Janie is the wife who taught me swear words, and Tess taught me about family dinners. My real mom taught me that anyone can leave, even mothers who smell like brownie mix and soap.
Karissa was supposed to be my friend who would teach me about the correct ratio of cigarettes to liquor and maybe making the most out of small boobs and a sizable ass and how to make the city seem new every day.
Instead she’s going to be girlfriend number eight hundred fifty-seven, and I’ll be learning about betrayal and whether or not I’m good at denial. I’ll learn how quickly something can be taken from me, which is a lesson I was already pretty knowledgeable about, to be honest.
“Don’t freak out,” Karissa says. I stare at the potted flowers Tess put out here. They’re dying, and I want to replace them. I liked the way she put different kinds on every step, like a mini botany lesson on the way into the apartment.
“Not possible.”
It’s funny that we’re talking in tiny sentences. The situation is enormous, but we are being stingy with actual words.
I relax a little. I can’t help it. My orecchiette is perfection in a cardboard box and the moon is bright and strange above the buildings and it’s nice to have someone to sit with at the end of the night in the middle of the big city.
“You take after your dad, you know?” Karissa extends the word dad so that it’s a word with a melody. “Like, the things I like about you are the same things I like about him.”
It takes everything in me to not scream at her, but I can’t stop thinking about the fact that she has no family, that they’re gone and she’s the brilliant sparkle that’s left. It’s hard to imagine lashing out at someone like that. I sit on my hands like that will somehow keep my volume and tone in check. Take a deep breath.
“I take after my mom,” I say. There’s a series of horns, a domino effect of sound moving down the street. Cacophony. I don’t even know that the things I’m saying are true. One phone call a year is not enough to get to know my mother.
“Me too,” Karissa says. “I mean, my mom. I take after her. It’s nice, right? Helps? To have something to share with someone who’s gone?”
I’m being tug-of-warred between rage and compassion. I can’t even form a response.
“What if this was really good for both of us?” she says. “My mom always used to say that the best things come from the most unexpected places.” She takes a piece of pasta right from the box, no fork. And another without asking.
“I feel like Sean Varren is all new to you. But we’ve been here before. This isn’t new for me.” I give her a heavy look. I shift the box of pasta a little so that she’d have to reach across me to get another piece of it. It’s mine. I don’t want to share.
“But I’m new,” Karissa says.
We listen to someone playing classical music a few floors above us. It’s probably my father, who likes to fall asleep listening to the radio. I look at her face to see if she knows that about him.
I hate her and love her.
I want to yell at her about finding her own family, not stealing mine. That dating my dad is disgusting. That she’s a liar and a fake and an awful person who I wish I’d never met. Those things are all swimming inside me.
But mostly I want to tell her that I’m worried about her.
“He’s going to hurt you,” I say. “This isn’t whatever you think it is. Whatever he’s saying it is.” I don’t like how it feels, talking about my father like he’s the douche football star that I’m worried is cheating on my friend or something. But it’s a true thing I can say. And I want to say a true thing out here on the stoop tonight.
“We both deserve something great,” she says, but this isn’t something great, so I don’t really have a reply. “I think we could all be really happy. Like, together.”
Karissa is not a Sean Varren wife. I don’t know how to explain that to her without a comprehensive history of the last ten years of my life, so I don’t say anything.
My skin itches. I poke as many tiny pasta ears onto my fork as possible and shove them into my mouth, like that will dull the urge to stand up for myself. Karissa takes something out of her purse. It’s a hunk of parmesan cheese wrapped in the restaurant’s cloth napkin. She pulls out a silver cheese knife too, and a small plate.
“Cheese,” she says. “We did cheese for dessert.” She puts the napkin on my lap and cuts bites of parmesan for both of us, and it’s impossible to hate someone who makes every tiny moment so fucking beautiful.