The Difference Between You and Me Page 15

  Jesse pauses, squints up at Mike. “You want to help fight StarMart?”

  “Yeah, it’s just…” Mike moves in a few inches toward Jesse and lowers his voice confidentially. “You know, this place has been here, like, sixty years.”

  “This place? Murray’s?”

  “Yeah, like, Mr. Murray’s dad started it in like the thirties. And I’ve been working here since eighth grade, both my brothers worked here, and Mr. Murray’s such an awesome guy, he gave both my brothers money at their graduations, like, for college, and it turns out he’s, like, totally against StarMart coming in. He told us this story about his friend over in Windsor who had, like, a family-owned hardware store just like this and a StarMart moved in, like, twenty miles away, not even next door or anything, but still he went under in less than six months. It happened last year. Mr. Murray was all like, ‘Sixty years to build a business and six months to kill it dead.’”

  Mike kneads the bill of his baseball cap with his left hand, pops the cap up off his close-cut curls, then sets it back down again. In the moment when his hair is revealed, Jesse feels a bright comet of envy streak through her chest; Mike’s haircut is so perfect, so clipped and polished and clean. He has such an effortlessly cool boy-head. Jesse feels a throb of shame about her own shaggy bangs, then focuses again.

  “Yeah,” she says. “That’s what StarMart does.”

  “Yeah so, Mr. Murray’s been more and more worried about it lately and we’ve all been saying to him, like, ‘Oh, Mr. Murray, your customers are loyal, they won’t leave you no matter what.’ But I don’t know, you know? I looked at that website it said about on your flyer and I just, it seems like if StarMart comes in there’s not much you can do, you know? If you’re a small business like this one. And I would feel so bad if that happened here, to Mr. Murray. I just… I don’t… we can’t…”

  Mike trails off, either shy or embarrassed or overwhelmed, Jesse can’t tell.

  “We can’t let that happen to him?” Jesse supplies, and Mike’s head bobs up and down vigorously.

  “Right. Right. So, like, what’s your plan? For defeating StarMart?”

  “Oh. Um, I guess it’s not really possible to actually defeat StarMart? Since they’re like one of the largest corporations in the world?”

  “Oh.” Mike looks crestfallen. “Well, but what about just this one StarMart, just this one that might come in near us? Can we defeat that?”

  When Jesse looks at Mike, she takes in the whole of him, the whole guy who has his whole body around Emily Miller whenever he wants to. For a second, the familiar feeling of being about to let something out—about to blow her cover—comes over Jesse. It’s almost like having a well-known flavor of gum in her mouth. She holds the secret on her tongue, feeling its weight, tasting its comforting bittersweetness, for long enough that Mike McDade shifts uneasily.

  “No?” he says. “You think it’s, like, not possible?”

  The simplest, most effective thing would be to say, Look, talk to your girlfriend. She’s working for them, don’t you know that? Find out from her what’s going on. Tell her to stop sleeping with the enemy.

  Then Jesse thinks, Who’s the enemy?

  Jesse swallows all the unsaid things. Takes a breath.

  “I guess the thing we’re working on,” she says, “was, like, trying to convince student council that we need to divest from StarMart. Like, we shouldn’t take their money and use it for school functions.” Mike has assumed a doglike listening posture, leaning in with his ear turned slightly in Jesse’s direction to catch her words. He nods eagerly. “So, like, if you know anyone on student council you could start there. Tell them you don’t want StarMart in our school. That’s one thing you can do. If you know someone.”

  Mike swallows uncomfortably. “I do, actually,” he says, “but it’s kind of like, really complicated? I can’t actually be public about this? Like, I really want to help, but I can’t help in school. I can’t be seen helping.”

  “I get it,” Jesse says. In her mind she thinks, Great. Now even her boyfriend is telling me he can’t be seen with me in public.

  “No, it’s really complicated,” Mike continues, “I can’t really explain it because it’s, like, too complicated to even explain.”

  “I get it,” Jesse repeats. “You have a conflict of interest.”

  “What?” Mike’s face clouds over with incomprehension. Then resolves. “Yes. Yes. I have a conflict of interest. It’s a really complicated conflict of interest. But is there still, like, a way for me to pitch in… in, like, secret?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Like maybe I could make some more flyers for you?”

