by Teresa Hill
It seems like only seconds later we’re parked at the curb at my school. I get out, put my backpack on the ground and open her door. I hold out my hand to her and say, “Come here for a second.”
She lets me tug her out of the car and to her feet. Then she stands in front of me, leaning against the side of the car with her arms crossed in front of her, like she’s ready to give me hell.
I take a breath, and it’s hard to say anything. It feels like this moment has arrived way too fast, that one minute I’m just thinking about her taking off to California, and here she is, actually going. I have so many things I want to say to her. I just don’t have enough time.
“What?” she asks, when I can’t figure out where to start.
“Just ... Guys can be dicks, okay?”
Her whole face changes, from mad to hurt in seconds. She whispers, “So, when you kissed me--”
“No. I’m not talking about that.”
“Are we ever going to talk about it?”
I wince, and she looks even more hurt. Dammit. “I shouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry. You were just ... so upset, and right there, and guys ... Dana, when a guy gets a chance to kiss a pretty girl, he’s probably going to take it.”
“Really? I was just ... there, and you thought ... why not? Because you’re a guy?”
“Yeah, like I said, I’m sorry. It was just a kiss.” I hope I make it sound like that, like nothing. I shrug and make myself ignore the frozen expression on her face. “It was a few seconds, you know? Not even a minute, Dana. Can we just forget it? Let it go? Please?”
“Sure. Because guys are jerks? No, dicks, right?”
“Some of us. College guys ... Especially college guys.”
She glares at me. “And you would know this how?”
“Guys talk, Dana. They talk about what they do with girls. What they get girls to do. And even if half of what they say is bullshit ... It’s bad, okay? There are some bad guys out there who get a few drinks in them and think they’re irresistible. They assume things. They take. They don’t ask. They don’t always listen when a girl says no.”
“You think I don’t know all of this?”
“I want to make damned sure you do.”
She gives a little huff. “Fine. I do. Anything else?”
Shit. I need her to listen, to take this seriously, and all I’m doing is making her mad. Still, there are things I have to say. They’re too important not to. She is too important for me not to say them.
“Just ... Be careful. Promise me. Don’t drink anything you don’t pour yourself. Don’t take your eyes off your drink for a second. And if you go to some kind of party, go with another girl, and the two of you promise to look out for each other there. If you disappear for some reason, without saying anything to her, she needs to come find you.”
“Peter, do you really think I’m that naive? That I don’t know all these things already? Or do you think I’ll go to California and morph into some stupid, reckless party girl?”
“No.” I feel all the breath leave my body, and it seems hard to find any more to draw in. I’m messing this all up. “Just ... If you get in trouble or you need help, call me--”
“And you’ll fly across the country, instantly somehow, and come save me?”
Yeah, it does sound stupid, doesn’t it? I’m at a complete loss.
Zach calls out from inside the car, “Hey, we’ve got a plane to catch.”
I can’t help myself then. I reach out and grab her, pull her into a long, tight hug I wish would never end.
“I’ll be fine. Promise,” she says.
“Yeah.” I drop my arms and step back, looking down into those pretty brown eyes of hers one more time before she gets back into the car and I have to watch her leave me behind.
* * *
Peter
I want to call her that weekend, but I don’t, and she doesn’t call me. She texts a few times to say she’s fine and having fun. She texts me and a bunch of other people photos of the campus, the beach, sea lions on a pier, the Golden Gate Bridge and her and Zach on a cable car. It both hurts and helps that she looks really happy.
I want her to be happy. I do. Happy and safe and off doing whatever she wants to do. It’s going to be something amazing. I know it. I guess I didn’t realize how much I’d miss her. If it’s this bad now – for a long weekend – how bad is it going to be once she’s really gone?
And maybe, somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m still thinking it will magically work out somehow. Me and her, despite everything standing between us. Maybe I haven’t quite given up on her, on us.
I sit there thinking about what it will mean to truly give up on me and her, and what I’ll do if I keep fighting for her, for us. I go back and forth. I want to fight, even though I know I shouldn’t. If I keep trying—there’s her dad, right at the start, and he’s impossible to get past. There’s what she wants to go and do with her life, and how wide open all her options are, how caged in I feel. How my mother’s always going to be out there somewhere, ready to fuck up any good thing that comes into my life. It’s impossible, me and her, and I’m afraid that will always make me crazy and mad at the whole fucking world.
Julie seems a little crazy, too, that weekend. Zach’s been trying to convince us that we should go see Mom in the town where she is, before she comes here and surprises us. That way, we pick the time and place of the meeting, not her. No surprises for us. And we can walk away from a meeting there. She can’t make us stay, can’t follow us unless she somehow got a car. The meeting ends when we decide it does. Zach thinks that will be better than waiting and worrying about when she’ll show up here.
Finally, Julie decides she wants to go on Sunday. Zack will have a fit if she goes to face Mom without him. But she’s been worrying about it until she’s sick of worrying, and suddenly, the idea of just getting it over with sounds better than dreading it any longer. We both feel like we’re on borrowed time, surprised Mom hasn’t already shown up here.
