Her mother took a deep breath. “I was just wondering,” she said slowly, clearly having to work to stop the words coming out sharply, “whether you have any other friend? Anyone in particular?”
“Other friend?” Catherine said mockingly. She could not stop herself. When she was home, when she was talking to her mother, she turned into a fifteen-year-old again. It was ridiculous; she needed to snap out of it. She cleared her throat. “What do you mean, any other friend?” she said, more evenly.
Her mother shrugged. She had on the striped navy and white top that Catherine loved on her, its vivid white, its dark navy bands; the sleeves were pushed up on her arms, which were already growing brown — Catherine wished she had inherited her mother’s olive complexion rather than her father’s gene for sunburn. On her mother’s wrist was the Swatch watch that Catherine and the others had given her for her last birthday, her forty-fifth, the strap splayed with colors, the tiny mirrored face glinting, now, as she turned the tea towel again in her hands, laid it down on the table to be folded the other way. Forty-five; her mother was forty-five. It seemed impossible, but it was nothing beside the thought that in another handful of years, she would be fifty. Fifty. Her mother, slim and tanned and brown-haired; her mother who wore jeans and runners, who had recently bought a new pair of sunglasses to wear in the car. How could she be nearly fifty? And as for Catherine’s father, that was completely outrageous — he was ten years older, and sixty was not even an age Catherine was willing to countenance for one of her parents. Sixty was, was it not, the point after which nobody much remarked if something happened to you? If, one morning or one evening, you simply slipped away? What the hell was she supposed to do if that happened to one of her parents? It panicked her, the thought of it; it kept her awake at night, staring at the wall. She had told James about this, of course, but James had come nowhere close to understanding; James had thought she was mad. Or, actually, it was not madness of which he had accused her, but something else — something she had forgotten now, a word she had not heard before — dependent somehow, dependent on them in the same way they were dependent on her — anyway, he had given her a right lecture over the phone that evening. He did not even know exactly how old his own parents were, he had said; sixties, maybe? Late fifties? Catherine had been astonished. For his parents to be that old, and for him not to be riddled with the anxiety of their mortality, with the knowledge that the clock was counting down on the very fact of them — how could he go around like that? How could he have felt relaxed enough, for instance, to have gone off to Berlin? Oh, for fuck’s sake, Catherine, James had spluttered, and then Catherine had changed the subject. They were so alike, the two of them, so alike in every way — and yet, there were moments when she saw the ways in which they were so different. And she did not like those moments. She found herself moving quickly to chase those moments away.
“Well,” her mother said now, more pointedly; Catherine had not given her any answer to her question. “Well? Is there anything you want to tell me? Is there anyone you—”
“No,” Catherine said, pushing back from the table.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Catherine said. “And I think that tea towel’s folded now.”
“Don’t be so bloody smart!”
“I’m not being smart.”
“I’m only trying to have a simple conversation with you!”
“About Pat fucking Burke,” Catherine spat.
“Catherine!” Her mother glanced, horrified, towards the open back door. “Watch what you’re saying!”
“Well? That’s it, isn’t it?” Catherine said, crossing to the sink angrily. “He saw me with my friend up at the train station, and he told Daddy, and now I’m in trouble, and I didn’t even do anything.” Forget fifteen: she sounded ten, now, and she was dismayed at how easily this had happened, at how automatically her voice had become this babyish whine; but in the next moment, she had decided that she was perfectly entitled to whine, and that she might as well go the whole hog, and she banged down her bowl. “It’s not fair,” she said, folding her arms.
“Stop that, Catherine,” her mother said warningly. She put one hand on the table and the other on the counter, blocking Catherine’s way to the door. “I just want to talk to you.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Catherine said, and she tried for a contemptuous laugh which would make clear her feelings about all of this, but as soon as she started it she realized that it would come out as a sob, so she swallowed it back down. “Pat Burke is nothing but a creep. Everyone hates him, and yet you all still listen to him.”
Her mother raised an eyebrow, as though to say she could not argue with this, but nor could she openly agree. “He says he saw you with your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Well, you were seen holding hands with him, whatever he is.”
“We were listening to my Walkman, for Christ’s sake!”
“Well, if you’re going to be so public about it, you can’t be surprised when somebody sees you.”
“Oh my God. Oh my God. We weren’t doing anything! He’s a friend! He’s an old friend of Amy and Lorraine’s, and he was going in the direction of the train station anyway, and I wanted to tell him about this song — this song I like—”
She stopped. She could hear how unconvincing it sounded. And, also, she was reeling a little, in shock a little, that already she had pushed an untruth into the story; James had not, after all, been going in the direction of the train station anyway. He had gone there especially for her. To sit with her. To hug her goodbye. To wave her off from the platform, with his arms going madly, not giving a shit who was seeing him or laughing at him, doing it with such glee and enthusiasm that Catherine had cringed. But she could not tell her mother this; she could not tell her mother any of it. Her mother would not understand. Her mother, like her father, had surely never known this kind of friendship, the kind of friendship in which you did not want to waste a single minute, in which every minute was a chance to talk about something more—
“Look, Catherine,” her mother said, shaking her head. “We don’t expect you not to have boyfriends. You’re old enough for that now. You don’t have to tell me lies.”
“Oh, thanks very much,” Catherine said, the words tart with bitterness. “That’s very good of you.”
“I told you not to be so bloody smart!”
“I’m not being smart,” Catherine said, and she slammed her hands down on the edge of the sink. There had to be a better way to do this, she thought; there had to be a better way to argue and protest and stand up for yourself. A dignified way; a grown-up way. She would ask James about it the next time she talked to him, she decided; James would know. James would know how to keep your voice level in a situation like this, and how to sound confident, and how to come out the winner with just a few carefully chosen words.
“I hate that old prick!” she shouted suddenly across the kitchen, and then she burst into ragged, jerky sobs. Her mother rolled her eyes.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Catherine. Get a hold of yourself. You’re eighteen years old.”
“I know I’m eighteen!” Catherine wailed. “That’s my whole point! James is my friend! He’s a friend of the girls, and he was in Germany all year, and he’s back now, I mean just for the summer, and we were listening to music, and I was just saying hello to him at the train station, and I’m sick of not being able to do what I want!”