by Alice Ward
I looked at Auggie. “What’s up with her?” Auggie shrugged, and I decided to let it go for now. This entire thing felt awkward and tense. It felt like Hawk and Liane were company, and we were trying to make a good impression. It didn’t sit well with me. Not in the least.
Hawk must have felt it too because he took a stab at it. “So, Mark, how many ditches did you dig?” he asked, referring to his driving.
Mark looked at Hawk. There was almost a defiance in his expression; certainly one of distrust. I wondered at this. “None,” he said bluntly and fell silent.
Liane tried. “I didn’t get my license until I was eighteen. Dad was afraid I’d pick up strangers and give them a ride.” She smiled, and I knew she was referring to her big heart. Mark simply stared at her, as though she was unintelligible with her accent.
This angered Hawk. I knew it immediately. “Mark, Liane is to be my wife, and I expect you to treat her with respect.”
I closed my eyes. I knew it was the wrong thing to say, but it was too late. Liane jumped in, trying to make it better. “Oh, he’s just a bit shy,” she covered.
“I’m not shy,” Mark stated in a clear voice. He looked directly at Hawk. “I just don’t happen to trust you, and I don’t care whether you’re my brother or not. From what I’ve heard, you’re a psycho murderer, and we’re better off without you. No one asked you to come back.”
“Mark!” Auggie shouted, coming out of her chair. “Hawk is your brother and a member of this family. You will apologize immediately and then go to your room!”
Mark looked at Auggie with surprise. “You said yourself you didn’t know him anymore. Who changes their name? What’s he hiding? Or have you conveniently forgotten why you sent him away?” Mark dropped these bombs and then turned and took the stairs two at a time.
The silence in the room was suffocating, and Hawk stood. “Liane, I think we need to leave.”
“Hawk, no,” Auggie objected, but Hawk was pulling Liane, and they were already halfway to the door.
“It’s alright, Mother. I knew I should have stayed away. He’s right. Trust is important, and he’s not feeling it. I get that.” He opened the front door and slammed it behind them.
I looked at Auggie and saw the tears running down her face. “Why didn’t you do something?” she asked me, choking on the sobs. My mouth was hanging open in helplessness. “You just sat there and let Mark treat him like that. You didn’t stick up for him.” Auggie walked past me, and I tried to grab her arm, but she pulled it flat against her side, out of reach. She left the room and the bedroom door slammed as she retreated. She didn’t come down to dinner, and I saw Letty leave the kitchen with a tray in her hands. She didn’t look at me. It seemed I was in the dog house all the way around.
“Dad?” Marga was standing in the hallway.
“Yes?” I answered, grateful that someone was speaking to me.
“Can I go out with some friends for an hour or so?” she asked quickly, darting looks out the window as though someone would be pulling up to the house soon.
“Who?”
“Oh, just Bobby Fleener. You know his father. We’re just going for a ride.”
Every bone in my body cried out that she shouldn’t go.
“Be home in an hour,” I said, retreating into old habits. It was just simpler.
“Yes!” she squealed and was immediately out the door before I could possibly change my mind. I had no idea who Bobby Fleener was.
I walked upstairs and tried to go into our room, but the door was locked. With a sigh, I went into the guest room and laid down. I didn’t wake up until the next morning.
Auggie was at the table in the kitchen, her robe askew, a worried look on her face. “Marga never came home. Do you know where she went?”
The hair raised on the back of my neck. “Not really, she asked to go out with friends for an hour. She must have come home and gone out again, and you just didn’t see her.”
“She’s not been home, Worth. Her bed hasn’t been slept in. Her toothbrush is dry. My calls go straight to voicemail when I call. Where is she? Who did she go with?”
I was groggy and raked my brain for a name. “Bobby somebody.”
Auggie looked at me in total disgust. “Bobby somebody? You let our sixteen-year-old wildcat daughter run the roads all night with someone named Bobby somebody? What the hell kind of a parent are you?” she spat and left the room.
