Matt raised his eyebrow and made a show of looking over the length of her body, the first time she could ever remember realizing he was actually looking. At her body. “Now, come on. You cannot be serious.”
“At my school, yeah. Size 8 and five foot seven in the ninth grade was sturdy. To say the least.”
Matt lowered his head even more, exaggerating his eyebrows and flicking his glance at her every few seconds to keep his eye on the road.
“Anyway,” Amy continued, trying to distract herself from her quickening heart rate, “I was unconscious for, like, ninety seconds. Apparently the girls tried to get me to wake up, and Adam was the first football player to arrive on the scene. He gave me mouth to mouth without checking if I was breathing first. Which I was.”
“Genius,” Matt muttered.
“I know. But at the time…I don’t know. I thought it was sweet,” Amy admitted, a small part of her longing for some younger, dumber form of herself that could live in blissful ignorance of how imperfect Adam had actually been for her. Her parents would certainly be happier. “Anyway, now I know that he bragged to his friends about how he got me to kiss him when I wasn’t even awake, and it’s all kind of creepy.”
“To say the least,” Matt filled in.
“Yeah, but you know what? Nobody had ever paid attention to me before, between my braces and my big butt and my red hair, which…it takes a lot of effort to make a redhead look good, you know?”
Matt shot her a puzzled look.
Amy shook her head, blowing him off. “But all of a sudden people were calling me Sleeping Beauty, and talking about how my prince had rescued me, and how it was fate and meant to be. I got really popular really fast, because he was really popular. And high school me kind of got really carried away with all that. Brainwashed, almost.”
“You’re not the kind of girl who cares about being popular, though,” Matt said. “You’re so real. Not like you’re a freak or a degenerate or something,” he rushed to correct, “but you’re just you. I’ve been on this campus for over a year and I’ve never met anyone like you. In the best of ways.”
Amy turned her face to her shoulder, trying to keep from saying something stupid. For a few long minutes, they said nothing, which was mostly as comfortable as usual. Then Matt turned on his blinker and slowed onto an exit.
Amy’s eyes flicked to the big green sign over their heads. “University City?”
Matt shrugged. “My moms liked it because it’s pretty much the only place in the Midwest where they could settle down and most people wouldn’t hassle them. Also one of the few places that didn’t think aerobics classes were for whores and black Episcopal pastors were something to be afraid of.” His jaw clenched when he said that last bit.
“Your mom is black?” Amy asked, sitting up a little straighter. “I mean, one of your moms.”
“Is that an issue?” Matt asked. All of a sudden his voice was guarded, sharp.
“No, no…I mean, definitely not. I just didn’t know.”
By now, they had pulled down a mile of suburban road and into a neighborhood. Matt turned slowly into a concrete driveway, put the car into park, and looked at her with eyes full of dread.
“I guess I was just so focused on the fact that you have, you know, two moms, that I hadn’t stopped to think that they weren’t both white. But it doesn’t matter to me,” she said softly, her voice full of apology. “I mean, it doesn’t bother me. Not that it should bother anyone.” Amy stumbled through words, trying to access anything appropriate to say and obviously coming up short. “I don’t care,” she repeated. “There was only, like, one black kid in our entire high school, but it was a small school. Small town.”
“Would it bother your parents?”
“What, that the guy I hang out with all the time has a black mom?”
Matt nodded. “And that I have two moms.”
“Maybe,” she answered honestly before she could check herself. His face fell, and she instinctively reached out to grab his hand. “But remember, I don’t really care what they think. I care so little about what my parents think about what I do that I ditched them for Christmas and came home with you.” With that, the full force of what she’d done hit her. Her words hung in the air, waiting for Matt to take them, make them mean whatever he wanted. Amy wasn’t really sure what she wanted, but she knew that she was holding his hands in hers, and that she absolutely didn’t want to let go.
