by Tara Sivec
“She’s been like that since she showed up here last week, crying and wearing nothing but a sweatshirt, and hasn’t moved from the couch except to shuffle to the bathroom,” my mom informs her, talking about me like I’m not even here.
Which I’m not. Mentally, at least.
“She wasn’t wearing any pants?” Aunt Margie asks in shock, because of course that’s what she focuses on.
Not the fact that I showed up here crying. Not the fact that I’ve been here for an entire week. Not the fact that I’m lying like a slug on the couch that has become my home for seven days, with greasy, frizzy, unwashed hair, because showering is pointless, still in the same sweatshirt, because even though I’ve been hurt by the man whom it belongs to, and who shall remain nameless, his sweatshirt still smells like him, and I can’t deny how good he smells, even if he broke my heart.
I pull the neck of it up to my nose and take a big whiff, dry heaving a little and immediately pulling it back down. Well, it did smell good. Now it smells a little bit like cheese. At least I’m wearing pants now. A pair of my dad’s sweatpants that are two sizes too big for me, but whatever.
“In this U.S. city, filled with stars and palm trees, it is illegal to lick a toad,” Alex Trebek questions on my parents’ television.
“What is Miami?” my dad shouts from his recliner in the corner of the room.
“It’s L.A., Dad,” I mumble from the couch sadly, feeling a sharp pain in my chest.
“What is Los Angeles?” contestant number two asks when he presses his button, the answer confirmed by good old Mr. Trebek, which makes my dad grumble in annoyance.
I only know that stupid, useless fact, because the man who shall remain nameless spent an evening googling random, stupid facts about the city he grew up in and reading them out loud to me, while I scrolled through the channels on his television, trying to find something for us to watch.
All of a sudden, my mom marches across the room, snatches the remote out of my dad’s hand, aims it at the TV, and turns it off.
“Hey! I was watching that!” my dad complains.
“We’re gonna miss the first Daily Double, Mom,” I add, my voice a little muffled since I pulled the blanket up over half my face, with just my eyes peeking out.
“No more Jeopardy, no more Wheel of Fortune, and no more lying around on the couch smelling like last week’s cheesy bacon hotdish, feeling sorry for yourself.”
“Why do I have to suffer just because she doesn’t feel like showering?” my dad complains, crossing his arms with a huff.
“Henry, go out in the garage and fix something,” Mom says with a roll of her eyes.
With some more grumbling, Dad pushes himself up from the recliner and stomps out of the living room. When he’s gone, my mom walks over and sits on the edge of the coffee table right in front of me. Aunt Margie lifts up my blanket-covered feet from the end of the couch, scooching under them and flopping down, placing my feet in her lap.
“Talk to us, sweetie. I know something happened between you and Brent. Just tell me what it is and I’ll fix it,” Mom says softly.
“Don’t say his name. His name is dumb and I never want to hear it again.”
“Fine. Tell me what happened with your neighbor,” she amends. “I can’t fix it if you don’t tell me what the problem is.”
I let out a huge sigh, knowing she won’t stop pestering me until I tell her everything. I should be thankful she hasn’t bugged me before now. As soon as I walked into the house last week with red and puffy eyes, she made up a bed for me on the couch, kissed me on the cheek, and never once asked what was wrong. She knew I needed time, and she gave it to me. But now my time is up.
I push myself up into a sitting position on the couch, letting the blanket fall from my shoulders as I pull my legs off Aunt Margie’s lap and hug them to my chest. I spend the next few minutes telling them everything.
After a week of crying non-stop, I thought my tears were dried up, but I was wrong. They come pouring out of me again when I recount everything that man said to me in his bedroom, how he listened to my podcasts without telling me, and how our entire relationship was one big lie. I leave out the part about how I had to turn my cell phone off because he wouldn’t stop calling and texting me, telling me he was sorry over and over, asking me if I was okay, and begging me to tell him where I was just so he could make sure I was safe. I don’t need them to know each and every one of those texts and voicemails almost made me waiver and go running back to him. They don’t need to know how weak he makes me, even though I’m sure they can obviously see it right now.
