Every Other Weekend

by Abigail Johnson

  With one, I’d talked; with the other, I’d shared.

  The difference felt huge.

  “I’m glad she knew him,” Jeremy said after a while. “I mean, it’s not—” He rolled his eyes. “We’re not together yet. We had fun at the dance, and not just because we got to stick it to you. I like her and if something more happens between us... I’m glad I won’t have to deal with trying to tell her about him.”

  “Yeah,” I said, my throat squeezing the word so that it barely came out. “It’s hard.”

  “But you did?” he went on. “Tell Jolene?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, it was after we...we actually ran into Daniel.” I hadn’t intentionally withheld that fact from my brother; it was just that we didn’t talk, except to fight. I lowered my head though, because, intended or not, I should have said something.

  I made sure not to look at Jeremy when he spoke, but I heard the break when he did.

  “You did? When? Where? Is he...okay?”

  I told him the details, feeling worse with every word. Daniel had been more than Greg’s friend, he’d been ours, too—both of ours.

  “He’s still got the Jeep.”

  Jeremy’s mouth lifted. “Does it still smell like every animal in the state has pissed in it?”

  I laughed. “Every animal in the state did piss in it. Do you remember when he and Greg got the badger in the back seat?”

  “No, the time they had the two swans...”

  And that was how it went for the rest of the drive. My abs hurt from laughing, and for the first time since Greg died, the tears in my eyes weren’t from crying.

  Jolene

  It was late when I heard the front door open, but not as late as I was expecting. I was normally dead asleep by the time Mom got home from a date with Tom, but they’d been gone only a couple hours. I was still finishing the last few bites of the early individual-size birthday cake—pineapple upside-down—that Mrs. Cho had left me along with her thoughts on the most recent films I’d suggested to her—she’d gotten the bittersweet coming-of-age brilliance of The Way, Way Back but couldn’t get past that scene in Planes, Trains and Automobiles where Steve Martin lays into the lady from the car rental place. The cake was supposed to be for tomorrow, but I hadn’t been able to wait. And Mom’s unexpected appearance meant I didn’t have time to wash the caramel off the plate. It didn’t matter that I could shove the rest of the cake in my mouth. She’d know. I decided to enjoy my cake, because I was going to pay for it one way or another.

  I was lifting a bite to my mouth when Mom entered the kitchen. She froze like she’d walked in on me snorting a line of cocaine off the countertop, which I guess, in her mind, might have been the less grievous action. If I was on drugs, she could send me to rehab. The same couldn’t be said about consuming processed sugar.

  I took in the mascara streaks under her red eyes and knew that I’d made the wrong decision by not hiding my cake—and myself. This wasn’t going to be a film starring movie-studio Mom. This was going to be the underground, black-market edition that only the most twisted people would watch.

  I had no choice but to costar.

  “Don’t,” she said, raising a shaking hand in my direction.

  I took the bite.

  She screamed, smacked the plate away from me, and threw it into the sink so hard that it shattered.

  I turned my fork over to lick the other side clean.

  She pulled it from my mouth with enough force that one of the prongs sliced the inside of my lip. I tasted blood.

  “It’s a cake. Why are you acting like this?”

  “It is not a cake. It is poison that makes you fat.”

  “Well, it was delicious.”

  One eye twitched. “You think I didn’t look like you when I was your age? That I couldn’t eat garbage all the time? Well, I did until one day, bam!” She clapped her hands in front of my face and I flinched back. “I’m a fat middle-aged woman whose husband is screwing his personal trainer!”

  “Can you stop telling the same story over and over again? None of that has anything to do with your size, because he would have done it anyway. Plus, he’s not your husband anymore, and his personal trainer has a name—Shelly.”

  It felt as if my eyes opened twice as wide as hers. The pineapple upside-down cake in my stomach tried to turn itself into a right-side-up cake. I didn’t care about Shelly. I hated Shelly. She was awful, and she’d used our former friendship to get to my dad. I didn’t understand how my brain and my mouth could have become so disconnected, but I didn’t have time to think about it, because Mom took a step back from me.

  “How could you say her name to me?”

  And just like that, I was done. She was supposed to come home from her bad date, see me sneaking my birthday cake, and shake her head as she smiled. She was supposed to slip off her heels, grab a fork, and dig in with me. We could have laughed together, talked together, and when the cake was gone she could have hugged me, and told me she loved me, and that she was sorry for all the times she’d let me think she didn’t.

  That was what Adam’s mom would have done. For his birthday, she’d probably fill their kitchen with cakes and hug him once for every year that he’d been alive. She wouldn’t just tell him how much she loved him, she’d show him over and over again, and he’d never spend a single sleepless night counting all the things that were wrong with him.

  He’d never feel like he wasn’t enough.

  Like he was the reason everyone was miserable.

  Like his mom was unhappy because of him.