“You’re right, you did.” Matt smiled, the same smile he gave her when they were half-teasing, and Amy took a breath again. He popped open his door with his free hand, and when he slid the one beneath Amy’s fingers out so he could climb out of the car, the space it left felt empty in a way that she didn’t like. Not at all.
Dinner with Matt’s moms and a few people from the church was pretty much the same as holiday meals back home. They started with a prayer from Tamara, Matt’s mom, and each person had to say what they were thankful for as her eyes moved around the table. There was a little bit of good-natured ribbing, plenty of Harriet, Matt’s other mom, buzzing around the table urging everyone to eat more, and a lot of talking shop. Except here, everyone was a college professor, and talked about paper-grading instead of cow-milking. Normally, Amy would check out of conversations around the table, thinking instead about the next school dance, what movie she could go see with Adam and her friends the next day, occasionally an art project or a book she’d only gotten to glance longingly at because she’d been helping mom clean the house top to bottom for days.
The way this conversation, this group of people, fit her just right was like a warm blanket over her skin. Not only were they talking about interesting things, but they included her, and were actually interested in what she had to say. Before she knew it she was talking to the urban planning professor about how she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about sustainable building practices, and why they couldn’t be implemented in the United States for the poor.
“This is why it’s such a blessing that election day is a few weeks before Thanksgiving,” Tamara said. “We start to think about turkey and sweet potatoes when we should be thinking about how we can help the people who don’t have any of the things we are so thankful for. And Jesus knows if we don’t talk about those things, if we don’t lead the charge to provide them, nobody will. Even when we vote for the right people, still nothing gets done. Still we’re handing out blankets to people sleeping on the streets.”
Harriet bent over Tamara and gently kissed her head. “We have guests, my love, and church isn’t until tomorrow. Save it for the sermon.”
“Luckily for all of you,” Tamara replied, “Christmas is about challenging ourselves to look at the world in a new way. So all of my sermon will be new to you.”
Good-hearted chuckles filled the room as Tamara stabbed her fork into another bite of turkey, a gloating grin spread across her face.
The next day, Christmas, was filled with a trip to the soup kitchen and lazy movie-watching, as promised. But all of that Christmas comfort and joy was overshadowed by the tense text conversations with Mom.
Matt wasn’t nosy when Amy ducked into the guest room, twice between dessert and again when both of his moms had fallen asleep in recliners, so she could deal with Mom in private. Her texts were becoming more and more panicked-sounding throughout dinner, but the one that finally made Amy’s heart stop was the one that came through in all caps:
THIS IS YOUR FATHER.
A giggle rose up in Amy’s throat. But she knew it was a hysterical one when fear squeezed her chest the next second:
GET YOURSELF HOME RIGHT NOW. YOUR MOTHER IS WORRIED SICK.
and then:
I AM VERY DISAPPOINTED.
Finally, she strung a few words together.
I’m safe and sound at a friend’s house. We’re going to church tonight.
That started the phone vibrating in Amy’s hand. She jumped and tossed it on the bed, steeling herself to stare at it until the ringing st
opped. She bit her lip and forced her feet to stay stuck to the ground. Don’t let him scare you. When it went silent, she let out a slow breath, then jumped when it lit up with another text message.
YOU DO NOT GET TO CHOOSE WHERE TO CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS YOUNG LADY.
She held the phone in two hands in front of her, trying to read and re-read Dad’s words despite her shaking fingers and the fury casting everything in her vision dark and blurry. Dad was so horribly oblivious to the truth that had been creeping up on Amy since the day Adam had broken her heart—she’d hardly ever gotten to choose anything. Every single thing in her life, from what she would wear to who she would be, had been chosen for her.
Well, now she was going to choose for herself.
The strength that conviction brought her only lasted for a second, until the phone rang. Mom’s name on the incoming call screen had almost always made her smile in the past few months. Now it nearly made her pass out.
