by E. J. Mara
Jonathan cleared his throat and the sound made me jump, which made me hit the top of my head on the refrigerator.
“Ow!” I exclaimed, ducking out of the fridge and patting my head.
“Are you okay?” Jonathan laughed.
I couldn’t help but grin too.
I rolled my eyes and reached into the fridge for a large bottle of Simply Orange, orange juice.
“I’m fine. And thanks for the sympathy, Mother Teresa,” I deadpanned.
Still chuckling, Jonathan stuck his hands in his pockets and lightly bit down on his bottom lip.
“I’m sorry.” He shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t mean to laugh, you just, you’re usually so, you know. Together. It’s weird to see you do awkward things.”
I blinked back at him.
“I thought I was the one who hit their head. Did you really just say I’m “usually so together?” And imply that I rarely do awkward things?” I asked.
This made him laugh again.
“Yeah, seriously.” He grinned. “You’re so… I don’t know. You’re like a future First Lady or something. You’re always so poised and whatever. Well, until you’re telling Jen off or, like, accidentally hitting your head on the refrigerator.”
As the word ‘poised’ came from Jonathan’s lips, I grinned like an idiot.
Jonathan thought I was poised?
In an attempt to hide the extreme level of flattered I’d fallen into, I busied myself with grabbing two glasses from one of our cabinets and pouring us each a glass of orange juice.
“Well,” I said, turning my very red face (and body) away from him while I poured the second glass of OJ. “I would say thank you, except you said I look like a future First Lady. I’d rather someone look at me and think, “Ah, there’s our future President.”
Jonathan snickered and moved to the counter beside me.
“My bad,” he said. “You’re definitely President material.”
“That’s more like it,” I slid a glass towards him.
“Thanks.” He took a long sip of the juice. “Would you seriously want to be President some day?”
I put the container back in the fridge and, grateful for something to think about other than the fact that the boy I liked (but who didn’t like me back) was standing in my house and giving me flattering compliments.
“No,” I said, wrinkling my nose. I leaned on the counter beside Jonathan and watched him drink more of the juice. His Adam’s apple moved up and down as he gulped it down. I wondered what it would feel like to plant a kiss right there on his neck.
“Why not?” he asked.
I shrugged.
How could I say that if an adversary wanted to pull up dirt on me, they’d find an entire landfill? Even if I spent every second of my adult life handing out plates in homeless shelters and being your basic superhero, none of that would erase the way Mom and I had lived for the past four years.
“It’s a lot of pressure,” I said, looking down at my juice. “And even though I want to make a difference and, like, really help people I don’t want to do it as a famous person. And who’s more famous than the President?”
“I get it,” Jonathan said.
I took a sip of my orange juice.
“So, what do you want to do after we graduate?” he asked.
I liked that he said “after we graduate,” as if we were a fixed unit.
But I knew he didn’t mean it like that.
He meant we were the same age and happened to go to the same school, so we’d most likely don robes and throw our caps into the air in unison.
I wished I could tell Jonathan the truth, that I wanted to use what I’d learned about deception for a good cause and work for the CIA.
But that was too dangerous.
Thinking quickly, I said, “I think I want to-”
The back door opened and we both looked up at the noise.
My mother stumbled into the sunroom, which was visible from where we stood in the kitchen, and then slammed the door behind her. I jumped at the forcefulness of the sound.
Was she angry? Or was that a mistake?
“Sugar plum?” she shouted as she took a step forward, tripped over her own feet, quietly cursed and then paused in stride to burp.
“Oh, God,” I mumbled.
She wasn’t angry, she was drunk. Very drunk.
“I’m here, Mom,” I said. “In the kitchen. And I have a friend over.”
I hoped at least some part of her brain was functioning enough to read between the lines and understand the real meaning of my last sentence, namely, “Please don’t embarrass me in front of my friend.”
Mom looked up, saw us, and grinned.
Drunk as she was, her smile lit up the room and I was kind of proud of her for looking so beautiful. I glanced at Jonathan and he was grinning back at her.
I could tell he thought she was pretty.
It probably hadn’t even dawned on him yet just how plastered she was.
A lot of guys were like that around my mom, they barely listened to what she said- they just looked at her. And that’s exactly how she managed to steal a good chunk of their money.
“Hey, sugar plum,” Mom slurred. “Who’s this? Is this the boy- your friend?”
I tensed and Jonathan shifted on his feet as he stuck his hands in his pockets.
Is this “the boy?” Great. Now it’s obvious I’ve been talking about him.
“Yeah, this is my friend who rides the bus to school with me,” I said, trying to cover mom’s faux pas. “His name’s Jonathan.”
“Hi, Ms. Hollister,” Jonathan said with a polite smile.
Mom chunked her purse on the floor and sauntered across the room to stand directly in front of Jonathan. Like, directly. As in, two point five literal inches from his face.
“Hi, Jonathan.” She stuck out her hand, inviting him to shake it.
Jonathan tried to keep smiling, but there was a mix of fear and amusement in his eyes.
I wanted to sink into a hole and cover myself in an impenetrable layer of mud. Like a crawfish.
He shook my mom’s hand and proceeded to stammer, “N-nice to meet you.”
