Skeletons Out of the Closet

by M. Katherton

  “Alright. I’ll see you there then!” She agreed, tossing her lunch tray in the trashcan and waving goodbye before parting for sixth period.

  As I left the cafeteria, I spotted Emelia and her cheerleading friends come in the back doors. They often snuck off campus for lunch despite constant threats from administrators that anyone caught leaving would get a week of on-campus suspension. She casually tossed her brown highlighted hair over her shoulder as if she was in the middle of a photoshoot instead of the school hallway. I wondered if she and I were still friends if I would have recruited her to help me find my dad. We had grown up doing everything together, helping each other talk to boys we liked and convincing our parents to let us have sleepovers on school nights. However, that wasn’t how things were anymore. A little over two years ago, she would have been breaking into the Lakewood High School library alongside me to get my hands on the prized 2002 yearbook. Now it was just me.

  Tuesday, January 8th, 2019

  Mom was too engrossed in helping Macy with math homework to interrogate me when I told her I was going to Lakewood to watch Kendra’s stepsister play basketball. I didn’t know much about basketball but I figured Kendra would likely spend most of the time talking instead of watching the game. I would stay until halftime to convince her I had come to hang out then pretend to get a text from Mom needing me to come home. I would find a way to sneak out of the gym and to the library, a straight shot down the main hallway according to a map I found on the school website. After major budget cuts in the district last year, I doubted there would be security guards posted anywhere besides the gym and I figured most teachers would have already left for the day. If anyone caught me, I would pretend to be a Lakewood student looking for a jacket I had left in the library earlier.

  The Lakewood girls’ varsity basketball team was undefeated so far this season. Though just a sophomore, Lana was in the starting lineup. She was one of the shortest players on the team and easy to pick out with her bright red hair, but she was a force to be reckoned with. According to Kendra, she was a speed demon and had a wicked layup shot. I didn’t know exactly what that meant except that it was a positive thing. Kendra did her best to explain the game to me though I could tell she still didn't completely understand it herself.

  When the buzzer rang at the end of the second quarter and Kendra claimed she was going to get nachos and a soda from the concession stand, I made up a phony excuse about how I had to go pick up Macy from dance which she thankfully bought. As Kendra trailed off for the concession stand located at the far end of the gym, I snuck out a door on the opposite end leading to the inside of the school.

  The main hallway was pitch black except for one classroom with a light on with a cart of cleaning supplies outside the door, suggesting it was occupied by the nighttime custodian. Walking the same hallways my mother once had was surreal to me. I imagined her walking down the center of the hallway hugely pregnant, people on both sides staring and snickering as she passed like some dumb high school movie. My mom and dad had probably walked down this hallway together hand-in-hand before the pregnancy, thinking they would be together forever like many high school couples did. They had likely gone to the Valentine’s Day dance in the same gym I had just watched Lana play basketball in. It wasn’t until this moment that I realized how much personal history my family had here.

  The main hallway dead-ended into the library, which was thankfully dark and empty. I looked over each of my shoulders to make sure I was alone then tried the door handle. To my surprise, it opened.

  I navigated through the giant book-filled room using the flashlight on my phone, careful to keep away from doors and windows to avoid drawing attention to myself. As I searched row by row for yearbooks, I imagined my mom and dad making out between the shelves or having secret meetings here during lunch to discuss the pregnancy and what they would tell their parents. I found rows upon rows of fiction, nonfiction, and reference books, but no yearbooks. Just as I was about to give up and head home, I spotted a lone shelf next to the librarian’s desk containing Lakewood High memorabilia.

  The school opened in the fall of 1995, proudly documented by framed photos of the ribbon cutting and newspaper articles. The shelf also contained a leopard stuffed animal wearing a mini Lakewood High t-shirt to symbolize their mascot. On the bottom two shelves were old yearbooks dating all the way back to the school’s opening. I snatched 2001-2002 off the shelf and flipped through to the senior section like I was in a video game where you had to collect certain objects before the timer ran out. After accidentally flipping past it twice, I finally landed on the page of students with the last names N through P. Sandwiched in between Marcus Oneill and Nina Pacheco was a smug young man named James Owenby that looked identical to the guy in the Valentine’s Dance photo with my mom.