She shouldn’t have answered—she knew that. She should have ignored the call, shoved her phone in her purse, and focused on feeling as contented for the rest of the trip as she had during dinner. And tamping down the building feeling of resentful jealousy that Matt seemed to have these parents that loved him no matter what he majored in or what t-shirt he wore or what kind of slightly inappropriate jokes he made. There were no strikes against him, there were no expectations on who or what he would grow to be. He was just there, and they just loved him.
But she did pick up, held the phone to her ear. Let hope bleed into the one word she managed to get out. “Mom?”
“No. I told her to call. But she’s crying too much to dial your number.” Dad’s voice was hard, short. Unforgiving.
The guilt surged inside Amy and squeezed her chest even harder. She was speechless.
“Well? Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”
“I…” she really didn’t. She knew she was supposed to say, “I’m sorry, Daddy. I’ll come home.” But she hadn’t forgotten the way Dad had made her feel, however indirectly, when he ranted about how dirty girls who’d had sex before marriage were. Ten times fresher than that sting was the betrayal of Mom, who’d basically tried to trap her into getting back together with Adam, on one of the most peaceful days of the whole year.
Even though she hadn’t verified it, either Mom or Dad had helped Adam surprise her with his unwanted pickup, an interaction that still rattled her down to her last nerve.
“I don’t have any way of getting back there. I’ll see you at Spring Break.” She let her voice go on auto pilot, giving him an answer that, while it wasn’t the one she wanted, kept her from either breaking down in tears or dissolving into rage-filled screams. As robotic as her words felt and sounded, she was proud of herself for choking back the “I’m sorry.”
“Young lady,” Dad said, low in the phone, a growl rumbling from his throat. “I don’t care what you have to do. I don’t care if you have to pay this girlfriend who took you home or if you have to hitchhike, but…”
“Boy,” Amy blurted out before she could hold back. Seizing on the strength coming through her words that she hadn’t really expected, she kept going. “My friend who brought my home is a guy. And honestly, he treats me ten times better than Adam ever did. And nobody tried to force me to me to spend Christmas with him, either.”
“Amy. Are you telling me that you’re dating a boy I’ve never met?”
“I…” Again. Speechless. Amy had slowly been realizing since she got to college how little she had ever talked to Dad, and having this totally bizarre conversation drove it home even more. “You never told me I had to…I didn’t know…Is this some new rule of yours?”
“It is not new. This has been a rule since your sister was born, Amy Elizabeth Bauer. You do not date a boy that I haven’t met and approved.”
She would have made a mental list of boys she had dated, to see if they really did all fit the criteria, if there had been more than one to list. But of course, Dad knew Adam. The whole town knew Adam. Not only that, but Adam was as good as a saint for having led the high school team to State, then getting a football scholarship to Northern. Of course Dad approved of him, wordlessly and every single time he saw the guy. He was their town’s crown prince, fit for Dad’s princess. What had they ever had to talk about? Dad had given his approval of Adam before Amy ever looked at him with stars in her eyes.
How had she never realized how completely and totally that assumption of Dad’s pervaded her every life decision?
One thing she was definitely grateful for—she was realizing it now—was that now that she was away from home, she was free to make her own decisions.
“Are you listening to me, young lady? Are you dating some boy I’ve never met?” Dad slowed down his words, enunciating them as though stupidly trying to communicate with someone who was hard of hearing or didn’t speak English.
And that was enough to unleash every ounce of frustration and sass and anger and indignation that had ever lived inside her, all at once. She felt it. She was about to get brave. “It’s none of your business.”
She could have simply said no, told Dad that she’d talked to him later, hung up the phone, and collapsed on the bed with exhaustion, and maybe some tears. Although she was getting really, really tired of crying. Whether it was because she knew that leaving Dad in the dark with his own crazy, misogynistic assumptions would force him to acknowledge her independence, however little he liked it, or for some other reason, refusing to clearly answer the question about whether she was dating Matt felt like the right thing to do.
