“She thinks all of this—our split-up family—is her fault. It’s not. My dad is the one who walked out.” I closed my eyes, thinking about that morning he’d left and wishing I’d done more. “She hasn’t been happy in a really long time, and more than anything, I want that for her.”
Jolene’s sigh brought my attention back to her. “I want to preface this by saying I’m still trying to be nice here. Try not to take it personally if you can’t make your mom happy.”
Jolene
“Oh, Mom! Your dearest daughter is home! Come shower me with kisses and lonely sob stories.”
My voice echoing back at me from the vaulted ceiling in the foyer was the only response I expected, and I wasn’t surprised. It was Sunday evening, which meant my mom was probably still at the gym. I dragged my bag upstairs to my room and tossed it in the vicinity of my bed before continuing to the kitchen. Like most of the house, it was pristine and blindingly white, from the glazed snowy cabinets to the Carrara marble countertops and glittering crystal chandelier. All that splendor faded into the background the second I smelled the lasagna that Mrs. Cho had left for me in the oven.
Technically, Mrs. Cho was only supposed to clean the house three mornings a week while I was at school—a rule Mom instituted to eliminate my interactions with a person I openly preferred to her—but she’d started cooking for me when Mom decided that the elusive key to her happiness was tied to the number of pounds she could lose and had stopped consuming anything that didn’t come in a martini glass.
I peeled back the foil, and the scent of cheesy, garlicky goodness wrapped its arms around me. “I missed you, too,” I told my dinner. It was too hot, which meant I burned my mouth and had to endure that tiny flap of skin hanging from the roof, but no sacrifice was too big for Mrs. Cho’s lasagna.
A thought propelled me across the kitchen to the fridge, and, opening it, I did a happy dance. There was a cheesecake on the second shelf, with luscious-looking red cherries on top. I checked our hiding spot in the bread box on the counter and found the best present of all: a note written in Mrs. Cho’s teeny tiny print.
I watch movie with man who drives car. I think I like dog movie best. I make you cheese dinner and cheese dessert. Be good.
My laughter echoed around the kitchen. I knew she’d like the psychological horror of Cujo more than the pulpy crime drama of Drive—she did work for my mother, after all. Mrs. Cho and I had recently formed a movie club together. She wanted to improve her English, and I was only too happy to recommend titles for her. Next, I’d have to try her on the less gory but arguably more terrifying Get Out.
I kept reading. Her notes were never long, and this one was shorter than most, but it was the last line she always added that filled my heart and flooded my eyes: I miss my girl. I could remember a time when I’d come home from school and Mrs. Cho would be waiting to hug me and lift me up on the island so that I could help her with dinner. She always smelled like fresh bread and Windex, and she’d scratch my back while I stirred bowls bigger than I was. She spoke next to no English back then, and I knew only the few Korean words she’d taught me, but we always understood each other.
I flipped the note over and in, my bolder, blocky handwriting, suggested a couple more movies for her to watch, and then profusely thanked her for all the cheese that I was going to consume that night and told her I missed her, too. My hand shook as I tucked the note away for her to find tomorrow.
Our notes were better than nothing, but I had to bite the inside of my cheek until that burst of pain chased the tightness from my chest before I could lift the first forkful of fluffy cheesecake to my mouth.
If Mom knew how much I ate on a given day, she would cast me out on the street and stone me. Probably. Maybe. More than likely she’d use it as an excuse to rant about Dad and his cursed slim genes, which I’d inherited. The calorie obsession wouldn’t last. She’d find out that she was just as miserable at a size four as she was at an eight, and then she’d be onto something new.
Back in my room, I slipped my phone out of my pocket and looked at the picture I’d sent myself from Adam’s phone. I tried to imagine what his mom had thought when she saw it. It was a good picture. I looked happy, and my lips weren’t curled back in that way they sometimes did that revealed too much gum. The sun had lit the shot at just the right angle, threading my brown hair with gold and highlighting the yellows and reds of the last few oak leaves in the tree behind us.
But I didn’t study myself for long, and I didn’t imagine Adam’s mom would have either. He was the one who drew my eye, with his ruddy hair falling forward and his eyes lighting up not for the camera, but for me. It was because I’d surprised him by leaning in and sneaking a photo, but anyone else would look at that picture and envy me. Not because Adam was an Adonis or anything—though I rather liked his jaw—but because his expression, his eyes, his everything, said he was looking at something beautiful.
With a reproachful sound that was directed solely at myself, I tossed my phone onto my pillow and bent to unpack my camera and laptop, ignoring, for the moment, the other few belongings that I was forced to shuffle back and forth between my parents’ residences. I kept basic necessities at both places, but I had only one nearly threadbare T-shirt featuring The Breakfast Club that I liked to sleep in.
After opening my laptop and Final Cut Pro, I rewatched the footage of Adam and me that I’d imported the day before. None of my footage had captured the magic moment from the cell phone pic, so I imported that image, too. My projects always started the same way: with random footage dumped together until, slowly, the story I wanted to tell took shape. My idol, Suzanne Silver, described her directorial process in a similar way. The current footage was still a mystery to me, but the story would come.
