by Judy Corry
I stood frozen for a minute. What just happened? Did he just bring up what happened Easter weekend? I thought I was the only one who ever thought about that. Could he, like me, have regretted what happened after that kiss? Did he wish he’d never gone on that date with Kelsie? Would everything be different now if I hadn’t pushed him that way?
I walked inside and leaned against the door, ghosts of what might have been taunting me. Did he really wish we could go back—go back to the day when everything changed?
But I shook those what ifs away. Not everything had changed that day. Just me.
Chapter Twelve
Jess was in hot water with Kelsie. Apparently, he’d never told her his plans about taking me to the dance, and she found out the next day when one of her friends sent her a picture of us dancing. They didn’t break up though, which I didn’t understand. Had I completely misunderstood what he’d said the night of homecoming? Hadn’t he hinted that he wanted to go back to the weekend of that kiss and have a redo?
But maybe it was just my own wishful thinking.
Regardless, I still had no idea why he’d want to stay with her. She was a beast, way worse than any of his previous girlfriends that he’d let go of after only a couple weeks. But who knows, maybe she had some hidden qualities I didn’t know about. She was in Ithaca with him at least, so that was convenient.
The next month passed slowly as I turned in my college applications and continued to spend most of my free time at the library. I saw my mom for a few minutes every day in passing, and lately those few minutes were more than enough. She was turning into that bitter, angry woman she’d been before, maybe even more so since now she was a poor drunk instead of a rich one. Dating Brandt wasn’t helping anything either. Sure, he seemed like a positive enough guy, but all he had to do was worry about himself, he had no one else depending on him—just working during the daytime and partying at night. And from some of the things my mom said, it seemed like she was jealous of his freedom and wished she didn’t have a stupid, needy daughter to tie her down.
Thanksgiving was lame. Mom had to work, so I ended up eating pizza with Uncle Peter and Brandt while they watched football all day. Jess and Ashlyn had gone to their grandparent’s new resort in Dominica for Thanksgiving, so I couldn’t even escape to the Brooks’ house for a few hours.
Finally, the day I’d been looking forward to in forever came. November twenty-seventh. My eighteenth birthday.
I was an adult now!
In years past, my parents had always made a huge deal out of birthdays, spoiling me with more gifts than I could count. When my mom was sober, she had found a hobby in throwing themed birthday parties. When I turned thirteen I had a rock star party, and the next year we had a spa day for me and my friends.
For my sixteenth birthday, they’d rented a limo to take me, Ashlyn, and Jess to New York City for a couple of days of over-the-top activities.
I knew my mom couldn’t afford to do anything big and crazy this year, but I secretly hoped she’d at least make me the traditional strawberry French toast she made each year.
I walked into the kitchen and found Mom and Brandt sitting next to each other at the table. This was a good sign. It was rare to see her up before I left for school. My mom’s light brown hair was frizzy and falling every which way over her light blue bathrobe. She rested a cheek on her hand, much like she did on the days she had a hangover.
“Good morning.” Brandt smiled at me, his brown eyes lingering a moment too long. “You look happy today.”
I dipped my head and tried to return his smile. “I am happy.” I glanced around the room, searching for evidence of breakfast. The kitchen didn’t smell or look much different than it had last night, though. The sink still overflowed with dirty dishes, the peeling laminate counters cluttered with stacks of junk mail and empty wine bottles. My smile faltered until I remembered how she always set breakfast in the warm oven so it didn’t get cold. I opened the oven door and peered inside. It was empty.
“What are you looking for?” my mom asked in a tired voice, turning her gaze in my direction.
I tried to keep any disappointment from showing on my face. “Nothing. I wanted to make sure I hadn’t left anything in there last night.”
I’d just have cold cereal again this morning.
I checked the clock on the wall. Ashlyn would be here in about ten minutes to pick me up. She didn’t have drill team practice this morning and had offered to drive me to school so I wouldn’t have to ride the city bus on my birthday. I washed a bowl in the sink, and found the box of cereal I kept hidden in the back of the pantry.