Grace, who’s sick of only thinking about herself and her own problems, has agreed to go with Julie. They can drive up and back in one long day.
Julie asks if I want to go. I know I should, because if Zach can’t be there to watch out for her, he’ll want me to do it for him. He’ll expect it. I expect it of myself. It’s the least I can do, after all he and Julie do for me.
But, shit ...
As much as I hate showing that kind of weakness to anybody, including myself, I’m not sure I can. Julie must see that, because she finally says we’ll wait, maybe until next weekend. I don’t think it will be any easier then, but I don’t tell Julie that.
God, I’m sick of my mother having this kind of power over me. Even so far away, all these years she’s been in prison, she’s still been messing with my head, with my life.
I wake up Sunday morning feeling like a complete coward, a damned wimp. Once I finally go downstairs, a little after eleven o’clock in the morning, I find Julie sitting at the dining room table on her laptop. It’s her usual work spot. She likes to spread out all her paperwork into piles I don’t understand, but know not to ever move.
“Morning,” I say.
“Morning.”
Wearing nothing but a long pair of basketball shorts, I go to the kitchen to search the refrigerator, trying to decide what to eat. Eggs? OJ? I can go straight to lunch. It’s late enough. Turkey sandwich?
“Have you eaten?” I ask her. “Want some eggs? Scrambled? I’ll cook.”
“Sure. Thanks.” She gets up and heads toward the kitchen door. “I think I left some papers in my car. Be right back.”
I’m reaching for the eggs, when I hear her gasp.
“Julie?” I run for the side door. It’s heavy, made of solid wood. The locks are solid, too. But she’s already unlocked and opened the door. Separated from us by nothing but the flimsy screen door is Mom.
* * *
Chapter Ten
Peter
We don’t
let her in.
Julie and I stand with our sides pressed against each other, blocking the doorway. We don’t even open the screen door.
Mom looks older, skinnier, harder. Prison took its toll. She says she came a long way to see us, wants to come inside and talk. When that doesn’t work, she starts talking about what a nice house we live in.
Which is her way of saying she thinks Zach and Julie have money. That means she’ll try to find a way to get some of it. Typical Mom.
She doesn’t like us refusing to let her in, but still claims she wants to know all about how we are. Where is Julie working? Are she and Zach still together? Am I playing ball? Still in school? How tall am I now? She hints about needing a place to stay here in town, says she wants to be here for us, claims she’s clean and sober.
We don’t care. We been through so much with her, heard so many lies, so we just keep asking her to go and not come back. It’s like we’re little robots, frozen there in place, hardly capable of standing and repeating that we want her to go. She doesn’t like that, either. We’re her children, she keeps saying, as if we’re mistreating her.
In the end, Julie threatens to call the police and have her thrown off the property, and finally Mom leaves. We call the police anyway, telling them she came here and repeatedly refused to leave, asking them to watch out for her in case she tries to come back. Small town. They already know her, know what she did to get sent to prison. Zach probably already talked the cops, too, to explain that we worry she’ll show up and cause trouble.
We check the locks on every door and window in the house, just to be sure she can’t get in, like she’s some kind of evil monster who might do anything to us, if only she could find a way inside. Like she has superpowers we can’t escape. It’s stupid, I know. I’m completely irrational where she’s concerned. But we check every single lock anyway. I can’t sit down until that’s done, and I’m so glad I know the house is solid. I know because I was here. I saw the kind of work that went into it, even helped Sam and Dana’s dad rebuild it. This house will not let us down.
I want to call Zach. He’d take the first plane home, but Julie says no. He’ll be on the redeye tonight anyway, home in eighteen hours. Telling him now would only worry and frustrate him. She doesn’t want to do that to him. She takes care of him, too.
We call Sam instead. Sam will come. All we have to do is ask. We’ll feel safe with Sam here.
And then we sit on the couch like we’re in some kind of trance. I’m not shaking anymore, but Julie might still be, and I wonder exactly what Mom did to Julie to make her this afraid, too. Maybe it’s the same things I’m afraid of -- being drawn back into the chaos and all that comes with it. The way it can take over your life, the shouting, the threats, the way you’re always on edge, never know how bad things are going to get or if it will ever end.
I don’t ask Julie about that. I don’t want to talk about it. I never do. I just keep telling her how sorry I am for not going with her yesterday. We could have avoided this, Mom being here, at our house, how awful and intrusive that felt. I feel like I let her down.
Julie’s nice about it. She says Mom would have shown up eventually, no matter what we did, which is true. I’m afraid it will always be true.
My stomach clenches painfully. God, I hate this. We have something good here, and she’s determined to come fuck it up for us. She always does, like she can sense when there’s anything good in our lives and has to mess it up.
I think about hitting something. Or someone. About heading out and looking for a fight, about how good that would feel, at least while I’m doing the hitting. It’s never hard to find a fight, but I’m not leaving Julie alone. I can do that much right today.
As we’re calming down, waiting for Sam, my hand, before I even realize it, comes up to my chest and I’m absently fingering the little knot on my collarbone from a break that never healed properly. It was the last time Mom knocked me down. I never saw a doctor for it, which was the norm back then.
