Free Confessions of an Almost-Girlfriend by Louise Rozett Page A

details regarding how she’s
coping with the death of her son,” my mother cuts in, sounding
jealous and protective at the same time. “She’s a grown woman.
She shouldn’t be burdening a child with her feelings under the
guise of helping her.”
“I’m not a child, Kathleen,” I say.
I clamp my hand over my mouth. I had no intention of calling
my mother “Kathleen” to her face. Well, no conscious intention,
anyway. I can’t imagine that it’s going to go over well.
My mother’s face changes color several times and I feel like
steam is about to come out of her ears but she’s doing her best
not to lose it. I actually feel bad. I didn’t do it on purpose. It just
came out.
It probably hurts to hear your child call you by your first name,
although I can’t really say why.
But why do I have to worry about her feelings?
Because there’s such a thing as basic human kindness, says one of
the voices in my head.
Caron is watching my mother to see if she wants to address
what just happened. When it’s clear that my mother is taking the
high road, Caron asks, “Is it easy to write to Vicky about how
you’re feeling, Rose?”
I don’t like having to talk about Vicky in here like she’s an issue. “I don’t think about it—I just do it. She asks me questions and I answer them, and then I ask her questions. I don’t
see what’s wrong with that. She’s just a sad woman with a dead
son. And I’m a ‘depressed’ girl with a dead dad.”
My mother closes her eyes and twists her wedding ring on
her finger. Then she finally says, “Please don’t talk about your
father that way.”
“What way? He’s dead, so I get to say that he’s dead. Isn’t the
whole reason we’re here so we can say whatever we want out
loud?”
“It’s the way you’re saying it, Rose. You’re saying it in a way
that is disrespectful to your father and designed to shock and
hurt me. And I know why you’re doing it—”
“Kathleen,” Caron says again, with a little more force than
before.
This time my mother is the one to roll her eyes, which I think
is pretty funny. I guess she’s sick of Caron telling her what she
can and can’t say. She stares out the window into the backyard
and looks…hopeless.
“Why do you keep stopping her from talking if we’re supposed
to be so open?” I ask Caron. Mom looks at me.
“Sometimes it’s difficult for your mother to be a patient, which
means things get a little uneven—”
“Rose, just tell me why it’s important to you to keep that website up, even though it could send you into a tailspin at any moment,” my mother interrupts, obviously not liking where Caron
is going. I see a flicker of annoyance on Caron’s face.
I know it seems to my mom and to Caron that I’m keeping
this information from them, but I just haven’t come up with the
right way to tell the truth yet. For example, if I said, “Sometimes
the site feels like my only connection to Dad,” Kathleen might
ask why she isn’t that connection for me. I don’t know how to
answer that without hurting her. Also, when I was building the
website, I liked that it was a way for me to connect with Dad directly, not through her or anyone else. And when I launched it
and all those people started posting things, it became my favorite
way to connect to him. And I definitely can’t say that.
So I go with the easiest answer. “It’s important to me to keep
the site up because I’m learning things about Dad that I didn’t
know before.”
My mother is so frustrated by this that she can barely stay
seated on the couch. “What could you possibly learn about your
father from people who barely knew him?” she snaps.
I snap right back. “Oh, I don’t know, maybe the fact that he
was going to stay in Iraq for a whole year.”
Her irritation turns to shock. She shakes her head and then
says to Caron, “See? This is exactly the kind of information Rose
shouldn’t be getting out of