  Wednesday, January 9th, 2019

  All I could think about the entire school day was going home to research James Owenby. I got home too late to start last night and while I wanted to prioritize it over everything else, I promised Mom I would get Macy and Spencer off the school bus since she had a three o’clock meeting. I hoped my siblings would quietly work on their homework and not bother me but unfortunately Macy had two pages of fourth grade math she needed help with. Despite being in eleventh grade algebra II, her long division problems were tricky and I didn’t have the teaching skills to explain them to somebody else.

  “I don’t get it, Jessica!” She stammered, pounding her fist on the kitchen table. The poor kid had inherited both Mom’s poor math skills and her quick temper. Spencer, who thankfully took after even-tempered Ross, sat across the table reading silently, unaffected by his fit-throwing sister.

  “Calm down.” I urged despite being equally frustrated. “You’re not going to get it if you’re all worked up.”

  “I already don’t get it!”

  “Fine but Mom’s gonna be mad that it’s not done when she gets home.” I scowled, trailing to the fridge to grab a can of lemonade as Macy stomped upstairs to her room. Though she would only be ten in May, sometimes she had the attitude of a thirteen-year-old.

  “What’s her problem?” Spencer questioned, then slurped from his grape juice box.

  I shrugged, feeling a little empathetic for Macy as fourth grade was when I began struggling in math too. I remembered crying in class when my teacher Mrs. McBride placed my math test upside down and I turned it over to see a 55 written in bright red ink and a note that my mom needed to sign it. Ever since then, I had never been confident in my math abilities and now I saw history repeating itself with my sister.

  Once Spencer finished his reading, he went upstairs to play in his bedroom and Macy was likely still pouting in hers. Therefore, I went to my own room, turned on my computer, and typed “James Owenby” into the search bar.

  The most frequent result was a pastor named James Owenby who I quickly ruled out wasn’t my father since he was almost thirty years older than my mother. There were dozens of James Owenbys on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and it would take me probably at least a year to look at each profile extensively. I added my location, hoping he had stayed semi-local after high school but could not find anyone looking remotely close to his senior picture. I even tried nicknames for James such as Jamie, Jim, and Jimmy but that didn’t yield any promising results either. When I searched just the last name Owenby within a twenty-mile radius on Facebook, I discovered a Caroline Owenby who lived in the next town over. Her profile picture was a baby wearing a blue bib with the name Taylor embroidered on it. Just as I clicked on her photos to snoop further, my bedroom door burst open. I slammed my laptop shut, fearing Mom had some secret spyware on my computer and knew what I was doing but it was just Spencer, the only person in the house that never knocked.

  “Jeez.” He picked up on my jumpiness. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “You scared me.” I defended, my heart still racing.

  “Mom’s home. She wants to see you.”

  I reluctantly h
eaded downstairs, prepared for a lecture about how I should have made Macy finish her math homework. However, when I got to the kitchen, Mom casually brewed her favorite hazelnut coffee, still in her work clothes, seemingly normal.

  “Hey, how was school?” She asked.

  “Good.” I gave my generic response, not wanting to field any further questions.

  “Have any plans tonight?” It was her subtle way of asking if I would babysit my siblings. By this point I was so used to being thrown in to babysit when Mom scheduled a last-minute showing and Ross had to work late that it no longer bothered me.

  “Not really.”

  “Do you mind taking Macy to dance at five? I have a showing at five-thirty and Ross won’t be home in time.”

  “Yeah, sure.” I obliged, masking my disappointment that I would have to hold off on my search until probably tomorrow.