As I was closing my laptop, my phone buzzed, and I saw a text from Dad on the screen. My stomach twisted into a knot before I even read it.
Busy weekend. You understand. Shelly said everything went well. We’ll have dinner next time. Promise.
I clutched the phone with fingers that had gone icy cold. Yeah, sure we will. I could barely remember the last time I’d seen him, let alone had a meal with him. My last birthday, maybe? Just for kicks, I scrolled through his last half-dozen texts. They all said basically the same thing. A couple were identical, as if he’d copied and pasted the same words. I wondered if he thought I was dumb enough not to notice, or if he didn’t care either way. The knots in my stomach began twisting.
I didn’t respond. I never did.
I could put a stop to his absentee parenting act if I wanted to. A single word to Mom or her lawyer, and Dad’s no-show weekends would end...until his lawyer dug up something new on Mom. And on and on it would go.
No, thanks.
Besides, how was that a better story than the one I already had?
* * *
Hands shook me awake, interrupting my dream that I was Tarzan. During a brief moment of confusion, my dream and reality converged, and then the vine I was swinging on was torn from my grip.
“Jolene. Jolene! Wake up!”
My vines—or sheets, as I saw them with my awake eyes—were discarded at the foot of my bed and Mom was leaning over me.
“Good. You’re awake.” She smiled, perfectly white-capped teeth on full display.
Mom’s declaration that I was awake wasn’t a completely observable fact. My eyes were barely open, and my body remained curved around the vine/sheet that was no longer there. In truth, I’d hardly moved except to dip involuntarily toward her as she sat down on the mattress next to my hip.
“You’re not taking drugs, are you?” Her thumb lifted my eyelid, and I hissed and jerked away like a vampire confronted with sunlight.
Her hands settled on me again and more shaking commenced. “I wanted to see you. Would it have killed you to wait up for me?”
One eye opened and I glanced at her.
“What time is it?”
“A little after two,” she said without a trace of remorse.
“Then, yes.”
Mom was sitting all prim and proper on my bed, her brown hair sleek and shiny on her shoulders. The neckline of the tank she wore was a little low, and I could see the outline of her sternum in addition to her muscle-shredded, olive-toned arms. Was it possible that she’d gotten skinnier in the past two days? My eyes said yes.
Her brown eyes gleamed a little too bright, but even without that visual clue, I could smell that she’d been drinking and I clutched at the corner of my pillow. These middle-of-the-night chats tended to happen only after a little help from Captain Morgan, and they never went well.
She always started with the same question. “How’s your father?”
“Fine.”
“And the home wrecker?”
“Mom.”
“What? Am I not allowed to ask about the woman your father chose to co-parent with? Is it not within my rights as your mother to want to know that she’s treating you well? Is it not—”
“She’s fine. Everything is fine. No one beat me or starved me or forced me to join a cult. No, Dad didn’t mention you. No, I didn’t get the sense that he and Shelly were splitting up. No, I didn’t find a secret bag of money marked Hide from Helen. I don’t know anything. I never know anything. Now, can I go back to sleep?”
But I couldn’t. Because she started to cry. So I had to hold her. Because she never held me.
“Tom says I should be getting more money.”
“Who’s Tom?” I asked, several minutes and a completely soaked shoulder later.
“Tom. You know Tom.”
I did not know Tom.
“I met him at the gym, and he says there’s no way Robert’s disclosing all his assets.” She lifted her head, and after I stopped focusing on the black smears all over her face, I realized she was looking at me like I was supposed to say something.
I sighed and dropped my arms. Just once, I’d like her to wake me up because she actually missed me instead of for what this was: an attempted guilt-trip debrief. I was pretty sure Dad was putting money away somewhere in Shelly’s name. Mom thought so, too, but so far she hadn’t been able to prove it. Her attempts to get me to spy for her had failed. What did I care which one of them got to enjoy his money? As long as this charade went on, neither of them did.
It was the little things in life.
“I told you I don’t know about any money.”
Mom snorted and jerked back. “He’s hiding it somewhere. You know I’m right.” A finger waved in my face and I brushed it away. “Why else would that tart stay with him?”
I no longer thought that either of my parents was especially lovable, so I didn’t comment.
Mom rested her head on my shoulder. “Couldn’t you just—”
“No,” I said, tightening my grip on my pillow and hunching my shoulder to dislodge her. She was trying to play nice, play sweet, but my heart beat erratically from the falseness of it all. “I’m not going to riffle through his stuff. How many times do I have to say it?”
She abandoned my shoulder. “I guess you want me to be homeless.”
“You have a huge house.”
“What happens if he claims he needs to pay less? I could lose everything.”
“Mom, stop. You’re getting worked up over nothing.”
“Why, because I’m the only one who’ll be homeless?” She made a scoffing sound in the back of her throat. “You’ll go gallivanting off to your father’s like you do every other weekend—”
“I am known for my gallivanting.” I refrained from commenting on the visitation schedule, because she knew—at least, sober, she knew—that I’d had no say in that arrangement.
“—and I’ll be in an alley somewhere selling my body for drugs.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed at her. “You turned into a crack whore pretty quickly in that scenario.”
