Page 79 of The Bad Boyfriend Curse
Nani nods and this time her smile is fond. “He’s a teacher and a children’s author now. He’s dedicated his life to making children happy.”
Mom gives Nani a questioning look. “You still talk to him?”
“I reconnected with him and his wife on Facebook. She’s his illustrator.”
“Okay, but what about Mom and me?” I ask. “Look how disastrous our first relationships turned out.”
Mom throws her head back and laughs. “Your father wasnotmy first relationship.”
My eyes widen. “Mom!”
“Meera, we’re not cursed,” Nani says. “We’re just… not perfect. We’re human.”
We’re all quiet for a while, sitting in the truth of that. I remember what Noah said when I told him about my family curse. He said we were using it as a crutch, because it’s easier to blame a curse instead of ourselves.
“We should all do family therapy together,” Mom says. “Sadie’s mom said it was a game changer for her family. We have to rebuild our relationship without any of these unrealistic expectations.”
Nani smiles. “Absolutely. We’ve made mistakes, but we’ve blamed the curse instead of taking responsibility for our own actions and decisions. Everyone in this family who has blamed the curse for something a man did has failed us.” She looks at Mom. “Like I failed you.”
Mom takes Nani’s hand again before turning to smilesadly at me. “And I failed you too, Meera. I’m sorry. We didn’t give you space to make mistakes. We expected too much from you, and that wasn’t fair.”
I shake my head and take hold of Mom’s other hand. “And I… I failed you too, Mom. I should have trusted you. Yeah, I didn’t understand why you were being so harsh, but I’ve been terrible to you this summer. I lied so many times. I was so wrapped up in myself and my own stuff. I should have talked to you. I’m sorry.”
Mom smiles and squeezes my hand. “You’re just a kid, Meera. I’m supposed to be the mature one.”
“The three of us need to spend some quality time together,” Nani says. “Just us. I took the rest of the week off work. Neelam, do you think you can take a few days off from your golf lessons and volunteering and show your mother and daughter around Cherrybridge?”
Mom smiles. “I think it’s agreatidea. But not here. I think Meera and I could use a break from Cherrybridge. I’m sure I can find us a spot at a spa or resort in the area for a few days. What do you say, Meera? You want to get pampered and spoiled with your mother and grandmother so we can recover from this damn curse?”
I thought I was going back to Toronto today. I told Keeley and Adanna I would be there. We made all these plans. But looking around the table, at my family, the strongest women I know, I’m weirdly okay with letting my plans go. Toronto can wait.
Because Mom and Nani are so right. We need to heal. We’ve gone our whole lives believing we were cursed, and wedeserve to get spoiled for a few days, and more than anything else, we need to talk and listen to each other.
When we get home, I text my Toronto friends to say I had a change of plans and won’t be in Toronto today after all but will have a lot to tell them when I do get there in a few days. Then I finally start putting everything from my room into my two suitcases. It’s strange. I still want to go back to the city, but also I’m glad I came here. I’m never going to forget my weeks in Cherrybridge.
When I’m taking my dresses out of my closet, I find the big paper bag full of Crash on Jupiter T-shirts. Which of course reminds me of Noah again. Which makes me cry again. Part of me is still not one hundred percent sure that there’s no curse. I mean, things went so cosmically bad with Noah that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t because of a cruel twist of fate.
But it also went bad because I lied to my family so many times. Because I encouraged him to lie too. And because I sent that song of his to Keeley without asking him first. I didn’t do those things because I was cursed. I did them because I was so wrapped up in myself that I didn’t see how they could affect other people. Things imploded because I was being selfish, which was bound to happen even without jealous Kaitlyn and her racist father.
I dig through the bag of T-shirts and find one in my size, as a souvenir of my four weeks in Cherrybridge. I take the bag with the rest of the T-shirts downstairs to Jason’s office. He’s working at city hall today, so I leave the bag on his desk and write a note:
Found these in a thrift store. I thought you might want to keep a memory of your teenage angst days, in case there is any of that guy still left in you.
The first-ever vacation that the three generations of Noorani women (or, technically, two Nooranis and one LeClair) take together is… okay. Complicated, because of everything that’s going on in our lives. Nani is still in a fantastic mood—giddy about leaving her husband—but Mom’s obviously feeling the opposite about her marriage ending. Not to mention, the life she’s always known is being turned upside down. She might be happy that her mother is leaving her father, but it’s still a massive change.
On our first night we decide that Nani and I will move into our condo in Toronto after this vacation. Mom says she’ll follow soon. She needs time to pack and wrap up her commitments in Cherrybridge first. Nani says Mom can stay in Cherrybridge with Jason if she wants to now. I won’t have to live with Nanabapa, and Nani will make sure my grandfather never sees me, but Mom still says she doesn’t want to stay in the spotlight in Cherrybridge, especially without me with her. She loves Jason and has no doubt about how much he loves her, but she’s not sure she’s cut out to be a LeClair. She’s going to ask Jason if we can take Rosie—so we can be three single women with a cat.
I like this plan, but I’m still pretty sad about everything. Even though we decide we’re free of the curse, our actions feel so resigned. Mom and I talk for a while about how we wastedyears thinking we were cursed, and it didn’t let us truly be ourselves because we were trying too hard to be perfect. Mom admits that the golf and tennis lessons and cooking every night was all because she was afraid that the curse would sabotage her relationship if she wasn’t the perfect wife for Jason just like all the other wives in the country club.
It’s funny. I always thought Mom and I were only similar on the outside, but this trip has shown me that we’re exactly the same on the inside, too. Nani laughed at that, saying the only person as stubborn and determined as my mother is me.
More than anything else, I want to talk to Noah about all of this, because he understands this complicated family crap better than anyone else I know. He gets why the expectations our family puts on us, and that we put on ourselves, are the real curse.
I miss him so much, it hurts. I miss the way I could tell what he was feeling just by the shape of his lips. I miss his mischievous flirty smile. I miss his real, embarrassed smile too.
Since I’m not really interested in having a mud bath at the spa, I lounge in the hotel room and pull out my computer and start documenting my summer in Cherrybridge in a long post on my photography blog while Mom and Nani have spa treatments. I post the pictures of Gordon Park before we spruced it up; the ones of all of us CROP kids working; of Donut Den; of the bridge; and of me, Sadie, and Liv in Jason’s backyard. Plus a whole bunch of pictures of Rosie.
My favorite are the last few pictures of Gordon Park, while we’re painting the bandstand. It looks so amazing. The whole park does. It sucks that I won’t see it when it’s completely done, because right now is the last week of CROP.