  “I don’t think we need any more flyers.”

  Mike looks crestfallen. Then brightens again: “Or like, free tape? I could probably get you free tape or something from here. Mr. Murray would probably be into helping.”

  Jesse smiles. “We could maybe use free tape.”

  “Or other supplies, tacks, glue—whatever you wanted. Just keep me posted. Let me know what I can do.” Mike bobs his head up and down, then says searchingly, “I’m not, like, generally this guy. I’m the guy who’s like, ‘It’s none of my business to tell anyone else how to live their life.’ I never even do the Juvenile Diabetes Walk, even though my brother has it and my whole family does it every year. But this, I don’t know. It just feels, like, personal. I just think this is really important.”

  “Yeah, it is,” Jesse agrees.

  “So, seriously, come find me here if there’s, like, anything I can do. I work Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and weekends. Or, oh!” Mike’s eyes light up with a new thought. “I bet I could get the guys from baseball to participate in something. Maybe I could, I don’t know. If we had snacks for them or whatever.”

  “That would be awesome.”

  “Do you do athletics?” Mike asks, friendly. He shoves his hands into his pockets and shrugs them deep down into the legs of his khakis. “You’re not on softball, are you?”

  Jesse smiles faintly. “Um, no.”

  “You should go out for it. I bet you’d be great.”

  “Thanks, but I suck at sports.”

  “You?” Mike grins. “Naw. No way.”

  “It’s true. Some lesbians actually suck at sports.”

  Mike’s face goes up like a boiled lobster. He blushes so deeply he’s practically purple.

  “I didn’t, I didn’t, uh—” he gropes helplessly.

  At this moment, Arthur comes around the corner of the aisle.

  “There you are,” he says to Jesse, and Jesse says to Mike, “My dad.”

  “How are you, sir?” Aggressively, Mike reaches out and takes Arthur’s hand, shakes it too hard and too long. Arthur looks confusedly at Jesse.

  “We wanted to build a birdhouse,” Arthur explains, and Mike stammers, “Birdhouse, yeah, yeah, we have kits for that!” before dropping Arthur’s hand and practically bounding off toward the back of the store.

  “Nice fellow,” Arthur says. “Who is he?”

  “My former nemesis,” Jesse says, and smiles.

  ***

  An hour later, Jesse and Arthur are hunched over their half-constructed birdhouse in the dusty garage, trying to figure out how to slot Roof Part A into Wall Part B.

  “There must be a part missing,” Arthur says tensely. His normally oceanic patience is starting to run out.

  “I don’t think so.” Jesse consults the hieroglyphic line-drawing instructions. “See how this little pokey thing is supposed to go into that little gappy place?”

  “I see that there in the instructions, yes, but I do not see it here in life.” Arthur points accusingly at the half-built box.

  From across the room comes the sound of Fran clearing her throat. Jesse looks up to see her mother silhouetted in the doorway, haloed by afternoon sunlight, arms crossed in her typical fashion. “Cured, I see,” Fran observes.

  “Oh. Hi. Yeah. I feel a lot better.”

  “
Yes,” Arthur says, flinging Roof Part A down onto the worktable a little harder than necessary. “A trip to the hardware store and a constructive hands-on project turned out to be just what the doctor ordered.” He wipes the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. “I don’t know why I’m sweating. The damn thing is only twelve inches high.”

  “What are you guys making?” Fran strolls into the room and approaches the worktable.

  “A birdhouse, allegedly,” Arthur says, the closest thing to gruff that he ever gets. “Though at this point it’s more of a bird pen.”

  “We can’t get the roof to stick on,” Jesse explains.

  “Interesting problem. Arthur, could I have a moment alone with my daughter?”

  Arthur brushes off his hands and steps away from the worktable. “Of course,” he says. “Perfect timing. I need to wash up and get ready for clients anyway.”

  “Ha-ha, don’t leave me alone with her,” Jesse half jokes.

  “Ha-ha,” Arthur echoes, already on his way out.

  “Yes,” Fran says archly. “Ha.”

  After her father leaves the garage, Jesse stares deeply into the roofless birdhouse and sands its edge in vague swipes, afraid to meet her mother’s eye.

