JENNIE
I give another fake smile to another faceless stranger and move on to the next, thanking each of them for attending. The funeral was short; apparently this church doesn't take kindly to celebrating the life of an addict. A few stiff words and phony praises were given, and that was that.
Only a few more people; a few more simulated thanks and forced emotions as condolences are given. If I hear what a great man my father was one more time, I think I'll scream. I think I'll scream right in the middle of this church, in front of all my mother's judgmental friends. Many of them have never even met Richard Kim. Why are they here, and what lies has my mother told them about my father if they are praising him?
It's not that I don't think my father was a good man. I didn't know him well enough to judge his character accurately. But I do know the facts, and the facts are that he left me and my mother when I was a child, and he only came back into my life a few months ago by chance. If I hadn't been with Lisa at that tattoo parlor, chances are I would never have seen him again.
He didn't want to be in my life. He didn't want to be a father or a husband. He wanted to live his own life and make choices that revolved around him and him alone. That's fine, it is, but I can't understand it. I can't understand why he would run away from his responsibilities only to live the life of a drug addict. I remember how I felt when Lisa mentioned my father's drug use; I couldn't believe it. Why was I so accepting of his being an alcoholic, but not a drug addict? I just couldn't wrap my head around it. I think I was trying to make him better, in my mind. I'm slowly realizing that, like Lisa always says, I'm naïve. I'm naïve and foolish to keep trying to find the good in people when all they do in return is prove me wrong. I'm always proven wrong, and I'm sick of it.
"The ladies want to come over to the house when we leave here, so I need you to help prepare for that as soon as we get home," my mother says after the last hug is given.
"Who are the ladies? Did they even know him?" I snap. I can't help the harsh tone of my voice, and I feel slightly guilty when my mother frowns.
The guilt is pushed back when she glances around the church to make sure none of her "friends" caught my disrespectful tone.
"Yes, Jennie Ruby Jane. Some of them did."
"Well, I'd love to help as well," Karen interrupts as we walk outside. "If that's okay, of course?" She smiles.
I am so thankful for Karen's presence. She's always so sweet and thoughtful; even my mother seems to like her.
"That would be lovely." My mother returns Karen's smile and walks away while waving at an woman unfamiliar to me in the small crowd across the lawn of the church.
"Do you mind if I come, too? If not, I get it. I know Lisa's here and all, but since she's the one that called me in the first place . . ." Rosé says.
"No, of course you can come. You drove all the way here." I can't help but scan the parking lot in search of Lisa at the mention of her name.
Across the lot, I spot Jisoo and Karen getting into Marco's car; as far as I can see, Lisa isn't with them. I wish I had gotten a chance to speak to Marco and Jisoo, but they were sitting with Lisa and I didn't want to take them away from her.
During the funeral I couldn't help but worry that Lisa would tell Marco the truth about Christian Vance right in front of everyone. Lisa would be feeling bad, so she might want someone else to feel bad, too. I pray that Lisa has enough decency to wait until she can find the right time to disclose the hurtful truth. I know she's decent; deep down Lisa is not a bad person. She's just bad for me.
I turn to Rosé, whose fingers are picking at the dots of fuzz on her red button-down shirt. "Do you want to walk back? It's not a far walk, twenty minutes at most."
She agrees, and we slip away before my mother can shove me into her small car. I can't stand the thought of being trapped in an enclosed space with her right now. My patience with her is growing thin. I don't want to be rude, but I can feel my frustration grow with every stroke of her hands over her perfectly curled hair.
Rosé breaks the silence ten minutes into the walk through my small hometown. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"I don't know. Anything that I say probably won't make any sense." I shake my head, not wanting Rosé to know just how crazy I've become during the last week. She hasn't asked about my relationship with Lisa, and for that I'm thankful. Anything involving Lisa and me isn't open for discussion.
"Try me," Rosé challenges with a warm smile.
"I'm mad."
"Upset mad or crazy mad?" she teases, playfully touching her shoulder to mine as we wait for a car to pass before crossing a street.
"Both." I try to smile. "Mostly just upset mad. Is it wrong that I feel sort of angry at my father for dying?" I hate the way the words sound. I know it's wrong, but it feels so right. The anger feels better than the nothing, and the anger is a distraction. A distraction that I'm in desperate need of.
