Confessions of an Almost-Girlfriend (14 page)

“Wait, is this— This is your mom’s book?”
“Yeah. She took lessons when I was a kid.”
“I can’t—”
“Yeah, you can.”
“Jamie, she would want you—”
“She’d want a singer to have it,” he says, taking it out of my
hands and putting it on the counter behind me so I can’t give it
back to him. I almost tell him that I’m not a singer like she obviously was, but I stop myself.
I
am
a singer—I can feel it. He can, too.
Somehow, instinctively, I know how important it is to say
those words, and to believe them, and to trust that they’re real.
As he leans in and kisses me on the cheek, he takes my hand
in his and I feel his thumb lightly slide down my palm. His lips
linger for a moment and I can feel his breath on my cheek. Then
he heads for the back door.
“Jamie,” I say, grabbing the sleeve of his army jacket to stop
him. I have no idea how much stuff Jamie still has that belonged
to his mother, and I really don’t feel like I should have this music
book with her handwriting and notes and thoughts in it. But I
do know that when someone makes a gesture like the one Jamie
just made, you are supposed to accept—you have to.
But I want to give him something, too.
My fingers slide down his sleeve and find his hand again. “I
just want to tell you that no one’s ever…done that to me. What
you did. Before.”
The surprise on his face is quickly followed by regret, and then
he actually closes his eyes and drops his head. Not the reaction
I was hoping for. I just wanted him to see how much it meant to
me—how much
he
means to me.
“Wait—what’s wrong?” I ask.
He struggles for a second, then says, “I didn’t think… I shoulda…”
I wait for the end of the sentence but it never comes.
Although there are many things about desire that I haven’t figured out yet, here’s something I do know: it only takes a second
for things to be misinterpreted and get really confusing when
people are talking about touching each other.
“I loved it,” I whisper, embarrassment heating my face at the
sound of my very simple, innocent words.
After a moment, he brings my hand to his mouth and kisses it.
Jamie lets himself out and disappears into the dark as I stand
in the quiet kitchen, listening to the ticking of the clock, memorizing what it felt like to have Jamie Forta’s hands on a part of
my body that no guy has ever touched before.
I feel like I’m his.

“YOU HAD NO RIGHT!”
“I had every right. You’re a minor!”
Caron looks baffled by the intense argument my mother and

I are having. Peter has sunk so far into the couch that he’s practically a part of it, his head tipped back on the squishy pillows
as he stares up at the ceiling, trying to pretend he’s not in the
room with us.

The new year is off to a great start for the Zarellis.
I took Vicky’s suggestion and called the company that hosts
my website to say that I’d gotten a weird post with code and nothing else in the comment-posting section for a long time. When
the woman who was helping me suggested I talk to my mother
about it, I knew exactly what had happened.
“You lied to them about being eighteen when you took Peter’s
credit card to set up that website—”
“I didn’t take it—he gave it to me!”
“—and when I told them that you lied, they said I could shut
the whole thing down. But all I did was shut off the posting feature. So consider yourself lucky that the website is still up.”
I must look like a demon right now. I’m sure my eyes are beetred, and the tears and snot are flowing freely. Caron is watching
me closely, probably trying to decide whether to ask me if I’m
struggling with any violent impulses right now.
Yes, Caron, I am. I’m struggling with my desire to jump over your
lovely glass coffee table in a single bound and throttle my mother on
your cozy couch.
It’s all I can do to stay in my seat.
I sniffle loudly and Peter picks up a box of tissues on the end
table between us and tosses it at me without saying anything.
I catch it and pull a tissue out to mop up my face. “What’s
the point of a memorial website if people can’t leave comments,
Kathleen?” I snarl.
“Rose, your mother told you she wouldn’t engage in conversation if you called her by her first name. And if there’s no conversation, there’s no reason for us to be here,” Caron says.
“Fine with me,” I grumble.
“Is it fine with you, Kathleen?” Caron asks.
“No. There are several things we need to talk about.” My
mother doesn’t look at either Peter or me when she says this,
and Caron gives her a nod. Obviously there’s a predetermined
agenda for this session.
“Rose, is there anything else you’d like to say about the website?”
Yeah. How about, why don’t I get any privacy? Why does she
get to monitor everything I do? And why is she being so insane
about something that actually makes me feel connected to my
father? Or it used to, anyway, back when people could still post
on it.
I throw my tissue in the trash with as much force as a person
can possibly throw a soggy tissue.
“Let’s revisit the website issue at the end of the session.” Caron
nods at my mother again.
My mother smoothes her skirt. “We need to talk about going
back to school in the fall, Peter. The dean of students says that if
you complete an outpatient rehab program, hold down a parttime job and make up some credits, you’ll be welcomed back.”
“I’m not going back,” Peter announces to the ceiling.
“Excuse me?” my mother says, as if she couldn’t possibly have
heard what she knows she heard.
“You didn’t ask,” he says. “You just assumed.”
“You’re right. I assumed. Do you know why? Because you are
lucky to be at that school in the first place.”
