July Exclusive - "Plans" - Part 1

Blowing Rock, North Carolina

10:30 PM

Cassie lies on her bed and Facetimes her best friend.

“Excited?” Sara Beth grins at her. “You lookexcited.”

Cassie laughs. “Can’t believe it’s really happening.”

“Packed?”

Cassie shows off the blue rectangle of her passport. “I really didn’t think Dad was going to let me go.”

Sarah Beth says, “Vouloirs, c’est pouvoir. You’re eighteen, you graduated from high school. What’s he going to do, ground you?”

Cassie reaches for her nightstand, puts the passport on top. “No, but he can take me on one hell of a guilt trip.”

“You made a deal!”

Her prize for being accepted into Wake Forest was either a car or a trip to Europe. Cassie chose the trip, 5 days with Sara Beth in Paris, with Dad genuinely seeming surprised by her choice.

Cassie sighs. “I think Dad thought I’d never move out. I’ve barely even been outside of Blowing Rock, since we moved here.”

“Because your family’s here, makes sense. Mine too.”

Family.

The girls – the young women – have plenty in common. Both 18 years old, both fresh from graduating high school. Best friends since kindergarten. And both with mothers with special needs.

“I think about getting back,” Sarah Beth says, looking wistful. “After the trip, going to see Mom. Showing her the photos on my phone. And I think, maybe, it’ll remind her. It’ll bring her back to us.”

Cassie has wondered herself, over the years, what caused her own mother’s breakdown. Two women, reduced to mental childhood, spending most of the time at ‘boarding school’, and then coming home for holidays. Cassie and Sara Beth both know how it is to have their mothers as playmates, and then to outgrow them, out-understand them, leaving the women behind intellectually.

She sighs. Surely, it will take more than photos from an iPhone to bring her mother’s adult mind back.

She looks at her friend, who is sitting at her bedroom desk, her face light by a ring-light as if she’s about to do a make-up tutorial on YouTube. As if. They’re both careful with make-up, with shoulder-length hair and conservative outfits. Nothing that would be considered ‘inappropriate’.

But Europe will be a different story.

“It’s just…a lot. A lot of new,” Cassie murmurs, and she doesn’t share with Sarah Beth that she’s been having accidents at night. The kinds of accidents she used to have as a very young girl.

“It’s okay to be nervous,” Sarah Beth says. “First trip outside the US. First time on an airplane. First train-ride. If we’re not reaching, we’re not growing, right?” She smiles indulgently at her friend. “You’ve always been a daddy’s girl, but he’ll survive without you for two weeks, I promise.”

Daddy’s girl. Sounds harsh, but it’s fair. Dad doesn’t see the appeal of France, but he didn’t refuse. He’s always indulged Cassie, and how much of that is trying to make up for the absence of Cassie’s mother? Even though that was hardly Dad’s fault. Mom just…broke down. She couldn’t handle adult life.

Like mother, like daughter? Daytime Cassie has been anxious, the last couple of weeks. Distracted. Forgetful.

Addlepated, Dad calls it, when Cassie misplaces her phone, or walks into a room and forgets why she’s there.

Addlepated. Which is a step up from Dad’s old nickname for his daughter, Giggles. But really means the same thing. Confused, mixed-up.

She hasn’t told her father or her friend about the night-time accidents. That she wakes up damp and breathless, and that she sees things in the dark shadows of her bedroom. Impossible things.

Cassie adjusts the shorts of her two-piece pajamas set. Pink with flowers, very Blowing Rock. But also with an elasticated waistband where she can wear the Depends underwear she bought from Walgreens.

Just a little wetting at bedtime, when her dreams are filled with thoughts of being lost in Paris, of being helpless and alone. And then waking up and barely resisting the urge, the childish reflex, to call out for her father. Because she needs her daddy. Because she’s so little and helpless.

Just dreams. Just anxiety that’s only natural. She’s about to leave the nest. She’ll be fine. She’ll be fantastic.

“We’re going to have an adventure,” says Sara Beth. She grins conspiratorially. “We’re going to meet boys who aren’t looking to get married, boys who are also…looking for an adventure.”

