Just Like Other Daughters

by Colleen Faulkner

  He looks at his mother, but doesn’t answer. He’s as tired as Chloe is.

  “We’ll see you upstairs in a few minutes,” I say. Then Chloe and I weave our way through the guests, toward the staircase. “You want to say good night to anyone?”

  Chloe shakes her head.

  I give her a peck on the cheek. She’s done so well today. I know it’s been overwhelming for her: so many people, so much to do, just the idea of getting married. “You don’t have to.”

  Inside her bedroom door, I kick off my heels. It feels heavenly to walk in my stockinged feet. I lead Chloe to her bed and pat it. “Sit down.”

  She drops to the edge of her bed.

  I reach under the layers of tulle and pull off her white Keds sneakers that Margaret bedazzled for her.

  “Don’t throw them away!” Chloe hollers.

  “I’m not going to throw them away. You can wear them tomorrow when we go to brunch.” I peel off her white knee socks. “You can wear them every day if you want to.”

  “And my bride shirt. I want to wear my bride shirt. And my pants.” She flops back on the bed and I’m enveloped in white tulle and lace.

  I have no idea what we did with her sweatsuit. It was in a bag in the room we changed in at the church. I think Jin and Abby cleaned up the room. I’ll have to check with one of them. Abby is spending the night tonight with Jin. I’m not sure who’s happier about that, Jin or Huan, who came home for the weekend for Chloe’s wedding.

  “You can wear your bride shirt, too,” I assure her. I grab her hands. “Now stand up. Let me take off your necklace.” She’s wearing the pearls my parents gave me for high school graduation. I wore them for my wedding, which took place at the courthouse between Randall’s Greek and Roman Epics class and a staff meeting.

  Chloe groans.

  “Come on. You said the dress itches. You have to stand up for me to unbutton you.”

  She wiggles on the bed. “It’s itchy.”

  I tug at her hands. “Stand up.”

  She slowly stands.

  “Turn around.”

  Slowly she turns.

  I slip the necklace off and lay it on the nightstand. She can keep the pearl stud earrings in her ears for tonight; they were too hard to get in. Then I start with the buttons at the top of Chloe’s gown and work my way down. It takes me forever, especially with her wiggling.

  “Almost done,” I say, at least three times. Finally, she’s unbuttoned. I realize there’s no graceful way to get her out of the dress, so I spin her around so she’s facing me again, grab it somewhere around the waist, and pull.

  “Owww! You’re hurting me.”

  “You’re going to have to help me here.”

  “Owww!It’sitchy. It hurts.”

  Finally, I get the thing off, and Chloe falls back onto the bed. She can be dramatic at times.

  Not sure what to do with the dress now, I look around her room. She doesn’t really have a chair or anything like that. She likes the room neat and empty. I end up tossing it over her wicker laundry basket. It will have to be dry-cleaned anyway.

  “Take your slip off.”

  Chloe groans, but does it.

  I get her new nightgown out of her dresser. It’s white with tiny blue flowers. No kittens. “Go pee, brush your teeth, take your bra and underwear off, and put this on.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Thomas will be up in a minute and he’ll need to use the bathroom. Now go on. Then I’ll tuck you in.”

  Chloe takes the nightgown and staggers toward her bathroom.

  I’m pretty sure my daughter and her husband had plans of playing under the sheets tonight, but from the look on her face, I doubt there’ll be much of that going on. I pick her slip up off the floor. But she wouldn’t be the first bride not to consummate her marriage on her wedding night. There’ll be plenty of time for that.

  I hear the toilet flush. Chloe is running water in the sink when there’s a knock at the door.

  I’m smiling when I open it. “Thomas.”

  He’s not smiling. He’s pouting. Margaret and Danny are standing behind him.

  “Tommy’s worn out,” Margaret explains. She sounds tired, too.

  “Chloe, too. It’s been a long day.” I open the door farther for them. Kicking my shoes out of their way.

  “I thought maybe Tom should come home with us,” Danny suggests quietly from behind his son. “It’s been a long day.”

  “Nonsense. Tommy’s married now! He belongs with his wife!”

