6. Meet the Thompsons

Richie has dinner at Carrie's house.

I took a deep breath as I walked up to the porch and prepared to ring the doorbell. I had no idea what to expect, I was so unsure what I’d gotten myself into. This Tuesday night I was wearing my nice-looking clothes, standing outside Carrie Thompson’s house, moments away from meeting both of her parents. It was her idea, after all.

“Ugh, tonight’s gonna be hell,” she moaned that morning as we left the cafeteria and I began walking her to her homeroom. “My dad’s coming over for dinner. Since they split up, every time my parents see each other it’s the same thing: them screaming at each other the whole time and me caught in the crossfire.”

“Have you tried talking to them about it?” I reasoned. Carrie scoffed.

“That would imply they valued my thoughts and feelings.”

She sulked as her eyes wandered off in distress. Then, they suddenly lit up as if she was struck with realization.

“You know,” she began, her frown turning into a slightly mischievous smile. “Maybe they would act civil for once if I had a friend over.”

“Who you gonna ask?”

“Who do you think, you dork? Come.”

I admit, I was thrown for a loop.

“I thought you didn’t want anybody meeting your parents.”

“That’s for everyone else,” she said with an honest hesitation. “All my judgemental classmates I can’t trust.”

“I’m different?” I uttered without forethought.

“Of course,” she answered, as if confused by my questioning it. “You’re the best friend I have here.”

I shrugged and accepted my fate. Surely she was exaggerating about her parents’ behavior, how bad could it be?

“Sure,” I complied. “Why not?”

“Great,” she replied cheerfully. “Dinner’s around six thirty-ish, I’ll text you the address. See you then, Superboy!”

And with that she disappeared into her classroom.

Flash forward to later that evening again, and there I stood. From the outside, Carrie’s house was small, but still nice-looking and in the middle of a relatively good neighborhood. I’d parked the newly-fixed RichieMobile along the street. Within seconds of me ringing the doorbell, I heard Carrie’s distant voice.

“The door’s unlocked,” she called from inside the house. “You can come in.”

I put on my best upstanding young adult face as I gently opened the door. What lied beyond it was a beautiful, obscenely tidy home, everything in sight looking thoroughly vacuumed, dusted or sorted away. There were pictures of Carrie as a kid everywhere. From the door I could see a small portion of what looked like a den and a staircase, with Carrie herself walking down. She had her same usual mellow smile, but her usually braided hair now hung down freely around her face carelessly and she was barefoot.

“You just gonna stand there?” she laughed as she walked down. “Come in.”

I dumbfoundedly took a step in. Carrie shut the door for me, then pointed.

“Meet my dad.”

I turned to see her father and nearly jumped. He was a tall, broad shouldered, muscular man with a dress shirt and a grizzled goatee. If there was one thing about Carrie’s dad I’ll always remember it’s that he was huge for no reason. He reached out his giant, manly goliath of an arm and I trepidatiously shook his hand, hoping he didn’t crush every bone in mine.

“You must be Ricky.” he said welcomingly.

“It’s Richie, Glenn.” corrected a woman’s voice. Amazing; this behemoth before me was named Glenn. All eyes shifted to the door to the kitchen, as a tall, forty going on twenty five looking woman entered, removing the oven mitts from her hands.

“I’m Carrie’s mother.” she said to me with a smile that seemed simultaneously sweet toward me yet passive aggressive toward Glenn over there. Carrie’s mother also somewhat surprised me at first glance. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was expecting, but nonetheless I wasn’t expecting her. She had long, brown hair a few shades lighter than Carrie’s, with her same green eyes and, most surprisingly, a big, full smile. She looked toned and completely in shape, like a ‘totally cool’ mom you would see in a protein shake commercial.

“Nice to meet you.” I said humbly.

“What’s for dinner, mom?” Carrie cut in before she could reply.

“Lasagna.” her mother answered.

“I thought you were making meatloaf.” Glenn questioned.

Her mother shot him a look. “We all think things, don’t we?”

Carrie rolled her eyes. “Can we not scare Richie away within thirty seconds of him knowing you?”

The former Mrs. Thompson put on that passive aggressive smile again and instructed,

“Carrie, go finish setting the table.”

Carrie rolled her eyes and headed off to the kitchen. As soon as she was gone, her mom looked back over to me.

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Richie,” she said. “Carrie talks about you all the time.”

I was taken way off guard.

“She does?” I nearly stammered. The woman simply giggled, then lead the way to the kitchen.

Carrie and her mother had a home that felt like a one inhabited by a loving family, way more than my house ever did at least.

In moments we were all seated around the circular dinner table, steaming piles of lasagna on all of our plates and an awkward silence beginning to take place. I sat across from Carrie, and on both sides of me her parents sat across from each other.

