During the hour long drive back to campus, Mike blasted Jay Z, pounded the steering wheel, and happily cursed the drivers around him, everyone speeding at seventy miles an hour or more.
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Amanda preferred no conversation anyway. What was there to say? She certainly didn’t want to talk about her mother. And she wasn’t in the mood for anything intimate. Amanda had assumed since they hadn’t made love at Cheryl’s—their bedroom had shared a thin wall with hers—Mike would want that first thing. Or sooner, when the traffic eased up, he’d want her mouth working on him until he was done. Nobody would see. He’d never heard of anyone getting busted for it.
Maybe so, since they did it all the time. Amanda gratified Mike while he drove and usually she liked it. But not now; she wasn’t in the mood. Cheryl yanking her arm like that, snarling her desperate, impossible command outside while they both shivered—what was she, stupid? Because if she insisted Amanda not think about something, what else could she possibly think about?
The more Mike shouted, “Fuck you and you and you!” the more Amanda retreated into her thoughts. How could she have forgotten the Underwoods? They were her family. When she was little and Lolly the nanny had kept house, Amanda would run across the street and play with Olivia Underwood every day. Olivia’s mother was chilly and selfish like Cheryl. But Walter, Olivia’s father, had lavished attention on them. He made tea party snacks for them and their dolls. He took them to playgrounds and taught them both to ride bicycles.
When the Underwoods separated, and Olivia and her mother moved to Maine, Walter had become Amanda’s de facto parent. He had unofficially adopted her when nobody else was there. She swiped at the silent but steady tears staining her cheeks. How could she have forgotten Walter? It diminished her gratitude. More than gratitude—her love. Walter Underwood deserved a place front and center in her mind every day. And where was he?
The traffic let up as they neared campus. Amanda pressed herself against the far side of the car and shook her head.
Mike nodded. “You haven’t said a word all day, sweetheart. Are you sick?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. My mother stresses me out.”
“You’re kidding? Cheryl? She’s so great.”
“It’s typical, though,” Amanda said. “Mothers and daughters. Ask your mom if you think it’s weird.”
Mike’s mother was a psychiatrist. But nobody needed an M.D. to recognize how friction built up between mothers and daughters. They were like magnets, attracting and repelling each other, some more charged-up than others.
The next morning, going to breakfast, she took a foot path around the administration building. Right there on the steps, Mike was kissing Melanie Park, a Korean girl he had said was “his best friend.”
Amanda stepped backward, her heart racing. Mike was holding the back of Melanie’s head, and they were still kissing.
She hurried back to her dorm room, sat at her desk, and stared at her feet as if she’d never seen them before.
Mike knocked lightly and sauntered into the room. Amanda continued staring.
“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” He stood up and reached for her. Something in her expression warned him to back off.
“What?” he asked. “What’s going on?”
“I saw you kissing Melanie.”
He laughed and threw his head back to laugh louder. “Shit, Amanda, I thought somebody died. We grew up together. Her parents work with my parents. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s like our custom. She’s like my sister.”
She nodded tentatively. Walter Underwood had taken her to Disneyworld right before the fast, drastic dislocation to Wisconsin that nobody had ever explained. Walter was the best father she could have hoped for, and she had left him.
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