  I’m trying to decide how to respond when the bathroom door swings open. “No! No! No!” Chloe shouts from the doorway. Then she hurls something at us.

  We all duck or sway. The object hits the blue wall near the door, barely missing my head. It bounces to the floor. It’s a Thomas the Tank Engine toothbrush.

  Things pretty much go downhill from there.

  20

  “Not my toothbrush!” Chloe screams from the bathroom door. She’s wearing the cute little nightgown I bought her.

  I’m surprised by the realization that I’ve come to know Thomas’s family well enough to not even be embarrassed. “Honey—”

  “He can’t come in here!” She disappears for a second. Before I reach the bathroom, a tube of toothpaste is ejected through the doorway, followed by a roll-on deodorant and a large pair of toenail clippers.

  “S . . . stop!” Thomas yells from the hall doorway. He grabs his toothbrush, then goes after the deodorant, which has skittered across the floor in the direction of the closet. “K . . . Koey!”

  “Chloe,” I say sharply.

  “No!” she screams. She throws the toiletries bag out next. “Not my bathroom! My bathroom.”

  I glance toward Margaret and Danny and indicate they should step inside and close the door. There are still guests downstairs.

  “Chloe, listen to me,” I say, turning back to her. I hear the door close behind me. “Thomas is allowed to put things in your bathroom. It’s his bathroom, too, now. Remember? We talked about this. You and Thomas share a bedroom and a bathroom.”

  “Get out!” my sweet daughter in her nightgown shrieks. Spit flies from her mouth, she’s so upset.

  “Oh dear. Oh dear,” Margaret is muttering.

  “No, K . . . Koey! M . . . my t . . . toofpaste!”

  “Maybe we should just take Thomas home. For tonight,” Danny says quietly.

  Chloe plants her hands on her hips. “Go home! Go home!”

  I reach out to her, but she slaps my hands away. “No engine toothbrush! No toothpaste! My toothpaste! My sink!”

  “Chloe!” I snap, looking her right in the eyes.

  She bursts into a flood of tears. “No, no, no!”

  She runs for her bed, to fling herself on it, I assume. Nope. She grabs Thomas’s pillow and throws it at him. And hits him.

  Thomas goes down with a cry. It couldn’t possibly have hurt him. It’s a pillow stuffed with little pieces of foam.

  “Tommy!” Margaret runs for him.

  “Chloe Mae Richards-Monroe,” I say. “That’s enough. Your behavior is inappropriate.”

  When I say inappropriate, that sets off another wave of tears, these born more of hurt than anger. We’ve been working on inappropriate for a long time. She knows “inappropriate” is bad. She doesn’t want to disappoint me.

  Margaret hovers over her son. “Tommy, are you all right?”

  Danny walks over to his son. “He’s all right.”

  Chloe is crying so hard that she’s shaking. I pull her into my arms. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” I soothe, stroking her hair, which has fallen from the beautiful curls my stylist created.

  “My bathroom. My bathroom,” she keeps saying.

  “Get up,” Danny tells his son. “Get off the floor.”

  Thomas gets on all fours and crawls toward the open closet door. He hunches behind it.

  “Oh my goodness,” Margaret mutters.

  “Chloe.” I press my hand to
her face and make her look me in the eyes. “Thomas is supposed to sleep here tonight. Do you want him to sleep here, or do you want him to go home?”

  “G . . . go h . . . home,” Thomas blubbers from behind the closet door.

  Danny’s gaze meets mine. “We’ll take him home. Bring him back tomorrow.”

  So my daughter’s wedding ends in a bit of disaster, but I’m not disheartened. I’m committed. Chloe is wearing a thin white-gold wedding band to prove my commitment. And I’m not used to failure. So I let my son-in-law go home to his mom and dad’s house and tell him to come back tomorrow.

  I don’t want him. I don’t want him in my bathroom! I’m crying. I don’t like crying. I’m not a baby head!

  Mom says don’t cry. She says Thomas can come back tomorrow. I told her good. But now I’m by myself in my room with my kitty.

  I thought Thomas was going to sleep in my bed tonight. ’Cause we’re married. He said if we were married his mom said he could touch my boobies.

