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“No, thanks,” Melissa says. “I have an early appointment tomorrow.”
“Do you need me to come to work early?” Sammy wants to know.
“You sleep in and plan on arriving for the second appointment at eleven,” Melissa tells her.
Meanwhile, I don’t want my night with Melissa to end like this. “Are you sure you don’t want an ice cream cone to go?”
“No, thank you.” Her tone is as cool as a mountain stream. She turns to Paige and asks, “You ready to go?”
“Yep.” Paige turns to me and Sammy and says goodbye. Her parting words toward my daughter are much warmer than to me. Sammy gets, “See you soon, baboon.” And I get, “Later days, monkey butt.” It’s clear Melissa told her everything that happened between us while we were outside.
Once they’re gone, I ask Sammy, “Did you have a good night?”
“It was so much fun,” she says.
“I’m glad.”
“What did you want to talk to Melissa about? She came back inside kind of grumpy.”
“Just some adult stuff.”
“What adult stuff?” she wants to know.
“Ah, but you see, I can’t tell you because you’re a kid. Adult-stuff, by definition, can only be discussed with adults.”
“If you say so.” Grabbing her shoes, she adds, “I’m only getting one scoop because I had a milkshake at dinner.”
“When has that ever stopped you?” On my most lenient parenting days, Sammy has been known to go through an entire quart of ice cream by herself.
“I have my womanly figure to think about now.”Andwe’re back to period talk, goodie.
“Have you been thinking about Chicago?” I ask as we walk out of the bowling alley toward our car.
“Kind of, but I’ve been trying not to. It’s not something I know how to feel about, you know?”
“I know better than anyone,” I tell her. “Your mom left me, too.”
Sammy looks up at me sadly. “She did a real number on us, didn’t she?”
After we get into the car, I ask, “If she’d died instead of leaving, what would you think about our life without her?”
“I’d totes think we were rock stars. I mean, we’ve mostly had a great time together.”
“It wasn’t our choice that she left, so why can’t we think of ourselves as rock stars anyway?”
She ponders this for a second before asking, “If Beth had died, would you have gotten remarried?”
“Maybe,” I tell her honestly.
“But because she left, you were afraid someone else would leave us too.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is that if Beth died, our lives could have been so different right now.” She hurries to add, “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not wishing death on her. I’m just saying that she totally screwed us over.”
As mad as I am at Sammy’s mother, and as true as Sammy’s words are, a strange feeling of sympathy nudges into my consciousness. “If somebody couldn’t walk, would you be mad at them for not running?”
“No, but what does that have to do with anything?”
