Love, Suburban Style Read Online Free Page A

board. Do you realize he’s only ten years older than we are? The teachers all seemed so old back then.”
    “Most of them really were,” Meg recalls, aware of Cosette shifting her weight, bored. “Are a lot of them still there?”
    “None of them, except Mr. Dreyfus.”
    “What about our old friends? Who else is still around?”
    “Just me, really. And ‘old’ is right.”
    “Oh, come on, you look exactly the same. And so”—Meg sweeps an arm to indicate Main Street—“does this place.”
    “You think?” Kris shakes her head. “You haven’t taken a close look yet, have you?”
    “Not yet… why?”
    “Just… trust me, Meg, nothing stays the same. Including me. So, are you married, or…?” With an eye on Cosette, Kris tactfully trails off.
    “Divorced,” Meg says briefly.
    No need to go into the gory details—and not just because Cosette is here. She rarely discusses her ex-husband. In fact, she had known Geoffrey a few years before she even got around to telling him the truth about her ex… and she did so only because it would have been awkward not to, under the circumstances.
    They were standing on line at Regal Cinemas on Fourteenth Street at the time. Normally Geoffrey pooh-poohed mainstream movies, but the indie film he wanted to see was sold out, so he suggested they catch the new summer blockbuster “starring that hot action movie guy.”
    Who happened to be none other than Calvin.
    “How could you not have told me that you were married to
him
?” Geoffrey asked when he managed to recover from his fake faint.
    “Trust me, it’s not something I like to think about. The only good thing that came out of that marriage was Cosette. Whom, by the way, he has never even been interested in meeting.”
    Geoffrey’s jaw dropped. “He’s never met his own daughter?”
    “He walked out when I was eight months pregnant and never looked back.”
    That was before Calvin was a big star, but he was already on his way.
    The only contact Meg has had from him in the last fifteen years is the sizeable alimony and child support check that arrives monthly like clockwork from his West Coast lawyer’s office.
    But without him, there would have been no Cosette, and for that, Meg is grateful. She held her breath as Cosette grew older, but her daughter embodies none of her father’s less-than-admirable characteristics—except, perhaps, for his moodiness. But then, he’s an actor; most actors are moody.
    Cosette, for that matter, could be an actress. She’s a natural onstage, and performed in a few professional musical productions when she was younger. With her father’s acting talent and her mother’s voice, she’ll be able to go far, if she chooses to pursue that route someday. But Meg pulled her back when she realized New York is just too cutthroat when it comes to child performers. She didn’t want that for her daughter; Cosette’s life has always been complex enough.
    But maybe, she thinks hopefully, Cosette will want to get involved in the local theater once they move.
If
they move.
    “I’m sorry to hear that,” Kris is saying, and Meg snaps right back to the present. Oh. She’s talking about the divorce.
    She can’t tell her old friend that she’s better off without the jerk. Not with Cosette standing right here. She’s been asking more frequently about her father, and Meg is determined not to bad-mouth him. But it’s pretty hard to find anything remotely positive to say about a man who chooses not to acknowledge his own child, especially when that child isn’t exactly oblivious to his absence in her life.
    “So are you still acting, singing, dancing… all that good stuff?”
    “I’m on a career hiatus at the moment, actually,” Meg tells Kris, and feels Cosette tense up beside her.
    For as many mother-daughter clashes as they’ve had since Cosette hit adolescence, Meg’s daughter remains a staunch, proud supporter of her mother’s work. She was outraged about the