  I like when he touches my boobies. I don’t like when he puts his toothbrush on my sink. His toothbrush is dirty. It will make my sink dirty.

  Dummy Thomas Train toothbrush. Dummy head toothbrush!

  I push my face in my pillow. I don’t want to cry. But I’m sad. I’m sad and I don’t know why I’m sad.

  I liked my wedding when me and Thomas got married. He was cute. I was pretty. Like a princess. He whispered and told me when we were up there in the church that I was his baby. He said he was my honey.

  I close my eyes because Mom told me to. She said not to worry. She said “go to sleep.”

  I decide I will go to sleep and Thomas can play with my boobies tomorrow. And we can watch Beauty and the Beast. But he can’t put his toothbrush on my sink.

  Tomorrow turns out to be a better day. Margaret and I agree to let the kids sleep in and we move brunch to eleven thirty, instead of ten. We all act as if nothing happened the night before and Chloe and Thomas are the happy couple at Friendly’s. They hold hands and kiss often enough that Margaret and I both have to remind them about not kissing in public.

  Thomas says good-bye to his parents after brunch, and he and Chloe ride home with me in the backseat of my car. By the time we get to the house, the caterers have been back, and like fairies, have cleaned up the mess and disappeared. My house looks as if the wedding never took place, except for the bridal bouquet in a vase in the middle of the coffee table in the living room, and the stack of bills in the kitchen drawer.

  Once home, I do what every parent does when they’re too tired to entertain their children. I turn on the TV and let them watch Disney movies all afternoon. We make dinner together: tacos, French fries, and mozzarella sticks, with leftover mini cheesecakes for dessert. Their menu choices. After dinner and cleanup, they go back into the living room to watch Animal Planet.

  The phone rings while I’m pouring the last of a bottle of chardonnay into a wineglass. The caterers left a dozen opened wine bottles on the counter with their corks just stuck back in the neck. I feel obligated to drink some; it’ll just go bad, won’t it?

  It’s Margaret on the phone.

  “Hi.” I drop the empty wine bottle into the recycling bin.

  “Hi! How are they?” she asks cheerily.

  “Everything seems fine.” I sit down on the bar stool. “No problems. Not even a hiccup. They’ve had dinner, and now they’re watching something on TV on the secret life of cats. Puppy Party is coming on next.”

  “I knew they’d be fine. It was a long day yesterday.”

  “I appreciate your understanding.” I sip my wine. “You know how Chloe can be. She really does love Thomas. I just think she was tired and . . .” I trail into silence. What else can I say? My daughter had a temper tantrum on her wedding night and sent her bridegroom packing.

  “Well, I just wanted to check on Tommy!”

  “Would you like to speak with him?” I hear the rumble of Danny’s voice.

  “Not tonight,” Margaret says. “We’ll talk in the morning!”

  “Sounds good.”

  I’m checking out another open bottle of wine when I hear the front door open. I hear Jin’s voice, then Chloe’s, then footsteps.

  “Aha,” Jin says, coming into the kitchen. “Hitting the sauce.”

  I carry two corked bottles to the counter where I was sitting. “Get your own glass,” I tell her.

  “Or . . .” She grabs another bottle off the counter, pops the cork, and takes a swig out of it. “Mmm. California merlot. Nice.”

  I laugh and sit back down on my bar stool. I’m too tired to stand. “Abby gone?”

  “Yup.” Jin drops down on the bar stool beside me. “Some kind of legal brief due in the morning.”

  “And Huan made it safely back to school?”

  “Yup.”

  I pour myself another third of a glass of wine, finishing off another bottle. It’s another chardonnay. I look at her. “You good?”

  Jin draws up one knee. She’s smiling dreamily. “I’m good.”

  “Should I keep my mother-of-the-bride dress in the front of the closet?”

  Another smile. “We’re not there yet . . .”

  “But?” I do the Jin brow thing.

  “We’ll see.”

  I nod. It’s a good answer. I take another sip. “So, what’s the fallout on my daughter’s temper tantrum last night?”

  Jin shrugs. “Not really any. The people who were still here that late know Chloe. We love her. The wedding was beautiful, she was beautiful. It was a beautiful day. What’s a little temper tantrum? We’ve all had them, or wish we had the guts to.”

