Nicolo. Nicolo didn’t like Lou; he was snarky about her at her party. “Your friend begs for a lot of attention,” he’d said.

I’d responded, “Doesn’t everyone?”

“If you like attention so much,” Nicolo had replied, “why are you so quiet?” I pinched him, hard, which he interpreted as flirting. He told me I reminded him of Mulan, which was important to him because it was the first American film he’d ever seen, back when he still lived in Rome. And now he and his sexy oblivious girlfriend got to listen to Lou’s shower playlist every day.

Your new place is nice!

Also Nicolo’s that guy