I did mean what I said. If I was Heidi, I’d want the boy to talk to me. It would drive me insane if he kept saying he’d call and never did. It would be so unfair. But at the same time, when Jackson told me he was going to the B&O for coffee with Heidi after school on Friday and wouldn’t be picking me up at swim practice, I was completely shattered. He was going out with his ex-girlfriend! The girl he had been kissing and thinking was pretty and special and wonderful only six weeks ago. I felt jittery all through practice, and swam badly. My dad picked me up, and I asked him to take me to a five o’clock movie so I wouldn’t have to think about Jackson and Heidi—so I wouldn’t give in to the temptation to call his cell phone while their big coffee discussion was still going on. But typical Dad, if we were having an afternoon together, he wanted to bond. “Why don’t we go to that B&O place you like?” he suggested. “I’ve always been curious about it.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said.
“Really? Aren’t you usually starved after practice?”
“I am, but all they have at the B&O is cake,” I said. “It’s like a coffeehouse.”
“You can have cake,” my dad said. “I won’t tell Mom. Besides, if they brew a serious cappuccino, I want to know about this place.”
He turned the wheel and got off the freeway at the exit for the B&O. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t feel like I could explain the situation to him, but if we showed up while Jackson was having coffee with Heidi, it would look like I was spying on them. And even though I actually did want to spy on them, I knew I wasn’t supposed to want to—and was supposed to be trusting of Jackson and unjealous of Heidi—because that was the cool way to be. Plus this whole thing of them talking was my idea in the first place, so supposedly it would be insane for me to be jealous.
My dad found a parking space and we marched into the B&O, him all beaming and talking about the teen hangouts of his youth, the merits of different coffee beans and the importance of whole milk in cappuccinos. I scanned the room, my heart thumping.
But Jackson wasn’t there.
And neither was Heidi.
Some artist types sat at a table for six, sucking down espresso. Kim was at the counter, writing an essay on her laptop. Finn was behind the register, wearing a black apron and gazing at her with big moony eyes.
Where were Jackson and Heidi? Had they seen Kim and decided to go elsewhere for more privacy?
Or had they finished up quickly and gone their separate ways?
Or had they finished up quickly because they had fallen madly back in love with each other and were even now making out in the Dodge Dart Swinger, steaming up the windows?3
My dad clapped Kim on the back in greeting and started quizzing Finn about professional-level milk-steaming methods.
“Where’s Jackson?” I whispered to Kim. “How long were they here?” She knew the whole situation, of course.
“He never came,” Kim whispered back. “Finn has been here since three o’clock.”
“What?” I could handle it when I knew where they’d be—but now it seemed like Jackson and Heidi had gone off to do some private thing between the two of them, like I didn’t even exist. I wondered if he’d even lied to me about what the plans were.4
My dad was having the time of his life, so pleased to be in his own daughter’s hangout, drinking cappuccino with her real live friends. He ordered cake. He flipped through the ads for rock shows in the local free paper and imagined he was going to buy tickets to something. I tried to be a good sport and act like I was enjoying myself. He’s a sweet dad, he completely is, and he meant well and was trying to bond, and who can blame him for not noticing that I was nearly out of my mind with anxiety?5
Jackson called when my dad and I got home. He wanted to come over. We sat on the deck, even though it was cold, to get some privacy.
He and Heidi had played tennis, for old times’ sake. They were so evenly matched and it was something they used to do together. Then they had talked in the restaurant area of their country club. Heidi wanted to get back together with him, Jackson said. She didn’t understand why things had broken off so suddenly. But he didn’t want to. Heidi was fun and superbeautiful and all, but she wasn’t that interesting. “I told her I was with you,” he said, taking my hand. “Roo, please don’t feel upset. I’ve never felt like this with anyone before I met you.”
“Me neither,” I said.
“Good,” he said, leaning in. “I hoped not.”
We kissed in the cold air for a long time.
But the truth is, I never felt the same after that. Not really. Look back and reread what Jackson actually said when he told me about his afternoon with Heidi. True, he said he wanted me, had never felt like this before. But he also said Heidi was superbeautiful and fun, and that they’d played tennis for old times’ sake, because they were so well matched, blah blah blah.
Now, if your entire focus was on making your new girlfriend feel better about your feelings for your old girlfriend, would you mix your declaration of love in with nostalgia about tennis games and the superbeauty of the old girlfriend?
No.
You would only do that if you were still thinking about the beauty and the tennis.
It’s not that I think anything happened with Heidi that day, or that Jackson was lying about how he felt toward me. It’s more that I realized he had this history with other girls, and I couldn’t stop him thinking about them, and he would think about them even when he was looking me in the eye.
It shattered something inside me that hadn’t been broken before.
So then I had Heidi radar on top of the Beth-Ann-Courtney radar.
And now I have Kim radar.
All the way until the end of the school year, I could barely walk across the quad without evil vibrations attacking me from all directions. Ag! Kim on the staircase! Heidi in French class! Triple threat of Beth-Ann-Courtney in the library, wearing pastels and having good hair days! The evil was everywhere—and just writing that sentence proves to me that I’m seriously messed up and thank goodness my mother made me start seeing Doctor Z because I am obviously about to go off the deep end, even after all this time has passed.
Believe me, I know the actual truth is that these are all nice girls. Some of them even used to be my friends. And I firmly believe that women should not get all cruel and petty with each other over men, because how on earth will we run companies and countries if we’re preoccupied with someone else’s big boobs in a pink sweater set?
In H&P, Mr. Wallace was talking about this kind of problem (we were covering the feminist movement), and I so agreed with the points he made about what he called “self-defeating antagonism between members of oppressed groups.” Translated from Wallace jargon, that means that if people want to fight for their rights and actually see some action, then they have to stick together and not be pissy with each other about little things.
My problem is I can think whatever I think—girl power, solidarity, Gloria Steinem rah rah rah6—but I still feel the way I feel.
Which is jealous. And pissy about little things.
Maybe the stuff that went wrong between Jackson and me made me feel insecure, and that’s why I got jealous of Beth/Ann/Courtney/Heidi. Or maybe I felt that way to start with out of some sour meanness in my soul, and my neurotic jealousy is part of why things went wrong in the first place. I’m not sure.
I only know that I felt this way—and I still feel this way. Even though Jackson and I are broken up.
I wish I felt different. I’d like to walk into the refectory and not have any radar at all. I’d like to just go in there, make my raisin salad and eat my damn lunch without a care in the world. But I doubt if it’s happening anytime soon. Right now I’m still lucky to get through a meal without a panic attack.