Confessions of an Angry Girl

by Louise Rozett

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s a jerk,” I reply, annoyed that she bothered to ask when the answer is so obvious.

  Robert comes back and puts down our drinks, spilling a few drops of cranberry juice on the white tablecloth. “Oops. Sorry, Rosie.” He tries to mop it up with the corner of his apron and then gives up, sliding the saltshaker over to cover the stain. “I’ll be back in a minute to take your order.” He grins.

  My mother lifts her glass to take a sip and then stops. “Don’t be mad at Peter, honey. Be thankful that he’s found someone he cares about enough to spend the holiday with.”

  Personally, I think he found someone specifically so that he wouldn’t have to spend the holiday with us, but if I say that, we’ll just end up having a conversation about my “negativity.”

  “How about a toast,” she says. “To us. And to your father.”

  Her glass just hangs there in the air, waiting. I know what I’m supposed to do, but I can’t make my hand reach for my drink. I feel weird, like I’m not really in my body. I just stare at her bloodred wine.

  “Rose?”

  I look from the glass to her puzzled face.

  “You don’t want to toast?” she asks.

  “You can’t do that,” I say quietly.

  “What, honey?”

  “You can’t just bring him up like that, like we’ve been talking about him all along.”

  My mother’s face goes white as a sheet and then bright red. I got my blushing problem from her, clearly. She slowly lowers her glass to the table without taking a sip and looks down at her hands. I notice that she’s taken off her diamond engagement ring but is still wearing her wedding band. This makes her hands look old, somehow. After a moment, she looks up again.

  “I know you’re angry, but there’s no reason to be cruel. This is happening to me, too.”

  I’m not trying to be cruel—I’m confused. She hardly ever even says his name, and now we’re suddenly supposed to toast him?

  Robert arrives. “Have you had a chance to look at the menu, ladies?”

  My mother forces a smile for him and shakes her head. “Why don’t you just recommend something?”

  “Certainly. I would recommend our tasting menu, which will take you on a veritable culinary tour through all the holiday standards.” He sounds like he’s reciting lines he memorized before his shift started, in order to better play his role of “waiter” today.

  “A culinary tour sounds delightful. That’s what I’ll have,” she says, closing her menu and handing it back to Robert.

  “And for the young lady?” he asks, turning to me.

  “I’ll have that, too.”

  “Excellent choices!” he replies, giving us a quick bow and then departing from the table.

  “Is he always like that?” my mother asks, watching him go. I don’t answer her. She looks at me for a moment, and I can see that she’s trying to figure out how to respond—as a trained therapist or as my mother. “You know, we don’t have to talk about your father. Or we can. It’s up to you.”

  “You didn’t warn me. You just, out of nowhere… I don’t know. Forget it.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you,” she concedes in her therapy voice.

  I hate it when she talks like that. It makes me feel like she’s a robot. We both reach for our glasses and drink at the same time. And that’s when I see Jamie walk in with a man who looks exactly like him, give or take thirty years.

  On the rare occasions when I’ve seen Jamie in the halls, I’ve avoided him, too embarrassed to face him ever since Peter told me about their little deal. It’s just as well, since apparently Regina has it out for me. But now that I’m looking at him, I can’t look away, no matter how much I want to. He catches my eye and smiles.

  I’m trying to decide whether I should smile back when his gaze shifts to my mother. His smile fades, and he gets a weird look on his face. Suddenly he’s heading straight for our table—or, actually, straight for her.

  I can hardly believe my eyes.

  When he reaches us, he doesn’t even look at me. “Um, Mrs. Zarelli?” he says quietly, sounding unsure about how to address her.

  My mother looks up at Jamie with no recognition for a moment. And then she smiles. “Jamie Forta,” she says. She stands up and touches his shoulder. “How are you doing?” My gut is telling me that there’s something I don’t like about this interaction, but my brain hasn’t put the pieces together yet.

  “I’m okay,” he says, nodding. “Sorry. About Mr. Zarelli. And sorry I didn’t come to the memorial.”

  “I completely understand. And thank you for your condolences. Is that your father?” she asks, looking past Jamie at the man who has settled himself at the bar under the big TV—with the biggest glass of beer I’ve ever seen—without even looking to see where Jamie went.

  Jamie nods.

  “Is he still a police officer?” The way she says this tells me that there was a time when Jamie’s dad may have been in danger of losing his job, and not just because the city was laying off cops.

  Jamie nods again and then turns to me. “Hi, Rose. Happy Thanksgiving.”

  I lift my hand in a lame wave—that’s all I can manage. I can’t even smile. Jamie was going to come to the memorial this summer? And what does she mean by I completely understand?

  What the heck is going on here?

  Jamie looks from me to my mother and back again, realizing that I have no idea what the story is. But he does nothing to clear up the mystery. “Well, I gotta go. Happy Thanksgiving,” he says again, nodding and then heading for the bar.

  It’s like I’ve slipped into a parallel universe. My mother sits back down, takes another sip of her wine and looks out the window.