It isn’t the only mark on my body.
I hope it isn’t that obvious to most people, what caused those marks. Who did it. I don’t want anybody to know.
But I promised myself after the broken collarbone that I would never let them hurt me again. At least not without fighting back. Fighting back felt so damned good. I say them because my dad’s no picnic, either. Thankfully, when I was growing up, he wasn’t around as often as my mom, but when he was ...
As I got older, fighting back scared me a little. I got bigger, stronger, more capable of hurting them in return. I don’t want to end up like them, not ever.
I try to breathe, to let go of those memories, to stop rubbing my thumb along that knot on my bone, but the ties to what happened run so deep.
I’m afraid it will always have this hold on me. I can’t outrun it, and it will never let me go. It’s a horrible feeling.
* * *
Peter
Zach calls from the airport that night, right before he and Dana get on their plane, and talks to Julie, but she doesn’t tell him about Mom showing up here. He’ll be livid when he finds out, at Mom for showing up here, at himself for not being here for Julie and at Julie for not telling him right away. But mostly about not being able to save Julie from having to deal with all this. He thinks he should be able to fix it, but there’s no way. It’s unfixable.
Sam’s with us. He’s the best. He’s spending the night, and he sent Rachel to Grace’s house, because my mom knows where Sam and Rachel live, too, and he doesn’t want Rachel there alone. Julie and I have calmed down enough by now to feel a little silly about ever calling Sam, but Sam refuses to leave us alone until Zach gets back. He tries to get out of me and Julie exactly what we’re afraid Mom might do, so he can be prepared to deal with it. Julie and I just look at each other, not knowing what to say, what we’re willing to explain.
“She used to hang out with some scary people,” Julie says finally, “even bring them home when she was drinking or doing drugs. I don’t want her getting drunk and bringing anyone back here, looking for a place to spend the night.”
It sounds perfectly reasonable. And it’s true. Some of the people who ended up in the house when I lived with Mom were scary as shit.
“And when she’s desperate for something to drink … ” I shrug, like it’s no big deal. “You just never know what she might do.”
“Like break in here? Steal some money? Steal something to sell to get some money?” Sam asks.
“Sure,” I say, as Julie nods.
Sam looks like he wants to ask about a million more questions. I look away, not able to meet his gaze, and Julie gets up and goes into the kitchen, saying she’s going to look for something for dinner for all of us. I have no interest in food, and I doubt she does, either, but it will keep her away from Sam’s questions, and it’s something to do, to maybe help the time pass faster.
Thankfully, Sam doesn’t ask anything else. We have a quiet evening. Sam insists on sleeping downstairs on the big couch in the family room, I think wanting to be between me and Julie and anyone who might try to break into the house. We get through the night without anything happening, although I doubt any of us got much sleep.
Julie must have warned Sam that she hadn’t told Zach what happened, because I hear Sam leave very early so they can deal with it alone. Maybe fifteen minutes later, I hear Zach come in, come up the stairs and walk into the bedroom he shares with Julie. If I know Sam, he probably parked down the street to wait until he saw Zach pull into the driveway before heading home himself.
Zach must go straight to sleep, because I don’t hear the discussion I know will happen once Julie tells him about Mom.
I dread going to school that day. I’m so sure Mom will show up and cause some awful, embarrassing scene. I start to not go, but if I don’t, how would I spend the day? Not hanging out somewhere in town, where she could find me. Not with my friends. They’ll be at school. Not at home, where Zach will wake up, find out
what happened, get mad, get worried and then spend the rest of the day trying to make sure Julie’s okay. I’ll give them some privacy for that.
So I end up going to school, still feeling that sense of the surreal that comes over me after Mom pulls something that really messes me up. True, she didn’t really do anything yesterday. There’s no reason to be so messed up over it.
It’s just been so long. Every day that passed without her felt like a victory, like one more step away from the life I had with her, one more step away from the chaos, the fear. Three and a half years without seeing her, and I felt like I’d gotten so far away from it. I didn’t realize how far until she showed up again, and all this hit me. The paralysis. The numbness. The sense of powerlessness. The cloud that seems to surround me, and not really let anyone get close to me.
I float through the day, not expecting to see Dana, knowing she spent all night on a plane. But I spot her in the hallway as I walk toward our second period class.
Shit.
I close my eyes tight, hoping I’m wrong. When I open them again, she’s still there. Dana, all shiny and polished and impossibly perfect, the girl I want so badly I ache with it. She’ll hear about my mom soon, probably when she walks into her house after school, and she’ll feel sorry for me. She’ll worry and try to call and want to know if I’m okay.
I’m not okay, but I sure as hell don’t want her to know that.
But she doesn’t look like she’s worried about anything right now. She’s glowing, and not just from the touch of a sunburn she got on her face in California.
I hear her telling Becca about everything she saw and heard on her trip. As I pass her to get to my seat behind her, her eyes meet mine briefly, and her smile gets even bigger and more beautiful. I don’t remember the last time I saw her this happy, and I want her to be happy. I concentrate on that. She should always be happy.
I sit down, and she and Becca both turn around so they can see me. I guess I have to ask, “How was it?”