Page 67 of A Better World

Josie stayed looking at the floor. “You know Jeanette with the different-colored eyes—one’s blue and one’s brown?”

“I do.” Jeanette was striking, refined, always had some hot companion’s arm wrapped around her.

“She said she like-liked me,” Josie said. “On Samhain.”

Like-like.So, this expression was still used. “Did you like-like her back?” Linda asked.

Josie shrugged. “I said I did. I’ve never had somebody. The rest of them have all dated somebody. They’ve done… more.”

Linda listened. Wanted so much to offer advice. “So, were you a couple?”

“Ithoughtso,” Josie said, “but it was a joke. She was only joking.”

Linda felt the contents of her stomach bubble. Oh, the humiliation of the fake ask-out. “Then what happened?”

“She laughed about it. They all did. So, I laughed.”

Linda wanted to tell her daughter to punch their dumb goddamned faces. As if reading her mind, Josie added, “It’s that or be alone.”

“Can’t you hang out with other kids?”

Josie sneered. It was ugly, and it made Linda sad. “They’re losers. They get teased so bad. You sit alone, you get teased. You sit with the wrong group, you get teased. I’m in with therightgroup. All I have to do is make it two and a half more years here, and I can leave, Mom. I’m at BWU and fuck them.”

“Yeah,” Linda said, tears coming to her eyes. “What about Hip? Does he get teased?”

“He would, but he’s with Cathy and she’s untouchable.”

“Right,” Linda said. “Because of her parents. You feel pretty stuck, don’t you?”

Josie shrugged, like Linda had no idea. Like she was some kind of moronic alien life-form. “I feel stuck, too,” Linda said, the words surprising her as they came out.

“You do?”

“It’s so stifling,” Linda said.Stifling. She’d thought the word, but she’d never allowed herself to consider it. She’d pushed it down like a weighted floater in the Hudson River.

“You feel trapped, too?” Josie asked with surprise.

“I’m not myself here. I’m this pleaser…” Linda said, realizing for the first time that what she was saying was how she really felt. It had been like a pill stuck in her throat for months, unwilling to dissolve. “I don’t say what I think. I just agree… I’m not even sure I like the person I’m becoming.”

“So?” Josie asked.

Something was happening, here. Linda could feel a wall in Josie coming down. She wanted very much to say the right thing.

“So, I don’t know,” Linda said. “You’re not alone.”

“I am, though,” Josie said. “Can you go away?”

That Wednesday was a half day. Linda met Russell at his office for the department party.

Each staff member brought a plus-one, so there were twenty people in all. Streamers and paper caladrius sat on desks or hung from ceilings. Trim, young dayworkers with their hair pulled back passed hors d’oeuvres. Linda had been seeing the same crowd for so long that these fresh faces felt new, like a date night.

“Delicious cocktails,” Russell said.

“But also fussy. Like a tuxedo shirt with ruffles,” Linda answered.

“Or a bonsai plant.”

“I hate bonsai plants. I mean, what the hell?”

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