The Difference Between You and Me (21 page)

“We can’t get the roof to stick on,” Jesse explains.

“Interesting problem. Arthur, could I have a moment alone with my daughter?”

Arthur brushes off his hands and steps away from the worktable. “Of course,” he says. “Perfect timing. I need to wash up and get ready for clients anyway.”

“Ha-ha, don’t leave me alone with her,” Jesse half jokes.

“Ha-ha,” Arthur echoes, already on his way out.

“Yes,” Fran says archly. “Ha.”

After her father leaves the garage, Jesse stares deeply into the roofless birdhouse and sands its edge in vague swipes, afraid to meet her mother’s eye.

“So okay,” Fran begins, taking the floor. “First of all, I’m not going to ask for an apology from you about the cancer remark, even though I do think you should apologize to me for the very rude cancer remark you made earlier today.”

“Are you asking me for an apology or aren’t you?” Jesse looks up squarely at her mother, a challenge.

Fran breathes in and out through her nose, the calming-breath technique she learned in her stress reduction class last year. “I’m not. Even though I want to. Because I feel like there must be extenuating circumstances that led you to make that highly uncalled-for, snide remark.”

Jesse shrugs. “I guess.”

Fran does the calming breath again, a little less calmly this time. “Okay. So let’s move on from that. I want to talk to you about a bigger issue.” Fran clears her throat, then clears it again, awkwardly. “Daddy would probably want me to start by naming my feelings and using I-statements.”

Jesse nods.

“So, um.” Fran looks up at the raftered ceiling and blows out a sigh, as if clearing her chest of self-consciousness. “I feel that you’re not learning from your mistakes.”

“‘Feel that’ is not a true I-statement,” Jesse corrects her. “True I-statements don’t have ‘that’ in them.” It’s one of Arthur’s cardinal rules:
feel that
doesn’t really name an emotion, it introduces a judgment.

“Right, right. Okay. I feel, uh, I feel frustrated when you don’t learn from your mistakes.”

“That’s also not a true—”

“Let me finish, okay? Will you please lay off the grammar police and let me finish? I’m trying to work up to something here. Jeez.” Fran runs both hands through her short white hair. “Okay. I feel worried that you’re heading down a dangerous path. I feel afraid that you’re going to make a dumb mistake that will compromise your future. I feel concerned that there’s something sort of major going on with you that you’re not telling us about for some reason. And I feel annoyed that after all our years of hard work trying to create a safe, supportive environment for you to
grow up in, you still feel like you have to keep secrets from us. Why won’t you talk to us about what’s really going on?”

“Why do you assume there’s something ‘really going on’? I got busted a couple of times by Snediker, so what? Sometimes when you do actions, there are consequences. ‘If you don’t end up in jail, it’s not much of a principled statement,’ right? Wasn’t that you?”

“Sweetheart, I’m not talking about jail, I’m not even talking about the busts, I mean, I
am
talking about the busts, but it’s more than that, it’s…”

Fran trails off. She drags a paint-spattered stool over from by the wall and plunks down on it, right next to where Jesse’s standing.

“Look. You’re a forthright kid. You’ve always been an unusually direct, forthright kid. It’s one of the things I admire most about you. But for a while now I’ve felt like you’re, I don’t know, jumpy. Furtive. Defensive. Weird around the house. Myron says it’s just adolescence—”

“You talked to
Myron
about me?” Jesse groans. Myron is her mother’s boss at the firm, the kind of chummy older dude in a rumpled sport coat who’s always asking you questions about your “after-school hobbies” and socking you unpleasantly in the arm.

“Myron has three grown kids; he’s a font of great advice. I talk to Myron about you all the time.”

Jesse rolls her eyes. “Great.”

“Myron thinks you’re individuating and Daddy thinks you’re pissed at me because of the cancer but I think it’s something else. I think you’re messed up in the head about something and I want you to talk to me about it. Talk to me about it!”

Jesse sighs her giantest leave-me-alone sigh.

Fran softens. “Please?”

