“Played,” Jared corrects me. “He used to be good enough to get some paying work, supposedly. That was before I was born. Then he quit.”
“Because of you being born?”
Jared shakes his head. “Because it wasn’t enough for him. He couldn’t be happy with what he had. It’s one of the reasons he and my mom got divorced. He’d get frustrated and take it out on her, pick fights and run off for days. That sort of thing. He’s an asshole. He threw the guitar away during the divorce. My mom rescued it from the trash and saved it for me.”
I’m not sure what to say to that so I fall back on the lamest thing possible. “That sucks.”
Jared scowls. “Hey, it means I got his guitar. It’s the only good thing he ever did for me.”
I lean over and kiss his cheek to save myself from saying anything else stupid, and he smiles and hands me a different instrument.
“Try this one. You just need to pick the one you like—one that sounds good and fits comfortably in your arms. Kind of like picking a girlfriend.”
I poke him and knock the guitar out of tune. “You like me because I sound good?”
“Sound good, look good, are good.” He returns my kiss on his cheek with a kiss on my ear, and an idiotic grin spreads over my face. The same dumb smile is mirrored on his own. Then he taps the guitar. “Play good, too.”
I laugh my disagreement because he’s wrong about that part, but his kisses make me giddy and he dares me to believe it. And as the weeks go by, with him at my side, I do get better. By the end of the year, we’re writing songs together. We have great plans. Ridiculous fantasies. One day Steele-Winslow will be the new Lennon-McCartney.
It’s Jared who takes a part-time job so he can buy me concert tickets for Valentine’s Day. And it’s Jared whose shoulder I cry on when I can’t contain my worries about my mom and the chemo. It’s always him, the first to come through for me on anything. Sometimes we have whole conversations without saying a word because we can read each other’s expressions so well.
I don’t know when my parents morph from being wary of him to outright disliking him, but their annual Christmas party is a good bet. Such a party is not for the faint of heart under the best of circumstances, but I thought I’d prepped Jared well. He looks good in his borrowed suit, he keeps a respectful distance from me at all times, and he calls Grandma B “ma’am” when she speaks to him. All goes well until my parents ambush us by the tree in the den.
“So, Jared,” my dad says. His cheeks are Santa-pink, courtesy of the champagne. “You’re a junior, are you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Started looking at colleges yet?”
Jared squeezes my hand. “No.”
“No?” My parents exchange glances. “Well, you can’t start that sort of thing too soon. Claire’s a year behind you, and we’re already making plans for which schools she’s going to visit this coming summer.”
“Oh, come on,” I say. “You’re making a plan. So I can visit Yale.” That’s where my dad went to school, and he has high hopes of me following.
My dad’s chest puffs with pride. “Because it’s a fine school and ought to be a family tradition. Where did your father go to school, Jared?”
“Um, he didn’t go to college.” Jared kicks at the carpet, clearly aware that was the wrong answer. So he tries to atone. “But he owns his own business.”
“Good for him,” my mother says. She seems particularly frail tonight, washed out in her gold gown, and the tree’s twinkling lights reflect off her pale skin, giving her a mottled appearance. “What kind of business?”
Jared fidgets with the silver ring on his thumb. “A bar in New Haven.”
“So.” I clear my throat. “That puts him kind of close to Yale, right?” Jared’s caught midway between a smirk and a wince, but my dad gives me a knowing look. “He’s got time, Dad.”
“Yes, you do,” my mother agrees. “But what are you thinking of studying?”
Jared’s half smirk vanishes, and my right hand might never recover from the crushing he gives it. His grip isn’t the only thing that’s tight, either. Although his expression never truly changes, I can see how his shoulders have clenched and his eyes have narrowed. I’m going to hear all about how nosy my parents are later. “Um, not sure.”
Actually, I’m fairly sure that this conversation is the most thought Jared’s ever given to college at all. When we’re not playing and writing songs, I’m often helping him with his schoolwork even though he’s a year ahead of me. It’s not that he isn’t smart, but he doesn’t have much interest in it.
“Well, what do you want to do?” my dad asks. “Surely, you have some thoughts. A doctor? A lawyer? Lord help you, not a teacher or an accountant, I hope.”
“I want to be a musician, I guess.”
“Oh, yes,” my mom says. “You’re teaching Claire guitar, aren’t you. I do love Andrés Segovia. We should hear you play sometime.”
His wince returns in full force. “Sure, I guess. But I won’t sound anything like Segovia. He plays a classic guitar, and I have a steel-string because I mostly play rock.”
Given the horror that sweeps across my parents’ faces, this must translate as: my boyfriend aspires to be poor, do drugs and drop out of school.
“Well, that explains your hair,” says my dad.
It’s the beginning of the end.
From that day forward, Jared becomes ever the more obstinate about avoiding my parents. And for their part, my parents become ever the more argumentative whenever Jared’s name comes up. He’s a blemish on the Claire sculpture they’ve tried so hard to mold.
But though my parents have done their best, personality is only so malleable. They started with the piano and tennis lessons in elementary school because, according to my mom and her mother before her, all girls should know how to play both. While those were ongoing, I was made to appreciate art everywhere from the Met to the Louvre, taken on shopping expeditions from Fifth Avenue to Florence, and the gaps in my pricey private-school education were filled in with horseback riding and sailing lessons.
And although I can’t deny some of my mom rubbed off on me—I stuck with the piano long after April quit and I pretty much adore all things Italy—she didn’t create a little version of herself. I prefer funky boutiques to high-end designers. I’d rather watch a game at Yankee Stadium than a match at Wimbledon. And I want a Strat and a set of amps for my sixteenth birthday instead of the new car my parents are offering.
Worse: I love Jared even if they don’t. As a result, I begin the downward slide from simply being the misfit child to the bad daughter. It’s a process that’s been fifteen years in the making.
The harder they try to make me into their version of Claire, the harder I fight back. If I’m not hanging out with Jared, I’m hanging out with Kristen. Anything to get away from the tension at the Winslow house. My parents’ tendency to favor April, which they staunchly deny, becomes even greater. It’s as if we communicate so infrequently and irregularly, that sometimes they forget I exist. Or maybe we start speaking in two totally different languages.
Take, for example, my cousin Alison’s wedding. Alison is my mom’s brother’s daughter. She’s ten years older than me, and I see her maybe once a year. Our paths cross so infrequently that I can’t even give an opinion of her. But that’s not about to stop Alison from using me and April as decorations in her wedding party.
Alison is determined to have the most badass (read: expensive) wedding known to humanity. Something so ostentatious that members of Greenpeace