Page 70 of Seven Days in June

“What are youdoinghere?” yelped Eva, clutching her head. That scream had rattled her brain.

“Um, I live here?” said Audre, with utter calm. She was wearing oversized Princeton sweatpants and the Hogwarts Sorting Hat she always wore when she was working on her art. “Thehell, Mommy.”

“Language!”

“Oh, my eternal bad. What’s the proper response when your MERE PRESENCE sends your mother into ACUTE HYSTERIA?”

“Audre,” said Eva, trying to modulate her breathing, her head and heart thumping wildly. “My love. Why aren’t you at school? Please don’t tell me Bridget O’Brien expelled you. Do. Not. Tell. Me. That. ’Cause I will absolutely sue Cheshire Prep. She promised me—”

“I’m not expelled!Goddd-uh. It’s the second-to-last day of school. We have today off. Like we do every year, for teachers to finish report cards. Didn’t you, like, get an email?”

Eva couldn’t keep up with Cheshire’s administrative emails. They sent one for everything, from notices about lice epidemics to parent-led Zumba classes.

Keeping her head very still, Eva gingerly slid onto the bench in her breakfast nook. Audre watched her, knowing all the signs. Huffing, she grabbed a fresh ice pack from the freezer and tossed it to her mom, who caught it with one hand.

“Thanks,” breathed Eva, pressing the frosty ice pack to her left temple. “I forgot about today. I think I’m losing my mind.”

“No comment,” Audre said, pouting. She plopped onto the bench, across from Eva—a not-yet-graceful girl with noodly limbs and an endless neck who, one day, would be elegant in the extreme. But today, she was a newborn giraffe.

In an effort to be casual, Eva asked, “How’s the portrait going?”

“Fine.”

“It’s lovely. You really captured your grandmother’s essence, even though it’s an abstract piece. Your dad’s gonna be so proud.”

“Dad co-designed the characters inMonsters, Inc.andBrave,” she mumbled. “This is nothing.”

“Okay, Audre,” she said, letting it go. “So. Did you see my note this morning?”

“Yeah.”

“Any response to it?”

Audre shrugged, slipping off her wizard hat. Underneath, her hair was a riot of ringlets, identical to Eva’s. “No. I mean, yeah. Like, I guess we should talk.”

Audre’s lower lip was poked out, and she wasn’t blinking, because if she did, tears would fall. Eva shouldn’t have been so nervous to launch a difficult conversation with her own kid, but so much of Eva’s self-worth depended on how her daughter thought of her. She knew it was unhealthy and over the top, but it was also true.

“We can’t tiptoe around each other like this, babe. You’re my girl. You’re my person. I love you bigger than—”

“I know, bigger than Ursula in the dramatic finale ofLittle Mermaid.”

Eva had been saying this to Audre her entire life. It was one of their things. But Audre wasn’t moved.

“I’ll go first,” sighed Eva. “I’m sorry that I yelled at you at school. It wasn’t the place or time. I was just shocked, you know? You’re always so consistently on point. The last thing I was expecting was to walk into that meeting and find out that you’re facingexpulsion.”

“You act like I’m the worst daughter, though,” she said. “Do you know why Parsley was in detention? Tequila!”

“She brought tequila to school?”

“No. She snuck a tequila-soaked tampon to schoolin her actual vagina, let it absorb into her bloodstream, and was blackout drunk by fourth period.”

Eva stared at her daughter, thunderstruck.

“Point taken,” she said. “Look, I don’t think you’re terrible. My expectations of you are high, because I want you to have every option in the world. Options I didn’t have.”

Her daughter sat in stony silence. Eventually, she plucked the burgundy feather off her cheek and started slowly shredding it on the table.

“Audre. Say something.”

---