Peter takes his keys out of his pocket and fiddles with a bottle
opener on his keychain. “I’m not learning anything.”
Because you don’t go to class,
I think.
“Peter, I think what your mother is saying is that attending
Tufts is an incredible opportunity, and you’re lucky to have a
second chance there.”
My mother shakes her head too fast. “That’s part of what I’m
saying.” She’s ramping up for battle now—she must have spent
days preparing for this. “This family has invested in your education. If you’re not going to pursue it, pay the money back.”
Peter starts tossing his keys up in the air and catching them.
“Everything is about money to you,” he says, taking a shot at my
mother’s Achilles’ heel.
If it hits the mark, my mother doesn’t show it. “Oh, this is definitely about money,” she says. “It’s about the money I’ve given you
to support yourself—while you’re supposedly getting educated—
going to drugs and alcohol. That is disrespectful, self-destructive
behavior, and I don’t need to be around that, nor does your sister. So follow the plan or leave my house.”
Peter catches his keys, his hand frozen in the air as he tries
to determine if she’s serious. His eyes slide from my mother to
me. I look at her.
“Don’t include me in this,” I say. “He doesn’t affect me one
way or the other.”
“Oh, is that so? None of this affects you? Then why did I get
a message from Principal Chen, asking us to come to a meeting
when school starts next week because she’s ‘concerned’?”
My brain immediately whirs into overdrive.
The swim-thug party?
What Conrad did to Matt’s car?
Matt beating the crap out of Conrad? As far as I know, Matt
hasn’t done a thing to Conrad yet.
I don’t know what the meeting is about, but I do know this: I
sure don’t feel like going to the principal’s office with my mother.
It’s bad enough when I have to go there on my own.
She sips from the glass of mint tea she made while we were
in the waiting area. The look on her face tells me that she’s been
waiting to ambush me with this information.
“Unfair,” I announce.
“What’s unfair?” she asks, pretending she did nothing wrong.
I feel like I’m fighting with Tracy, not my mother.
“You know.”
“Rose,” Caron asks, “is this the first you’re hearing of this
meeting?”
I nod. Caron looks at my mother, who suddenly decides to refresh her tea with hot water from Caron’s super-high-tech water
cooler across the room.
“Kathleen, weren’t you going to talk to Rose about the meeting before you came today?” she says.
My mother watches the hot water filling her cup. “It must
have slipped my mind.”
Caron raises her eyebrows. “You realize that isn’t what we
agreed on in our conversation.”
“It sucks that you two have your own sessions. It gives her an
advantage,” I say to Caron.
“You’re more than welcome to come with me every week instead of every other week,” my mother says as she makes her
way back to the couch.
“Kathleen, these sessions are not meant to be a battlefield.”
My brother smirks, enjoying watching our mother get verbally
spanked by her shrink.
“Noted,” my mother says.
Caron waits.
“I apologize, Rose,” she says grudgingly. I can tell she’s irritated
by having to apologize to me when she feels I’ve totally wronged
her in every way lately.
The feeling is mutual, Kathleen.
“Let’s get back on track,” Caron suggests.
“Peter, you have until tomorrow to decide what to do,” my
mother says.
Peter goes back to playing catch with his keys as if he doesn’t
have a care in the world.
“Is there something else you wanted to talk about?” Caron
prompts.
When my mother’s expression changes from confident to terrified, I know we’re about to get to the real reason we’re here today.
“I’d like to talk about Dirk. Taylor,” she adds, as if there’s any
doubt who Dirk is.
My heart thuds to a halt. Peter misses his keys and they glance
off his hand and clatter on the coffee table.
“Go on,” Caron encourages.
My mother clears her throat. “Dirk and I have become friends—”
“You’re not friends,” I interrupt.
“Let her finish,” Caron says with a gentleness that tells me my
mother is about to announce something I’m going to really hate.
“He asked me to dinner. I said yes—”
“No, you didn’t,” comes out of my mouth.
“—and we’re going out next week.”
My mother holds her breath, looking at me with fear, like she’s
waiting for me to say something awful.
When did my mother start expecting me to hurt her?
Probably after I started hurting her.
“On a date?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“But…what about Dad?” I whisper, my throat burning from
the pain of holding back tears.
“Honey, I love your father. I always will.” She rubs her forehead like she’s getting a headache. “Going to dinner with someone isn’t going to change that.”
“But Dirk is… He’s…” I can’t find the words to explain my
confusion.
Shouldn’t my mother want to date someone like Dad? If she
goes out with someone who’s totally different, does that mean
she never really loved him?
“He’s nothing like Dad,” I finally say.
Peter snorts. “So?”
“Well, doesn’t that mean…”
“Oh, grow up, Rose,” Peter says.
“Peter,” my mother warns.
“So what if you go out with Dirk? It’s no big deal. Dad’s dead.”
I start crying again. My mother whips around, grabbing Peter
by the arm. Peter sits up fast, like he thinks he might have to
physically defend himself.
“Do you know what concerns me most about you this year?”
she says in a fierce tone I’ve never heard her use before. “You’ve
become unkind.”