After all, they were friends, but weren’t they a little more than that? People who were just friends didn’t spend every afternoon studying together, make each other laugh effortlessly, challenge each other to think about their religion and spend Christmas together without it being weird in any way. No, they’d never kissed. They’d never been on a date and they’d never even held hands. Not like that, anyway.
But something about going through her first semester at Northern with Matt had changed her whole world.
This realization hit her so hard, this friends-but-more truth, that she hardly noticed when Dad started talking again. Some angry mumbling, then, “And I won’t come out there to get you. Wherever there is.” The implicit threat hung in the air. She was in some serious trouble. “But we will be addressing this when you come home for Spring Break. Until then, we’ll be praying for you.”
The outrage in Dad’s voice had faded a bit to include a tinge of anguish. But Amy’s matched his. “We’ll be praying for you” meant “You’ve screwed up so badly that only God can help you now.” Amy couldn’t bring herself to believe that. Not anymore.
“Tell Mom I’m sorry.” That, at least, felt sincere, even if she couldn’t say it to Dad. She’d have to ask Mom why she’d planned to push her and Adam back together on Christmas. Maybe it hadn’t been her decision after all, Amy realized, now that she understood how few decisions had ever been hers, and hers alone, to make. Maybe Dad controlled Mom just as much as he controlled his daughters.
“You’re going to owe your mother a lot more than that,” Dad said, the growl fully present again.
“Okay, Dad, I—” She stopped short, her better judgment to apologize warring with her deep, irrefutable knowledge that she was right. She was an adult, and her family was trying to manipulate her, and she wouldn’t take it. Couldn’t take it.
“What?” Dad snapped.
Amy sighed. “Nothing.”
Another long pause, this time on Dad’s end. Of what? Disappointment? Anger? Then, in soft, controlled tones, “I’ll pray for you, Amy.” Then a click and a dial tone as he hung up. Whatever he was feeling on the other end, Amy knew what it meant when Dad said that. He thought she was too far gone to be helped. He would pray for her, sure. But the only people he ever said that about was sinners, too far off the rails to ever be close to him or his family.
With that one sentence, Dad had called her
an outsider.
That was when the tears began to fall.
Amy didn’t know how long she would have sat there, taking staccato gasps in and out, trying to stay quiet and ward off an even bigger meltdown, if Matt hadn’t knocked on the door a few moments later.
“Ames, you awake in there?” The thoughtfulness of just his voice, loud enough so she could hear but not so loud it would wake her from a deep sleep, made the tears flow heavier. “It’s about time for candlelight services.”
“Yeah,” she choked out, trying to keep her voice under control and failing miserably.
“Hey. Are you okay?”
She could picture him, leaning his head closer to the door, wanting to respect her privacy but seriously worried now.
That image alone was enough to make her stand up and walk the few paces to the door, swing it open, and let Matt see her face in all its puffy, red-eyed messiness. What did she care? For the past fifteen weeks, nothing had been easier than talking to Matt. This wasn’t any different.
Thank God she wasn’t snotting yet.
“Oh, Ames.” He barely had a chance to open his arms before she fell into them. She’d always sort of known he was strong despite his reedy-thinness, but having his arms so solid around her, like a force field nothing could break through, made it that much more apparent. Her forehead tucked against his shoulder automatically, and his chin notched on top of her head. After her breathing became steadier, Amy finally felt her body loosen a little. He must have too, because it was then that he spoke.
“I’m gonna guess that pie won’t fix this.”
She laughed for a few sweet seconds before pushing back a new round of tears that threatened to start again. Be strong, Amy. Name the problem and he’ll be able to help you carry the burden.
Just that thought, so sweet and true, pushed the words out.
“He’s really, really mad,” Amy said, just loudly enough that she was sure Matt would hear it. Enough that she knew she wouldn’t have to repeat it.
The Broken Hearts' Society of Suite 17C Page 30