I Was Told It Would Get Easier(26)

“I’m sorry, Mom.” Emily had her hands over her face as she lay on the bed. “I’m sorry.” Her voice cracked, and I’ll admit it, I rolled my eyes. It’s not that I don’t have enormous sympathy for the hormonal and emotional roller coaster that is sixteen; it’s that the whiplash is killing me. I went over and sat next to Emily on the bed again.

“Baby, it’s okay,” I said softly, stroking her hair. “I know it’s hard to be your age.”

“How do you know? It’s completely different than it was when you were sixteen.” She pulled away her hands and her face was angry again. “I mean, physically it’s the same, but it’s a completely different world. You didn’t even have computers.”

This was, of course, untrue, but I doubted this was the time to split hairs. You cannot win this argument, I reminded myself, because she is irrational and actually couldn’t be less interested in what your teenage experience was like any more than I had been interested in my mother’s. Her brain is awash in chemicals and her prefrontal cortex is as smooth as a hazelnut, and she’s looking for someone to blame for how she feels and you’re sitting right there.

Emily was still going, her voice thick with tears. “You could make mistakes at school and it didn’t ruin your entire life. You could get into college with like a 2.4 GPA and do fine. You could get drunk and stupid and it wouldn’t show up online the next day and follow you everywhere you went your whole entire life.” Her hands were back over her face, and now she rolled over and started sobbing into the coverlet.

Oh, for crying out loud. “I know, honey, I’m so sorry.” I rubbed Emily’s back and thought longingly of the shower. I’d been so close . . .





EMILY


I got a great T-shirt and the theater tour was really good; I loved it. I posted pictures and we got back to the hotel in plenty of time to chill out. I was planning on having a shower, but Mom decided to push me about college and got all upset about it. She doesn’t understand that things are so different now, there’s so much pressure to be perfect all the time, perfect at school, perfect online, plus a little bit different, to make yourself stand out. A learning disability is good, or maybe freckles all over your face, or a little bit plump but sexily body positive . . . you know, something that says you’re not basic. While still meeting the basic criteria, obviously, and not messing up in some catastrophic way.

I stood in the shower and tried to clear my thoughts. I’ll admit I’d gotten a little bit bent out of shape when my mom was interrogating me, and I didn’t want to look puffy at dinner. I was still freaked out about the girls in my Statistics class, but even before that, I felt anxious all the time. Maybe I have a disorder; maybe a specialist can write me a note getting me out of life for a few years, so I can recuperate.

The shower helped, though, and maybe dinner would be fun. I hoped Mom wouldn’t bug me again.





JESSICA


In the end there wasn’t time for both of us to take a shower, so Emily took one and came out totally recovered and in a good mood. And me? Well, still feeling grimy from all the walking we’d done, I had to content myself with fresh deodorant and brushing my teeth. At least I’d been able to vent to Frances while Emily was in the shower.

I texted, “Emily has lost her mind.”

Frances replied, “How can you tell?”

“She says she hates me, then she says she’s sorry and cries, then she hates me again.”

“Sounds normal to me. Two minutes ago Sasha asked me if she could Postmates a Venti iced chai from Starbucks, and when I said it was less than ten minutes away on foot, told me I didn’t care about her future.”

I smiled. “The connection being . . . ?”

“That she was doing Vitally Important Studying and the half hour she would lose by fetching her own drink—and please note, we have chai in the fridge—could mean the difference between getting into college and going on the pole.”

“Totally reasonable.”

“Right. The fact that your child even occasionally apologizes to you is amazing. Quit your bitching.”



* * *



? ? ?

The dinner that night was at El Presidente, and dancing had been threatened. El Presidente was clearly a DC institution, with adobe walls painted pink and the scent of forty thousand tortillas hanging in the air. My tummy rumbled, but thankfully, chips and salsa came immediately once we sat down. The E3 group had a long table to ourselves, and Cassidy had arranged the seating in order to separate parents and children, “the better to get to know each other.” As the parents at least had our kids in common, we did fine, but god knows what the teenagers were going to talk about, especially once Cassidy insisted they put away their phones.

“Oh my god,” said one parent, in an undertone. “They’re going to have to actually speak to each other.”

“I think my kid’s forgotten how,” said another. “He texts me from the room next door to ask me something. On the one hand it’s ridiculous, and on the other hand it’s so much better than shouting back and forth.”

Chris nodded, and said, “Sometimes I think it’s easier for Will to text ‘I love you’ than it would be to say it to my face.”