Good Girl Bad (7)
“Here, Mrs. G,” Freddy says, pushing a plate toward her. Two fluffy pancakes are topped with canned cream, strawberries, and maple syrup. They look delicious.
“You two have certainly perfected your pancakes,” she says, smiling, reaching for the plate, and plops herself down on a stool next to her daughter, reaching over to tuck some hair behind Tabby’s ear to reveal her face. “Though I’m not sure I’d class this as a wholesome dinner.”
“Not dinner, Mrs. G. A snack!” Freddy grins, mopping up the last of her maple syrup with her last bite of pancake. “We will certainly be up for some meat and three veg later, won’t we, T?”
Rebecca smiles to herself. She remembers being sixteen, carefree, eating ice cream for morning tea with her besties, never worrying about her weight or how she looked. Her face quickly clouds over, though.
She wasn’t always carefree, though, was she?
But she pushes that thought down hastily. She’s well-practiced at that particular movement in her psyche.
She smiles over at Freddy, who’s almost always the life of the party. Egocentric, sure, but Rebecca enjoys her company, is always encouraging Tabby to invite her over. Recently, it seems they always go to Freddy’s house, rather than hers. “What have you been up to, Freddy? How’s school? How’s life?”
“Can’t complain, Mrs. G, can’t complain,” she responds airily, waving her fork around, then cheekily reaching over and stealing one of Rebecca’s strawberries. Rebecca laughs, and pushes her plate across so Freddy has better access.
Freddy looks a bit like Tabby—slim, tall, toned, with long, blonde hair and smooth, tanned skin. Somehow, both of them have embarked on puberty without a single pimple seeming to mark their lovely faces. Now, Rebecca pulls out her phone and indicates she’d like to take a photo. Freddy throws an arm around Tabby expansively and grins at the camera. Tabby seems to shake herself, and gives her mother a tight smile.
“Came home to pancakes made by these two gorgeous creatures” she captions the photo, adding it to her Facebook feed, then snapping it shut.
“What about boys?” Rebecca goes on, teasing. “I hear my girl here might have a thing for a certain Trent, but I can’t get a word out of her about it. Maybe you could fill me in?”
Freddy falters ever so slightly, but then smiles brightly. “No boys here, Mrs. G. We’re both just busy studying, aren’t we, Tab? Don’t you worry, I keep an eye on this one, keep her on the straight and narrow.” Rebecca thinks she sees something pass between the girls, but it’s so subtle she can’t quite pin it down.
Is Freddy worried about Tabitha?
“In fact, we’re off to do a bit of studying now. Would it be all right if I stayed for dinner, Mrs. G? We’ll study for a couple of hours and probably work up a nice big appetite again.”
Rebecca smiles her acquiescence, knowing full well that they’ll probably just sit in Tabby’s room listening to music and gossiping, but she doesn’t mind. Tabby has promised her she’ll pick up her grades, that the dip was really nothing, just a lack of motivation for a little while there. Besides, she and Leroy have friends coming over for dinner, and she loves this part of her life: entertaining guests. Interesting conversation. Her successful daughters to show off.
She wonders what Genevieve is up to, and wanders down the hall to check on her.
As usual, she’s curled up in bed with a book.
Genevieve always gets great reports, and Rebecca never worries about her achievements or leaving her to be responsible for them herself. She does, however, worry about how quiet her youngest daughter is, how few friends she seems to have. The teachers correct her on this, though—apparently Genevieve is well-liked at school. Quiet, helpful, thoughtful, is how they describe her daughter. Seems to maintain close friends easily.
But Rebecca never sees them.
Genevieve never invites them around to her house.
Without the information from the school, she would have no idea her daughter had any friends at all.
Rebecca startles at this thought, though. Because without the information from the school, she’d had no idea that Tabby’s grades were slipping, or that she was possibly seeing a boy, either. There was something back to front about this, something not quite right. Because she was the parent, right? Shouldn’t she be telling the school the important things, not the other way around?
What sort of a mother relies on the school for information about her children’s lives?
And, more importantly, more concerningly—why don’t her daughters share this information with her themselves?
After dinner, Leroy sits beside Rebecca with one hand resting on her knee.
Freddy has departed, and Tabby and Genevieve have both excused themselves to their rooms.
“What beautiful girls you have,” Beth gushes, and Rebecca smiles demurely, though secretly concurring. Tabby had cleared the table for them, and Genevieve had already put the dishwasher on on her way to her room. Her huge mahogany table is decorated with flowers from the garden which Gen had arranged before her guests arrived.
Beth and Sandy are new friends who Rebecca met through tennis. Never a big sports person, she had convinced Leroy that they needed a way to meet new people while also getting a bit of exercise—it was so hard to find time for everything, why not kill two birds with one stone?