What comes out is “You look like a weirdo, pouring milk before the cereal, but I love you anyway.”
I step out to her middle finger. Then my phone rings, and that’s when my night collapses like an accordion.
In my defense, I pick up assuming it’s Jack, calling to say that he’s late, or that I’m late, or that someone hammered him in the frontal lobe and the resulting brain injury helped him realize that he doesn’t want to see me ever again. A tragic miscalculation on my part, because:
“Elsie, finally. You need to come home right now.”
“Mom?”
“Lance is now with Dana. And Lucas punched him after the soccer game. Everyone saw.”
God. “But I talked to them last week. Lance said he wasn’t interested—”
“He lied, Elsie. I’m disappointed in you for not picking up on it.”
“I—” I exhale, stepping out of the building. “He seemed sincere.”
“That’s why you need to come home and help me sort this out. I have been so tense and jittery. My poor nerves.”
“Mom, I can’t. I don’t have a car, for one. And I have classes.”
“Just find a substitute teacher.”
“That’s not—I’m not—Mom.” I spot Jack’s car. It’s freezing cold. Every instinct yells at me to first finish my conversation, but I cannot resist getting in. The seat is already heated, Jack’s hair still shower damp, curling in soft wisps on his neck. He looks freshly shaved and smells divine—like soap they sell in fancy boutiques and the hollow of his throat when I slept nestled in his arms.
One minute, I mouth. He nods. Mom’s going on about how Lance is misunderstood, Lucas is sensitive, Dad is busy with work, and the mean ladies at church are sure to be rejoicing in the downfall of the once-esteemed Hannaway household. Meanwhile, Jack studies me through my open coat. My dress hits only about midthigh when I’m sitting. His eyes follow the line of the hem, stop on my knees. Linger for a longer-than-polite moment. Then his Adam’s apple bobs, and he turns away. His shoulders rise, then fall, and then he’s driving out of the parking lot, looking anywhere but at me.
Oh.
“Mom, I have to go. I’ll call them both tomorrow and talk them out of . . . illegal stuff, at the very least—”
“You can’t solve this at a distance.”
I sigh. “I’ll do my best. Honestly, I’m not sure I can solve this at all. I’m not sure anyone can.”
Mom gasps, outraged. “How can you be so selfish, Elsie?”
I exhale slowly. “I don’t think I’m being selfish. I’ll help as soon as I’m able, but they’re both beyond listening to anything I—”
“Unbelievable,” she says, and then . . . nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
“Jack?” I say.
“Yes?”
“If I’m talking with someone and out of the blue I hear the busy signal . . . what does it mean?”
He gives me a look. “Sounds like you already know.”
“Oh my God.” I’m dumbstruck. “My mom just hung up on me.”
He nods. “Should I be shocked? Is that something that doesn’t happen in functional families?”
“I . . . don’t know. Does your father hang up on you?”
“Does my father have my number?”
I laugh, and we exchange a half-clueless, half-amused glance. Peas in a pod, really. “It’s a first.” My stomach feels heavy. “She usually likes me. Or pretends to, anyway.”
Jack looks at me with his resting I see you face. I’m not used to Mom being this mad at me. It feels terrible, like my entire soul is passing a kidney stone, and suddenly the idea of going out to dinner holds zero appeal. It’ll be good, I tell myself. You like his friends. Laughter is the best medicine. Or opiates.
“Want to tell me what happened?” he asks gently, twisting the car through Boston’s narrow one-ways.
“My family is . . . embarrassing.”
“More so than a dozen people in monogrammed shirts vulture-circling a ninety-year-old in the hope that she’ll drop dead and a few wads of cash will roll in their direction?”
“My family would do the same, if there were any money to be had. If something happened to my grandma, my brothers would beat each other up over the six-pack of beer she left in the fridge.”
“Is that what they’re fighting about? Beer?”
“I wish. It’s . . .” I roll my eyes. It sounds too stupid to bear. “A girl.”
“A girl.”
“Well, she’s a woman now. But she was a girl when it all began.”
He frowns. “How old are your brothers?”
