“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.