At the first planning meeting for the Mother Daughter Show at Barton Friends School, a group of mothers of senior girls are brainstorming ideas for skits and songs about their daughters and begin to get carried away.
“Oh, and we have to do something about clothes!” said Trish. “The way they dress? You know, with all the layers of tank tops? And the push-up bras?”
“The flip-flops,” Susan said, writing furiously.
“And the thongs!” said Savi. “You know how they wear their jeans low, so that the top of the thong shows?”
Again Amanda felt out of it: yes, Kate wore tank tops and flip flops. She might have one push-up bra. But in her role as the family laundress Amanda had never seen a thong in Kate’s dirty clothes—let alone one peeking over the top of her jeans.
“We could have, like, a fashion show,” said Trish. “You know, with the moms dressed like their daughters?”
“Yes!” screeched Savi, suddenly losing her elegant cool in favor of a fist pump. “I’ll wear a thong!”
Barb Atkins, perennial Parents Association volunteer at Barton Friends School, is struggling to cope with her troubled daughter, who frequently suffers a “Reduction in Privileges” (otherwise known as “getting RIP-ed”) for breaking school rules.
Barb suspected Grace had actually broken new ground in the annals of RIP-ing at Barton. It wasn’t unusual for kids to violate the rule against showing up drunk at a school dance. But Grace was probably the first and only student who had shown up drunk and then vomited all over the dean of students, who was acting as a chaperone. The incident would have been embarrassing for any parent, but it was excruciating for Barb, given her position as founder and co-chair of the Parents Association’s Health Improvement Program, an effort to address the issues of drinking and drugs. Sadly, the parent workshops organized by HIP, which had so far failed to draw many attendees, weren’t helped by the dance incident, but Barb could at least be proud of inventing a terrific acronym.
Amanda Marchetti, compulsively writing song lyrics for the show she and other mothers are creating for their graduating teenage daughters, phones her husband Larry from a Florida beach to tell him about her latest composition—a song about the daughter of the newly elected President, Franklin Miyama, who’s just joined the school’s student body.
Amanda looked around. There were two old ladies in beach chairs within earshot, but what the hell. “Remember how I told you people thought we should do something about Marina Miyama coming to Barton? I mean, we have to, right? You know, something about how Principal Tucker told everyone not to talk to the press, and that basketball cheer at Mitchell, when they used the name Miyama? Okay, so here goes: Ma-ri-na,” Amanda sang to the tune of “Maria” from West Side Story, “we just saw a girl named Marina.”
She could hear Larry letting out a guffaw. The two old ladies in beach chairs each opened a wrinkled, reptilian eyelid and stared at her.
Emboldened, Amanda sang: “And now we have a hunch, the Secret Service is at lunch . . . Miyama! We know we should try to stay calmer.”
The beach chair ladies were smiling now, one of them elbowing the other. Amanda smiled back; it had taken her a while to find the right word to rhyme with “Miyama.”
Susan Logan prides herself on her close relationship with her teenage daughter Allie. But an overheard conversation at a lacrosse game prompts Susan to question whether she knows Allie as well as she thinks she does.
Two mothers were standing a few feet away, chatting. Susan couldn’t recall their names, but one had huge sunglasses and the other was wearing a bright green jacket. “Jeez,” she heard Green Jacket say to Sunglasses, “look at the legs on that girl. Like sticks!”
Susan couldn’t tell which girl she was talking about.
“Yeah,” said Sunglasses. “Well, you know, Taylor says they have a few Anna’s and Mia’s on the team.”
“Anna’s and Mia’s?” asked Green Jacket.
“You know—anorexia and bulimia?”
Green Jacket started to laugh, but then—Susan could have sworn she wasn’t imagining this—caught a glimpse of Susan and immediately stopped and put a hand to her mouth. Sunglasses looked over at Susan as well, and the two women seemed to exchange a glance.
What was that all about? Could they possibly think that Allie . . . ? Ridiculous. If Allie was going through something like that, some weird eating thing, Susan would know about it.
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