Peter yanks out of her grasp and sits back with his arms
crossed, trying to mask the fact that he needs a minute to recover.
If I didn’t hate Dirk before, I sure hate him now. It’s
his
fault
we’re here, doing this.
“What’s going on for you, Rose?” Caron asks softly.
“He
just
died,” I say, using the back of my hand for a tissue.
“He died two years ago,” Peter says.
“A year and a half ago,” my mother corrects.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask her. “Is it because Dirk is a
movie star and Dad was just an engineer?”
My mother looks dumbfounded, like she prepared for everything I could possibly say except that.
“I am very proud of your father—of how smart he was, and of
how he was trying to help people in Iraq rebuild. The fact that
your Dad was an engineer and Dirk is an actor has nothing to
do with anything.”
“It’s not right!” I argue.
“Rose, people grieve differently at different ages,” Caron says,
when it’s clear that my mother can’t respond to what I said.
“Grief can cause adults to reflect on the fact that they are halfway through their lives—it makes them want to live as richly
as they can. For younger people, grief can bring up feelings of
abandonment. Are you worried that Dirk is going to take your
mom away?”
My brain says that with the way I feel about my mother right
now, I’d be just fine with Dirk taking her away—and my dad
probably would, too. But the tears spilling down my cheeks say
something different.
“If she gets to live
richly
by going out with someone who’s not
my dad, then I should get to have the website.”
I hear my mother sniffle—she leans forward to take a tissue
from the box in front of me.
“I feel like interacting with people on the website keeps you
in a constant state of grief over your father, and you can’t let go
of it,” she says.
“I don’t want to let go of it.” I can hear panic in my voice but I
don’t try to hide it. The idea of letting go freaks me out. I know
Dad now through grief. If I’m not feeling sad about him, he’ll
just drift away and fade into the background of my life, which
will go on without him. Like he never existed. “I don’t want to
let go of
him.”
“Dad and the grief are two different things,” my mother says.
My brain goes into can’t-compute mode. How can I keep him
here if I’m not grieving for him?
My mother blows her nose. “I want you to remember him but I
don’t want his death to become your whole life. And when you’re
constantly checking that website to see if someone has posted
something, I feel like that’s what’s happening. What if someone
posts something that upsets you and you don’t come out of your
room for three days again?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Peter look at me.
“That was different,” I say. “The posts haven’t really been about
Dad for a few months. Now they’re about support groups and
stuff like that.”
As I say it, I realize that despite all my arguing to keep the
website going, the purpose of the site changed while I wasn’t
paying attention. Time passed, and it became something else
without my permission.
Maybe that’s what happens with grief, too, whether you want
it to or not.
“I’ll make you a deal,” my mother says. “I’ll turn the posting
function back on if you take down the photo.”
“Which photo?” Peter asks, sitting up all the way, not trying
to hide his interest anymore.
I didn’t know, when I put up a photo of my parents saying
goodbye the day my father left, that I was causing trouble. I truly
didn’t. But when I think about the photo now, I realize why it
drives my mother nearly insane. My dad is standing by a black
car that’s waiting to take him to the airport with his bags on
the ground next to him. My mother is moving toward him to
hug him, and you can’t see her face but if you look closely at her
arms as they reach forward, it looks like she wants to grab him,
to stop him from going. And the expression on his face is pure
sadness. He obviously does not want to leave.
“The photo of us saying goodbye,” she says.
I can tell Peter knows which photo she’s talking about. “Why
do you want her to take it down?” he asks.
My mother takes her time answering. “Because I can see in
it so clearly that we’re making a mistake,” she finally says. “He
doesn’t want to go. And I don’t want him to go. But he’s going,
anyway, because that’s what we decided and we’re sticking with
the plan.”
She’s talking as if it’s all happening right now in our driveway, outside our house. She shakes her head and refolds her
hands in her lap.
“You sound angry,” Caron says.
“He never should have been there.”
Peter and I look at each other, surprised to hear her say this
so bluntly.
“Is that what the photo represents to you?” Caron asks.
She nods. “It was our last chance to change our minds.”
“We should have said something,” Peter says to me.
My mother closes her eyes. “Kids don’t participate in those
kinds of decisions for a reason.”
“But we knew it was crazy,” he says, clearing his throat when
his voice cracks. “We talked about it.”
“Honey, it wasn’t your job to say anything.”
“But what if—” I start.
Her eyes open. “What-ifs don’t matter,” she says, cutting me off.
“Finish your thought,” Caron says to me. My mother bows
her head and waits.
“What if Peter and I had told you and Dad that we knew he
shouldn’t go?” I ask.
My mother shakes her head but I can see the question in her
eyes.
After some silence, Caron says, “Several months ago, Rose, you
would have said it was your mother’s fault that Alfonso went to
Iraq. Now it sounds like you and Peter think it’s your fault, that
you could have prevented it.”
“If your father and I couldn’t stop what we set in motion, you
sure as hell couldn’t have,” my mother says before I can form a
response.