“Honestly, I just picked something with the number thirteen in it. I figured my luck is pretty shitty so why not, you know?”
I’m not positive, but I think she might be blushing. I don’t get a good look, though, because the door chimes and she jumps up to greet the mother/son dynamic duo of perfection with a hug. The annoying thing is that I see exactly what Henry means about them. They really are the mother/son dynamic duo of perfection. God, I miss my mom. I feel my eyes begin to sting. Shit. I blink furiously until everything’s back under control.
After Jordyn delivers the clients to Henry, who greets them with a hearty hello, I hear them catching up on the past year. The son’s doing well with his violin lessons; the mother thinks he’s a prodigy or something. The mother dated a loser who loved mooching off her until he yelled at the son when he thought she wasn’t there. She dumped him. I wish my mother had had the guts to do that. If it had just been the two of us, I think we might’ve had the kind of relationship these two have. We were close as it was, but when Dad treated her like shit and she just stayed and took it . . . I don’t know. It was hard to respect her sometimes.
Jordyn resumes her seat, a smile still plastered on her face, and we get back into our work. I follow all her directions. I’m surprisingly good at the detail work. I even kind of enjoy it.
Time goes faster now that I have something to focus on. Jordyn even lets me try one of the “real” jobs—after making a copy of the original, of course, in case I screw it up so badly, she won’t be able to fix it.
When Henry and the mother/son dynamic duo of perfection come back out from behind the curtain, I realize it’s been two whole hours. It seriously felt like twenty minutes. Maybe photo retouching will be my thing.
Henry calls Jordyn over to say good-bye and they all start talking about their loving families and everyone’s plans for the holidays. I cringe. I mean, the holidays are still a month and a half off, so it hadn’t crossed my mind. Now it’s like whatever was holding one edge of me to the other breaks. Just fucking snaps. Having to spend the holidays alone or, worse, with my dad . . . Those goddamn tears that were plotting their escape are free. I feel one fall, then another. I keep my head down and escape to the bathroom. But it’s taking everything in me to stay quiet, which really pisses me off. I want to wail and scream all of a sudden, like I did when it really hit me that Mom was dead. That wasn’t until two days after. I guess I was in shock or something. It was so bad that even my dad didn’t bother me. Why the hell do I have to feel like that again?
There’s a soft knock.
“You okay?” Jordyn asks.
I can’t speak or she’ll hear me crying.
“I’m going to Panda Express for lunch. You want anything?”
I can’t eat. I remain quiet, sitting on the ground in front of the door.
I can feel that she’s still standing there. I don’t hear Henry. He might still be talking to their client friends.
Finally Jordyn says, “I’ll be back in ten. I’ll lock the door so you don’t have to worry about watching the front.” And then her footsteps retreat. Henry must have left for his on-location gig at three p.m.
I’m alone.
After I finally get my shit together, I pull myself up and dare to look at my reflection. I don’t even look like me anymore. I’ve lost my football weight, probably a good thirty pounds; I’m getting dangerously close to thin. And I really can’t pull off that look with my height. My eyes are sunken in. My skin looks unhealthy; it has that greasy sheen you get when you’re really sick. And my hair is in serious need of a cut. Maybe I’ll just shave my head.
I tongue at the cut on the inside of my lip. Man, I really went off on Brett at the game. I study my features, trying to see if there’s any of my dad in me, any visual confirmation that I’m, like, turning into him. But I look exactly like my mom, she of the prominent genes. Maybe that’s why Dad always hated me so much, because he might as well not have played a part in my making. And now he hates me because I’m a constant reminder of her. I find it hard to look at myself for that same reason.
I run my hands under the cold water until they’re numb, then I splash the water on my face over and over again, until I feel like I’ve sort of snapped back into reality.
I have no idea how long I was in there. But when I fumble back through the curtain, Jordyn’s finished eating and is now scribbling in her sketchpad with something that looks like chalk but isn’t. My chair is now back on my side of the counter. As is a container from Panda Express with the fortune cookie on top and a can of Coke next to it.
Why is she being so nice to me?