Jesse turns to look at her mother. “I don’t…” she begins, and falters. “I can’t…”

Sitting beside her on the rickety stool, Fran’s head only comes up to Jesse’s chest. As she looks up at Jesse with her stormy, pleading eyes, her pure-white hair as short and glossy as a pelt, Jesse gets a vision of her as a small cartoon mouse, begging for a piece of cheese.

Jesse wants to tell her. She wants to be the direct, forthright kid that her mother wants to have raised. But every part of the story about Emily is paralyzingly embarrassing: the lying and sneaking, the mind-mangling lust, and most of all, Emily herself. Perfect, pretty, ponytailed Emily, the closeted StarMart storm trooper. If Esther is Fran’s idea of Jesse’s perfect girl, what would she think about Emily?

“Is it a girl?” Fran puts her hand on Jesse’s knee. Jesse looks away. To her dismay, she feels her eyes fill with tears.

“It’s Esther, isn’t it? Sweetheart, you can tell me.”

“It’s not
Esther
!” Jesse gets to her feet, shaking off
Fran’s hand, and strides to the other side of the table. “God! You’re so presumptuous! You always think you know everything about me, but you don’t know everything about me, all right?”

“All right! I concede! I hardly know anything about you! I shouldn’t have assumed this was about Esther.”

“It doesn’t even matter who it is, because it’s over.” Jesse turns her attention fiercely to Roof Part A, pivoting it around and around and trying to cram it onto the bottom half of the birdhouse.

“Oh?” Fran says tentatively. Jesse can feel her adjusting her position on the little stool across the table, sitting up to pay closer attention. “But there was someone.”

Jesse nods. All at once, she can feel herself getting closer to telling. It feels electric, stepping into this zone of almost-saying-it, after keeping it carefully tucked away and insulated for so long. Her mouth feels crackly with sparks, like she’s holding a whole packet of Pop Rocks on her tongue.

“Someone you wouldn’t approve of,” Jesse says.

“How do you know I wouldn’t approve of her?”

“Because she’s not the kind of person you like.”

Fran shakes her head, bemused. “And what ‘kind’ of person do I like?”

“Um, radical people?” Jesse snaps, annoyed at having to explain the obvious. “People who try to make the world
a better place? Gandhi? Thurgood Marshall? Martin Luther King Jr.? Oprah?”

“I do love Oprah.” Fran smiles. “I can’t help myself. She’s fabulous.”

“Well, this girl isn’t like that.” Jesse drops Roof Part A and starts messing with the tiny, dried-up tube of wood glue that came in the birdhouse kit, trying to unscrew its miniature cap.

“This girl’s not like Oprah. Or Gandhi, or Thurgood Marshall.”

Jesse shakes her head. “No.”

“So what
is
she like?”

“She’s…”

How can Jesse explain Emily to her mother? How can she describe Emily’s fluid beauty, her long-legged walk, the way her jeans fit on her hips, her laugh—recognizable to Jesse in any crowded hallway—her hoodies, her V-necks, the taste of her skin, the smell of her hair, the way she looks like she was just born to move down a hallway in a group of girls whenever Jesse sees her from a distance in school? How can Jesse describe this regular girl who is somehow, in some way, haloed in magic, for no other reason than because she’s Emily Miller? “She’s normal,” Jesse says finally.

“And I don’t like normal people?”

“It’s not that, it’s just—she’s like,
super
normal. She’s
against everything I stand for. She has a boyfriend.”

“Ah.” Fran nods. “I see.”

“She won’t admit in public that she likes me. And she works for StarMart’s parent company,” Jesse finishes darkly.

Fran cocks her head and squints. “Wait, how old is this girl?” she asks.

“She’s a junior,” Jesse says.

“A junior in high school? With a corporate job?”

“She has some kind of internship with them in Stonington, I don’t know. I couldn’t even listen to her when she was telling me about it, it made me so upset.”

