Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [19]
“It’s always ‘not now,’ ” I hissed, just as Jack’s three older sisters approached.
“Drop it,” he said with finality.
I grabbed my scotch and headed to the library to calm myself, emerging only for a refill, and then another. When Jack finally found me an hour later, I was twenty blurry pages into Great Expectations.
“It’s toast time,” he said. “Come out. Mother wants us all there.”
“She won’t miss me,” I replied and flipped a page.
“Come out, Jillian. This isn’t the time or the place to rehash this.”
“When is the time or the place, Jack? Because every single time your mother pulls this shit, you either ignore it or act like it’s not up for discussion!” I slammed the book closed and threw it back on the shelf. I tried to stand for emphasis but my knees wobbled below me. Three scotches might do that.
“Just deal with it!” he said, his voice now raised to match mine. “It is how she is. She’s not changing! Why don’t you get that?”
“And why don’t you get that if she won’t change, maybe you’re the one who needs to?” I was so irate (or perhaps it was those three scotches), my vision blurred.
“So now this is about me?”
“It’s always been about you!”
“And what about you? None of this has anything to do with you?”
“She’s your goddamn mother, Jack!” I yelled. “And I’m your goddamn girlfriend. Why can’t you just tell her that I’m a priority to you? Why can’t you just say, ‘Accept her, Mother!’ Is that so fucking hard?”
“And why can’t you just say, ‘Jack loves her,’ and get over it!” His voice resonated so loudly that the books shook on the walls.
I stared him down—suddenly and instantly sober—too furious to speak, until I noticed an eerie silence humming from the rest of the apartment, the kind of silence that comes when people are pretending not to have overheard something they shouldn’t have overheard, but are too astonished to start talking to cover up their eavesdropping. Jack heard it, too, and I saw his eyes widen.
“Shit,” he muttered underneath his breath, then spun on his heels, and disappeared out the door.
He came to get me thirty minutes later.
“We should leave,” he said.
“Fine by me.” I threw my hands up in the air.
“She heard everything,” he answered flatly, as we stepped onto the elevator with eyes on our backs. “What a total and complete fucking debacle.”
So this morning, when Jack demanded to know if I’d be on time to his niece’s party, I certainly knew why he was more than a little concerned, more than a tad bit overwrought about Vivian’s and my reunion. I didn’t blame him. Last time, yes, I did. Most certainly, I did. But armed with hindsight, I’d resolved to try a different tactic: In my previous life, I’d quietly and desperately fought for Jack to cut the figurative umbilical cord; this time, I’d lose the self-indignation and focus more on the long-term strategy, less on the short-term gratification. After all, swallowing my anger and my ego and, yes, a tiny morsel of my self-respect was a small price for a second shot at my future, or so I considered over my stale bagel and brewing coffee.
And now, at the train station, at the pinnacle moment in which I was truly ready to prove myself, I was running late. What was an honest oversight—a conference call that lingered longer than anticipated—would turn into a full sandstorm of trouble.
The ticker at Grand Central finally indicates that my train (to hell) is boarding, and I lug my heavy feet toward it, pausing briefly at the newsstand to pick up the latest copy of Esquire, where Jack is now a senior editor.
“He’s going to be a famous novelist someday,” Vivian told me over scallops at Chanterelle the first time we met. “All of his high school teachers and college professors have said so.”
I nodded with the sort of enthusiasm that only a new girlfriend can muster.
“I know,” I said. “I’ve read his short stories. They’re so good.”
“Not good, my dear,” she corrected me. Vivian smelled of a woman who was rarely corrected herself. “They’re magical.” She took a long sip of Pellegrino and fingered