Jolene
“Oh, Mom! Your dearest daughter is home! Come shower me with kisses and lonely sob stories.”
My voice echoing back at me from the vaulted ceiling in the foyer was the only response I expected, and I wasn’t surprised. It was Sunday evening, which meant my mom was probably still at the gym. I dragged my bag upstairs to my room and tossed it in the vicinity of my bed before continuing to the kitchen. Like most of the house, it was pristine and blindingly white, from the glazed snowy cabinets to the Carrara marble countertops and glittering crystal chandelier. All that splendor faded into the background the second I smelled the lasagna that Mrs. Cho had left for me in the oven.
Technically, Mrs. Cho was only supposed to clean the house three mornings a week while I was at school—a rule Mom instituted to eliminate my interactions with a person I openly preferred to her—but she’d started cooking for me when Mom decided that the elusive key to her happiness was tied to the number of pounds she could lose and had stopped consuming anything that didn’t come in a martini glass.
I peeled back the foil, and the scent of cheesy, garlicky goodness wrapped its arms around me. “I missed you, too,” I told my dinner. It was too hot, which meant I burned my mouth and had to endure that tiny flap of skin hanging from the roof, but no sacrifice was too big for Mrs. Cho’s lasagna.
A thought propelled me across the kitchen to the fridge, and, opening it, I did a happy dance. There was a cheesecake on the second shelf, with luscious-looking red cherries on top. I checked our hiding spot in the bread box on the counter and found the best present of all: a note written in Mrs. Cho’s teeny tiny print.
I watch movie with man who drives car. I think I like dog movie best. I make you cheese dinner and cheese dessert. Be good.
My laughter echoed around the kitchen. I knew she’d like the psychological horror of Cujo more than the pulpy crime drama of Drive—she did work for my mother, after all. Mrs. Cho and I had recently formed a movie club together. She wanted to improve her English, and I was only too happy to recommend titles for her. Next, I’d have to try her on the less gory but arguably more terrifying Get Out.
I kept reading. Her notes were never long, and this one was shorter than most, but it was the last line she always added that filled my heart and flooded my eyes: I miss my girl. I could remember a time when I’d come home from school and Mrs. Cho would be waiting to hug me and lift me up on the island so that I could help her with dinner. She always smelled like fresh bread and Windex, and she’d scratch my back while I stirred bowls bigger than I was. She spoke next to no English back then, and I knew only the few Korean words she’d taught me, but we always understood each other.
I flipped the note over and in, my bolder, blocky handwriting, suggested a couple more movies for her to watch, and then profusely thanked her for all the cheese that I was going to consume that night and told her I missed her, too. My hand shook as I tucked the note away for her to find tomorrow.
Our notes were better than nothing, but I had to bite the inside of my cheek until that burst of pain chased the tightness from my chest before I could lift the first forkful of fluffy cheesecake to my mouth.
If Mom knew how much I ate on a given day, she would cast me out on the street and stone me. Probably. Maybe. More than likely she’d use it as an excuse to rant about Dad and his cursed slim genes, which I’d inherited. The calorie obsession wouldn’t last. She’d find out that she was just as miserable at a size four as she was at an eight, and then she’d be onto something new.
Back in my room, I slipped my phone out of my pocket and looked at the picture I’d sent myself from Adam’s phone. I tried to imagine what his mom had thought when she saw it. It was a good picture. I looked happy, and my lips weren’t curled back in that way they sometimes did that revealed too much gum. The sun had lit the shot at just the right angle, threading my brown hair with gold and highlighting the yellows and reds of the last few oak leaves in the tree behind us.
But I didn’t study myself for long, and I didn’t imagine Adam’s mom would have either. He was the one who drew my eye, with his ruddy hair falling forward and his eyes lighting up not for the camera, but for me. It was because I’d surprised him by leaning in and sneaking a photo, but anyone else would look at that picture and envy me. Not because Adam was an Adonis or anything—though I rather liked his jaw—but because his expression, his eyes, his everything, said he was looking at something beautiful.
With a reproachful sound that was directed solely at myself, I tossed my phone onto my pillow and bent to unpack my camera and laptop, ignoring, for the moment, the other few belongings that I was forced to shuffle back and forth between my parents’ residences. I kept basic necessities at both places, but I had only one nearly threadbare T-shirt featuring The Breakfast Club that I liked to sleep in.
After opening my laptop and Final Cut Pro, I rewatched the footage of Adam and me that I’d imported the day before. None of my footage had captured the magic moment from the cell phone pic, so I imported that image, too. My projects always started the same way: with random footage dumped together until, slowly, the story I wanted to tell took shape. My idol, Suzanne Silver, described her directorial process in a similar way. The current footage was still a mystery to me, but the story would come.
As I was closing my laptop, my phone buzzed, and I saw a text from Dad on the screen. My stomach twisted into a knot before I even read it.
Busy weekend. You understand. Shelly said everything went well. We’ll have dinner next time. Promise.
I clutched the phone with fingers that had gone icy cold. Yeah, sure we will. I could barely remember the last time I’d seen him, let alone had a meal with him. My last birthday, maybe? Just for kicks, I scrolled through his last half-dozen texts. They all said basically the same thing. A couple were identical, as if he’d copied and pasted the same words. I wondered if he thought I was dumb enough not to notice, or if he didn’t care either way. The knots in my stomach began twisting.
I didn’t respond. I never did.
I could put a stop to his absentee parenting act if I wanted to. A single word to Mom or her lawyer, and Dad’s no-show weekends would end...until his lawyer dug up something new on Mom. And on and on it would go.
No, thanks.
Besides, how was that a better story than the one I already had?
* * *
Hands shook me awake, interrupting my dream that I was Tarzan. During a brief moment of confusion, my dream and reality converged, and then the vine I was swinging on was torn from my grip.
“Jolene. Jolene! Wake up!”
My vines—or sheets, as I saw them with my awake eyes—were discarded at the foot of my bed and Mom was leaning over me.
“Good. You’re awake.” She smiled, perfectly white-capped teeth on full display.