“No offense, Cass, but I thought you guys were justreallygood at matchmaking. I grew up Catholic! All the stuff you guys do seems straight pagan.”
“A lot of cultural customs are pagan,” I say, my finger up in lecture mode. “Doesn’t mean it’s not rooted in something real.”
“Listen, I’m not going to argue with you about this because I am white and uncomfortable with your culture.”
I laugh. “Shut up.”
“Anyway, I feel bad for Ellis.”
“Stop.”
“Ido! Couldn’t you have had a few more nights with him before calling it quits?”
“No, you freak!” I sit up and level an attempt at a serious gaze at her. “What’s with married people forcing their single friends to make dubious dating choices so they can live vicariously through them? This is mylife.”
“Because we haven’t felt the fear of dying alone in too long and have grown reckless in our sordid daydreams,” she says with a laugh, sloshing her wine around her glass. I love her.
Her phone buzzes with a text, and she holds it up away from her face.
“You know, I don’t mind aging that much but having to squint to read is a real motherfucker.”
“Really looking forward to it,” I say. While Mar types out a text, my mind wanders. “I actually think I feel chill about aging because my mom never had the chance to do it.”
Mar looks up at me, her expression surprised. I don’t bring up my mom that often. But I just had my birthday and, of course, she’s been on my mind.
I take a sip of wine. “I’m not scolding you for complaining, I complain, too. I hate how I have to do ten squats in the morning in order for my back tonotfeel like a piece of petrified wood. And RIP to raw garlic. It’s just that, when I think about how young my mom was when she died—it seems so completely…”
“Tragic?” Mar finishes for me quietly. “It was awful, Cass.”
I nod. “Yeah. It was. She was thirty-two.” Mar knows this but it bears repeating. I’m lying on a rug my mom picked out on a trip she took to Morocco when she was in college. We used to lie on it together and watch the shadows cross the ceiling as the day passed through the windows.
“Cass?” she said one of those afternoons. “Did you see that?”
My eyes searched the ceiling. “What?”
“The shadow fairy.”
“Huh? Where?” I kept looking.
She pointed, her fingers stacked with rings—all different kinds of metal and colors. “There. You just have to look, Bean. Look for the shape.”
And I saw it then—a tiny darting figure. “Is that really a fairy?”
“Sure.”
“When you say ‘sure’ it means ‘maybe.’ ”
She laughed and looked over at me. “Smarty-pants.” Then she paused. “You’re smart but that’s not the most important thing, okay? I want you to always see the magical things—like shadow fairies.” Even then my mom saw my nascent type A side. As an artist, shewas always trying to nurture my imagination. To make sure I remembered to have fun.
“Okay, Mama.” I reached over and grabbed her hand. She squeezed it tight, lacing each finger through my small ones. I loved the feel of her cool rings on my skin. Sometimes I felt them like a phantom on my hands.
I feel them now, her presence everywhere. “You know what’s wild?” I say to Mar. “I ended up spilling my guts to Ellis about my mom.”
“Was this before or after you fornicated on every surface of this house?”
“After, you perv,” I say with a laugh. “It was in the desert, when I was high.”
“Ah, yes. The shroom musings. Remember how I came up with that genius movie idea on our retreat?”
