Chapter 10 Jamie #3
Fuck it. I’m not going to be able to read this book. Not like this.
I toss it aside and take my Cheez-Its down the hall to the living room. I try to sneak in quietly, so she doesn’t notice, skulking along the wall to take up residence on the sofa.
Then my phone rings.
Shit. It’s Tuesday. And every Tuesday night, my mom facetimes me. I know this, I’ve known it forever, because it’s been Tuesday nights ever since I started at Parker, and yet somehow I forgot.
Marigold startles, jerking around so fast she almost topples off the piano bench.
“Sorry. Sorry.” I hold both my hands up, like I just got caught at the scene of the crime. “Um. Ignore me.”
“You scared the shit out of me!”
“Sorry. Uh. I’ll just…” I wave the phone and take a step back toward the hall, but Marigold crosses her arms over her chest.
“Don’t let me interrupt you,” she says. “Answer it.”
I accept the call and lift the phone so Mom can see my face. “Hi, Mom. Um. Listen, it’s not a good time at the moment; can I call you back in a few?”
“Where are you?” Mom says. She starts craning her neck, like that’ll somehow make her able to see more of the room I’m in. “Is this your friend’s house?”
“Yeah. And we’re in the middle of practice, actually, so—”
“Which friend? I don’t remember you saying.”
I’ve told her about Marigold before. Only bad things. “Um…you haven’t met her.”
“That’s nice of her family to let you stay with her. I hope you told them that. It looks like a very nice place. What do her parents do for a living?”
Why is my mother always like this? Why does she keep pushing, and pushing, and pushing, like she’s mining for precious ore?
“They’re musicians. Listen, Mom—”
She starts twisting around again, trying to see, even though I take a seat on a sofa and very carefully keep the phone positioned so the only thing she can view is the emerald-green wallpaper. “Are her parents there? I’d love to meet them.”
“No. Her dad’s on tour right now. He’s with the Philharmonic.”
“Oh? He left you two alone there?”
Jesus Christ, this conversation will never end. “Mom, I really have to—”
“Wait,” my mother breathes, sudden elation dawning on her face as she puts Philharmonic and rich together. “Is this—are you at that girl’s house?”
Okay, scratch the wallpaper plan. I twist around in my seat so the camera shows Marigold and the piano behind me. She’s right here, Mom, don’t say anything stupid.
“Hi, Mrs. Larson,” Marigold says, venturing a small wave.
Luckily my mother, while a little obtuse sometimes, isn’t quite so bad as to insult someone to their face. “Hi there,” she says, suddenly all small-town charm. “It’s Marigold, right?”
“Nice to meet you,” Marigold says. “Even if it’s just over video chat.”
“Nice to meet you, too. What are the pair of you up to? Are you studying?”
I don’t know how to explain to my mom that this entire conversation is making me want to turn to dust right now. Not without Marigold picking up on it, anyway.
“Just practicing,” I say. “Marigold’s going to be playing at Stockholm, too.”
“That’s wonderful. I bet your parents are very proud.”
“My dad is thrilled,” Marigold says. “It’s all he talks about anymore.”
But her smile seems pasted-on. I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t want to facetime with someone else’s parent, either.
“Anyway, yeah, I’ve gotta go,” I say, turning the camera back around to show just me. “I’ll call you back tonight. Okay?”
“Okay,” my mom says, and she gives me a big old wink, like she thinks I’m off to practice something besides music with Marigold Gensler. “I’ll talk to you then. Be safe, sweetie.”
And then she hangs up.
Be safe. Fuck me and my fucking life. I really hope she meant Be safe from unexpected lightning strikes, and not…anything else.
“So, your mom seems nice,” Marigold says, when neither of us has spoken in so long, the silence has become almost unbearable.
I laugh before I can stop myself, tipping my head back against the edge of the sofa. “Yeah. She tries her best.”
“You look a lot like her.”
“Nah,” I say. “That was my brother. Adam could’ve been her twin.”
Marigold raises her brows. “I remember you mentioned a brother once. Is he older or younger?”
“Younger. And it’s was. He died the fall of sophomore year.”
Marigold’s not very good at hiding her facial expressions.
I watch her mind do the same dance as everyone else’s, calculating whether to say she’s sorry for something she had no hand in, whether it’s appropriate to come and sit by me and give me a hug, whether she should play this off light or let it become a whole Thing.
“I’m sorry” is what she settles on at last; standard-issue. “That must have been very hard.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it wasn’t great.”
I hate how rough my voice sounds all of a sudden, like I’ve been raking my vocal cords over the coals.
“I know it’s not the same, but when my mom died, I felt like I couldn’t function anymore.
Like I was living in some kind of false reality, and the dimensions I was supposed to be living in were just on the other side of some invisible film between my world and that one, where my mom was still alive.
People don’t get it.” She has her hands braced against the edge of the piano bench, her knuckles blanched.
“And you see everyone else acting so happy and normal and it’s like…
don’t they know the world has ended? That the world just lost one of its best… ”
“I’m sorry, too,” I say, once it’s clear she isn’t going to be able to finish her sentence. Marigold has her gaze fixed high up on the opposite wall, like she’s fascinated by the join of the wallpaper to the crown molding. “When did she…?”
“Three years ago.”
“Fuck. Wow.” I feel like the worst asshole on the planet. “I had no idea.”
She shrugs and pulls her gaze down from the wall to fixate on me once more. “I didn’t tell many people about it, so there was nothing to know. She had lupus. She had a kidney transplant, but it didn’t really work, so….”
This whole time. This whole semester, I’ve been relishing my hatred for Marigold based off jealousy and her family’s money and her dad’s connections.
Meanwhile, she’s been grieving the death of her mother.
She didn’t let it show. Not even for an instant.
She didn’t give anyone a chance to help her—she just kept going, like an automaton with a switch flipped to the “on” position.
Just like me. Just like I had.
“My brother killed himself,” I find myself saying. “We’d known he was depressed for a long time, and we’d tried to get him help, but it wasn’t enough. And he killed himself.”
“Oh, Jamie.”
Marigold abandons the piano bench, and when she joins me on the sofa, close enough her knees bump against mine, I don’t stop her. I always hated pity. It’s part of why I never told anyone at Parker about my brother, aside from Shrishti.
But this isn’t pity. Marigold gets it.
She lost someone, too.
Her hand finds my knee, squeezing lightly. My next exhale comes out on a shudder, and I close my eyes, blindly glaring into the dark.
We sit there like that for a long time, the only sounds those of the clock on the wall and Marigold’s soft, steady breathing.