**THIS BOOK IS ON HOLD UNTIL I'M DONE WRITING LOVE CONSEQUENCES** Linda Baxter's trust fund makes life easy, but she learned that things in pretty packages are not worth her time. By twenty-nine, she tried marriage, fabricated a fake relationship, a...
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My assistant was not looking for an apartment for me because if I tell Mama that I'm moving out during my short stay in Chicago, she'll skin me alive. With her stare. And silences. And a million other nonviolent ways mothers have to show that your decision not to live with them is hurting them every second of every day. That your rash and misguided choice to leave the family living quarters is the thing that keeps them awake at night.
I hoped Mama would be happy to have her three boys out of her hair, but it's like the moment she became an empty-nester, she decided her wish was to have all us kids under her roof again. So, no, I didn't ask Cleo to look for an apartment, because I would much rather suffer the showerheads that start neck-height, ironed jeans that I never asked for, and Mama's watchful squint, which I can feel on my back when I'm cooking in her kitchen, than experience her wrath. However, if I tell Mama I'm moving in with a girl who is a friend, she'll pack my bags for me and send me on my way.
Moving in with Linda is a triple win: I get the help I need with the workshop; she gets the help she needs with learning how to be an adult; and Mama will get the illusion of me sailing into the sunset with a girl who is a friend, and thus a surefire marriage material.
Lying to Linda is a small pebble in my shoe. Uncomfortable, but it's not hurting anyone. I'm helping her, maybe even more than she's helping me. We're helping each other. She just doesn't know how much more she's helping me than I her. That's for the best, because I don't need her to imagine she's in charge. She'd enjoy that. Being in charge seems to be the mode of operation Linda prefers. She's been in charge since I finished cleaning her fountain and opened all the windows to air-out the lingering smell.
"You see how if you do the picture notes on what you read, plus the tables, the content sticks in your brain better, right?" She points into my notebook, that I've been illustrating according to her guidance. "Now look at me."
I lift my head. The feverish glow doesn't end with her eyes. She's flushed, her hair ruffled from the many times she had to move it out of the way when she was leaning over to give me examples of picture-notes. She puts her pencil behind her ear. "Let's figure out why the iambic pentameter is called that."
