It’s Mandy, my little sister, and two of our cousins. I will myself to be silent until they leave, will myself to be invisible for just a little while. Just a little while and then I can sneak out of here, go back to the party, and socialize for another hour or two.
We only have these get-togethers once a year. All of the cousins and aunts and uncles from all over Colorado meet up and share an afternoon picnic. My mother promises it’s a chance to “catch up,” but that just means it’s a chance for people to gossip and figure out who’s doing the best for themselves.
Every year for as long as I can remember, I’ve hated the family picnic.
It’s never been fun for me and as far as I can tell, it’s not fun for anyone else, either. So why do we do this? Why do we get together and have this charade? Why do we get together and pretend we all like each other?
Obviously, we don’t.
“Can you believe what she was wearing?” Adele asks, and I cringe. They’re going to be talking about me, of course. What else is there to gossip about? No one else has screwed up majorly this year. No one got arrested or lost their job. The only fuck-up is me: the fat girl.
“So hideous,” Mandy says, and Janet laughs.
“She thinks she looks good,” Janet says.
“She doesn’t.” Mandy’s voice is harsh, shrill, and suddenly, I wonder why I’m here. Why did I even come? Do I really have a family obligation to be here? Do I really have an obligation to be around people who hate my guts?
“I feel bad for you,” Adele says. “She’s your sister, you know. Her looks reflect on you.”
I’m almost 30 years old and I’m hiding in the bathroom because my family hates me. I’m at an event that I chose to come to, and I’m hiding in the bathroom.
There is something seriously wrong here, and the realization is a little bit freeing, to be honest.
Suddenly, I understand I shouldn’t have come.
Suddenly, I realize no one would have missed me.
Suddenly, I realize it’s time to cut ties with my family and move on.
It’s time to be strong.
It’s time to be brave.
It’s time to be a fucking adult.
I push the stall door open and walk over to the group of women gathered at the sink. They looked surprised to see me. Mandy has the decency to blush briefly, but Adele and Janet just stare at me.
“Melody,” Mandy says. “We, uh, didn’t know you were in here.”
“Obviously,” I say, then I give her a chance to say something for herself, but she doesn’t. Mandy doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t deny what she said, she doesn’t apologize, and she doesn’t make up anything to ease the tension in the room.
She just stares at me, and I realize I don’t know her at all.
I never did.
“You know what, Mandy? Adele was right.”
“Um, she was?” Mandy looks confused.
“I feel bad for you, too,” I say, and Adele suddenly grins, but the smirk doesn’t last for long because I keep talking. “Yeah, I feel bad that you’re such a shallow person you have to put others down to feel good about yourself. What is this? Third grade?”
“Hey,” Janet inserts herself into the conversation. “That’s not nice.”
“Oh, you want to talk about ‘nice’? Is that what you want to do? Sure. We can do that. Let’s talk about how nice it is that your husband cheats on you with Adele when you’re not around. Let’s talk about how he was arrested for drunk driving three weeks ago. Oh, or we could talk about the fact that you’re still unemployed because no one wants to hire an employee who steals.”
“Melody!” Mandy tries to shush me. She looks around wildly, like someone is going to hear. “That’s not polite.”
“No, it’s not polite, Mandy. It’s not polite that Adele is a cheater. It’s not polite that she thinks it’s okay to mess around with her cousin’s husband. It’s not polite that you’ve known about it all year and never said anything. It’s not polite that you’ve slept with him, too.”