  “So okay,” Fran begins, taking the floor. “First of all, I’m not going to ask for an apology from you about the cancer remark, even though I do think you should apologize to me for the very rude cancer remark you made earlier today.”

  “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.

  “It’s Esther, isn’t it? Sweetheart, you can tell me.”

  “It’s not Esther!” Jesse gets to her feet, shaking off Fran’s hand, and strides to the other side of the table. “God! You’re so presumptuous! You always think you know everything about me, but you don’t know everything about me, all right?”

  “All right! I concede! I hardly know anything about you! I shouldn’t have assumed this was about Esther.”

  “It doesn’t even matter who it is, because it’s over.” Jesse turns her attention fiercely to Roof Part A, pivoting it around and around and trying to cram it onto the bottom half of the birdhouse.

  “Oh?” Fran says tentatively. Jesse can feel her adjusting her position on the little stool across the table, sitting up to pay closer attention. “But there was someone.”

  Jesse nods. All at once, she can feel herself getting closer to telling. It feels electric, stepping into this zone of almost-saying-it, after keeping it carefully tucked away and insulated for so long. Her mouth feels crackly with sparks, like she’s holding a whole packet of Pop Rocks on her tongue.

  “Someone you wouldn’t approve of,” Jesse says.

  “How do you know I wouldn’t approve of her?”

  “Because she’s not the kind of person you like.”

  Fran shakes her head, bemused. “And what ‘kind’ of person do I like?”

  “Um, radical people?” Jesse snaps, annoyed at having to explain the obvious. “People who try to make the world a better place? Gandhi? Thurgood Marshall? Martin Luther King Jr.? Oprah?”

  “I do love Oprah.” Fran smiles. “I can’t help myself. She’s fabulous.”

  “Well, this girl isn’t like that.” Jesse drops Roof Part A and starts messing with the tiny, dried-up tube of wood glue that came in the birdhouse kit, trying to unscrew its miniature cap.

  “This girl’s not like Oprah. Or Gandhi, or Thurgood Marshall.”

  Jesse shakes her head. “No.”

  “So what is she like?”

  “She’s…”

  How can Jesse explain Emily to her mother? How can
she describe Emily’s fluid beauty, her long-legged walk, the way her jeans fit on her hips, her laugh—recognizable to Jesse in any crowded hallway—her hoodies, her V-necks, the taste of her skin, the smell of her hair, the way she looks like she was just born to move down a hallway in a group of girls whenever Jesse sees her from a distance in school? How can Jesse describe this regular girl who is somehow, in some way, haloed in magic, for no other reason than because she’s Emily Miller? “She’s normal,” Jesse says finally.

  “And I don’t like normal people?”

  “It’s not that, it’s just—she’s like, supernormal. She’s against everything I stand for. She has a boyfriend.”

  “Ah.” Fran nods. “I see.”

  “She won’t admit in public that she likes me. And she works for StarMart’s parent company,” Jesse finishes darkly.

  Fran cocks her head and squints. “Wait, how old is this girl?” she asks.

  “She’s a junior,” Jesse says.

  “A junior in high school? With a corporate job?”

  “She has some kind of internship with them in Stonington, I don’t know. I couldn’t even listen to her when she was telling me about it, it made me so upset.”

  “Wow, okay. Okay.” Fran gets up from her stool and paces a moment, full of energy, then turns to face Jesse. “So my first priority, obviously, is your well-being, and this relationship doesn’t sound like it’s been great for your well-being.” Jesse shrugs. “Anyone who won’t admit publicly that they’re dating my daughter is obviously not good enough for her, that’s how I feel. But before I dole out any motherly advice about how to handle this, let me just say: I have to hand it to you, kid. This one’s a doozy.” There is a note of genuine appreciation in Fran’s voice. “Your girl is a closet case who works for StarMart? I’ve found myself in some compromising situations myself over the years, but this one is rough.”

  “Now you see why I couldn’t tell you?”

  “Actually, no, because—”

  “No one has ever done anything as stupid as this, ever, in the history of the entire world!” Jesse wails, cutting her mother off.

  Fran rolls her eyes. “Kid, please. Practically everyone in the history of the entire world has done something as stupid as this.” Fran comes around now to Jesse’s side of the table. “Look. You’ve heard me mention Daniel Karp every now and then, right?”