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It was a relief, in a way. Sometimes it felt like a relief to be invisible.
Tibby sat on the outside of a group of kids in the film program. There was a lot of dark clothing and heavy footwear, and quite a few piercings glinting in the sunlight. They had invited her to sit with them while they all finished up their lunches before film seminar. Tibby knew that they had invited her largely because she had a ring in her nose. This bugged her almost as much as when people excluded her because she had a ring in her nose.
A girl named Katie complained about her roommate while Tibby chewed listlessly on pasta salad. It had as much taste as her sleeve. She chewed and nodded, nodded and chewed. It was a good thing she’d been born with her friends, Tibby realized, because she was terrible at making them.
A few minutes later she followed the group up the stairs of the arts building and into the classroom. She sat on the edge so there would be empty seats next to her. Partly she wanted to lessen her commitment to this particular group. Mostly she was waiting for Alex.
Her heart sped up when he arrived with Maura and sat down next to Tibby. Maura sat on his other side. Granted, they were the only two empty seats together left in the room.
The instructor, Mr. Russell, organized his papers. “All right, class.” He held up his hands. “As you know, this is your project seminar. This class is not about listening but about doing.”
Alex was taking notes in his binder. Tibby couldn’t resist glancing at them.
Class about doing.
Was he joking? He glanced at Tibby. Yes, he was joking. “You’re each going to make a film this summer, and you’ll have nearly the entire term to do it. You’ll spend a lot of time out in the world and a little time in this class.”
Alex was now drawing a picture. It was Mr. Russell, only his head was very tiny and his hands were very large. It was a pretty good picture. Did Alex know Tibby was peeking at it? Did he mind?
“The assignment,” Mr. Russell went on, “is to make a biographical piece. Focus the film on somebody who’s played an important role in your life. You are welcome to use scripts and actors or to make a documentary. It’s up to you.”
Tibby had an idea of what she wanted to do. It just arrived in her head. It arrived in the image of Bailey. Her friend Bailey, last summer, sitting against the slatted blinds in Tibby’s bedroom window with the sunlight sliding through in the last month of her twelve-year-long life. It made Tibby’s eyes ache. She looked to her left.
Up to you, Alex wrote in flowery calligraphy under the picture of Mr. Russell.
Tibby rubbed her eyes. No, she didn’t want to do that idea. She couldn’t do that idea. She didn’t permit herself to even give that idea a worded tag in her brain. She let it float back out the way it had come.
For the rest of the class she felt haunted by the feeling of the idea, even though the idea itself was gone. She forgot about Alex and his notes. Her eyes seemed to focus only a few inches in front of her face.
She forgot about him until he was talking right next to her ear. It took her a few moments to realize he was talking to her ear. Or rather, to her.
“Do you want to get coffee?” he seemed to be asking.
Maura was looking at her expectantly too.
“Oh …” When Alex’s words arranged themselves into the proper order, Tibby discovered she was pleased. “Now?”
“Sure.” Maura appeared to have taken over the planning. “Do you have another class?”
Tibby shrugged. Did she? Did it matter? She stood up and lifted her bag over her shoulder.
They sat in the back of the café at the student union building. It turned out both Alex and Maura were from New York City, which Tibby might have guessed. It also turned out Maura’s room was on the seventh floor of Tibby’s dorm. Maura was particularly interested in Vanessa, the RA.
“Did you see her room?”
Tibby’s attention was drifting over to Alex. Maura wasn’t willing to let it go.
“Seriously, did you see it?”
“No,” Tibby said.
“It’s full of toys and stuffed animals. I swear to God. The girl is a freeeeak.”
Tibby nodded. She didn’t doubt that, but she was more interested in listening to Alex talk about his project. “It’s pure nihilism. Think Kafka, but with a lot of explosions,” he was explaining.
Tibby laughed appreciatively even though she didn’t know what nihilism meant and she couldn’t name a single thing Kafka had written. He was a writer, wasn’t he?