“You too,” she smiled brightly and continued to shake his hand. “So, did my Manda tell you all about us?”
I winced. Manda. She called me Manda.
Jonathan glanced at me, confused.
Mom was still shaking his hand.
“That’s what my mom calls me,” I said, putting my hand on top of both of theirs and squelching the never-ending hand shake. “Kind of like how I call you Cletus.”
“Oh.” Jonathan returned his attention to my mother and said, “Yes ma’am. And I’m so sorry about um, I wanted to express my condolences to you for the loss of your husband.”
Mom laughed and picked up his almost-finished glass of orange juice.
I longed for the life of a crawfish, and Jonathan looked half-horrified, half-embarrassed while Mom continued to chuckle pleasantly over the death of her husband.
She finished off Jonathan’s orange juice and leaned on the counter as she said, “That man is not dead. He should be, but he’s not. Out of all the men, he’s the one I should have killed. But he’s alive. Because, hey? That’s life. Am I right?”
She held up her empty glass, waiting for someone to clink glasses with.
I robotically lifted mine and we clinked glasses.
“Uh, I should probably get home,” Jonathan said in a low voice. I made myself look at him. His face was redder than I’d ever seen. “I didn’t realize how late it was. Bye, Libby. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I nodded, too mortified to speak.
“Bye, Ms. Hollister.”
Mom didn’t reply, she simply lunged herself at him and wrapped him in a hug.
I didn’t see Jonathan’s response because I closed my eyes in horror.
By the time I opened them, Jonathan was exiting the back door.
As soon as it closed, Mom tu
rned to me, her eyes wide as she slurred, “He’s so cute, Manda!”
“And he’ll probably never come over here again,” I muttered.
But Mom didn’t hear me.
She stumbled to the refrigerator and opened the freezer, pulling out a carton of vanilla ice cream and a waffle cone.
“But don’t let that mean anything, Manda,” Mom said, grabbing a large spoon and scooping out a generous helping of ice cream.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, annoyed and wanting nothing more than to go to bed. But I couldn’t just leave mom like this, drunk and prone to leaving the kitchen flooded with melted ice cream by morning.
“Never let a cute guy get too close, not even as cute as Bonavan,” she said as she heaped the ice cream onto her cone and accidentally got most of it on the counter instead. She didn’t seem to notice. She dropped the spoon on the floor and began licking the ice cream.
I rolled my eyes and picked up the spoon. “Do you mean Jonathan?” I asked as I put the spoon in the sink and grabbed a few Lysol wipes.
She nodded. “Yeah. Him. Don’t let him get too close, because they’re all the same. They try to make you love them, and once you love them, they win. They have total control. They dictate your everything- your self-esteem, your self-worth, how you’ll spend your days, what you’ll wear-”
Mom paused to lick more of her ice cream.
I used the Lysol wipes to mop up what she’d already spilled on the counter.
“Jonathan’s not like that,” I said.
“They all are, trust me,” she slurred. “They’re programmed. Genetics –all that testosterone and then our society- it trains them to be pig-headed, competitive, and completely self-centered control freaks. They live to dominate. And nothing satiates them. They always want more. Monsters… all of them.”
I stared at my mom, the Lysol wipes in my hand.
I’d heard her say lots of things over the years, but she’d never come out and accused all men of being self-centered monsters.
“Do you really believe that?” I asked.
She chuckled. “I don’t want to believe it, but it’s the one truth I’ve learned in life: men cannot be trusted. So, yeah. Unfortunately that is the truth, sugar plum.”
I frowned, thinking this over.
Jonathan was nice. He wasn’t a monster. And I didn’t really have any right to be upset with him for liking Jen more than he liked me. If I did, that would make me the monster. So, maybe Mom was wrong about men. Not all of them were bad.
I threw away the used wipes and put the ice cream container back in the freezer.
“Well, Jonathan’s different. He’s nice,” I said, unsure of even why I was attempting to have an argument with a drunk person. It was like trying to have a logical conversation with a social media troll. “Besides, it doesn’t even make a difference because he doesn’t like me like that. He likes someone else.”
“Hey, that could be a good thing,” Mom said biting into her cone. She spoke with her mouth full. It was not a flattering look. “You’re still young and you could’ve fallen in love, which is so dangerous, honey. Never fall in love with them.”
I sighed.
Mom kept talking, bits of waffle cone flying from her mouth while she went on, “It’s okay for them to fall in love with us, because we take care of them. We bend over backwards for them. It’s our programming. And they take advantage of us. They make us financially and emotionally dependent on them. Like your father, remember him?”
“Yes,” I muttered, looking down at the counter I’d just cleaned. I watched pieces of her waffle cone fall on it, creating a trail of crumbs.
“I loved him, and he abused me and used me,” she laughed dryly. “And I still love him, because I’m an idiot. Like all women. Don’t let them do that to you.”
I glanced at mom.
She still loved my dad? She’d never said that before.
She set her cone on the counter and sighed. “You can’t let yourself get attached to them, Manda. Use them, let them love you, but don’t go any further than that. Otherwise, they will break you until you’re shattered. So, break them first.”