When I sat down to eat, my phone vibrated with a text message from Ashlyn.
Hey, Eliana. Luke gave me strep throat. I can’t get you today. :(
Dang it! I checked the time, the city bus left the stop down the street in fifteen minutes. I’d have to hurry if I wanted to make it in time.
I quickly texted her back, and slipped my phone into my back pocket.
“Teens text their friends this early in the morning?” Brandt asked.
“Ashlyn was telling me she’s sick today. I’m gonna have to ride the bus after all and I’m running late.”
“I can give you a ride on my way to work,” Brandt offered.
“Oh,” I shifted in my chair and looked at my cereal bowl. “That’s okay. I can take the bus like usual.” I’d rather not be alone with him if I could help it…just to be safe. I still didn’t feel super comfortable with the way he always sat a little too close to me when my mom wasn’t around.
“Don’t be silly, Eliana.” Mom sounded annoyed. “Brandt offered to do something nice for you. The proper thing to do is to accept.”
“It’s okay, Annette.” Brandt patted her hand and looked back at me. “Eliana was probably worried it was out of my way.” Yeah, that’s the reason. “But the construction site is not too far from your school. It’s no problem at all.” His smile seemed earnest enough. And maybe he was just being a nice guy willing to help his girlfriend’s daughter.
“O-okay. Thanks,” I said.
My mom straightened up and frowned into the mug she was holding.
“What are your plans for today?” I asked her, trying to have some sort of positive interaction between us.
She startled and shifted her gaze to me—apparently still out of it. After a beat, she answered. “Working, same as usual, in the never-ending world of waitressing.”
I nodded, looking at my cereal as I swirled my spoon around.
“Do you have any tests today?” she asked.
“No, thankfully. That would kind of ruin my day.” I hoped the hint would jog her memory.
She lifted the mug to her lips and blew in it. “And what’s so special about today?”
Was she playing dumb in order to surprise me with something later today? I couldn’t be sure. Maybe she was pretending to forget my birthday since she knew I was expecting something and she didn’t want me to catch on?
“Oh, um, it’s just Tuesday. I hate having tests on Tuesdays.”
She pursed her lips and nodded her head thoughtfully as she slowly looked at Brandt. “You learn something new every day.” She gave him a half smile, like she found something amusing. “I had no idea Tuesdays were a bad day for tests.”
“Any day is a bad day for a test.” Brandt laughed and winked at me.
I forced a smile at him, though his winking made my stomach turn. “I wish my teachers felt the same way.”
Once I finished my breakfast, I decided to pass the time before Brandt took me to school by tidying up the kitchen. Since I didn’t have to catch the bus, I had more time than usual to get to school. I washed the dishes, stacked the junk mail in a corner for Uncle Peter or my mom to go through later, and tossed the empty bottles in the recycling box outside. At least the kitchen would be nicer looking if my mom wanted to bake a cake later on. When it was seven-thirty, I grabbed my backpack and followed Brandt to his rusty old truck.
When I got home from school, I brought in the mail, hoping to find a birthday card from my grandparents in Italy. They had always made sure to send something, even if it was just a card. But there was nothing with their name on it. Maybe they didn’t know our new address. I sighed and added the junk mail to the pile on the counter. Someday Uncle Peter or Mom might decide to look through it.
Next to the mail I found a note from my mom. I have to work a double-shift. There’s leftover pizza in the fridge for dinner. My shoulders slumped, and I let my backpack slide off my arm to the ground. I had held out hope that Mom was planning a big surprise after school, but it didn’t look like that was happening.
I decided not to go to the library like I usually did on the days I didn’t work at the theater. Uncle Peter was out of town again, so there wouldn’t be any partying tonight. And my mom didn’t sound like she’d be around, which meant Brandt shouldn’t be home either. So I was safe to stay home, which I guess could count as a birthday present of its own. I took my backpack upstairs and studied in my room, taking a break for cold pizza around six.
