I kick through the rumpled sour clothes for the UPS box. Wrapped in bubble wrap is an antique Betty Boop alarm clock and a box of black-and-white cookies from Shriner’s, a bakery in our town. The sticky note on the cookies says These are from Grandma.
“I thought the clock would go perfect in your collection.”
“Uh-huh.” I look at the still-packed boxes in my closet, where my alarm clock collection, and all my nonessential stuff from home, still remains.
“And I ordered you a bunch of new clothes. Shall I send them or just bring them up?”
“Just bring them, I guess.”
“Speaking of Parents’ Weekend, we’re firming up plans. Saturday night we are trying to get dinner reservations at Prezzo. Sunday is the brunch, and after that, before we fly home, your father has an alumni thing, so I thought I’d splurge on spa treatments for us. Oh, and Saturday morning, before the luncheon, I’m having coffee with Kali’s mother, Lynn. We’ve been emailing.”
“Why are you emailing my roommate’s mother?”
“Why not?” Mom’s voice is snippy, as if there is no reason for me to be asking about this, as if there is no reason for her not to be present in every single part of my life.
“Well, can you not call Kali’s cell? It’s a little weird.”
“It’s a little weird to have your daughter go incommunicado for a week.”
“Three days, Mom.”
“So you were counting too.” She pauses, scoring herself the point. “And if you would let me install a house phone, we wouldn’t have this issue.”
“No one has landlines anymore. We all have cells. Our own numbers. Please don’t call me on hers.”
“Then return my calls, Allyson.”
“I will. I just lost my charger,” I lie.
Her aggrieved sigh on the other end of the line makes me realize I’ve picked the wrong lie. “Must we tie your belongings to you with a rope these days?” she asks.
“I just loaned it to my roommate, and it got put away with her stuff.”
“You mean Kali?”
Kali and I have barely shared a bar of soap. “Right.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting her and her family. They seem lovely. They invited us to La Jolla.”
I almost ask my mother if she really wants to get chummy with people who named their daughter Kali for California. Mom has a thing about names; she hates nicknames. When I was growing up, she was kind of fascist about it, always trying to prevent anyone from shortening my name to Ally or Al. Grandma ignored her, but everyone else, even teachers at school, toed the line. I never got why, if it bothered her so much, she didn’t just name me something that couldn’t be truncated, even if Allyson is a family name. But I don’t say anything about Kali because if I get bitchy, I’ll blow my cover as Happy College Student. And my mother especially, whose parents couldn’t afford to send her to the college of her choice and who had to work her way through college and later support Dad while he was in medical school, is very intent that I be a Happy College Student.
“I should go,” I tell her. “I’m going out with my roommates tonight.”
“Oh, how fun! Where are you going?”
“To a party.”
“A keg party?”
“Maybe the movies.”
“I just saw a great one with Kate Winslet. You should see that one.”
“Okay, I will.”
“Call me tomorrow. And leave your phone on.”
“Professors tend to frown on calls in classes.” The snark comes out again.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday. And I know your schedule, Allyson. All your classes are in the mornings.”
She would know my schedule. She basically created it. All those morning classes because she said they’d be less attended and I’d get more attention and then I’d have the whole rest of the day for studying. Or, as it turns out, for sleeping.
After we hang up, I shove the alarm clock into a box in my closet and take the cookies and bring them into the lounge where the rest of my roommates have started in on a six-pack. They’re all dressed up and ready to go out.
When school started, the rest of them were so excited. They really were Happy College Students. Jenn made organic brownies, and Kendra drew up a little sign on our door with all our names and a moniker, the Fab Four, atop it. Kali, for her part, gave us coupons to a tanning salon to ward off the inevitable seasonal affective disorder.
Now, a month in, the three of them are a solid unit. And I’m like a goiter. I want to tell Kendra that it’s okay if she takes down the little sign or replaces it with one that says something like Terrific Trio* and Allyson.
I shuffle into the lounge. “Here,” I say, handing over the cookies to Kali, even though I know she watches her carbs and even though black-and-whites are my favorites. “I’m really sorry about my mom.”
Kendra and Jenn cluck sympathetically, but Kali narrows her eyes. “I don’t want to be a bitch or anything, but it’s bad enough having to fend off my own parents, okaay?”
“She’s having Empty Nest or something.” That’s what Dad keeps telling me. “She won’t do it again,” I add with more confidence than I possess.
“My mom turned my bedroom into a craft room two days after I left,” Jenn says. “At least you’re missed.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What kind of cookies are they?” Kendra asks.
“Black-and-whites.”
“Just like us,” Kendra jokes. She’s black, or African American; I’m never sure which is right, and she uses both.
“The racial harmony of cookies,” I say.
Jenn and Kendra laugh. “You should come out with us tonight,” Jenn says.
“We’re going to a party over at Henderson and then there’s this bar over on Central that apparently has a very liberal carding policy,” Kendra says, twisting her just-straightened black hair up into a bun, then thinking twice about it and pulling it down. “Lots of fine male specimen.”
“And female specimen, if that’s your thing,” Jenn adds.
“It’s not my thing. I mean, none of it is my thing.”
Kali gives me a bitchy smirk. “Think you enrolled in the wrong school. I believe there’s a convent in Boston.”