“So he basically only went out with me because he felt sorry for me, and now I don’t ever want to see him again. I think I’ll probably have Dad go pack up my house, and I’ll just live here forever and never trust anyone ever again, because all men are liars,” I finish dramatically, swiping the tears off my cheeks with the back of my hand.
Mom and Aunt Margie are quiet for several minutes, and I almost start to worry about what they could possibly be planning to do to get revenge on the guy who shall not be named. I mean, this is Minnesota, and the meanest thing they would ever do is not apologize for bumping into his shoulder if they ran into him in public, but still. They would be thinking a lot of bad things about him, so there’s that. It makes me feel better than I have in seven days imagining all the bad things they’re thinking about him right now.
“So what you’re saying is, he listened to all your recordings?” Aunt Margie finally asks.
“Yes, my podcasts,” I confirm with a sharp nod.
“The podcasts that are all on your website thingy?” Mom questions.
I nod again, almost feeling like I could smile if I put some real effort into it that my family gets me and totally understands where I’m coming from.
“The podcasts that are, you know, available to the public, for anyone to listen to, that you don’t have a fancy password or lock or something protecting? How dare he listen to something thousands of other people have listened to,” Aunt Margie states.
My eyes narrow as I glare at her.
“I thought you were on my side?”
Aunt Margie shrugs. “I am. But I also think you’re being a tad overly dramatic.”
I turn to look at my mom, hoping she isn’t going to be a traitor as well.
“I love you, Heidi, but I have to agree with my sister. Did you even hear anything Brent said to you? He’s proud of you. He loves you. And he didn’t listen to those things to hurt you. It sounds like he listened to them to better understand you, because you were still trying to find your voice and didn’t know how to tell him those things at the time,” she explains softly. “While I agree you have a right to be a little mad and a little hurt that he didn’t tell you he listened to them, you also never told him you were recording all those things, talking about him, for everyone to listen to. In the last few weeks, I’ve been stopped by I don’t know how many people telling me they listened to your recordings. Oh, sure, you never mentioned him by name, but anyone in this town who listened to them and knows you knows who your neighbor is.”
For the first time since we broke up, I start to feel a little guilty at what she’s saying. I too have been stopped at random places like the grocery store by someone who wants to tell me they listened to my podcast, and that even though my language was a little too colorful, they still enjoyed what I had to say and loved listening to my transformation from shy, quiet, weird girl to strong, confident, sexy woman, who is still a little weird but owns it now instead of trying to change myself.
It’s not like I knew my podcast would blow up and thousands of people would be listening to it week after week. But once it did, I never stopped talking about him. I never thought about his privacy or how it might make him feel that people he might know would be listening to it. People in a town where he’s still considered the new guy, where not everyone has gotten to know him like I have and don’t really know what kind of person he is. S
ure, I said a lot of great things about him, but I also complained about him not making a move on me. I made him sound like a giant… pussy who didn’t know how to please a woman.
Oh, God! I made him sound like a giant pussy, and he didn’t even get mad at me about that!
He never once got mad, or accused me of making him look bad, or told me to delete the podcasts. He told me he was proud of me. He told me I amazed him. He told me he didn’t admit he listened to them, because he didn’t want to ruin what I was trying to do for myself. He let me take charge, because I needed to do it for myself, and he knew that. If he had asked me out like he wanted to when he first met me, if he would have led our entire relationship from the start, it never would have helped me. I would have just let him make all the decisions and make all the moves without even giving it a second thought, because it would have just been easier and it’s what I’ve always done. And nothing would have changed. I wouldn’t have realized I do have a voice, and I do have confidence, and I can be sexy and courageous. I never would have fallen in love with him, because he would have been like every other guy I dated—someone who didn’t understand me at all.