  Macy’s dance studio was about half an hour away but easily forty-five minutes with traffic. Last summer Mom and Ross had discussed trying to find a closer studio to eliminate travel time but Macy threw a fit about how she didn’t want to leave her teachers and her friends and start completely over so they let her stay. I dropped her off at the studio and Ross planned to pick her up later. Spencer asked me if we could drive through McDonald’s on the way back but I shot the idea down.

  “Ross should be home soon and I don’t know what his dinner plans are.”

  “You mean Daddy?”

  “Sorry, I meant Daddy.” I usually referred to Ross as Dad or Daddy when speaking to my siblings but I had been so preoccupied with my biological dad lately that I completely slipped.

  “How come you call him Ross and not Daddy?” I could always count on Spencer for curious and sometimes invasive seven-year-old questions. Though Ross had been around for most of the life that I remembered, I never called him Dad. Mom gave me the choice to call him Ross or Daddy after they got married but I chose to continue calling him Ross as that was always how I had known him.

  “Well, before Mommy married your daddy, she was um…with a different daddy who is my daddy I guess. I didn’t meet Ross, I mean, your daddy until I was four.” My explanation only seemed to puzzle him more and I regretted saying it instead of giving some generic response about he would understand one day when he was older.

  “So mommies can have more than one daddy?”

  I wanted to slam my head into the steering wheel. I had created a monster. Mom would lose her mind if he ever repeated this to her, which he likely would because Spencer was notorious for telling his parents every detail of his life. To answer his question, I told him mommies could only have one daddy at a time since I didn't want to try to explain cheating or polygamy in terms a first grader could process. He thankfully accepted this answer and went on to tell me about the game of kickball he played at recess, unfazed by my explanation.

  When we got home, Ross was in the kitchen cooking spaghetti and meatballs. He claimed Mom would be on her way home soon and we would eat when she got here. Spencer went upstairs to play while I helped set the table and make the salad. Mom stumbled in the door about fifteen minutes later, cranky and frazzled after her showing. She devoured her spaghetti like she had not eaten in weeks while Ross took on the parental role and asked everyone about their days.

  Spencer, per usual, went into excessive detail about his day in first grade. Though it seemed to just be an average Wednesday for the rest of us, every day was whimsical for Spencer. He told us all about getting to feed Gonzo the class fish and how it was macaroni day in the cafeteria and repeated the kickball game story I had already heard in the car. Mom was clearly zoned out, staring at a framed picture of a cardinal on the wall that someone gave her and Ross as a wedding present that she hung in the kitchen out of obligation and had never removed. However, once Spencer finished talking about kickball and shared the conversation we had in the car, she refocused her attention.

  “Jess told me how she has a different daddy. She said mommies can have more than one daddy as long as it’s not at the same time.” He chirped, completely unaware that this was an inappropriate and awkward thing to discuss in this company. Ross’ eyes widened with intrigue and Mom literally spit out the drink of water she had just taken then glared at me like I had talked to Spencer about where babies came from.

  “Are you kidding me?!” Mom retorted, interrupting Spencer’s charming story to yell at me.

  “Vanessa,” Ross tried to mediate but that just flared her temper more.

  “Why?! Why on earth would you talk to him about that?! Why does it matter?! Ross is your father! It doesn’t matter if it’s not by blood! End of story!”

  “He asked!” I defended, holding up my hands like a kid accused of stealing chocolate in a candy store. “What was I supposed to say?!”

  “Ladies!” Ross intervened. “Enough!”

  “I’m sorry!” Spencer blubbered, his innocent brown eyes full of tears.

  “Spencer, it’s not your fault.” Ross rested his hand on his distraught son’s shoulder.

  “He’s seven years old! He doesn’t need to know that! Now he’s gonna go tell all his friends at school that I was with multiple men! He doesn’t understand!” Mom yelled, disregarding Spencer’s inconsolable state.

