Rock Bottom Girl(132)

She thought about it for a minute and then held up a finger. She disappeared back inside her house and reappeared on the back porch a minute later. She had two bottles of wine and a puffy winter coat. Amie Jo jogged to the fence separating our yards and dropped the wine bottles over into the grass one at a time.

She took a running start at the fence and scrambled over.

Zinnia and I scooted farther out on the limb, and Amie Jo handed up the wine. I pulled her up, and she settled on the branch next to me. It creaked a little.

“Rough Thanksgiving?” I asked.

Zinnia lit another cigarette and handed it to Amie Jo.

She accepted it and pulled the stopper from the first bottle of wine. “My sister just announced she’s getting married for the fourth time. Her daughter, Lisabeth, is pregnant with some dropout’s baby. And worst of all, my in-laws hate me,” Amie Jo announced.

“What? You and Travis have been together since senior year.”

“And they’ve hated me since then. They think I got pregnant on purpose in college so Travis had to marry me. To them, I’m just a gold-digging prom queen.”

Zinnia and I shared a glance.

“Well, that’s not fair to you,” I said to Amie Jo.

“I know! I’ve done everything I can to make those horrible people like me! I gave them beautiful grandsons. I make sure their son has a home he can be proud of. A wife he can show off. We’re upstanding members of the community, and the turkey is still too dry, and the house is still too drafty, and maybe I shouldn’t show so much cleavage at a family dinner!”

Amie Jo took a gasping breath and a swig of wine before passing me the bottle.

“I’m having an out-of-body experience here,” I admitted. “I thought both of you had the perfect lives.”

Zinnia and Amie Jo shared a slightly hysterical laugh.

“Out of all of us, you’re the happy one,” Amie Jo said accusingly.

“Happy? I’m not happy. I’m fucking miserable. My life is one failure after another!”

Zinnia snorted. “I forgot Chandler’s birthday this year. I packed him up and sent him off to a friend’s for a sleepover because I had a grant I needed to finish. His little friend’s mom told me the next day when I picked him up that Chandler told them it was his birthday. I’m regularly a not-good-enough mother.”

“My kids learned from me that appearances are much more important than actually being happy,” Amie Jo announced. “I’ve taught them that great selfies on Instagram are more important than being a good person.”

“Yesterday, Edith told me she hated me because I let Rose watch two movies back-to-back because I couldn’t stand to hear another word come out of her sassy little mouth. And the grant proposal that I spent three months of my life on was denied, and I had to call the Mobile Surgical Organization and tell them that they wouldn’t be getting the $200,000 they were counting on next year.”

“It takes me two hours in the morning to get ready because I don’t want my husband cheating on me the way his father cheats on his mother,” Amie Jo confessed, looking over her shoulder at her house.

“Do you lock yourself in the bathroom to cry?” Zinnia asked.

“Once a week. For twenty minutes,” Amie Jo said.

“I sit in the empty bathtub.”

I looked back and forth at these women and wondered how the hell I never knew any of this.

“I don’t get it. From the outside, everything looks so perfect. What about your hashtag blessed post today on Facebook?” I asked Amie Jo.

“That’s social media,” Zinnia scoffed, taking a swig of wine.

“Exactly. That’s a highlight reel. Social media is how you fantasize your life should be. Not the reality of it.” Amie Jo looked at me like I was an idiot. “No one actually wants to know how you really feel.”

I helped myself to more wine. I couldn’t wrap my head around this. “You guys aren’t happy? Even with money and husbands and kids?”

“I’m exhausted,” Zinnia said.

“I’m miserable. The amount of attention I need just to be okay is terrifying,” Amie Jo said.

“You had something real with Jake,” Zinnia told me.

“Had? You didn’t do something stupid, did you, Marley?” Amie Jo was horrified.

“I kinda broke up with him,” I confessed.

Amie Jo gasped so hard the branch creaked. “That is asinine! Who wouldn’t want Jake Weston? Hell, I want Jake Weston, and I’m married.”

“I was only supposed to be here until the end of the semester. It was a temporary position! I wanted to do something bigger, more important than teaching gym class.”

“What about your team?” Zinnia asked.

“Those girls had the longest losing record in school history. You taught them how to work together and trust each other,” Amie Jo pointed out.

“Do you know how epically impossible that is to do at this age? Teach women that they’re sisters, not enemies fighting over the last damn piece of fine pie?” Zinnia asked as she swung the bottle of wine wildly.

“I wanted to do something like you do. Something that makes a real difference,” I told her, still trying to explain my hopes and dreams.

“I hate my job, Marley. I hate it,” Zinnia enunciated carefully. “My desk and inbox are full of pictures of what landmines and gunshot wounds and poor medical care do to people. Every day I am drowning in them.”