When she slapped me, my face flamed hot.
“Oh!” Both hands covered her mouth. “Jolene. Honey, I didn’t mean that. My Jolene.” Then she was hugging me again, rocking and shushing me as if I was the one crying. I wasn’t. I never did. My heart limped in my chest, and my face stung, but my eyes stayed dry. “You are the only good thing in my life, do you know that? I love you so much, so, so much...” Then she made me lie down, and she pulled up my sheet and tucked me in.
The last thing she did before leaving was kiss the cheek she’d slapped.
ADAM
I waited in the car while Jeremy and Dad hugged goodbye, opting out of any farewell beyond a single uttered word: bye. As a result, Jeremy and I didn’t talk on the way home. It was a thirty-minute drive, so the silence took considerable effort from both of us.
We turned off the main road, and even with my eyes shut, the crunching sound accompanied by the vibration of Jeremy’s car let me know I was almost home. The graveled road stretched for a half mile before our house came into view and Mom came dashing down the porch, her jaw-length auburn hair fluffing out around her fair-skinned face.
I let Mom hug me as tightly as she needed. Jeremy was next, obediently hugging her and then kissing her cheek as directed. She clung to both of our hands and drank us in with blue-green eyes that were a little too red-rimmed to completely sell the smile she wore.
“You’re taller. I swear both of you are taller.”
“Don’t go giving Jeremy ideas, Mom. Short people are just as good as the rest of us.”
Jeremy swore at me, right in front of Mom, but she didn’t reprimand him. That, more than anything, killed the fight always simmering between the two of us.
“Who’s hungry? I made fried chicken, and there’s apple pie for dessert.” We both responded eagerly and let her precede us into the house. We exchanged a glance. No smiles or mouthed words, but I knew that we’d both do everything we could to make her forget that she’d been alone all weekend. Jeremy wasn’t inclined to place blame on either of our parents, and right then, being half-right was all I needed from him.
An hour later, Mom pretended to be horrified when Jeremy and I polished off the entire pie.
“Got any more?” I asked. She really did look horrified then, but probably more out of self-recrimination that she should have made a second pie just in case. “Mom, I’m kidding. I’m seriously on the verge of throwing up.” No joke. I would have stopped after two pieces, but when Jeremy had gone back for thirds, my little-brother inferiority complex kicked in.
“I can make another one.” She started to push back from the table, but I stopped her with a hand on her wrist.
“Mom. Sit. It wasn’t even that good.”
Mom exhaled but it turned into a laugh. “I know you’re teasing me, because you ate the whole thing.”
“That last piece was pure pity. Awful pie. I mean, I feel bad for the apples.”
More laughter from Mom, and each sound was better than the last.
“I liked it,” Jeremy said, and Mom leaned over to pat his hand.
“Thank you, sweetie.”
She tried to shoo us to go unpack while she did the dishes, but I lingered until Jeremy left. “Mom?”
She was standing at the sink, rinsing plates and loading the dishwasher. She looked at me over her shoulder. “Change your mind about the pie?”
I took a newly rinsed plate from her and put it in the dishwasher. “I’m glad to be home is all.”
She kept running another plate round and round in her hands under the faucet. “Me, too. I—I didn’t think it would be this hard. How many mothers would love to have their house to themselves for a few days? I’ll be better next time. I’ll plan some things, and it’ll go by faster.” She nodded at me and finally relinquished the plate. “Your dad okay?”
“Fine, I guess.” I could have adde
d that I didn’t really know, because we’d barely spoken the whole weekend, but she’d find a way to feel guilty about that. Instead, I brought up the subject that had served me so well last time I needed to cheer her up. “Did you get the picture?”
“Is that what that was? My phone made a chirping noise and I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do.” Mom had grown up Mennonite and had been slow to embrace technology even as an adult. She wiped her hands dry on a towel and retrieved her purse from the other room. When she handed over her phone, she was already smiling.
“Before you get any ideas, please remember that I just met this girl.”
“Adam, I know.” She tried to sound calm, but she was practically bouncing up and down on her toes, which ruined the effect. This was either going to be the smartest or dumbest thing I’d ever done. Thinking about Jolene, I decided it was probably both.
I showed her the picture without looking at it too long myself. Based on Mom’s expression, I had woefully underestimated the impact it would have. Her smile, which had been big and bright only a moment before, dimmed before my eyes.
“Mom?” When I tried to pull the phone back, she seized my wrist and made a sound like a wounded animal.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She pulled the phone closer, and I watched her gaze flick from corner to corner over and over again. “She’s very pretty, Adam.” Then she pressed the phone back into my hands. “Take another one for me next time, okay?” When I nodded, she smiled. “I guess all that cooking exhausted me. I’m going to go to bed early tonight.” She brushed a kiss on my cheek. “Glad you’re home.”
When she left, I looked at the phone in my hand, and it took only a second to see what I had missed before. Her reaction had nothing to do with Jolene or the two of us together. It had everything to do with that fact that, in that hastily taken photo, I looked just like my dead brother.
Greg.
SECOND WEEKEND
October 9–10
Every Other Weekend Page 5