She put a sweater on over her nightgown and I followed her out to the car. “You’d never have to drive me anywhere if I had my license,” I pointed out.
“Once your father’s schedule eases up, he’ll teach you.”
I’d had my permit for two years. Twenty-four months. One hundred and four weeks. And my dad had taken me driving exactly once, and a few minutes in, before he’d even let me switch seats with him, he got an important call and we had to go home. “He taught Crispin right away.”
“Crispin was different.”
“Well, that’s a little sexist.”
“Jemima. It has nothing to do with your gender. He just doesn’t want to have to replace the brake pads again.”
“Who says I’d suck as much as Crispin did? Crispin’s not known for his motor skills. Besides,” I said, suddenly processing, “that’s the real reason? I thought he was too busy!”
“That too.”
“Crispin could teach me.”
“Crispin’s working long hours these days.”
“You could teach me.”
“Sweetheart. Be patient. We’ll take you where you need to go.”
Did having a kid wipe all your memories of being a kid? There was a huge difference between getting a ride and being your own ride. And it wasn’t like I was going to absquatulate with the car for a wild road trip to Mexico. I was a nerd. My best friends were from Quiz Team. The closest I had ever come to pot was when I went to a lecture at George Mason last April 20, and I’d spent the whole afternoon thinking that someone was burning rope.
I mean, guys. I was the Mildred.
“Give a girl a fish and she eats for a day,” I said into the silence. “Teach a girl to fish and she eats for a lifetime.”
My mom sighed and switched on NPR.
* * *
—
Some friends you go places with and some you just chill with, but Jiyoon and I always make stuff. It’s funny because alone, we aren’t crafty; alone, all we do is read, not out of virtuous self-betterment or anything but because we’re lazy and escapist and, I guess, kind of lonely. Together, though, we do weird projects like building a functional scale model of an Archimedes’ screw or sewing an Arachne doll that turns inside out into a spider. A few months before, we’d turned Pride and Prejudice into a card game called Pemberley, sort of a cross between gin rummy and The Bachelor. It was a big hit among the Quiz Team crowd.
“My mom suggested we have chopped salad for dinner,” I said to Jiyoon. “That okay?”
“Sure.”
We chopped for a while, talking about unimportant stuff like:
Jiyoon: “The only accurate word to describe this cucumber is flaccid.”
Me: “No. The word flaccid belongs in just one context.”
Jiyoon: “Feel it, really.”
Me: “Limp as…”
Together: “…a dick.”
Cackle, cackle. Dick jokes are funniest when you’ve never seen a live one. We ate on the spinny stools at the kitchen island. “What makes the perfect prom?” I asked her.
“Not going,” she said immediately.
“You like dances.”
“Not prom. Prom’s about three things. One, the ask. Two, the photos. Three, getting wasted at the after-party, despite graduation the next morning. I will never go to prom.”
“I bet you’ll go next year.” Jiyoon was a junior.
She started twirling on her stool. “Not a chance.”
I hadn’t twirled on these stools for years, but I joined her. Conversation briefly ceased.
“Oh, gross, so dizzy,” said Jiyoon. “What was I saying?”
“Prom?”
She clutched her stomach. “Blech.”
“Do you need a bucket?”
She put a hand over her mouth and waved me away. While she recovered, I thought about prom. Blech indeed.
“Okay,” she said. “When did I get old? Next thing I’ll realize I hate roller coasters.”
“I already hate roller coasters,” I confessed.
“You know? Same.”
“Maybe we should bust out the sherry and prunes.”
“High-fiber crackers.”
“Cottage cheese.”
“We should make something old-fashioned tonight,” she said. “Like…a diorama.”
I went with it. “A diorama of when we’re aged spinsters, living together, eating high-fiber crackers, hating roller coasters.”
“And men.”
“We already do,” I said.
“Speak for yourself.”
“Men hate me.”
“Uh-huh. Right. Find a shoebox.”
We made a gigantic mess on the kitchen table as we turned the shoebox into a parlor suitable for Old Jiyoon and Old Jemima, blue-haired troll dolls who were briskly christened Dotty and Dorcas.
Jiyoon measured the sides of the box for wallpaper. “My dad got another job in Indiana. Three more months.”
“Ji! That’s—well, great. And not great.”
“Yep.” Her dad, who does construction, couldn’t get work here in Virginia, but when he’d heard there were jobs in Indiana, he’d gone out there with a few other guys from their church. “He hates living in a motel.”
“I bet.”
She was quiet, her bottom lip between her teeth as she cut gold-and-green-striped wrapping paper.
“It must be hard on your mom,” I ventured. “Not to have him home.”
“The money is nice. More than nice. Necessary. But my mom gets down. When he’s home, she cooks and cleans and, you know, moms, but now…well, I try to get Hae-Won and Min to help me, but Hae-Won sleeps all the time, she’s such a blob, and Min’s sweet, he says he wants to help, but he’s ten, so how much can you expect? He tries but gets distracted, or I get mad at him because he does a sucky job….” She shoved the wallpaper into the back of the shoebox. “Damn. The stripes aren’t straight.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters.” She laughed. “I may have to hide out over here for a few months. That’s all.”