I’d never told Gretchen much about my family, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know. Our friends had probably told her things. And she must’ve noticed that we only went over to my house when my parents weren’t there.
I’d met Gretchen’s parents the night of our first official date. It was all very old-fashioned. Well, we’d already made out a half-dozen times before our first official date, not counting the time on the dance floor at Homecoming, so it wasn’t that old-fashioned, but the date part kind of was. I’d driven over to pick her up, knocked on the door and been greeted by her dad, Mr. Daniels. I’d gone inside and met Gretchen’s mom and one of her brothers and their dog, a rescued greyhound named after the actor who played C3PO in Star Wars. That was the sort of family Gretchen had. Gretchen’s dad was about seven feet tall, or that’s what he looked like next to me anyway, but he was really nice. He and Gretchen’s mom both acted like it was perfectly normal that their daughter was going on a date with another girl.
Gretchen had never met my parents. She’d hinted a couple of times that she wanted to, but she hadn’t pushed. That was the thing about Gretchen. She never, ever pushed.
I’d wanted to keep her away from all of that. I’d wanted what I had with Gretchen—this perfect, precious thing we had together—to be separate. Untainted.
That wasn’t up to me, though. That wasn’t how life worked.
I realized it right there, sitting there in the car with her holding my hand, both of us shivering while we waited for the heat to fill the car. You didn’t get to put all your stuff in little boxes where nothing touched each other. You could try, but sooner or later the boxes would start bursting at the seams. Everything runs together in the end.
So I took a long breath, and I squeezed her hand, and I told Gretchen what my mother had done that afternoon.
GRETCHEN
I’d never met Toni’s mom, but I’d heard enough stories from Toni’s friends to know Mrs. Fasseau was a complete bitch. I just didn’t understand exactly how complete a bitch she was until that night in the car.
When Toni first started to tell me what had happened, she looked calm. Her face was composed. She looked—professional, almost. She recounted the story in the same even tone I’d heard her use to make presentations in class. Like she was being graded on her oratory skills.
Toni and her sister, Audrey, had gone shopping after our Gay-Straight Alliance meeting that afternoon. Audrey had bought two pairs of shoes for Easter even though Easter was still a month away and no one needed two pairs of shoes for it regardless.
The Fasseaus only went to church at Christmas and Easter, and the whole family dressed up for it. Whenever they all went anywhere together, there were all these rules they had to follow—fancy clothes, no chewing gum, no looking at phones, no slouching and other stuff that basically would’ve been impossible to follow for any regular family. Which the Fasseaus, apparently, were not supposed to be.
Audrey had been in a shopping mood that day—Audrey was pretty much always in a shopping mood—and she’d begged Toni to get something for Easter, too. Toni gave in and went over to a table full of ties. She meant to just grab the first thing she saw so Audrey would get off her back, but that plan changed when she saw what she called “the most awesome tie ever created.”
She showed me a picture of it on her phone. It wasn’t anything supercrazy—the fabric was electric blue with cinnamon-and-gold stripes—but I could tell from the way she talked about it that Toni had developed a mild obsession with this tie. As she smiled down at the phone screen, I hoped she liked me as much as she did this blue-striped tie.
When they’d gotten home, Mrs. Fasseau had made a big deal about wanting to see what they’d bought. She did that sometimes, Toni said. Feigned interest in her children’s activities. Usually when she’d been out with her friends and they were comparing notes about how impressive their respective children were.
Mrs. Fasseau hadn’t been happy with Audrey’s shoes, though. She’d examined both pairs, proclaimed them “cheap,” and ordered Toni’s sister to return them to the store.
“Buy something people will have heard of, for heaven’s sake,” Mrs. Fasseau said, swooping her hand over the shoeboxes as if to banish them from her sight. Then she opened Toni’s bag.
Toni had tried to not let her see. By the time she was telling this part of the story, Toni’s class-presentation voice was gone. There was a glimmer in her eye as she told me how she’d tried to slide the Macy’s box into her backpack. She wasn’t quick enough.
When Mrs. Fasseau saw the tie, she didn’t react at first. She just stared at it as if she wasn’t sure it was real. Then she pulled it out of the box and dangled it from the tips of her fingers, a full arm’s length away, like it was a wet painting that was going to jump onto her crisp white sweater.
“Is this supposed to be a joke?” Mrs. Fasseau asked.