“Did your mom ever tell you the story about Grandma Larson and how she met your grandfather?” Aunt Margie asks.
I shake my head back and forth and sniffle loudly.
“Oh, I just love this story, ever since Peggy first told it to me years and years ago,” Aunt Margie says. “Well, your grandmother threw herself a twentieth birthday party and invited a few friends over to your great-grandparents’ house,” Aunt Margie starts. “She’d gone on a few dates with your grandfather, but she wanted to play a little hard to get, so she ignored him for a few weeks after their previous date and was waiting for him to come to her. But she still made sure he knew he was invited to the party by telling her friends, who told his friends. Well, your grandfather showed up to your great-grandparents’ house with none other than Dirty Neck Bertha.”
My mom laughs and shakes her head.
“Oh jeez, I forgot all about Dirty Neck Bertha!”
“Do I even want to know about this Dirty Neck Bertha person?” I ask.
“She was the town floozy,” Mom says, taking over the story from my aunt. “She got her name, because she liked to do a lot of necking in the back of cars with a lot of boys she wasn’t going steady with. Anyway, your grandmother flipped her lid when Dirty Neck Bertha walked into her party on the arm of the man she really liked, but didn’t want to let on how much she really liked, and also never told the man in question how much she liked him, even though he’d made his feelings known on their first date. Well, one thing led to another. There was a lot of shouting, a punch bowl got knocked over, your grandmother told your grandfather he had a lot of nerve dating someone else when she was pretty much in love with him, and your grandfather was in complete shock, because he just assumed she wanted nothing to do with him, what with the whole ignoring him for weeks thing and never saying one word when he basically told her from the get-go how much he liked her. Anyhoo, Dirty Neck Bertha went home with Dirty Hands Dan—who got his name because he worked as a mechanic in town, not because he did dirty things with his hands, mind you—and your grandmother and grandfather were married three months later.”
Mom lets out a breath when she finishes the story, and I just sit here staring at her.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?” Aunt Margie finally asks.
“What exactly am I supposed to say to that?”
“Oh I don’t know. A thank you would be nice, considering we just helped you with all your problems,” my mom says.
“How in the hell does that help me?” I shout.
“Language!” my dad yells from the kitchen.
“Go back out to the garage, Henry! This doesn’t concern you!” Aunt Margie shouts back.
We hear his footsteps stomping across the kitchen floor and then the slam of the back door.
“Your grandfather might have married Dirty Neck Bertha, all because your grandmother didn’t talk to him. Never told him how she felt. Was never honest with him. Never listened to him when he told her how much he liked her and enjoyed her company when they went on their dates,” Aunt Margie explains. “You might not even be here right now because of that. Or you would be, but you would have grown up calling your grandmother Dirty Neck Grandma, instead of Grandma Larson.”
“That would have been really unfortunate, especially on Grandparent’s Day, when grandparents get to go to school and have lunch with their grandkids and are presented those adorable little cards their grandkids make for them,” Mom says. “Do you remember the one year you made Grandma Larson a card that read, ‘Grandma Larson is the best grandma in the whole wide world!’? Imagine the phone call I would have received from the principal if you wrote, ‘Dirty Neck Grandma is kind of okay, but also a floozy.’”
My head drops down to my knees that I’m still hugging to my chest, and I wonder what it’s like for daughters who have normal families. But I do get what they’re saying now, sort of.
I should have listened to Brent that day in his bedroom. I should have heard all the things he was telling me, instead of shutting him out and assuming the worst about him.
Feeling my mom’s hand on my arm, I lift my head to look at her.
“I’m sorry, Heidi. I think this might all be my fault.”
“How in the world is any of this your fault? I’m the one who screwed all this up.”
