Chapter 6
LINDSAY
“Baby, I need you to fold the laundry on your bed, okay? Then I need you to get dressed. We have a lot to do before I take you to Gram’s. She wants to take you and Kayla to the diner for brunch so we can’t be late.”
“Yup yup yup,” she mumbles as she tosses a stress ball in the air and catches it as she walks.
There’s no sense of urgency in Jules this morning, and it’s driving me up the wall.
It’s been that way all week while I’ve felt like a headless chicken, zooming from one room to the next trying to remember everything I planned to get done.
I also can’t stop thinking about that damn chicken joke and how deeply disturbing Dominic’s take on it is.
He and I have been texting most nights, but on Tuesday, we had another phone conversation that went on for hours.
I woke up exhausted but smiling. There are so many questions I have about his, ahem, condition, but it still feels too personal to broach.
I can’t recall what we talked about, really, but we didn’t get off the phone until four in the morning.
For about an hour, I was baking gingerbread cookies for Jules to bring to school, and he was doing laundry, so we weren’t really talking at all, just listening to each other exist. It was nice. Comforting.
This morning is the opposite of calm. I still have to finish packing, make sure Jules is packed, take out the trash, and load the dishwasher, and that doesn’t include getting myself ready to hit the road.
The only step in my beauty routine that’s been completed is the vitamin C serum.
I still have all the other steps and only an hour before we need to leave.
“Mom, what do you think of this lip stain?” Jules asks as she strolls into my room and puckers her lips. The shade is a deep purple, almost eggplant-colored.
“The drama! I love it,” I tell her. “How’s the folding going?”
“Ugh, I’m doing it.” She rolls her eyes as she stomps out.
“Watch that sass, cupcake. It’s bad enough you landed yourself in detention next week.
” She earned that punishment by getting into a screaming match with Sadie, her nemesis, during math class, which I’m not thrilled about, but it sounds like Sadie started it when she whispered to her lemmings about Jules’s eyeliner being “mid” and “a cry for an involuntary psych hold” and Jules overheard.
What I won’t tolerate, however, is her getting an attitude with me.
My hair is air-drying, and I’m doing that awkward hop one with a sturdy frame often does as I yank on the waist of my olive slim-fit pants to get them over my thick thighs.
“Hey, Mom, when you get back, can we do some more clothes shopping?” she asks, shouting from her room.
“I will not be taking requests at that volume, young lady,” I shout back.
Okay, clothes are on. Jewelry has been selected.
Shoes are next to my vanity. Time for makeup, then chores.
My fingers trace along my jawline as I lean close to the mirror and examine the few pimples I’m sporting, but I’m quick to shake off the desire to pick and apply a thin layer of primer––after sunscreen, of course.
Then I add a subtle cat-eye with dark brown shadow using my fine-edged brush.
“Can we go shopping when you get back from Mapletown? I found some stuff at Pac Sun that I really––”
“We went shopping a couple weeks ago, didn’t we?” She’s still wearing her pajamas, and I’m wondering if she’s folded a single thing from that giant pile of clothes on her bed. “No, honey. Not until next month. We can’t be blowing money on new clothes all the time.”
“Didn’t you just make a ton of money from the sale of Nonna Penny’s house?”
The death stare my mother would give me for asking about her and Dad’s finances would probably make Jules pee herself. She has no idea how easy I am on her.
“That money is not for new clothes. It’s for your future, okay? Now go get changed. Scoot.”
When we finally make it out the door, Jules is giving me the silent treatment. She doesn’t even touch the playlist I put on in the car, or react when I crank the volume on “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica––a song I know she despises.
I pull into Mom’s driveway, relieved that the snow we got on Thursday seems to have been cleared from the pavement and the stone walkway to her front door.
My sister talked her and my dad––who lives right across the street––into hiring someone to shovel all the walkable areas around their houses that the city plow doesn’t reach.
My dad was stubborn at first, convinced he could still handle it, but eventually caved.
It’s nice having my parents live so close to each other.
Dad kept our childhood home when they divorced, but bought Mom the two-bedroom house directly across the street when it went up for sale.
Now that they’re no longer married, they’re basically best friends.
Mom even gets along with Ruth, Dad’s second wife, whom he married several years ago.