  “Vanessa! Leave her alone! It’s not her fault!” Ross’ voice echoed throughout the kitchen. Mom got up and stormed off to her bedroom, leaving her empty bowl of spaghetti on the table. Ross took a deep breath then looked sympathetically at me. “You did nothing wrong. It’s a perfectly normal question and you did the right thing. She’s just been in a mood lately.”

  His compassion broke me. I put my head down on the table and burst into tears. Ross was the most stable adult in my life and here I was trying to find my real father. The guilt hit me like a wave but he thought I was upset over the blowout with Mom.

  “Jess,” He sympathized, coming around the table to put a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay. She doesn’t mean it. She’s just having a bad day.”

  “Can I go to my room?” I croaked, just wanting to be alone in my misery.

  “Of course, honey.”

  I thought today would be the day I would finally get answers but instead everything just got more complicated. If Mom got that upset over me telling Spencer that I had a different dad then I couldn’t imagine what would happen if she found out I was looking for my biological dad.

  Thursday, January 10th, 2019

  I opened my eyes to find Mom sitting on the edge of my bed. She was dressed for work - hair in a smooth bun, face full of makeup, and perfectly pressed realtor jacket - but the bags under her eyes hinted she hadn’t slept well.

  “Good morning.” She greeted, brushing my hair out of my face and acting all motherly as if last night hadn't happened.

  “Morning.” I mumbled, willing to put everything behind us if she would just let me go back to sleep.

  “Can we talk?”

  I nodded, barely holding my eyes open.

  “Come downstairs. I made coffee.”

  I zombie-walked downstairs to find the familiar smell of hazelnut coffee. Mom poured some for herself into her blue travel mug with a V on it and some in a rainbow striped mug that I often used, something Macy dragged home from one of her trips to the dollar store. She then filled both mugs to the top with creamer.

  “Ross said you were pretty upset last night.” She acknowledged as she took her mug to the kitchen table. I followed, still yawning.

  “Sorry I told Spencer.” I admitted, not caring if I was right or wrong but just wanting to put last night behind us. Being on my mother’s bad side was hell. She was a grudge holder and gave a solid cold shoulder whenever she thought someone had wronged her.

  “No, it’s not your fault.” She countered. “Spencer asks a lot of questions and sometimes they are hard to answer. I overreacted. I had a long day at work and took it out on you. It was my fault. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” I accepted, followed by a sip of coffee, still h
ot enough to scald my tongue.

  She studied me for a minute as if picking up that something else was going on with me, then asked, “anything else you want to talk about? I feel like we haven’t gotten to talk much lately.”

  “No, I’m good.” I shrugged.

  If I had been bolder, I would have asked her about my father, hoping maybe she would feel bad enough about last night to give me a fun fact or two about him, but I didn’t. She was about to head off to work and I didn’t want to ruin her day before it even started.

  “Alright.” She accepted and got up from the table, taking her travel mug with her. “I’m gonna head off to work. I love you, Jess.”

  “I love you too.”

  I watched her walk out to the garage to get in her car, heading off for another day in the life of a real estate agent. I wondered what my dad’s morning routine was. Did he drink coffee with his children in the morning then kiss his wife goodbye before getting in his car? Did he have another daughter that he argued with at the dinner table or a young son that asked a thousand questions a day? I would probably never know.

  After last night, my focus was nonexistent in school. I dazed through my morning classes, finding it easier to daydream about finding my dad or to mindlessly stare at the cheesy try your best or think before you speak posters my teachers decorated their classrooms with that I doubted actually motivated anyone. No one seemed to notice my distracted state until lunchtime.

  “Jessica?” Kendra interrupted my thoughts, now clued in that I had only half-listened to her regurgitation of a story about a new baby panda born at the zoo that she saw this morning on the news.

  “Sorry. I’m really tired.” I apologized, covering my mouth as I yawned.

  “What’s up with you lately? You’ve been weird ever since we came back from winter break.”