“Wow, okay. Okay.” Fran gets up from her stool and paces a moment, full of energy, then turns to face Jesse. “So my first priority, obviously, is your well-being, and this relationship doesn’t sound like it’s been great for your well-being.” Jesse shrugs. “Anyone who won’t admit publicly that they’re dating my daughter is obviously not good enough for her, that’s how I feel. But before I dole out any motherly advice about how to handle this, let me just say: I have to hand it to you, kid. This one’s a doozy.” There is a note of genuine appreciation in Fran’s voice. “Your girl is a closet case who works for StarMart? I’ve found myself in some compromising situations myself over the years, but this one is
rough
.”

“
Now
you see why I couldn’t tell you?”

“Actually, no, because—”

“No one has ever done anything as stupid as this, ever, in the history of the entire world!” Jesse wails, cutting her mother off.

Fran rolls her eyes. “Kid, please. Practically
everyone
in the history of the entire world has done something as stupid as this.” Fran comes around now to Jesse’s side of the table. “Look. You’ve heard me mention Daniel Karp every now and then, right?”

“Yeah, the guy Daddy hates.”

Fran smiles ruefully. “Daddy does hate him, yes. Daniel Karp is the guy I was dating when I met Daddy.”

“You met Daddy
while
you were dating Daniel Karp? So you dated them both at the same time?”

“Not ex
act
ly…” Fran winces a little, seems to search the air above her for an explanation. “Not really. Sort of. It was complicated for a while there. Anyway, the point is, I was with Daniel for a couple of years before I even knew Daddy. We met arguing a case—on
opposite
sides. He was an assistant DA. Right after he lost and my client was acquitted, he came over to shake my hand and asked me out.”

“Whoa.”

“I know. It was ridiculous. And extremely hot.”

“Please don’t say ‘hot.’” Jesse scrunches her shoulders up to her ears and edges away from her mother.

“I’m sorry if it makes you uncomfortable, I’m sorry if Daddy hates to hear me say it, but I’m not going to lie about it: Daniel Karp was hot. That guy was one of the most brilliant litigators I’ve ever seen in action. And he had incredible cheekbones. Also, he was pure evil, but that’s another story.”

“So fine, you’re saying that everyone makes mistakes blah blah blah and I don’t have to feel bad about it and I should just forget I ever met her.”

“No, and please don’t put words into my mouth. I wasn’t going to say you should forget about her, whoever she is. Of course I don’t want you to be in a situation where you have to hide, that’s never going to be okay with me. For that reason alone, I’m glad it’s over. But just being with someone who’s wrong for you isn’t necessarily a mistake. I’m certainly not sorry I was with Daniel, even though we didn’t last and he drove me up a wall every freaking second we were together, because I learned a tremendous amount from being with him. And we were totally into each other, right up until the end, even though we could never really figure out why.”

Jesse sighs. “I just… I just hate feeling so dumb. I
know
better than to like her. I
don’t
like her. And I don’t even
get
to like her anymore. But I just…” Jesse looks down at the floor. “I just
like
her. It makes me feel like a tool.”

“Once,” Fran says, settling against the worktable and folding her arms, “I knew this kid who very bravely and bossily came out of the closet when she was only fourteen years old. She told me then that we can’t choose who we love. We just love the people we love, no matter what anyone else might want for us. Wasn’t that you?”

Obviously, I made the right decision to put a little distance between me and Jesse. I sort of took my own self by surprise when I said it—I certainly didn’t go into school that morning thinking I was going to tell her we should take a break. But when I saw her there outside the dean’s office, it just popped out of my mouth, and as soon as I said it I knew it was the right thing to do.

Some of the most important things that happen in a person’s life are split-second decisions. Sometimes it’s in those quick moments, when your brain sort of does something without your permission, where you can be the most brave.

Like—ironically—the first time I kissed Jesse. It was an accident, sort of. It happened during Vander Open House Night, which is an evening event for parents and guardians held at the beginning of every year, where your parents or guardians come to school and run through a
short version of your schedule and get a chance to meet your teachers and experience a snapshot of your life as a Vander student.