8. Sky (but he had someone else.)
Doctor Z thinks I have panic attacks because I don’t express myself. Like I’m repressing how I really feel, and all this repression triggers anxiety. Blah blah blah.
To take it out of therapy-speak, Doctor Z thinks I’m lying way too much of the time. She thinks I lie to my parents. She thinks I lied to Jackson.
She thinks I lie to myself, mainly. Not about truths or facts. About feelings.
And all that lying makes me not be able to breathe, because the horror that’s inside me pretty much has to express itself somehow, so it starts my heart up like a jack-hammer and turns off my lungs.
I never thought of myself as someone who lies at all. Actually, I think I’m pretty truthful. But maybe she was right. “How can I be honest with anyone when everyone is lying to me?” I said to Doctor Z.
“Who’s lying to you?”
“Jackson.”
“Who else?”
“Kim.”
“Who else?”
I felt like there were hundreds of people. But I couldn’t think of anyone.
We were silent.
“Who is it that you’re not honest with?” asked Doctor Z.
“No one.”
“No one?”
“I’m not a liar.”
“I’m asking if there are times when you don’t tell the truth about how you feel.”
“I’m not a liar.”
“Ruby, that’s not what I asked you. I asked if you were honest about your feelings.”
Ag. Therapy is such a pain in the ass. I told her I wanted to change the subject and talked about how annoying my mother was for the rest of the hour.1 But then I went home and I made a list of all the lies I told to Jackson.
I didn’t mind that he never came to my swim meets.
Watching the cross-country team run was interesting.
Japanese anime movies were interesting.
I liked his friend Matt.
I liked the half carnation.
I liked his new haircut.
I liked his mom.
I didn’t mind the frogs ending.
I didn’t mind him playing tennis with Heidi.
I didn’t mind when he said he’d call, but then forgot.
I didn’t mind him making friends with Kim.
When I got to eleven, I realized I could very easily get to twenty. Or thirty. Or forty. I put my pen down.
I was obviously a big huge liar and didn’t even know it.2
I actually never thought of myself as lying to Jackson. Well, some of them were lies I told to make him feel good. The haircut. His mom. But most of the others are actually lies that I told myself, and didn’t even know were lies, until I made that list. I would be bored watching cross-country, but I’d somehow tell myself I was learning about the sport. I hated the Japanese animation films he always wanted to rent, but I told myself I was getting a taste for them. His friend Matt isn’t awful, just kind of lunkheaded and boring—but I spent time with him every single week, and never stopped to think that I’d rather not. If Jackson asked him along with us, I never objected.
Jackson made friends with Kim around Thanksgiving. He and I went over to her house the morning of the holiday, and we all sat on her front porch, shucking corn and peeling apples for Mae Yamamoto, who seemed to view us as hired labor.
We were joking around and talking about Madame Long, the French teacher, and how she collected stuffed pigs, and how does one get started collecting such a thing? And Jackson said something to Kim in Japanese.
She said something back.
Then him.
Then her.
I shucked corn.
Kim squeezed my knee. “You didn’t tell me Jackson was fluent!”
“He was in Tokyo for a year,” I said.
“Really?” cried Kim, although I know she knew already. “I’m applying to go on an exchange program. Where were you hanging out?”
More Japanese going on. Back and forth. “Sorry, Roo,” they both said, at one time or another.
And I shucked corn.
From then on, they were friends. They did things together and talked on the phone. Jackson was a big proponent of boy/girl friendship, which in theory I appreciated. Yes! It’s important to be friends with the opposite sex, I thought. I was friends with Noel, wasn’t I? We should all be comfortable with everyone, and we shouldn’t be jealous and possessive, and it’s good for boys and girls to hang out together and not only see each other as sexual objects.
But I did feel strange when I saw Kim’s handwriting on a note, half in Japanese and half in English, sticking out of Jackson’s back pocket. Or the one time he left my house on Sunday afternoon and I found out the next day he’d gone over to her place after, to study for a test in the Asian History Elective they were both taking. Or the time he was taking me to a restaurant to eat Japanese food for the first time, and he invited Kim to come too, without even checking with me. It turned out we had a great time, but I was also a little disappointed because Jackson and I had never gone out to eat anywhere fancy before, and I had dressed up for a romantic date.
Not once did the two of them flirt in front of me.
No extra smiles, no longing looks, no secret jokes.
Never did Jackson talk about Kim being pretty. Never did Kim change how she acted when I told her stuff about Jackson. She knew every detail of what went on, and the only thing she ever said was that she knew he liked me and that his intentions were good—the way she did when I was upset about the half carnation. Never did Jackson stop kissing me the way he kissed me, like it mattered hugely, putting his hands on my face. Never did he stop coming over to my house, rooting around in our (macrobiotic) refrigerator, pulling me into my bedroom the minute my parents went outside on the deck so we could make out on the bed and feel the warm bare skin up each other’s shirts.
When I called, he always said, “Oh, I’m glad it’s you.”