Two or Three Things I Forgot to Tell You by Joyce Carol Oates

and bask in their applause.
    Tink had said, Acting is for people who don’t have actual lives .
    If only Mom would leave! Merissa would connect with Blade Runner and the others and—maybe—she would take the razor-sharp paring knife out of the drawer where it was hidden, and contemplate where next she might cut herself.
    Blade Runner had made the big step—to Merissa, almost unthinkable. She’d cut her breasts, both breasts. . . .
    Maybe that was next: the soft, sensitive skin of Merissa’s breasts.
    For now there was punishment needed, for lying about Hannah—Merissa had to be seriously hurt .
    But—oh God!—Merissa’s mother sat down .
    On the edge of Merissa’s bed. (Uninvited.)
    Merissa saw that her mother’s ashy-blond graying hair was matted as if she’d been sleeping, one side of her head against a pillow. Her eyes were both oddly bright and not quite in focus.
    Merissa had never seen her mother actually drinking except at mealtimes—but she knew.
    Sometimes, entering the kitchen, on her way to purloin a smoothie from the refrigerator, Merissa smelled wine.
    Merissa hated weakness ! Seeing her mother through her father’s critical eyes.
    It was unfortunate, Merissa’s mother hadn’t gone to law school as she’d wanted to. Or graduate school. There were many mothers in Quaker Heights who worked, and who had good jobs: Anita Chang’s mother commuted all the way to Manhattan to work as an investment banker; Chloe Zimmer’s mother was a real-estate agent in Quaker Heights and worked “crazy long” hours, Chloe said, but she had no choice: She was divorced. Hannah’s mother had taught college—community college?—and could work again, maybe, if she had to.
    How pained Merissa had been, hearing her mother confide in people, Well, Morgan and I were together for three years before we got married. And then Merissa came along.
    There’d been a kind of girlish boastfulness in her tone. “Were together” meant—what? Sleeping together. Living together.
    And maybe Merissa’s mother had been pregnant with Merissa before getting married to Merissa’s father—was that the implication?
    If so, it was backfiring on Stacy Carmichael now. For maybe Morgan Carmichael wouldn’t have married her, except for the pregnancy.
    Disgusting!
    In any case, lately Merissa’s mother had stopped any sort of boasting about her marriage.
    â€œMom, I really have to work. If you were Dad, you could help me with calculus—but you can’t. So—I just can’t talk .”
    Merissa’s mother smiled pleadingly. How Merissa hated to see pleading in her mother’s eyes.
    â€œI know, Merissa. I know you have work to do. But I wanted to tell you—assure you—that things are not so terrible right now, with your father, I mean. We were talking this evening after dinner—on the phone. He’s said he is certain that it’s best for both of us to take time for ‘sorting things out’—‘discovering priorities.’ He hasn’t once mentioned divorce. So I think—if we get through the next few weeks . . .”
    Merissa’s heart beat painfully. She wanted to believe what her mother was telling her.
    â€œAnd there isn’t any ‘other woman’—I’m sure of that now. He wants, he says, to live alone for a few months at least—and he has a business trip coming up, to China of all places. He wants to be alone to ‘discover who he is.’ We were married too young, he says—both of us.”
    Merissa shifted miserably on her bed. Every little wound in her body stung as if someone had rubbed in salt.
    Why was her mother telling her such things? How she wished her mother had more dignity .
    And had her father been so young ? He’d been thirty-one. And Merissa’s mother had been twenty-five. Hardly young .
    â€œWell.