Free Confessions of an Almost-Girlfriend by Louise Rozett

heart-to-heart conversation last year on my birthday and it
seemed like everything was finally going to be okay between
us. She apologized for “abandoning me to my grief,” explained
that she needed help and asked if I would come to therapy with
her. I said I’d think about it.
What a mistake that was. Two months later, I launched my
dad’s site and when I refused to take a shower after sitting in
front of the computer for a few days, she practically dragged me
by my greasy hair to see Caron for the first time.
“So, Rose, when you hear your mother talk about feeling betrayed by you and scared for you, what do you feel?”
This question has come up before, but I guess I didn’t answer
it right. Maybe I’ll try telling the truth today.
“I feel annoyed,” I answer. This is a very different response
from my usual I feel bad.
Caron’s eyebrows shoot up.
“Annoyed?” my mother repeats very slowly.
“I don’t understand why we have to keep talking about this.
It’s starting to get annoying. ”
“We have to keep talking about it because you refuse to take
the site down, even though you are unable to explain why you
want to keep working on it when it clearly upsets you to be in
touch with those people.”
Those people. She means Vicky.
I just got an email from Vicky this morning, reminding me to
have fun on my last free weekend before school starts on Tuesday. Vicky checks in on me from time to time, emailing me little inspirational sayings or pictures that she’s scanned as part
of her ongoing project to scan every photo she ever took with a
pre-digital camera. She only sends me funny photos of herself,
like from Halloween or from some party where she did something big and crazy with her hair. Vicky is from Texas, and she’s
a hairdresser, so she’s had a lot of practice making big hair. Every
time she sends me a new photo, it’s the biggest hair I’ve ever
seen. When I told her I had the lamest, flattest, straightest, most
boring-est hair in the history of humankind, she said I needed
to “hightail it on down” to Texas and let her take a crack at it.
“When I’m done with you, honey,” she wrote, “you won’t even
recognize yourself.”
Vicky raised her son—the sergeant, Travis—and daughter
alone. A “good, single Christian woman” is how she describes
herself. She’s never told me anything about the father of her
children, although I read a letter Travis’s dad wrote to him that
she posted on the website. And she doesn’t say much about her
daughter. I kind of get the feeling that she and her daughter don’t
talk much. But she loves to write about Travis, and she always
ends every email with, Your dad is watching over you, just like my
Travis is watching over me. God bless, honey.
I was raised agnostic, bordering on atheist, but there’s something about the way Vicky writes God bless, honey that makes me
feel safe from all the awful stuff that goes on inside my head and
out. When Vicky says she’s praying for me, I believe it, and even
though I don’t think there’s a god who pays attention to us, I like
when she says it because I know she does think he’s up there.
Of course I can’t tell any of that to my mother.
“It doesn’t upset me to be in touch with those people. Why do
you hate Vicky so much, anyway?” I ask.
Kathleen sighs like she’s the weariest person in history. “I
don’t even know Vicky, Rose. I just feel like you give her more
than she gives you. And frankly, you don’t need to take care of
anyone but yourself right now.”
“Rose, do you feel like you’re taking care of Vicky?” Caron
asks me. My mother looks at her sharply. Caron, to her credit,
keeps her eyes on me and doesn’t acknowledge the death rays
that Kathleen is staring at her.
“We just email about stuff. She sends me funny pictures of
her hair. Is that taking care of somebody—sending each other
emails?”
“It is when she’s sharing private