I’d just finished writing a paper for Humanities when my phone rang. It was Jess.
My spirits lifted as I slid my finger across the screen to answer. “Hello.”
“How’s my favorite birthday girl doing?” Jess said, sounding cheery.
“Great, now that I’m talking to you,” I said, feeling a brightness in my chest I’d been missing all day. Jess was the first person to wish me Happy Birthday.
“Did you do anything fun today?”
“Not really. I went to school, came home and did my homework.”
“What? How did anyone let you be so lame on your eighteenth birthday? It’s only the most important one you’ve had so far.”
“Nah. It’s okay.” I leaned back on the pillows on my bed, pushing my laptop to the side. “It’s like any other day of the year.” I hoped that sounded convincing.
“You at least have plans to party tonight, right?” He sounded so sure.
I shook my head before realizing he couldn’t see it. I found my voice. “Nope. No partying here. Actually, I’m the only one home.”
“You mean your mom didn’t even get the night off work?”
“You know she can’t do that. We need the money.” I wanted to leave it at that, but I needed someone to vent to. “Plus, I don’t think she even realized today was my birthday.”
“Are you serious?” I heard him draw in a breath and release it before speaking again. “How do you forget your only daughter’s birthday?”
I rubbed a wrinkled spot on my comforter until it lay smooth. “I doubt she knows what month it is, let alone the exact date. Her life is the same every day: go to work, hang out with Brandt, go to sleep, wake up, and repeat.” I sighed. “It’s okay, though. I made myself a birthday cake and blew out the candles about an hour ago.”
Jess laughed, but it was the kind of laugh that told me he didn’t know if I was serious or not.
“Did you really bake yourself a cake? Because that would be sad.”
“No, but I’m seriously thinking about it. Maybe I’ll get all fancy and make a cheesecake or something.”
“I have a great recipe if you need one,” Jess offered.
“What? You know how to make cheesecake?” Did he even know how to heat up a can of soup?
“Heck yes!” He sounded so proud of himself, I could picture the big smile on his face. “Since living on my own I’ve been cooking a lot of different things. That’s what happens when you get sick of eating Top Ramen for every meal.”
“I’ll have to see this so-called cooking in action before I believe it,” I said.
“I’ll make something for you sometime, and when your taste buds come back from what’s sure to be the closest thing to heaven, you can apologize for doubting me.”
I smiled. “You’re on.”
There was a pause on the line, and then Jess spoke in a quiet, concerned voice. “I’m sorry your birthday ended up being a total flop. I wish I could have celebrated it with you.”
I relaxed my head on my pillow and curled up on my side, missing Jess so much it hurt. At least with him around my life had been bearable. “It’s okay.”
The line was quiet again for a while as I thought about how our relationship might have been if I hadn’t messed things up last year. Too bad I couldn’t go back in time and fix things.
“Jess?” I asked, not sure he was still there.
“Yeah?”
There was a thickness in my throat now. “I miss you.” I wiped at a tear trying to escape out of the corner of my eye.
“Me too, Eliana.” I heard an almost imperceptible sigh through the earpiece. “I think I miss you more every day.”
After hanging up with Jess, I ended up pulling out the scrapbook I had put together a couple years ago, hoping to get my mind off the present. Inside the thick binder was photo after photo of once-happy memories. There was the photo of my dad reading my favorite book to me on the leather couch in his office when I was four. A couple pages later sat a picture of my fifth birthday. Mom had done my hair in French braids the night before so it could be wavy for the party. In the picture, I was smiling from ear to ear, with Ashlyn on one side, Jess on the other, as we anxiously waited for my mom to cut the pink castle cake she’d had a friend bake. I choked back a wave of emotion, remembering how good things were when my mom wasn’t drinking and my dad was around.