  “Because it doesn’t matter if I say Shelly’s name. And it doesn’t matter if I eat a birthday cake for my birthday made by someone who actually cares about me. I don’t care what size I am. Why do you care more about what I eat than how I feel? Why can’t you care about me, me?” I said, pressing my fingers into my sternum. “Not how you can use me to hurt Dad or make you look good in front of Tom or—” I scoffed “—how the two of you can use me to spy on Dad and get you more money. For what? Will money make you happy? You weren’t happy when you were married and had Dad’s money. You’ve never been happy with me, and judging from the makeup you’ve cried off, Tom isn’t making you happy either. So, what do you want, Mom, because it looks like the only thing that makes you happy is when other people feel worse!”

  And still, after saying all of that, there was a stupid speck of hope beating in my chest that wanted her to shake her head, to gasp and realize with a shock that although she’d been hurting me all these years, she hadn’t meant to. That hope imagined a scene in which she’d fall down in front of me, hugging me and begging me to forgive her.

  It could have been the ultimate climax, with swelling music and an unsteady, handheld camera capturing it all.

  But in the movie of my life, the characters never changed or grew. My life would never be the movie I wanted.

  She slipped off her right earring, pulled out her phone and dialed, and lifted the cell to her ear.

  She never once broke eye contact with me as she spoke. “Yes, I’m sorry for the late hour, Mrs. Cho, but this couldn’t wait. I don’t need you to come in tomorrow.”

  “Mom,” I said, my voice more breath than sound as I clutched the edge of the island, my heart plummeting.

  “My financial situation has become more difficult of late and I won’t be able to keep you on any longer.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll look at Dad’s papers, whatever you want. Please. Please don’t.” For a second I thought she heard me, not just my voice but the plea that came straight from my heart.

  “Yes, of course. Thank you for understanding.”

  She ended the call and replaced her earring. “You think that woman cares about you? Ask me what she said when I fired her. Ask me what her concern was.”

  I shook my head, feeling like I might throw up th
e last thing Mrs. Cho would ever make me.

  “A reference letter. Not you.” She strode across the kitchen until she was right in front of me. “She didn’t even say your name.”

  My lungs emptied in a sob and my arms came up to wrap around myself.

  “Look at me.”

  And when I couldn’t, she lifted my chin herself.

  “One day, you’ll thank me for teaching you the most important lesson you’ll ever learn—caring about people who can’t get you anything in return is a waste.”

  Then she pressed her lips against my forehead and told me to clean up the kitchen before I went to bed.

  ADAM

  The second hand of my bedroom wall clock was passing the nine, ten, eleven, and the moment it ticked past the twelve and hit midnight, I pressed Call on my phone. The lateness of the hour made the phone slip in my slightly sweaty hand as I waited for her to pick up.

  And waited.

  Waited.

  I was beginning to wonder if she was asleep when her voice, low but clear, replaced the continuous ringback.

  “Adam. It’s midnight. Are you dying or super rude?”

  “No,” I said, and then I laughed. “You can’t think of a single reason why I’d be calling you at exactly midnight on this particular day?”

  “Let me think for a moment,” she said, but I could hear that she was smiling.

  “Happy birthday. I wanted to be the first one to say it to you.”

  “Well, congratulations. That honor belongs to you.”

  “How do you feel? Older? Mature? Too cool for fifteen-and-eleven-months-old guys?” I heard Jolene shifting, and for some reason I imagined her flipping around on a bed I’d never seen with her legs propped up on a padded headboard.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been sixteen for like a minute, so maybe? Although I’ve always been too cool for you, so definitely yes to the last question.”

  “I would take issue with the use of the word always in that statement, but come morning, I’m not going to be able to argue with a driver’s license when I’m stuck riding a bike. You’re still going, right? Gabe is taking you?”

  “Yeah, we were going to blow off first and second periods, but there was some damage to the roof from the snowstorm over the weekend so there’s no school tomorrow. Want me to call you after?”

  “No. I mean, yes, normally I would want that, but my mom decided we should take an impromptu drive up to Lancaster for a couple days to visit my grandparents. We’re leaving in the morning and they’re conservative Mennonites, which is only a few steps away from being Amish. They don’t go for a lot of technology around the farm. My mom wants us to leave everything with a battery at home. I know, I know,” I said, forestalling a predictable remark from Jolene. “It’s like traveling back in time instead of driving a couple hours away.”

  “I wasn’t going to say that.”

  “Why not? It’s true.”

  “I think it’s nice that your mom is being so thoughtful of your grandparents.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Age is definitely making you more compassionate. I don’t know what to do with you if you aren’t making fun of me.”

  “Is that how you see me? As the mean girl who insults you all the time?”

  Age was also making her more sensitive, apparently. “No. I wouldn’t be calling you on your birthday or wanting to hang out with you all the time if that’s what I thought. I’d be hanging out with that other girl, the one I broke up with because I’d rather be friends with you.” And then I added, “Is everything okay? I mean, you just turned sixteen. Why aren’t you happier right now?”