Disgusted with the entire situation, I grabbed my jacket and left for the office. At least there I was still respected.
I was thoughtful on my drive. I wasn’t worried about Marga. She was independent and could take care of herself. If something happened, I would have gotten a call. I made a note to check into this Bobby Fleener — I’d finally remembered his fucking last name. She said I knew his father.
I shrugged it off as soon as I arrived at the office, immersing myself in spreadsheets and forgot about the entire sour day.
Auggie, however, did not. I got hit as soon as I came through the door.
“Let me ask you a question, just for the hell of it,” she began.
“Okay,” I shrugged, oblivious.
“Is Marga home?” she asked.
I shrugged again. “I guess so.”
“You guess so?”
“Well, I assume if she hadn’t shown up, you would have called me at the office.”
“So you parent your children by assumption?”
“Well, all parents do to a certain extent. They have to unless they want to walk them on a leash. What’s this all about, Auggie? Why are you up my ass?”
“It’s so typical of you to only think of yourself and what you want, Worth. You’ve always been that way. As long as what you wanted included me, I didn’t notice I was being steered. But when it doesn’t, it becomes quite obvious.” Auggie was angrier than I could ever remember seeing her. She wasn’t screaming, but her deadly calm voice was far more lethal.
“What does that have to do with Marga?” I asked her, trying to keep her on one course of logic. She was blowing this out of proportion.
Auggie’s mouth distorted with resentful doubt. “Plenty! Number one, Marga didn’t come in until after ten o’clock this morning. Number two, she stank of booze and was slurring her speech — not to mention her clothes looked like she’d slept in them. And number three, there is no such person as Bobby somebody or the father you claim to know! I called some of her friends and none of them know of a Bobby of any last name.”
I saw black. It was an absolutely encompassing rage that I’d not felt since my father had beaten me for not filling a watering bucket, even when it was obvious by the wet soil that it had been kicked over — most likely by him. I was not angry with Marga. Teens were notorious for deceit. I was insanely furious that I’d been caught in this humiliation and in Auggie’s verbal trap.
“Are you rejoicing, Auggie?” I shouted. “You’ve been waiting for your moment, and now you have it! You’ve caught me when I had so much on my mind that I missed one detail, and you were waiting like a cat to pounce! Well, how does it feel, Caren?” I hurled at her, calling her by her mother’s name — a comparison intended to inflame her further.
She was smarter than me, however. “Feel better, Worth?” she asked in that calm, level voice. “You’ve been saving that little comparison for a long time, haven’t you? Now, rather than accept that you exercised poor judgement in your perpetual motion of self-aggrandizement, you behave just like you always have. You try to deflect it by attacking. Only it won’t work with me, Worth. I’ve been waiting for it. Yes, you’re right about that. I knew it would come eventually, but it wasn’t my trap. It was your own.”
Auggie turned her back to me and went upstairs. She didn’t slam the bedroom door. That would have invited argument and been childish. It would have positioned the argument between herself and me. This wasn’t about us. It was about me and my shortcomings, or so she saw them. She was quietly, completely shutting me out of her life.
A
few minutes later, I quietly climbed the stairs and tapped on Marga’s door. When she didn’t answer, I opened it. She was on her bed, asleep, dressed in her clothes from the night before. Her arms and legs were splayed wide like she’d simply fallen face down and passed out. It felt all too familiar.
I closed her door, still angry and headed to the guest room where I slept the night before and sat on the edge of the bed. I needed a shower, a nap, and to think. Before I stood up, there was a knock at the door, and I assumed it would be Marga. “Come in,” I said sternly. It was Mark.
“Dad?”
I knew this was about to be another problem. “What is it?”
“Can I talk to you?” He could obviously tell I wasn’t in a great mood and surely had heard the shouting from downstairs.
“What is it, Mark?” I repeated impatiently.
He stepped through the doorway and nervously closed the door behind him. “Dad, I’m not sure how to say this, but I don’t like Hawk.”
