Mom picks a lipstick from my cosmetic bag on the coffee table. “Didn’t you say they all have babies?”
I sigh. “They do.” All my friends from high school are either married or married with kids. Meanwhile I’m single by choice right now. Kind of. Until recent developments, work dried up after that last show, so I had to get a job with a catering company to pay the rent. Between work and the auditions, I’m too tired to think about dating.
“Maybe you might be less tired if you didn’t stay up all night reading mystery novels like an old lady,” my roommate keeps telling me.
“Hey did you read the latest Lacey Piper novel?” I ask Mom now.
“Oh my gosh, yes!” Mom says as she brushes on eyeshadow. We chat for a bit about our latest reads. I know my roommate’s right. I could be more social. But mystery novels are how I relax and destress. Besides, I don’t want to meet anyone new. And now with my big show, I really won’t have time.
“Press your lips together,” Mom says. She hands me the mirror.
She did an amazing job.
“You could have had a great career as a makeup artist,” I joke.
Mom smiles, and I cringe inwardly for suggesting it, since it’s acting-adjacent. Mom was once an actor, like me. She stopped when they moved here from Burlington. Then she got pregnant with my brother Dan. She never went back to work because of Dad’s erratic hours at work. But I know that’s not the whole story. No one dreams about giving up their dreams, do they?
“That would have been nice,” she says, taking my joke seriously. “But we never had much of a theater scene here in Quince Valley.”
I don’t mention that there are other places to do makeup.
“I wish there had been a theater here at all,” I tell Mom now.Maybe then you wouldn’t have had to give it all up.
And maybe then I wouldn’t have put so much pressure on myself to succeed.
My thoughts must be evident on my face, because Mom smiles at me, her expression a little bittersweet. “Would you have stayed in town if we had a theater here?”
I answer her question with my own. “Would you have acted if we did?”
I picture Mom’s yearbook photos, which I looked at every night as a teenager, especially on nights when she seemed exhausted or lonely when Dad was out of town. There was a quote next to a photo of Mom playing Juliet, right under where it said MOST LIKELY TO BE A BROADWAY STAR “You only get one life! Make a wish and make it count.”
Mom smiles. “Oh honey. That was an old dream.”
Would I have stayed in Quince Valley if I could have been a performer here? Before last year, the answer would have been absolutely not. My goal had always been to go all the way. I owed it to my mom and myself to do that. But I’ve found myself missing home lately, at least a little.
Leif’s face flashes in my mind. It’s ridiculous—he doesn’t even live here. I miss Quince Valley sometimes only because I miss going into the shops and people remembering my name. Getting a flat tire and having literally fifteen people stop and insist they fix it for you instead of having to wait for help.
But it was the feel of him last year on that balcony too, how close he stood to me, how genuine his smile was. How it felt like the happiest reunion, even though the night I met him capped off one of the worst days of my life. I’m just conflating the feelings of him with being home.
“I was always going to go to New York,” I tell Mom.
Mom smiles. “I actually find that reassuring. Means I was always going to lose you to the big city. And I couldn’t be more proud.”
Mom beams and I give her a huge hug.
“Thanks,” I say, my chest tight.
The sharp trill of the landline rings in the kitchen. I jump up. “I’ll get it.”
But the ringing cuts short.
Shit. Dad and my older brother Dan, a video game designer, are playing some action game that Dan’s company just released in Dad’s man cave. There’s a phone extension in there, too, and if my dad picks up…
I sprint for the kitchen, but as I pass by their door, I hear a falsely deep voice booming, “What exactly are your intentions with my daughter?”
I freeze, my stomach dropping.
“Dan, get the hell off the phone!”