Roomies

Jamie Jamie Dawn McCormick grew up in and around San Francisco. Her parents divorced when she was 8. A few years after the divorce, her mother had a daughter with her new boyfriend, so Jamie has a half-sister, Rachel. There isn’t much to say about Jamie because she is a very simple person. She’s decent, easygoing, and easy to be around and live with. She isn’t very bright, but she knows enough. She’s very mellow and rarely argues or judges people. It takes a lot to get her going. I think it takes someone like her to be with Angela, given how Angela can sometimes be moody and even a bit judgmental. When I first moved in with Michelle, and Angela later joined us, I wasn’t all that excited, deep down, at the thought of meeting Jamie, to be honest. I felt so comfortable, safe, and protected with Michelle and Angela that I wasn’t sure I wanted to share them with someone else, so to speak. But as I quickly found—as did the others—we all complement and balance each other nicely. To lose one of us would create a void for the others, and to add another would seem intrusive. We are a definite “square.” You can’t add lines to a square and keep it a square, nor can you take lines away and still have a square. Jamie completed our square, though she never lived in the apartment with us. At the time, she was living in another apartment with someone she didn’t really get along with. They weren’t destructive or abusive in a harmful way, but Jamie didn’t feel comfortable because her roommate was picky about things and regularly had company over, whether Jamie was up for it or not. She felt her roommate was selfish and inconsiderate, and they didn’t even remain friends after Jamie moved out and into the house we all bought. Jamie spent most of her life working as a cook in both fancy restaurants and diners like Denny’s. Once we were settled in the new house—which I’ll describe in another entry—she and I were happy to drop to part-time so we had more time to devote to cooking, cleaning, and being there for our spouses, who worked odd hours. We were kind of old-fashioned in the sense that Michelle and Angela were like traditional husbands, while we were like traditional wives. They made most of the money; we took care of most of the house. Michelle and Angela usually worked days, but as a detective and a U.S. Marshal, their hours could vary. Angela eventually grew tired of international trips to hunt fugitives in other countries and soon began working at the local FBI field office. Michelle would occasionally be on loan to the FBI as well.