"It's not wrong to feel that way, but then again it sort of is. I don't think you should be mad at him. I'm sure he didn't know what he was doing when he did what he did." Rosé looks down at me, but I look away.
"He did know what he was doing when he brought those drugs into that apartment. Sure, he didn't know he was going to die, but he knew it was a possibility, and all he cared about was getting high. He didn't think about anyone except himself and his high, you know?" I swallow the guilt that comes with the words. I loved my father, but I need to be truthful. I need to let my feelings out.
Rosé frowns. "I don't know, Jennie. I don't think it was like that. I don't think I could be mad at someone who died, especially my parent."
"He didn't raise me or anything. He left when I was a little girl."
Did Rosé already know that? I'm not sure. I'm so used to talking to Lisa, who knows everything about me, that sometimes I forget that other people only know what I let them.
"Maybe he left because he knew it was better for you and your mom?"
Rosé says, trying to comfort me, but it's not working. It's only making me want to scream. I'm tired of hearing this same exact excuse from mouth after mouth. Those same people claim they want the best for me, yet they make excuses for my father, who left me, acting like he was doing it for my own good. What a selfless man, leaving his wife and daughter all alone.
"I don't know." I sigh. "Let's just not talk about it anymore."
And we don't. We stay silent until we arrive at my mother's house, and I try to ignore the annoyance in her voice when she scolds me for taking so long to get home.
"Luckily Karen is here to help," she says as I walk past her and enter the kitchen.
Rosé stands uncomfortably, unsure whether to help. Quickly though, my mother hands her a box of crackers, ripping open the top and pointing wordlessly to an empty tray. Marco and Jisoo have already been put to work chopping vegetables and arranging fruit on my mother's best serving trays. The ones she uses when she wants to impress people.
"Yeah, luckily," I say under my breath. I thought the spring air would help cool my anger, but it hasn't. My mother's kitchen is too small, too stuffy, and it's filling with overly dressed women with something to prove.
"I need air. I'll be back, just stay here," I say to Rosé when my mother rushes down the hallway for something. As thankful as I am that she drove all the way here to comfort me, I can't help but hold our conversation against her. I'm sure once I clear my head I'll see it differently, but right now I just want to be alone.
The back door opens with a creak, and I curse at myself, hoping that my mother doesn't come flying out into the yard to drag me back into the house. The sun has worked magic on the thick mud that covered the floor of the greenhouse. Dark, wet patches still cover half the space, but I'm able to find a dry spot to stand. The last thing I need is to ruin these high-heeled shoes my mother couldn't afford to buy me in the first place.
A movement catches my eye, and I begin to panic until Lisa comes into view from behind a shelf. Her eyes are clear, and beneath them dark circles shadow her pale skin. The usual glow, the warm tan, of Lisa's skin has vanished and been replaced with a fragile, haunted ivory.
"Sorry, I didn't know you were here," I say, quick to apologize and immediately backing out of the small space. "I'll go."
"No, it's fine. It was your hiding space to begin with, remember?" She gives me a small smile, and even the tiniest of smiles from her feels more real than the countless fakes I've received today.
"True, but I need to go inside anyway."
I grab the handle of the screen door, but she reaches out to stop me from opening it. I jerk away the moment her fingers graze my arm, and she sucks in a harsh breath from my rejection. She quickly recovers and reaches past me to hold on to the door handle, making sure I can't leave.
"Tell me why you came out here," she softly demands.
"I just . . ." I struggle for the words. After my conversation with Rosé, I lost the urge to discuss my terrible thoughts about my father's death. "It's nothing."
"Jennie, tell me." She knows me well enough to know that I'm lying, and I know her well enough to know she isn't going to let me leave this greenhouse until I tell her the truth.
But can I trust her?
My eyes look her over, and I can't help but focus on the new dress shirt she's wearing. She must have purchased it solely for the funeral because I know every shirt she owns, and there is no way she could fit into Kai's clothes. Not that she would ever wear them . . .
The black sleeve of the new shirt is ripped open from the cuff, making room for her cast.
"Jennie," she presses, bringing me from my inner distraction. The top button on her shirt is undone and the collar is crooked.
I take a step back from her. "I don't think we should do this."
"Do what? Talk? I just want to know what it is you're hiding from."