I looked up, surprised at the turn of events. “You’ve made that abundantly clear. Where’s this coming from?”
“There’s something about him, Dad. He acts like he’s trying to bully me. Like he hates me, but he doesn’t even know me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve only known him a total of five seconds.”
“I’m not being ridiculous. It’s there. It’s a look in his eye. It’s like he thinks he is a hawk, just watching for the right moment to pounce.”
“Mark, it’s your imagination. Listen to yourself! You sound like a little girl. Be a man, son. He’s got problems — he always has. Just ignore it and leave me alone. I’m tired and need some space.”
Mark’s face fell and I felt momentary guilt at my callous words. But not enough to change them or say anything different. He was being ridiculous. The end.
He looked down as though he was thinking of something more to say, but changed his mind and nodded. He turned slowly, opened the door, and closed it as he left.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Auggie
I was living the curse.
The one all mothers wished on their errant daughters and went something like, “I hope when you grow up, your kids give you everything you’re giving me, twice over!”
I lived in constant terror every time the phone buzzed. Both of the twins had gotten their driver’s licenses. Worth and I had not resolved our argument the morning Marga came in late. He was brooding, and I was stubborn. To best me, he took the twins out and bought them each a brand new car of their choice.
Marga had, of course, chosen a snow white Mercedes convertible. Where we lived, most of the kids in high school had expensive automobiles in the school parking lot. It was symbolic to the affluence of the parent, not the child, and anyone who came from middle class homes looked impoverished by comparison.
Mark, the more reasonable of the two, chose a red pickup, and I knew he was a boy after my own heart. He was being practical, and I knew he would take over the farm for me when the time came. He never was one to care about status.
I sat Marga down for a conversation.
“We’re going to have a talk, young lady,” I began, and she was already rolling her eyes. That was the moment I realized the curse had come true. “Don’t look at me like that, Marga. I’ll take the car away.”
“You can’t. Dad put it in my name and paid the insurance for the next five years. Like it or not, Mom, you can’t do anything about it.”
“Don’t be so sure, young lady. Until you’re eighteen, I’m responsible for you, and if that means that you sit in the bedroom, and I feed you with a tray slid under the door, then that’s what I’ll do. Don’t push me on this, Marga. There isn’t anything you can think of that I haven’t already tried. Believe me.”
“Are you trying to impress me, Mom?”
I ignored her jibe. “Starting with that.”
She rolled her eyes again and threw herself down on the sofa with her shoes on to irritate me. I ignored that too. “You know, Marga, we can play this little game.”
“What game is that, Mom?”
“The one where you spend all your time trying to irritate me so I’ll give up and let you have your way. The only problem with that scheme is that you’ll soon discover you’re spending more time trying to aggravate me and getting punished than you are out with your friends having fun. It defeats the purpose. So, if you’re smart, and I think you are, you’ll hear me out on the rules, follow them, and we can live in peace in this household.”
She rolled her eyes again. “Okay, Mom, have it your way. What are the rules?”
“You ride in your car alone for the first year. No one rides with you who isn’t your parent or an adult who is in our employ. Second, you will never be gone for more than three hours without checking in with me here at the house first. Not your dad; we both know you have him twisted around your finger. Third, you don’t leave this county, and I have an app on your phone and mine to track you.”
“Jesus, why don’t you just put me in a nunnery?” she wailed dramatically.
“Those are the rules and if you keep it up, the list grows longer. It’s up to you, Marga. If you behave responsibly, the rules are removed. If you don’t — well, you get the gist, and I can be pretty creative when I want to.”
“Allllll right! Have it your way, Mom!” She leapt off the sofa and headed toward her room.
“Oh, and Marga?”
She spun around on the stairs and gave me that now what look.
“Just so you know. You might own the car, but I own the keys to the wheel boot.”
Her eyebrows arched in question, and I pointed out the window as I leafed through a magazine. She jogged to the door and opened it. “What’s that?” she shrieked, referring to the hideous orange wheel boot I’d attached to her front wheel.