“Hey,” I call when I enter the house. Jules has already run off somewhere, probably to find Kayla. “Sorry we’re late.”
“Heyo,” my sister, Isla, calls back from the kitchen. “We’re in here.”
I round the corner and find my mom with Kayla at the dining room table as Jules sits in the chair next to her, while Isla and my dad are standing in the kitchen eating donuts from a big Dunks box while observing the scene.
“I thought you were taking the girls to the diner.”
Dad shrugs. “We wanted donuts.”
Guess I didn’t need to rush after all. Thanks for letting me know, guys.
There are dozens of bundled nylon cords in a variety of colors covering the table. My mom is holding up a recently completed maedeup as she explains to the girls how she tied it. “I’ve been teaching myself how to make these, and I thought it would be fun to teach you.”
She gets to her feet when she sees me and offers me a half hug, which isn’t so much a hug as it is a shoulder squeeze, then a pat. We aren’t overly affectionate with each other, not like she and Isla are. I’ve stopped taking that personally. Well, I’ve been trying to stop. It’s an ongoing process.
My sister and I got two completely different moms in the same woman, and that’s just how it is.
I got the terrified mom who got pregnant younger than expected, whose professional dreams were dashed upon seeing the results of her pregnancy test, who had no support system once I was born, and wasn’t encouraged to seek help when she was clearly suffering with postpartum depression.
Isla got the mom nine years later, who was halfway through getting her law degree, who was regularly seeing a therapist, and eager to get the whole mom thing right the second time around.
Setting that aside, Mom and I have always clashed. She’s quick to tell me I need to “calm down” and “not let my temper take over,” while Isla is her eternally serene princess.
“Maedeups, huh?” I ask, surveying the table.
“Yes, they needed something for cultural heritage day, and I thought this would be perfect.”
“Hm.” I pick up the one she made, going over the intricate loops with my fingers. “Wish I knew how to make these at their age. What else is on the agenda? Bibimbap for lunch?”
I hear my dad let out a warning grunt from the kitchen, where Isla is shaking her head disapprovingly at me.
“Easy, Lindsay,” Mom says quietly. “This is supposed to be a nice weekend.”
Oh, and another pain point between me and Mom is the lack of Korean culture she exposed us to as kids.
It’s not entirely her fault, given that she was an army brat and only child to Korean immigrants, making assimilation priority one whenever they moved around the U.S.
, but she’s very much the kind of person to obsess about a new hobby one week, and lose interest in it the next since she retired, and I don’t like thinking of the preservation of our roots being treated like learning the harmonica, breadmaking, calligraphy, or that month she wanted to become a reiki healer.
Growing up in Boston, I was around other Korean kids, but with my Italian last name and inability to speak the language, to them, I was an outsider. Too white to be accepted by them, not white enough to avoid being the butt of racist jokes by the white kids.
Since Dad was the cook in the family, we were always eating American or Italian food.
It wasn’t until I went to college that I started going to Korean restaurants.
Isla and I got really into K-pop a few years ago and couldn’t stop watching KPop Demon Hunters when it came out, then we started bingeing K-dramas, but whenever we’d invite Mom to join us, there was an odd reluctance about her.
Almost as if she felt offended to be introduced to her own culture by her daughters.
It’s a loaded subject to broach, to say the least.
Dad clears his throat. “The traffic looks decent right now,” he says jovially as he approaches. “What route are you taking?”
I always take 93 North to 89 North, and he knows this, but I appreciate his very dad-like attempt to change the subject.
“We’re supposed to get a few inches on Monday afternoon, so make sure you leave in the morning, okay?”
“Okay, Dad,” I tell him, giving him a hug.
“Jules,” I say as I brush the loose pieces from her braid off her forehead. “Call or text me any hour, okay? If you need me to come home, say the word and I’ll be on my way.”
“Yeah,” she mumbles, her focus entirely on the nylon cord in her hands.
I wave to the group over my shoulder. “Okay, have fun. See you on Monday.”
I’m comforted to know that visits between Jules and her grandparents are completely free of tension and awkwardness, but it wasn’t always this way. As soon as Jules started dressing herself, I knew she was different, and I encouraged her to explore that in whatever form it took.