  “Mom.” She turns to me, takes in my confusion, and says “Yes?” in a tone of voice that I know means You’re not getting any information out of me. Which, of course, tells me all I need to know.

  Jamie, at one point or another, was one of my mother’s clients.

  No wonder he didn’t need directions to my house when he drove me home in September.

  “You’re blushing, Rose,” my mother says, a surprised smile on her face.

  I want to be nice to her, I really do, especially today. But I hate everything about this. Why does everyone in my family know Jamie better than I do? And why am I the last to know that they know?

  Furious, I get up from the table, my napkin falling to the floor, my chair tipping precariously backward, and I go over to the bar. I can feel my pulse beating under the hot skin on my face. My mother calls after me. I ignore her and reach out to tap Jamie on the shoulder, but I stop short of touching him.

  “Can I talk to you for a second?”

  Jamie shoots a glance at his father, who doesn’t see or hear anything besides the football game on the bar’s flat screen. He gets off his stool and leads me toward the coat-check room like he already had a plan in mind for this very moment. Robert stops in front of us, a bread basket in each hand.

  “Everything okay, Rose?” he asks, his eyes on Jamie.

  “Fine.”

  “Want me to keep your mother company for a minute?”

  “Sure,” I say, my fury giving way for one split second to raw shame, shame for leaving my mother sitting by herself on her first Thanksgiving without Dad. But the shame is followed by anger that her grief can make me feel shame.

  I exhaust myself.

&nb
sp; We step into the coat-check room. “I know why you’re pretending to like me,” I say before he can even turn around.

  Jamie is smart, unlike me. When he doesn’t understand what’s going on, he keeps his mouth shut and waits. I, however, start talking and can’t stop until I’ve said every thought in my head.

  “Because Peter asked you to. And now I know why you knew where my house is. Because you know my mom, not because you drove Peter home one time. You’re a liar, Jamie.”

  There’s a flash of anger in Jamie’s hazel eyes—I guess he doesn’t like being called a liar. At first I’m intimidated by seeing him angry and knowing that I’m the cause, but then I think, well, too bad—you are a liar. I realize I’m getting a little thrill out of not backing down. He looks at me hard, like he’s trying to figure out where I’m going with all this. That makes two of us.

  “I don’t know your mom. She helped me once.”

  I wait for more, but apparently that’s all he’s going to say about that without more prompting.

  “You been ignoring me because of your brother?” he asks.

  That’s part of the reason. The other part is his scary girlfriend and how if any of her minions see me talking to him, I’m likely to get my ass kicked. “I don’t like it when people make decisions about me that I don’t know about,” I say.

  “Pete didn’t want you to be alone.”

  “I have friends, you know. I don’t need fake ones.”

  He looks away and slowly reaches his hand into the mass of empty wire hangers dangling from one of the coat racks. They jangle softly in the quiet of the room as he brushes his fingers back and forth across them. For a moment, I lose myself in the sound, and a strange feeling shivers up my spine, as if Jamie were touching me, not the hangers. His touch seems purposeful but gentle, and I can imagine what it would be like to have his hand on my skin. The motion is hypnotic—my eyes practically start to close.

  I need to snap out of it. Jamie lied to me, and I shouldn’t be thinking about him at all, never mind like this.

  “Why did you need my mom?” I force myself to ask. I know it’s none of my business, especially since I just told him I don’t need his friendship, but I needed to say something before I disintegrated into a puddle at his feet.

  He rests both hands on the coat rack that’s bolted into the wall and stares at the floor. Then he turns and takes my hand, and I go completely still as warmth begins to radiate up my arm.

  “I’m not pretending to like you,” he says. My face burns as his words sink in. “I don’t do that.”

  He walks out of the room. I reach for the coat rack to keep myself upright. I need to catch my breath, but for once it’s not because I’m angry. I can still feel his hand on mine, and everything is tingling. The feeling spreads across my whole body, like a web across my skin. I couldn’t shake it off even if I wanted to, which I don’t. I want to stay right where I am for the rest of the day, my eyes half closed, warm from the inside out.

  When I finally head back to the table, I see that Jamie’s dad is still at the bar, but Jamie is gone. Robert is standing next to my mother. He says something, and she throws her head back and laughs. I realize that I haven’t seen my mother laugh since before the day my father decided that their best financial option was for him to pack up his pocket protectors and pencils and head off to Iraq nearly eleven months ago.

  I sit back down at the table.

  “Robert says you’re going to homecoming together. Sounds like we need to start shopping for a dress.”

  “Yeah,” I say. I’m suddenly so tired I can barely keep my eyes open—I feel like I just ran a marathon.

  “That’s great, honey. I’m glad you’re going.”

  “I’ll make sure she has a good time, Mrs. Zarelli,” Robert says. Good luck with that, I think as he goes to find our meals.

  “I didn’t realize you were friendly with Jamie Forta,” my mother says cautiously. “He’s a junior now, isn’t he?”

