to ask how the game had gone. “There’s plenty to eat, Susan,” Mom said.
“Aren’t you even going to ask how my game went?”
Mom’s shoulders fell. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I’m distracted. I found out yesterday that I didn’t get that job I interviewed for, and I think I was a touch overconfident that I would. How did it go, sweetie?”
She’d asked the question, finally, but she didn’t care, not really. I knew I’d probably made her feel doubly bad, pointing out her failings as a mom right when she’d gotten news that she’d failed at something else.
A little part of me, though, was glad she hadn’t gotten the job. No one had told her she had to do this. Was getting to manage a title company or whatever it was she wanted to do really so much more important than everything else going on? Than me? The thing that kept bothering me about my parents having a civil divorce was its unspoken rule that I act civilized about it, too. Whatever not-so-great changes it made to my life, I had to see the bigger picture. But standing there surrounded by the crappy food we had to buy because money was tight, I was tired of the big picture. I wanted a little picture with only me in it for a while.
“We lost. The game was shitty. I played shitty.” I didn’t give her a second to say anything before I added, “I love how you and dad getting divorced and you getting a real job means your stuff is always more important than mine. Maybe you should have stayed married. You have thinking of only yourselves in common.”
Normally, I might have thought those words but not said them aloud. But I was frustrated and I wanted someone to know, even if Mom maybe didn’t deserve it. I knew what was really upsetting me was Bobby’s anger and my persistent headache and Tina’s observations and knowing I’d blown my chance to feel special and talented this weekend. But I was hungry, in every way. Hungry for a dinner that required more than one utensil to eat, but also hungry for the kind of attention I didn’t have to ask for, like when I was a kid and would find that the picture I’d colored and left lying around had somehow made it onto the fridge.
Mom didn’t say anything, but she didn’t take her eyes off me as she tugged one of the grocery bags across the counter. She lifted two cans of Cheez Balls, my favorite snack, out of the bag and slid them across the counter toward me. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m only thinking of myself. That’s rich.”
I opened my mouth to apologize, or maybe just to thank her for the Cheez Balls, or maybe not to say anything but to just cram some Cheez Balls in. I wanted to say I didn’t mean it, and that I knew Mom was trying her best.
But I didn’t.
“I wish your game had gone better. I wish my interview had gone better,” Mom said. “But has it ever occurred to you how much I have to work my butt off to get something better to happen for myself? Meanwhile, they just start up a whole girls’ team for you. I’ll never know what that feels like.” She took the receipt from the bag and put it on the kitchen table next to her textbooks and pens, then left the room.
I told myself that she didn’t know anything about what I was doing. No one had paved the way for me. They’d said, “Go ahead down that road, but we can’t help you if there’s a boulder in the middle of it.”
But this weekend, Bobby had gotten us a game—he’d moved the boulder—and the team and I had crapped in the middle of the road. The worst part was, I wanted the win now more than I had even during the game, and I couldn’t go back.
I tore the lid from the can of Cheez Balls that Mom had bought, I knew, for me. That I hadn’t said thank you for.
They didn’t taste as good as usual, and I didn’t enjoy a single one as I finished the can.
Twenty-One
The phone rang Sunday morning and I picked up expecting Polly, or Tonia, or maybe my grandma, who’d called last week and whose message I realized I’d forgotten to give Mom.
“Hey, champ, how’d it go? You up for a practice?” Joe’s voice came