“That, my dear girl, is why I get to be the mom for at least two more years.”
***
My phone buzzed, and I was surprised to see Brandon’s name on the caller ID. “Brandon! What a delight! How long has it been?”
Brandon was a former college friend, and he’d helped me with several projects that called for an attorney through the years. We hadn’t seen one another for a long time. He used to carry a torch for me.
“Auggie, my love. I’ve been thinking of you.”
“Sweet talker, you. Aren’t you married yet?”
“Came dreadfully close a couple of times, but none of them could hold a candle to you, dear one.”
I couldn’t stop the grin. “Brandon, why don’t we get together? I’d love to catch up.”
“I was hoping for just that sort of invite, as a matter of fact.”
“Oh, wonderful! Why don’t you come over tomorrow after work and we’ll cook out and have a nice chat? This Indian summer is the perfect weather.”
“See you then!”
Brandon showed up a bit earlier than I’d planned. I had an idea that he wanted to chat alone before Worth got home. There had always been some jealousy between the two of them. Although I’d always flirted with Brandon, my heart belonged to Worth. It had from the moment I met him, for better or for worse.
“So, what’s going on in your life?” he asked after sitting down with his drink in his hand. He’d kissed me on the cheek and hugged me just a bit longer than necessary when he first came in. He smelled of being freshly showered and shaved. It was nice to have a man take some time to be well-groomed for you alone. I was flattered.
“Well, other than the farm, there’s actually quite a bit.” I filled him in on Hawk and the twins having stepped into a world of quasi-adulthood by driving. “Marga is giving me fits.”
As if on cue, the door opened, and Marga stepped out. I heard Brandon’s indrawn breath. Marga nodded to him, and he stood immediately. “Marga, you’ve turned into a woman since I saw you last. You’re the spitting image of your mother at your age.”
“Not sure if that’s a compliment,” she practically snarle
d, eyeing me.
Brandon flushed a bit at the cockiness of her attitude, and he glanced at me. I shook my head. “Did you need something, Marga?”
“Yeah. Lily wants to talk to you.”
“Would you tell her I’m with a guest and ask her to come up to the house?”
“I guess,” Marga allowed with a dramatic sigh and left.
Brandon cleared his throat.
“See what I mean?” I put to him. “Was I ever like that?”
“You, my darling, were exactly like that!” he answered and knew instantly that it wasn’t going to find favor with me. “Don’t get me wrong, Auggie. You are every bit as beautiful as you were in college, but you had a wild streak in you. She’s got it too. I don’t envy you.”
“You need to settle down and have some children while you still have a chance, Brandon.”
“Need the right woman. I only knew one so far who would fill the bill and she’s been taken,” he said, winking at me.
“Auggie?” I heard Lily’s voice by the front door.
“I’m out here on the patio,” I called out and she materialized in the doorway of the opened slider. “C’mon out and join us. Make yourself a drink.”
As she came out, Brandon stood and offered her his chair. “No, it’s fine, I’ll sit over here,” she said as she chose a rocker, her drink balanced on its arm.
I introduced Brandon and Lily and was surprised to see Brandon literally turn in his chair toward her. I smiled to myself. It seemed the man was attracted.
“Lily is my farm manager, but also a good friend. She and I had a lot in common — the way we grew up.”
Brandon nodded. “Well, it just so happens that I like Auggie-style of women,” he said boldly, and Lily laughed, recognizing that she was being flirted with.
“Well, I don’t know. Shall I leave you two alone?” I joked, and Lily laughed even more. Actually, it was more like a girlish giggle. It was sweet to witness.
“I was coming up to talk to you about Lightning Sal. She’s doing really well, and I think she’s ready for the track. Thought you might want to let her owners know.”
I nodded and made a mental note. “Brandon, why don’t you tell Lily a bit about yourself and the kind of trouble we used to get into. I’m going inside to check with Letty about dinner.”