These Girls Read Free Page A

fried-egg-and-cheese on a bagel to nibble on the way home. She’d lounge around in her sticky clothes, reading the paper and sipping coffee, feeling gloriously grubby.
    An hour later, she’d just brewed a two-cup pot of Colombian roast and snapped open the Times when her cell phone rang. She glanced down and swallowed a sigh before answering. It was 9:01 A.M.
    “Hey, Mom.”
    “Catherine, are you okay? You sound down.”
    Cate forced more enthusiasm into her voice. “Just distracted. How are you?”
    “Oh, fine. What are you up to?”
    At 9:01 A.M. ? Kicking both of my lovers out of bed, Cate wanted to reply. Her passive-aggressiveness wasn’t due to the question; it was because she’d prohibited her mother from calling before 9:00 on weekends, saying it would wake her roommates. The fact that her mother was clearly watching the clock, waiting for the magic moment to dial, conjured equal parts pity and frustration in Cate.
    “Just relaxing,” Cate said. “How about you?”
    “Oh, I thought I’d do a little grocery shopping today. Maybe go to the bookstore.”
    “Sounds nice,” Cate said, injecting even more enthusiasm into her voice.
    “I guess.”
    Now guilt washed over Cate. Her mother had devoted herself to raising Cate and her older brother, Christopher, to afternoons spent sitting at the kitchen table and going over multiplication tables while a stew bubbled away on the stove, to hand-sewing Halloween costumes and packing hampers full of peanut butter sandwiches and lemonade for summer afternoons at the beach.Now Christopher was living in Hong Kong with his wife of two years, her parents had split up, and her mother was alone in the brick colonial in Philadelphia that had once overflowed with soccer balls and ballet slippers and backpacks and happy chatter.
    After a pause, her mother said, “I was thinking, I could come up next weekend for a visit? We could have some girl time.”
    Cate swallowed hard. The last time her mother had come up, they’d wandered through MoMA and gotten manicures and feasted on chicken Caesar salads and a carafe of Chardonnay. Her mother had refused Cate’s offers to take her bedroom and insisted on spending the night on the love seat, claiming it was perfectly comfortable, though at brunch the next morning she kept rubbing the side of her neck. It had been lovely, but it had also been a month ago. No, less than a month. Three weeks ago.
    Cate stood up, knocking the newspaper off her lap and onto the floor. Agitation crept into her body as she began to pace. “I’m not sure yet what my plans are,” she lied. “I might need to go out of town for a story.”
    She could feel her mother’s disappointment, thick and heavy as a gray fog creeping over the phone line. She’d always reveled in the way her mom had waited to greet her after school, or was available to drive her to an activity at a moment’s notice, knowing that not every mother was like this, that she was lucky. What Cate hadn’t foreseen was that, in living for her family, her mother had failed to create a life of her own. Now that everyone was gone, it was as if her mother was trying to cling to Cate to keep herself from falling into the gaping hole created by their absences.
    “Maybe in another couple weeks?” Cate suggested. “I’ll call you when I get to the office and double-check my calendar.”
    “Of course,” her mother said.
    “What book are you thinking about getting?” Cate asked asshe walked over to the kitchen counter. A sheet of paper was propped up against the toaster. Cate picked it up and began to read.
    “The club chose To Kill a Mockingbird . We’re rereading classics for the next few months,” her mom was saying, but her voice faded into a buzz in Cate’s ear.
    The note was from Naomi. She was moving out, heading to Europe for a year to model. She was leaving in two weeks.
    “Shit!” the word escaped from Cate’s mouth.
    “What’s wrong? Honey, are you hurt?”
    She never