  I look her straight in the eyes and shrug, determined not to give her any more information about Jamie than she gave me. She tilts her head and sighs, defeated. Score one for me in my pathetic little game.

  Make an effort. Dad would want you to make an effort today.

  “I didn’t make cross-country,” I suddenly blurt out.

  She looks startled, a mixture of disappointment and confusion on her face. “I didn’t even know you tried out.”

  “I did. Barely. I sucked.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me beforehand?”

  “I didn’t tell anyone, Mom,” I say.

  She starts to say something but changes her mind and nods instead.

  “It was my first run since last spring,” I offer.

  She swirls the last bit of wine around in her glass, studying it intently. I imagine that she’s deciding whether to ask me anything else. “How did it feel to run?” she finally says, curiosity winning over caution in what was probably a serious battle in her therapist’s brain.

  “Like my legs were dead,” I say.

  My response shocks her. She stares at me as if trying to figure out if my choice of words was accidental or intentional. Robert returns with our “holiday culinary tours”—a plate of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce from a can—and we start our Thanksgiving in silence.

  WINTER

  taciturn (adjective): not given to talking

  (see also: Jamie Forta)

  10

  I'M IN THE gym bathroom looking at my zits in the mirror. My “crop” of zits, as Peter would say. I was planning on wearing makeup, but in the trial run earlier, it just made my skin all red and blotchy, and I looked even worse. Mom says I have extremely sensitive skin, just like hers. Thanks, Mom.

  My long, brown velvet dress looks stupid, not elegant the way I imagined it would when Mom talked me into it, and it completely flattens out my breasts, the only feature I have that I think someone else might find sexy. My shoes are too big and make my feet look wide. I forgot to put on jewelry. I have my period, and my stomach is all bloated, so the dress doesn’t really fit right. In short, I’m ugly. But that’s not new information to me.

  The door slams open, and the homecoming court—otherwise known as half the cheerleading team—swarms in. I try not to make eye contact with Regina, whose new favorite hobby is to stare me down when we pass in the halls. The court wears brightly colored tight satin strapless gowns that look like discarded bridesmaids’ dresses they stole from their older sisters’ closets. They have matching corsages on their wrists that seem to take up half their arms. Their hair is teased and sprayed into elaborate twists and up-dos, and adds at least four or five inches to their heads. I don’t have to look in the mirror to know that my brown hair is flat, flat, flat and does nothing interesting at all no matter what I try or whose hairdresser I go to. My hair has always been boring. Just like I’ve always been ugly.

  I hate dances.

  “Hey, Rose,” says Michelle Vicenza. Her dress is pale pink with rhinestones across the sweetheart neckline. She has gorgeous curly dark hair and big brown eyes, and diamonds in her ears. Michelle is one of those amazing girls who rise above the social hierarchy, oblivious to its rules and regulations. She is friendly to everyone, and everyone—me included—thinks she’s a goddess. The rest of the homecoming court is a nightmare.

  “Hi, Michelle.”

  “You look great!” She air-kisses me.

  “Oh, uh…” I say, self-c
onsciously shaking my head, feeling like an unwashed potato stuffed into a too-small brown paper bag. “You look beautiful and I love your—”

  “Michelle, you got any gloss?” says Regina, talking right over me. “I don’t know where mine is.”

  “I just lent you mine a few minutes ago!” says Susan, wincing in pain as she plunges a pick into the sprayed mass on her head and yanks upward to make it even higher. “What did you do, kiss it all off already? You should let Forta come up for air every once in a while.”

  I suddenly feel nauseous.

  “He got the keg, right?” Susan asks.

  “No, he forgot,” Regina snaps. “Of course he got the keg. Gloss, ’Chelle?” she demands impatiently.

  “Here.” Michelle reaches into her matching bag and pulls out some red lip gloss. I suddenly realize I left the vintage black clutch my mom lent me, which is the only cool thing about my outfit, in Robert’s car. Not that there’s much in it anyway. I was so aggravated by my skin that I gave up trying to look good and, in an act of rebellion, left all aids at home.

  “Thanks,” says Regina, reaching across me as if I’m not there. When her arm grazes my chest, she scowls, like I somehow came between her and her quest for lip gloss. Regina is the only blonde in the group. Her mean-looking face doesn’t seem to fit with the other girls, who look happy and nice, even if they aren’t. She’s wearing a red satin dress that is suspiciously similar to Michelle’s, right down to the rhinestone-studded neckline. Except Regina’s rhinestones have been removed, leaving pea-sized dark spots at regular intervals. Maybe there’s some unwritten squad rule that your dress can’t look like the head cheerleader’s or you’ll get court-martialed. I suddenly imagine Regina behind bars in cheerleader prison, being forced to make pom-poms by hand. If I weren’t so freaked out by my proximity to her, I might actually laugh.

  “Who are you here with, Rose?” says Michelle. Regina looks at her like she’s talking to the air. Michelle of course pays no attention. Love her.