  “Do you remember me telling you about Mrs. Cho, my housekeeper?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “My mom and I got into a fight tonight, and afterward she called Mrs. Cho and fired her. She told Mrs. Cho it was because we couldn’t afford her anymore, but that’s not why. It’s not even because she caught me eating the birthday cake that Mrs. Cho left me, or that Tom broke up with her because I refused to spy on my dad for them. I was happy for a split second, and she couldn’t have that. So she fired the only person who ever cared about me, just because. She even tried to tell me it was for my own good, a way to teach me that caring about people who can’t get you anything is stupid.”

  My hand clenched around the phone and so much blood rushed to my face that it seemed to seep into my vision. It didn’t seem possible that Jolene had come from two of the most miserable and worthless people who’d ever lived.

  “I’ve been lying here trying to sleep,” Jolene went on. I could hear her too-fast breathing through the phone, and the sound was a fist tightening around my heart. “But all I can think about is that I’ll probably never see Mrs. Cho again. And maybe my mom was right. She said Mrs. Cho didn’t ask about me on the phone.”

  “Your mom is a liar,” I said, raising my voice. “I don’t believe for a second that she didn’t ask about you. And neither do you.” When Jolene’s end of the line stayed silent, I felt a weird wash of anger crash over me—not toward her, but toward the people who were responsible for the way I knew she looked, sitting in her room miles away. Like she wanted the earth itself to swallow her. “You’re amazing, you know?” But she didn’t, and that was the problem. “Jo, I—” I didn’t want to tell her on the phone that I loved her.

  “Adam, I’m kidding. Obviously. I mean, it’s not even really just my birthday. Every year I’m alive is like a gift to the world.”

  She was trying to deflect from the rare honest words she’d let slip, and I knew I couldn’t let her. “Remember my prediction for our future?”

  “The one where I win an Oscar? Um, yeah.”

  “I started it too late. Before you get into college and you’re crying over leaving me at the airport—”

  “Uh-huh. Let’s see who ends up doing the crying.”

  “—you submit an incredible application to that film program, and to no one’s surprise but your own, you get in. After a single summer, you start realizing that all the crap your parents have made you think about yourself all these years is just that. Even when you come back home, it’s not as bad as it’s been, because you don’t just tell other people what an amazingly talented, beautiful, and funny person you are, you actually believe it. It’s not just some joke that only you’re in on.”

  The silence on the phone made me worry that I’d gone too far and she’d hung up. I pressed the phone harder against my ear. “Jo?”

  “Yeah?”

  My eyes fell shut in relief. “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Then tell me you know I’m right.”

  But she didn’t, and I realized that she couldn’t, not after everything that had happened with her mom and Mrs. Cho. I was going to keep telling her though. And I’d show her, too. “I am right. About all of it. Even you sobbing as I leave to catch my flight.” I told myself that that last part made her smile. “And I’m sorry about Mrs. Cho.”

  Jolene let out a sigh that was an acknowledgment of the sympathy I offered, but not much else. I probably had pushed her too far and, more than anything, when we hung up, I wanted her to feel better than when I’d called her. I wasn’t doing a great job of making that happen yet.

  “Leaving aside your wretched mom, you know that Mrs. Cho isn’t the only one who cares about you just because, right? I mean, I’m right here on the phone. At least wait until we’ve hung up before you dismiss me out of hand.”

  Jolene laughed a little. “I forgot about your fragile boy emotions.”

  “And we’re back to making fun of me.” I hoped she could hear me smiling.

  “You want an ego boost?”

  I wanted anything she wanted to give me. “Sure.”

  She laughed again, but when she started talking, she sounded completely serious. “I like tha
t you’re such a huge nerd that you sat up watching the clock so you could call me the second it was officially my birthday.”

  “Anytime you want to start with that ego boost.”

  “You want me to tell you that I like talking to you better than I like sleeping? You want me to tell you that no one has ever given me a midnight birthday call and that fact that you did means I don’t think I’ll ever be as cool as you are to me right now?”

  “For starters,” I said, going for a lame joke because my face felt so hot that it was borderline uncomfortable, which meant I was reaching record-breaking blushing territory. Since I knew Jolene would like hearing that, I told her.

  “Yes!” was her response, hissing the word so that it tickled my ear through the phone. “You did that just for me, didn’t you?”

  I did blush for her. I almost always blushed for her.

  When she spoke again, her voice started to crack, and she had to swallow and start again. “You’re a really good friend, Adam Moynihan. Better than the best.”

  “You’re worth being a really good friend to, Jolene Timber. I hope I get to be there when you realize that.” For some reason, that made her cry, though she tried to hide that from me, I could hear it. “You know, if you lived near me, or I had a license, I’d be at your window right now with one of those gross banana cupcakes that you like. Wait, no, I’d be wearing a trench coat, and I’d have found a giant old stereo in a pawnshop or something and I’d be holding it above my head playing...playing...” I smacked my palm against my head trying to remember the song from the John Cusack movie she’d made me watch a few weeks ago.

  “It’s Peter Gabriel’s ‘In Your Eyes.’”

  “‘In Your Eyes.’”

  “That’s pretty much the biggest romantic moment in movie history,” she told me. Her voice was back. So was my blush.

  “It’s possible I might have fallen asleep during part or all of that movie.”