  I nod.

  “And Thomas’s family?”

  My turn to shrug. “They understand, of course. And things seem to be fine.” I cock my head questioningly in the direction of the living room.

  “Looked fine to me. They were all over each other when I came in.” Jin flashes me a grin and I smile back at her, thankful she’s here.

  We finish off four partial bottles of wine and talk about stuff. I probably don’t get more than a glass and a half, but eventually I start to feel sleepy. I check the clock. It’s only nine-forty, but I don’t want to let it get too late before I send Chloe and Thomas to bed. I don’t want a repeat of the night before, and I know they both still have to be tired.

  “You want to stick around?” I ask, taking my glass to the sink to rinse it out.

  “You need me to?”

  I think about it. “Nah. Little pink pill is missing from today’s box. We’re all good.”

  We walk out into the living room together. Jin tells Thomas and Chloe good night. It doesn’t take much for me to get them to turn off the TV. To soften the transition, I have Thomas use the downstairs bathroom and put his pajamas on there. Chloe gets ready in her own bathroom. I escort Thomas to the bedroom door, in his red plaid wedding pajamas.

  “Kitty in or kitty out?” I ask Chloe. It’s a nightly question. Chloe likes her bedroom door closed. If she takes her cat to bed with her, it cries to get out in the middle of the night, waking my princess and annoying her. If the cat gets locked out, it wakes me up crying to get in.

  Chloe’s already in bed, in her nightgown, and she’s all giggly. “Kitty out.” She looks at Thomas. He’s giggling, too. “Husband in!”

  She really is funny, that girl of mine. “Good night,” I call. I give Thomas a gentle nudge and close the door behind him.

  I don’t know what happened that night behind my daughter’s bedroom door. I closed my door and put my earplugs in my ears.

  But I can guess.

  Christmas comes and Christmas goes. The first weeks of Chloe and Thomas’s marriage are bumpy, but isn’t any marriage that way? We’re so busy with all the Yuletide hullabaloo, it’s got to be hard to get into a routine, doesn’t it?

  Standing at Chloe’s window now, my fingertips on the cold glass, I realize I was making excuses last winter. For Chloe and Thomas. For myself. I let myself liv
e in Margaret’s cheerful little world because it was comfortable there. Standing here now, I can see that the writing was on the wall. But just because I have a doctorate in comparative literature doesn’t mean I always read the text correctly.

  And, by then, I so wanted it to work out. We all did.

  Thomas was happy to stay the first couple of nights. I knew very well it was because of the sex. I was diligent about checking on the birth control pills. I talked to Chloe and Thomas about the importance of them. I even showed him where they were in the little box on Chloe’s sink, hoping that between the two of them, they could be sure she took one each day. Still, I breathed a sigh of relief when she had her period in January. It was awkward, explaining the whole thing to Thomas. I was annoyed that Margaret hadn’t, but I felt as if I was now his parent, too, so I just sucked it up.

  January was cold. Bitterly cold, with freezing winds and more snowfall than usual on the Chesapeake Bay. Mix freezing winds with a Victorian house and what do you get? Frozen water pipes. Broken water pipes.

  Mark and I were already friends. We became better friends.

  “I used some heat tape near the water pump. If it drops to a certain temperature under the house, the tape warms the pipes right up.” He snaps his fingers. Which are red and look cold. We’re standing at the back door.

  “Come in.” I wave him into the mudroom. I’m wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and my dirty hair is piled on top of my head because I had no water this morning to shower. Luckily, it’s Sunday, so there’s no school.

  “I should let you get on with your day.”

  “Mark.” I hold out my hand to take his coat.

  He obediently hands it to me and leans down to unlace his boots. “Chloe and Thomas here?”

  “Margaret is having them over for lunch after church.” I hang his coat on a hook on the wall. “She’ll bring them home sometime this afternoon. Whenever Chloe gets antsy. She used to like staying there, but now she’s got it in her head that they have to be here all the time.” I head into the kitchen and he follows. “I’ve got coffee. And quiche. Want some quiche?”