Alex had a wry smile.“Kafka meets early Schwarzenegger, and the whole thing takes place in a Pizza Hut.”
He is smart, Tibby thought. “And how is this biographical?” she asked.
Alex shrugged and cast her a low-level smile. “Dunno,” he said, like he couldn’t be bothered.
“So what’s your project going to be? Do you know yet?” Maura asked her.
Tibby didn’t even allow herself the idea of her first idea, though it cast its shadow from high above her head. “I don’t know…. I’m thinking probably I’ll …”
Tibby had no idea how she was going to end this sentence. She looked down at Alex’s Pumas. She wanted her movie to be funny. She wanted Alex to smile at her the way he had in Bagley’s class.
She thought of the stuff she’d already filmed this summer. She’d caught this hilarious bit of her mom bustling around the kitchen, unaware that she had Nicky’s lollipop stuck to the back of her head. It was a dumb gag, but it was funny.
“I’m thinking I’ll probably do kind of a comic one … about my mom.”
Carmen wished the ride to the Morgans’ were longer so she could complain longer. She could tell Lena felt the ride was long enough.
“I understand, I really do,” Lena said sweetly but with diminishing patience as she pulled up in front of the large white clapboard house. “I’m just saying, your mom hasn’t gone on a date in a long time. It’s exciting for her.”
Lena glanced at Carmen’s sour face. “But then again, she’s not my mom. If she were, maybe I’d feel exactly the same way.”
Carmen studied her suspiciously. “No. You wouldn’t.”
Lena shrugged. “Well, I don’t think my mom ever kissed a guy other than my dad, so it’s pretty hard to picture,” she reasoned diplomatically. “But if she did—”
“You would be kind about it,” Carmen finished.
“No one is kind to their mom,” Lena said.
“You are,” Carmen accused.
“Oh, no, I’m not,” Lena said with feeling.
“You get annoyed and maybe huffy sometimes, Len, but you’re not openly bratty.”
“Annoyed and huffy can be even worse than bratty,” Lena argued.
The shiny red front door opened, and Jesse Morgan stood waving at them from the top step.
“I have to go,” Carmen said. “Can you pick me up? I’ll drive tomorrow.”
“You can’t drive tomorrow. If you do, I’ll be late again,” Lena said.
“You won’t be. Seriously. I’ll get up early. I promise.”
Carmen often promised this but never actually did it.
“Oh, all right.” Lena always gave her another chance. It was a little dance they did.
“Hi, Jesse,” Carmen said, hurrying up the walk. She grabbed him in a brief headlock as she passed through the door. Jesse was four and liked to keep track of who came and went on Quincy Street. Also, he liked to yell puzzling things to people on the sidewalk from his second-story bedroom window.
Carmen walked straight back to the kitchen, where Mrs. Morgan was cleaning Rice Krispies off the floor with one hand and holding Joe, the nine-month-old, with the other.
Carmen had already learned not to give the kids Rice Krispies, because they were harder to clean up than, say, Kix. That was something an outsider could figure out in a day and a mother would never think of. Wet, walked-on Rice Krispies were part of Mrs. Morgan’s unquestioned burden.
“Hi, everybody,” Carmen sai
d. She held out her hands to Joe, but he clung to his mother. Joe did like Carmen, but only when his mother was out of the house.
“Hi, Carmen. How are you?” Mrs. Morgan threw some Saran-wrapped objects from the refrigerator to the garbage can. “I’m going out to run some errands. I’ll be back at noon. I’m on the cell if you need me.”
Prolonging the inevitable, Joe surveyed Carmen from where his head lay on his mother’s shoulder. Carmen remembered what Lena had said about not being kind to your mother. Joe was kind to his mother. He adored her. Had Carmen been kind to her mother when she was a baby? Maybe you were kind only when you were very young or very old.
She accepted a wriggling, protesting Joe from Mrs. Morgan.