Cassie puts the back of her hand to her forehead, as if ready to faint. “Quelle horreur.” Teenage boys in their town wouldn’t dream of taking advantage, of pushing their luck on a first date. Cassie’s pretty sure that she’s okay with being taken advantage of, just the once.

“Maybe when we get to Frances, we should just stay there,” she says. It would make a change from the conservatism around her, the life planned out in advance, in stone. And it would mean not seeing the special Blowing Rock women, the forever innocent, her own mother among them, dressed like four-year-olds, and treated accordingly.

There’s a bigger world out there. A normal one.

Before Sara Beth can answer – to agree or to scold – Cassie’s father taps on the bedroom door.

“Go to sleep,” she orders Sara Beth. “Big day tomorrow.”

“Rest of our lives tomorrow,” Sarah Beth replies. “Fais un beau dodo.” It’s a line from four years ago, one of their first French classes. Basically, what mothers tell their small children at bedtime. Sweet dreams.

Cassie laughs. “Oui, Maman.” She blows a kiss into the camera, winks, and then ends the call.

Cassie gets out of bed and opens the door.

“Just saying good night,” says her father. Even at eighteen, Cassie is barely five feet tall, her father head and shoulders above her. He strokes her hair for a moment. “My beautiful princess.”

Cassie rolls her eyes. “Dad.”

“You are.” He steps into her bedroom and stops by the wall above her desk. He stands, hands behind his back, looking at the map of Paris as if seeing it for the first time.

“Not too late to change your mind,” he says softly.

She doesn’t respond to her father’s offer. She could show him the check-in notifications on her Delta app. She could point at the teal Samsonite suitcase in the corner of her room; she is beyond packed.

Instead, she joins her father at the map, takes her own good look at the stickered landmarks. The Louvre, Eiffel Tower. Sara Beth is determined to visit the Catacombs, while Cassie is more interested in a cruise on the Seine, because really, who needs travel all that way to be spooked, when all Cassie has to do is close her eyes at home?

She takes her father’s hand. “I won’t be there on my own. Sara Beth will be there too.” She adds a detail that she’s not entirely sure is true. “Sara Beth is very responsible.”

Above the map, their joint mission statement for the trip, spelled out in cardboard letters:

Impossible n’est pas français.

Dad kisses the top of Cassie’s head. “We can cancel your flights, you can stay here for the summer. Like the good old days.”

Cassie raises an eyebrow. The good old days, when they arrived in Blowing Rock with a broken mother. They went to Grandfather Mountain and had picnics. They spent days by the pool. Afternoons at the spa with Cassie getting her ‘little princess’ manicures and face masks.

Does her father really expect her to keep on doing that forever?

“If you have an accident, I won’t be there to help.”

An accident. Cassie’s thoughts flick directly to her Depends, and she imagines for one, shameful second, that her father has X-ray vision and can see that his daughter is wearing an adult diaper.

But he doesn’t.

If he patted Cassie’s rear, he would surely notice the thickness of her underwear. But Dad doesn’t do that. That would be pretty creepy, and Cassie wrinkles her nose in annoyance.

“I’m not a little girl anymore.” She looks at her father. “I know Paris is a big trip, but I start at Wake Forest in the fall anyway.” She’ll be 91 miles away, studying foreign languages and linguistics. She gives her father the gentlest smile. “I got this, Dad.”

“Can’t blame me for asking.” Dad pulls a box from his pocket. “This belonged to your mom, I know she’d want you to have it.” As if she were dead, and not a few miles away. He puts the box down on the nightstand and then hugs his daughter. “Love you,” he says.

“Love you too, Daddy.” Cassie watches her father leave the room, and then she sits down on her bed and picks up the wooden box with a shiny brass key.

When she sees what’s inside, when she hears it, she sniffs. A sweet gift, but surely something more appropriate to have given her when she was younger.

She stares at it, finds herself humming a melody. And then she lies down, turns off the light and closes her eyes.

A funny gift, followed by funny dreams. Less frightening, but very odd. Cassie can’t want to tell Sara Beth. Her friend will laugh so hard, she’ll probably pee her pants.

To be continued...