“Older than me. And honestly, I blame this entire mess on traumatic encephalopathy. Both of them were on the football team getting their brains oatmealed, and there were seventy million cheerleaders they could have, I don’t know, played D&D under the bleachers with, but no, they decided to choose the same one. Dana.”
His mouth twitches. “I don’t think that’s what people do under the bleachers, Elsie.”
“They’re my brothers, okay? For the purpose of this conversation, they’ve been fighting over the exclusive right to attend Dana’s decoupage classes. And the most ridiculous thing is, they fancy themselves in some kind of Legends of the Fall situation. They both think that the big love of their life is doomed to fail because of the machinations of their evil twin, but the truth is, it’s so obvious from the outside that no one loves anyone here. Dana gets ninety percent of her dopamine from watching two guys fight over her. Mom only cares about what her cousin’s husband’s sister’s nanny thinks, and is totally fine with them shanking each other as long as they do it privately. And the sad thing is, Lucas and Lance used to be best friends. They’d have fun trying to convince me that ChapStick was made of dromedary sperm and watching me gag. But by now . . . they’ve forgotten that they’re brothers, forgotten why they liked Dana in the first place, and are just chickens pecking at each other’s feed—like they’re two hydrogen atoms, and Dana is the electron they constantly steal back and forth. But they’re both nonmetals, and even though they wish they could pluck that electron out for good and keep it for themselves, nope, same electronegativity, sorry, it won’t work. And we’re back to square one every six damn months.”
“And where do you come in?” Jack asks, voice quiet in the car after my bout of yelling. I feel guilty for unloading my entire life story on him, like he’s Oprah or something. I should be fun.
“Mom sends me in to broker peace.” I squirm against the seat. Jack’s eyes slide to my legs, or maybe they don’t. The car is dark and I can’t tell.
“Why?”
“What do you mean?”
“It sounds like your brothers are having issues with one another.” I nod. “Why does she send you?”
“I—because—we—” It’s such a Why is the sky blue? question. Scattering of solar light through the atmosphere, duh. “It’s my family.”
“It’s your mom’s family, too. And your dad’s, and your brothers’. And yet they’re fine with not addressing the issue and asking you to take care of it.” He takes a right turn, and the lights of the truck coming toward us hit his jaw at the perfect, most handsome angle. There’s the way he looks, his low voice, this smell of his. What does this man want with this? With me?
“I owe it to them.”
“You do?”
“Yes. You don’t understand—I was . . . I gave them lots of problems growing up. My diagnosis was such a hassle for them, and the medical care was so expensive. I owe it to them.” My stomach drops. Now Mom is mad at me. I’m an ingrate.
“So, to summarize: Because your pancreas stopped producing insulin when you were a child, you now owe your family a doula-worthy degree of emotional labor?”
It sounds horrible, put like that. Downright horrifying. But. “Yeah, kind of.”
“What does your family think of your job situation?”
“Oh, that.” I shrug. “Not much.” I don’t plan to elaborate, but he’s giving me a raised-eyebrow look, and I want him to check the road. “I don’t tell them about that stuff.”
“You don’t tell them about your life?”
“It’s not what I meant.” Though I don’t. “Just . . . I’m a first-generation college student.”
“There are plenty of first-generation academics whose parents are supportive and engaged.”
I roll my eyes. Because it’s not like I don’t know that he’s right, or like my heart doesn’t feel heavy at the thought. “Just go ahead and do it.”
“Do what?”
“You’re dying to armchair-psychologize me.”
He doesn’t even hide how entertaining he finds me. “Am I?”
“You obviously have an opinion.”
“Hmm.”
“Just say it.”
“Say what?”
“That I don’t tell my family about my job because I’m unable to let people know that I’m more than the sum of the ways I can be useful to them. That if I show my true self, with my needs and my wants, I risk being rejected. That I’ve wielded my ability to hide who I am like an emotional antiseptic, and in the process I’ve turned myself into a puppet. Or a watermelon with googly eyes.”
He maneuvers the car past the glow of the streetlights, and as the seconds pass in silence, I grow afraid that I’ve said too much, showed too much, been me too much. But then: