Freedom [181]
“What about you? What do you like to listen to?”
“I’m more into world music, especially African and South American. But I liked your record. I certainly recognized the lake.”
It was possible that she meant something by this, also possible that she didn’t. Could Patty have told her what had happened at the lake? Her and not Walter?
“So what’s going on?” he said. “It sounded like you had a little problem with Lalitha.”
Again the amused or ironical widening of her eyes.
“What?” he said.
“Oh, nothing. I’m just a little impatient with my family lately.”
“I get the sense she’s something of a problem for your parents.”
“Mm.”
“She seems great. Smart, energetic, committed.”
“Mm.”
“Is there something you want to tell me?”
“No! I just think she’s kind of got her eyes on my dad. And it’s kind of killing my mom. To watch that happening. I kind of feel like, when a person is married, you leave them alone, right? They’re off-limits if they’re married. Right?”
Katz cleared his throat, unsure where this was heading. “In theory, yes,” he said. “But life gets complicated when you’re older.”
“It doesn’t mean I have to like her, though. It doesn’t mean I have to accept her. I don’t know if you’re aware that she’s living right upstairs? She’s here all the time. She’s here more than my mom is. And I just don’t think that’s quite fair. My feeling is she needs to move out and get her own place. But I don’t think my dad wants her to.”
“And why doesn’t he want that?”
Jessica smiled at Katz tightly, in a very unhappy way. “My parents have a lot of problems. Their marriage has a lot of problems. You don’t have to be a psychic to see that. Like, my mom’s been really depressed. For years. And she can’t get out of it. But they love each other, I know they love each other, and it just really bothers me to see what’s happening here. If she would just leave—I mean, Lalitha—if she would just leave, so my mom could have a chance again . . .”
“You and your mom are close?”
“No. Not really.”
Katz ate in silence and waited to hear more. He seemed, luckily, to have caught Jessica in a mood to disclose things to the nearest bystander.
“I mean, she tries,” she said. “But she’s got a real gift for saying the wrong thing. She doesn’t respect my judgment. Like, that I’m a basically intelligent adult who can think for herself? My boyfriend in college, he was incredibly sweet, and she was just horrible to him. It was like she was afraid I was going to marry him, and so she constantly had to be making fun of him. He was my first real boyfriend, and I just wanted to have some time to enjoy that, but she wouldn’t leave it alone. There was this time when William and I came down for the weekend, to go to the museums and do a gay-marriage march. We were staying here, and she started asking him if he liked it when girls flashed their breasts at frat parties. She’d read some stupid article in the newspaper about boys shouting at girls to show their breasts. And I’m like, no, Mother, I’m not at Virginia. We don’t have frats at my college, that’s just some stupid Stone-Aged thing that kids do in the South, I don’t go to Florida for spring break, we’re not like the people in your stupid article. But she wouldn’t leave it alone. She kept asking William how he felt about other girls’ breasts. And kept acting surprised when he said he wasn’t interested. She knew he was being sincere, not to mention incredibly embarrassed that his girlfriend’s mother was talking about breasts, but she acted like she didn’t believe him. To her, the whole thing was a joke. She wanted me to laugh at William. Who, yes, was a little hard to take sometimes. But, like, can I have a chance to figure that out for myself?”
“So she cares about you. She didn’t want you marrying the wrong guy.”
“I wasn’t going to marry him! That’s the thing!”
Katz’s eyes were drawn to the breasts that were