“So, Carrie,” I began, hoping to get some semblance of a conversation going. “Have you thought about joining choir at all since we talked?”

“Ooh, choir,” her mother chimed in. “That’s a cool extra-curricular for your last year.”

“You can sing?” Glenn said, sounding just as puzzled as I was at the discovery. Carrie’s mom rolled her eyes.

“I might try out,” Carrie answered, staring blankly at her lasagna. “I’m just kinda scared of the audition process. I’m not sure I can handle the rejection.”

“You won’t be rejected,” Mr. Thompson said encouragingly, even though he didn’t even know she sang until a second ago. “My little girl doesn’t fail. In fact she can do anything she sets her mind to. That’s how I raised her.”

“I’m sure I had nothing to do with it…” Carrie’s mom slipped in under her breath. It was going to be a long night.

I awkwardly sat in place as Carrie and her parents cleaned up the dinner table. I was instructed by Mrs. Thompson not to help being that I was the guest, but I wished I’d known the proper etiquette for waiting through such a process. So far I’d just been avoiding eye contact and trying to breathe in the least noticeable way possible.

“Stay a little longer, Richie?” Carrie called to me, blowing my attempt to not be noticed. She continued,

“The coolest thing about my new house is there’s a little section of the roof outside my window I can climb onto.”

“Why would you want to be there?” I asked.

“To see the stars, duh.” she answered as if it were obvious.

“Come on.”

“You two be safe.” said Glenn sternly. Carrie grabbed me by the wrist and rushed me out of the room before we had to hear her mother’s inevitable rebuttal to undermine him, leading into their next little verbal squabble.

Getting comfortable on a slanted roof is harder than it looks. The whole time these little tiles are poking you through your clothes and you’re afraid you’re gonna somehow slip and fall off. Carrie didn’t seem to have any problem though, laying on her back right away as if it were an everyday routine for her. The stars above us reflected in her glasses. I looked up at them and realized I didn’t remember the last time I saw stars, being adjusted to city life and whatnot.

“I took the PSATs yesterday.” I said, breaking the momentary silence.

“Oh,” Carrie took immediate interest. “How do you think you did?”

“I have no idea. Which I guess can’t possibly be a good thing.”

“Not when you’re all glass-half-empty about it. Did you study?”

“Only every waking moment nonstop for about three weeks.”

“Then I’m sure you have nothing to worry about.”

“You’d think, huh?”

“Patience, Superboy. Give yourself a break from time to time, no need to get all stressed out over some scores that were just the practice round anyway.”

She spoke with such comfort in her statements, such assuredness in every word. It makes my speaking sound even more like a series of confused, wimpery stutters than it already did.

“Carrie,” I sighed. “Do you ever feel like you’re trying to be the best you can be, but your best just isn’t good enough?”

“All the time,” she answered, hardly thinking about it. “In fact, that used to be a bigger problem for me.”

“How’s that?”

She turned over to face me, though her eyes drifted down to the roof’s tiles uneasily.

“When my parents divorced, I was in middle school. I knew there was nothing I could do about it, but since I was the singular product of their relationship it felt like I somehow failed them. And they were worried about how it would affect me, how I’d grow up. So I decided I would never let them down; I stayed out of trouble and got the best grades I could at school. Academics became my life, my competitive nature became obsessive.”

“Explains why you’re so smart. But how’d you overcome that problem?”

“I took a look at my mom. She was going through the same, trying to raise a little girl on her own, struggling with bills and whatnot, sacrificing everything to make it work and pretending none of it was hard just so I’d feel like things were okay. I watched her try way too hard to be the perfect mom, and I saw how much she was hurting.”

“And that explains why you’re so good at analyzing people.”

“The thing is, seeing her do that made me realize I didn’t need to stress myself out trying to please her. And I didn’t want her to keep doing it for me either. I guess what I’m trying to say is for the people that matter, your best is always good enough.”

She rolled back to her former position, staring up at the stars again. I slowly joined her, and for a moment we just laid there in silence, watching them. There’s something vaguely spectacular about them; they’re all lightyears away from us and millions of miles from each other, but from our point of view they all come together in the sky. They’re far apart but they seem so close to us, it’s mostly vast emptiness up there but it looks beautiful from down here.

One of them suddenly came darting past the others, soaring through the sky.

“Look,” I called, pointing up at it. “A shooting star.”

“Well what do you know?” Carrie said with a shrug.

“Go ahead, make a wish.”

“What?”

“A wish, Carrie. That’s what you do.”

“You know, shooting stars are really usually space junk pulled into Earth’s gravitational pull.”

“Stop being you for ten seconds and wish for something.”

She shrugged. “I’m not sure I have anything reasonable to wish for.”

“Come on,” I replied. “There has to be something.”

She stared off blankly.

“Tell me,” I said. “If there was one thing, anything in the world you could wish for, what would it be?”