I kept turning pages until I came across a page from when I was ten. Beneath a picture of my dad and me fishing from a boat at Martha’s Vineyard was a crumpled piece of paper with the first note Dad had written me. When my mom’s drinking started the first time, he had made sure to always show me how much he loved me, going the extra mile to do nice things. When I was ten, he came up with the idea for us to write notes as a way to tell each other things we couldn’t always say out loud. This particular message read: I love you forever, Baby Girl.
I ran my fingers over the paper, trying to ignore the pain the memory evoked in my chest. I couldn’t help but remember what my return message had been: I love you forever, Dad. I hadn’t been creative enough to come up with a different message of my own.
When my mom went to rehab a few months later, we told everyone she was visiting a sick aunt. It was then that I used these notes to tell my dad how alone I felt. And how sad I was that Mom was sick. He’d always written back with words of comfort, which helped me get through that difficult time.
We stopped exchanging notes a couple of years ago. Maybe I should have recognized that as the first sign that he was pulling away.
Feeling nostalgic, I pulled out a notebook and wrote the few sentences I would send if I knew how to reach him today.
I miss you.
Why did you leave us?
I still love you.
Chapter Thirteen
I was sneaking into the house after work Thursday night, when I overheard my mom talking to my uncle.
“You were smart to never tie yourself down like I did,” came her tired voice from the living room. “If I hadn’t gotten knocked up with a kid when I was twenty-three, I wouldn’t be in this mess. I could have finished college and started my own company like I’d always dreamed of.”
She paused, probably taking another long sip from her wine glass.
“Instead I got stuck with a colicky baby and had to drop out so I could take care of her while Paulo got all the accolades and awards because his wings never got clipped.”
“You can’t mean that,” Uncle Peter said. “Eliana’s a good kid.”
My mom huffed. “Yeah well, a lot of good that did. Paulo still left us. He always spoiled her too much, and when he knew he couldn’t afford the college his baby girl wanted to go to, he embezzled a bunch of money and split.”
My dad embezzled all that money because of me? If I hadn’t talked so much about going to an expensive school like Cornell, would he still be here?
Was
everything my fault?
I snuck out of my hiding place on the other side of the wall and slipped up the stairs to my bedroom. I tried going to bed, but my mind wouldn’t shut down. Was my mom telling the truth, keeping it to herself all this time and only venting when she thought I wasn’t around? As much as I didn’t want to believe what she said was true, I couldn’t ignore all the whisperings inside that believed her. It was stupid for me to expect my parents to pay for college. Obviously they couldn’t afford Cornell.
But I hadn’t known we couldn’t afford it. Dad had always been happy to buy me the things I asked for; in fact, he’d encouraged me to look into what my dream school would be. He’d been the one to drive me around campus as we talked over the pros and cons of Cornell versus a more local university like ‘Cuse. He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t want me to go there.
Would he?
But the facts were hard to change. We never had enough money in the bank to even pay for a semester at Cornell. So instead of telling his baby girl “no” for the first time in his life, he’d committed a huge crime and disappeared.
It was all my fault.
Jess texted me the next day to tell me he’d made a last-minute decision to come home for the weekend and wanted to hang out. I wanted nothing more than to get out of the house, away from my mom and all the guilt her words had formed in my heart. So I slipped my phone into my pocket, tugged on my coat, and waited for Jess on the front porch. Thinking about the truth bomb Mom had dropped wouldn’t do me any good, and I needed a break from everything tonight. So as soon as Jess showed up, I shoved my thoughts into a separate file in my brain, only focusing on the fact that at least Jess still wanted to spend time with me. Hanging out with him had always been like magic for my soul.
“What made you decide to come home so suddenly?” I slid into his car, the smell of his Camaro immediately taking me back to a time and place when things were much simpler.
Jess pulled away from my house. “Kelsie and I had another fight, and I needed to get away for a while.”