What a simple yet loaded demand. I'm hiding from everything. I'm hiding from too many things to name, her being the most important of those things. I want to vent my feelings to Lisa, but it's just too easy to slide back into our pattern, and I'm not willing to play these games anymore. I can't take another round. She has won, and I'm learning to be okay with that.
"You and I both know you're not leaving this greenhouse until you spill, so save us both the time and energy and tell me." She attempts this line as a joke, but I can see the flicker of desperation behind her eyes.
"I'm mad," I finally admit.
She nods sharply. "Of course you are."
"I mean I'm really mad, like pissed-off."
"You should be."
I look over at her. "I should be?"
"Hell yeah, you should be. I'd be pissed off, too."
I don't think she gets what I'm trying to say. "I'm mad at my father, Lisa. I'm so mad at him," I clarify and wait for Lisa's response to change.
"So am I."
"You are?"
"Hell yeah, I am. And you should be, too; you have every right to be pissed-off at his ass. Dead or not."
I can't stop the laugh that falls from my lips at the serious expression covering Lisa's face while she speaks such ridiculous words. "You don't think it's wrong that I can't even be sad anymore because I'm so damn mad at him for killing himself?" I pull my bottom lip between my teeth and pause before continuing, "That's what he did. He killed himself, and he didn't even think about how it would affect anyone. I know that's selfish of me to say that, but that's how I feel."
My gaze drops to the dirt floor. I'm ashamed to say these things, to mean them, but I feel so much better now that they are out there floating around. I hope the words stay here, in this greenhouse, and I hope that if my father is up there somewhere, he can't hear me.
Lisa's fingers press under my chin and she tilts my head up. "Hey," she says, and I don't flinch from her touch, but I am grateful when she drops her hand. "Don't be ashamed to feel that way. He did kill himself, and it's no one's fault but his own. I saw how fucking excited you were when he came back into your life, and he's an idiot for throwing that away just to get high." Lisa's tone is harsh, but her words are exactly what I need to hear right now.
She softly chuckles. "But I'm one to talk, right?" She closes her eyes and slowly shakes her head back and forth.
I quickly direct the conversation away from our relationship. "I feel bad for feeling this way. I don't want to disrespect him."
"Fuck that." Lisa waves her cast-covered hand through the air between us. "You are allowed to feel how you want to fucking feel, and no one can say shit about it."
"I wish everyone felt that way." I sigh. I know confiding in Lisa isn't healthy, and I have to tread lightly here, but I just know she's the only one who actually understands me.
"I mean it, Jennie. Don't you let any of those snobby fuckers make you feel bad for how you feel."
I wish it were that simple. I wish I could be more like Lisa and not care what anyone thought of me or how other people feel, but I can't. I'm just not made that way. I feel for others, even when I shouldn't, and I would like to think that eventually that trait will stop being my downfall.
Caring is a good trait to have, but it hurts me too often.
In the few short minutes I've been in the greenhouse with Lisa, almost all of my anger has disappeared. I'm not sure what has replaced it, but I no longer feel the burn of fury, just the steady burn of pain that I know will be a longtime companion of mine.
"Jennie Ruby Jane!" my mother's voice sounds through the yard, and Lisa and I both wince at the interruption.
"I have no problem telling any of them, her included, to fuck off. You know that, don't you?" Her eyes search mine, and I nod. I know she doesn't, and part of me wants to unleash her on the crowd of chatty women who have no business being here.
"I know." I nod again. "I'm sorry for venting like this. I just—"
The screen door opens and my mother steps into the greenhouse.
"Jennie Ruby Jane, please come inside," she says authoritatively. She's trying her best to mask her anger toward me, but her façade is slipping, and fast.
Lisa looks from my mother's angry face to mine before stepping past both of us. "I was just leaving anyway."
The memory of my mother's finding her in my dorm room all those months ago passes through my mind. She was so mad and Lisa looked so defeated when I left with her and Kai. Those days feel so ancient now, so simple. I had no clue what was ahead, none of us did.
"What are you doing out here anyway?" she asks as I follow her through the yard and up the porch steps.
It's none of her business what I was doing. She wouldn't understand my selfish feelings, and I would never trust her enough to reveal them. She wouldn't understand why I was talking to Lisa after avoiding her for three days. She wouldn't understand anything that I could tell her, because she fundamentally doesn't understand me.
So instead of answering her question, I stay quiet and wish that I would have had the chance to ask Lisa what she came to my greenhouse to hide from.