She wanted to hold her daughter until these dangers passed, until Betsy was old enough to handle them with grace and ease. Jolene needed to say the right thing now, the perfect motherly thing, but she was out of her element. Until the army—with its rigid rules of behavior—she had never fit in anywhere. The kids in her school had known she was different—probably it had been the out-of-date clothes or the events she could never go to, or maybe it had been because she couldn’t invite anyone home. Who knew? Kids were like Jedi in that way; they could sense the slightest disturbance in the Force. Jolene had found a way even then, as a girl, to compartmentalize her feelings and bury them.
So she didn’t know about wanting to fit in so desperately you felt sick at the smallest slight. Ordinarily, she would talk to Betsy about inner strength now, about believing in herself, maybe even about cutting her friends some slack.
But smoking on the school grounds changed all that. If Betsy’s friends, ex-friends, were smoking, Jolene needed to be more firm.
“I’ll call Sierra’s mother—”
“Oh, my GOD, you will not. Promise me you won’t. If you do, I’ll never tell you anything again. ”
The fear in Betsy’s eyes was alarming.
“Promise, me, Mom. Please—”
“Okay,” Jolene said. “I won’t say anything for now. But, honey, if Sierra and Zoe are smoking cigarettes at school, you don’t want to follow their lead. Maybe you need to make new friends. Like the girls on your track team. They seem nice. ”
“You think everyone seems nice. ”
“How about Seth?”
Betsy rolled her eyes. “Puh-lease. Yesterday he brought his guitar to school and played it at lunchtime. It was superlame. ”
“You used to love listening to him play his guitar. ”
“So what? I don’t now. People were laughing at him. ”
Jolene stared at Betsy; her daughter looked utterly miserable. “Ah, Betsy. How can you be mean to Seth? You know how much it hurts when Sierra and Zoe are mean to you. ”
“If I’m his friend no one will like me. ”
“You have to learn not to be a lemming, Bets. ”
“What’s that, a rodent? Are you saying I’m a rodent?”
Jolene sighed. “I wish I could make all this easier on you. But only you can do that. You need to be your best self, Betsy. Be a good friend and you’ll have good friends. ”
“You want to make it easier on me? Skip career day. ”
And just like that, they were back to the beginning. “I can’t. You know that. I made a commitment. When you make a promise to someone, you follow through. That’s what honor is, and honor—and love—matter more than anything. ”
“Yeah, yeah. Be all that you can be. ”
“I won’t volunteer next year. How’s that?”
Betsy looked at her. “Promise?”
“I promise. ” Jolene tried not to care that she’d finally drawn a reluctant smile out of her daughter by promising not to be a part of her life.
* * *
Career day was as bad as expected. Betsy had been mortified by Jolene’s appearance at the middle school. Jolene had tried to be as quiet as possible, modulating her voice carefully as she told the kids about the high school to flight school program she’d entered at eighteen. The kids had loved hearing about the missions she flew in state, like last year’s rescue of climbers on Mount Rainier during a blizzard. They questioned her about night-vision goggles and guns and combat training. Jolene tried to underplay everything, including the coolness of flying a Black Hawk, but all the while, she saw Betsy slinking downward in her seat, trying her best to disappear. At the end of the event, Betsy had been the first one out the door. On the other side of the gymnasium, Sierra and Zoe had pointed at Betsy and laughed.
Since then, Betsy had been even more hormonal and moody. She yelled; she cried; she rolled her eyes. She had stopped walking and begun stomping. Everywhere. In and out of rooms, up the stairs. Doors weren’t shut anymore; they were slammed. When the phone rang, she lunged for it. Invariably, she was disappointed when the call turned out to be for someone else. No one was calling her, which for a twelve-year-old was the equivalent of being stranded on an ice floe. Jolene might be overreacting, but she was worried about her daughter. Anything could set her off these days, send her spiraling into depression.
“And today is the first track meet. You know what that means. Potential humiliation. I’m worried,” she said to Michael that morning. He was beside her in bed, reading.
She waited for him to respond, but it quickly became apparent that he had nothing to say, or he wasn’t listening. “Michael?”
“What? Oh. That again. She’s fine, Jolene. Quit trying to control everything. ” He put down his newspaper and got out of bed, heading into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.