Mom’s eyes filled with tears and my heart softened.
“Are you okay?” I asked, touching her arm.
“Tired. Drunk. Bed…” With this, she stumbled away.
“Goodnight,” I called after her.
“Remember, men are basic,” she said. And then I heard her making her way up the stairs in a series of loud, slow footsteps.
As I cleaned off the counter (again) I thought about Mom’s little speech.
Could it be that she was onto something?
As crazy and prejudice as her thoughts about men sounded- was she right?
When I went over to my friend’s houses and watched their parents interact, I didn’t see a lot of happy couples.
In fact, the wives and mothers often came across as vaguely depressed and… muted; they walked with slumped shoulders and the dejected air of a prison inmate who’d eventually learned to accept her fate.
And after leaving my friend’s lives for a weekend here and there I’d return home to our quiet place, temporary and silent, but large and pretty -wherever it happened to be- and more importantly, run by a woman who had the confidence to walk with her head held high.
It was a look that a lot of my friend’s mother’s didn’t have.
Mom escaped from an abusive marriage and from then on, without the burden of having to focus, every day, on winning her husband’s approval- she was free to build a life for herself.
Sure, the life she’d built revolved around lying and stealing –and I wasn’t exactly okay with that- but I understood it. Mom was using men the way she’d been used.
Confused, I turned off the lights in the kitchen, set the alarm, and slowly walked up the stairs to my room.
What mom did to men was wrong. That was the plain and simple truth. But she did it, because that’s what men did to us all the time. They used us like toilet paper and then flushed us away.
As I stepped into my room, I realized mom was probably right.
Women shouldn’t trust men because it was in their nature to abuse us.
My heart sank and I sighed.
Just then, my phone buzzed.
I walked to the desk where, only an hour ago, Jonathan and I had sat, side-by-side, trying to figure out how to navigate the Farrah Duncan case and less importantly, how to navigate our awkward friendship.
I picked up my phone and saw that Jonathan had sent me a text.
Despite my mother’s warning speech, I grinned and opened his message with an eagerness that was downright embarrassing.
Hey, remember how we’re supposed to meet with Kimberly tomorrow at Marvin’s Diner? I was wondering, can you and I meet earlier? Like at 6:30? I want to talk to you one-on-one first.
My heart skipped a beat.
I closed my eyes.
As much as I believed my mother’s perspective on men, I also had a live, beating heart in my chest. And I couldn’t ignore the things that Jonathan seemed to do to that heart.
Is he going to tell me he has feelings for me?
I opened my eyes and smiled as I texted him back:
Of course. I’ll see you tomorrow.
Chapter Fifteen
At 6:25, my Uber driver dropped me in front of Marvin’s Diner.
I tugged at the hem of my favorite sundress, took a deep breath, and walked into the small diner.
As soon as I entered, the smell of pancakes, waffles, and coffee wafted my way and I stood still for a moment, taking in the delicious scent.
The layout of the place was your typical small-town diner; as soon as I walked in, a counter with glass display cases containing sweets was a few feet ahead of me. To my left and right were booths and tables, most of them empty due to the early hour.
The few occupied tables were used by lone men who looked like either truck drivers or plant workers and a few women
dressed in scrubs, probably nurses off to their morning shifts.
The men looked in my direction, making me blush.
I’d made an extra effort to look nice that morning, seeing as there was the distinct possibility that Jonathan was going to confess his feelings for me. My sleeveless sundress was black with little pink flowers, as low-cut as Mom would let me get away with, and on the shorter side of short.
I spotted Jonathan at a booth in the back corner of the restaurant. He hadn’t seen me yet, his head was down, his gaze glued to his iPhone.
As I made my way towards him, weaving in and out of the other tables, I could feel the appraising stares of the male plant workers/truck drivers and it made my legs go all wobbly. I wondered if this was how Mom felt when she walked into a room full of men, and if so- how she got used to it.
I felt like a baby deer covered in barbeque sauce traipsing past a gang of lions.
Trying to put my anxiety aside, I focused on Jonathan, who was still focused on his phone, and continued towards him.
Once I was about a foot away, he finally looked up.
His eyes widened and he glanced at my outfit before quickly returning his attention to my face.
It dawned on me that I might not look as pretty as I thought.
After all, I’d put my look together at 5:45 AM, otherwise known as the butt crack of dawn. Not exactly a time of day when my thinking was at its best. So, it was quite possible that I looked like a sausage stuffed in a toddler’s sock.
Even so, I smiled and said, “Hey.”
Jonathan nodded, his expression solemn and his gaze not quite meeting mine.
That made me pause in stride.
He wasn’t smiling.
Jonathan always smiled.
I panicked.
Oh God! I DO look like a sausage stuffed in a toddler’s sock!
“Have a seat,” Jonathan finally said, nodding to the empty seat across from him.
He still refused to look me in the eye and his expression remained grim, like he smelled something bad.
Flustered, I said nothing and slid into the empty booth.
I took a closer look at Jonathan and noticed that his hair was disheveled, like he’d been running his fingers through it, scruff dotted his normally clean-shaven jawline, his eyes were red and his shirt was full of wrinkles.