“Have I ever told you just how easy of a child you were growing up?” she asks. “I’m sure I have. I used to brag to anyone who would listen. My friends would go on and on about how trying it was to have a teenager, when their kids would get moody and defy them and be all mouthy and argumentative or completely shut down. And I’d think to myself, Heidi’s not like that. Heidi’s so sweet, and shy, and agreeable, and just so easy. And I let you continue growing up like that, never realizing I might be doing you more harm than good. I shielded you from the bad and uncomfortable stuff. I fixed all of your problems before they could even turn into problems, just so you never had to feel an ounce of pain. I never spoke to you about important things like boys, or sex, or relationships, and I never taught you how to be strong, and confident, and brave, because I just figured, I’m your mom. No one will ever hurt you as long as I’m around, and even if they do, it will be fine, because I’ll fix it and make it all better. The first thing I did when I started this conversation with you after I turned off Jeopardy was ask you to tell me what was wrong, and then told you I’ll fix it. By not giving you a chance to get hurt, by not letting you figure out how to fix things on your own, I never gave you a chance to find your voice. I never let you see you could be strong, and confident, and brave. I think I did you a big disservice, Heidi.”
She pauses for a minute to clear her throat, and I have to swallow back even more tears at seeing my mom so emotional and guilty for the first time in my life.
“Yes, you’ve found your voice, and you’ve grown into the strongest woman I’ve ever known, and aside from all the dirty talk on your podcast things, I couldn’t be prouder of you. But, you did all of this recently, when you should have been doing it all along. I should have been teaching you how to do it all this time, instead of being so thankful that you were so easy,” she tells me sadly. “Life isn’t easy. It’s hard. And things will hurt you. And people will disappoint you and make you cry. And when the first boy comes along who truly understands you and loves everything about you, and you think he’s broken your heart, you haven’t had enough practice yet to be strong and not let it crush you. You haven’t been living in this thick skin of yours long enough to stay and fight for what you want, instead of running away. And I’m so sorry for that, Heidi. I’m so sorry I never taught you how to stay and fight.”
Before I can let out a pitiful wailing cry at everything my mom just said to me, Aunt Margie does it for me.
“Uff da, Peggy, why’d you have to go and say all those things?” she cries lo
udly, sniffling and wiping away her tears. “Harold and I are going to bingo tonight at the American Legion, and now I’m gonna have to redo my makeup.”
Letting my feet drop to the ground, I lean forward and quickly wrap my arms around my mom’s shoulders, squeezing her as tightly as I can.
“It’s okay, Mom,” I whisper as she wraps her arms around my waist and starts rocking us gently from side to side. “You have nothing to be sorry for. You’re the best mom in the world, and you gave me the absolute best childhood. Maybe we never talked about sex or relationships, and maybe you never taught me how to throw a punch if someone is mean to me, but I’m a good person because of you. I’m kind, and I’m polite, and I’m understanding, and I’m loyal, because you taught me to be all those things. And those are pretty good things if you ask me.”
She raised me the only way she knew how. She raised me the same way her mother raised her, and there’s nothing wrong with that. She’s crying even harder now, and I don’t like it one bit. I love that she opened up to me, but I never, ever want to see my mom this upset or feel so horrible about something like this, so I do my best to put an end to it.
“I’m sorry I never screamed at you when I was a teenager, or slammed my door, or ignored you for days at a time. If it will help, I will get up from this couch right now, storm down the hall, and slam my old bedroom door twice. I can even dramatically shout, ‘Oh my God, you’re ruining my life!’ if it will make you feel better.”
My mom’s body shakes with laughter until I’m laughing right along with her and we’re both crying, laughing messes.
Aunt Margie scoots closer to me on the couch, and in between her sniffles and loud weeping, she wraps her arms around both of us.
“Oh this is just such a beautiful, beautiful moment. I love your cousins Harold, Jr., Robby, and Benjamin, but we never have beautiful moments like these,” Aunt Margie complains, hugging me and my mom so hard at this point that my face is smushed into the side of my mom’s, and I couldn’t speak now if I tried. “As soon as I get home, I’m going to call the boys and we’re going to talk. We’re going to talk about women, and we’re going to talk about sex, and it’s going to be beautiful!”