Love and Other Train Wrecks

by Leah Konen

  Maybe that’s why it was suddenly so easy to decide to come up here for the fake wedding. Call Dara for the ride, tell Kat I’d be there in time. Maybe I stopped being Team Mom a long time ago.

  “I don’t think I have the energy to learn something new after the day we’ve had,” I say, digging into the Cheetos once again. “Come on. Deal ’em out.”

  He doesn’t argue; he just shoots us each seven cards. I grab them and start to organize. I’ve got three queens, and I decide that that’s not a bad start.

  “Do you have a queen?” I ask.

  He smirks. “I don’t know, do I?”

  “Very funny,” I say, reaching out a hand. “Hand it over.”

  Outside, the wind whips hard, rattling the glass.

  He hands me the queen. “Good thing we stopped here,” he says.

  I take it from him, our fingertips brushing. Does he notice it as much as I do?

  I put my book of queens down. Triumph.

  “Any twos?” I ask.

  He shakes his head smugly. “Go fish.”

  I grab one out of the pond and arrange it in my small fan of cards. “Your turn.”

  He pulls up the scratchy comforter around him, dragging it halfway off the bed. He looks goofy, like a kid, but he’s not a kid—and I’m not, either. We’re two almost-adults in a motel room, alone. If this were the 1950s, they wouldn’t even be allowed to show this on network TV. “So you never told me what your biggest regret is,” he says. “I told you mine.”

  I tilt my head and take a deep breath. “I’m pretty sure that’s not an acceptable question in the game.”

  He sets his cards down for a moment. Outside, I hear the crackling of falling icicles. “So? Let’s go back to Questions.”

  “You said it wasn’t even a game,” I protest. “You said you wanted to play cards.”

  He scoots in a little closer. “I agreed to go first,” he says. “It’s not my fault I ran off the road before you had your turn.” He smiles jokingly.

  I scoot back, bump my head on the shitty painting again. I rub the back of it with my hand. “So which do you want to know?” I ask finally. “My biggest regret or why I’m here?”

  He shrugs. “I have a feeling, given your reticence to tell me, that they have something to do with each other. Mine did.”

  I take a deep breath, but that’s when my phone buzzes.

  I pick it up. It’s Kat.

  LOL wut? Are you serious? You’re missing the wedding to shack up with a guy? Girl, are you making this up?

  I type back.

  I know, I suck, but it’s not my fault. And it’s not like that. He’s a nice guy. Goes to Hunter. We just got thrown into this weird situation together. Hey, you were the one who was always telling me to be more adventurous, right?

  I can see that she’s typing something, but then she stops.

  “So do you have any threes?” Noah asks.

  I look at the phone again, but there’s nothing more from her, so I put it down. I pick up my cards. “No threes,” I say.

  He raises an eyebrow.

  “Really,” I assure him.

  He draws a card, and I watch as he organizes it, as he runs a hand through his shaggy hair, as he cuddles tighter beneath the comforter. I check my phone again, but there’s nothing more from Kat.

  I put my cards down and force myself to calm my breathing.

  Something about hearing that his parents were separated, hearing the words actually come out of his mouth, makes it easier. Because that’s what they don’t show you on TV shows and movies about divorce: the gray area. In those, the kids either don’t give a shit at all or totally lose their shit. But there’s this whole big in-between. It’s so hard even to say it out loud—my parents, the people I love more than anything, the people who are my family—aren’t together anymore.

  My family isn’t my family anymore.

  And then when you add the fact that my dad has found a new family, that I’m leaving my mom on one of the hardest days of her life to celebrate his premature, divorce-papers-aren’t-even-signed-yet union, well—it makes me sound awful.

  It makes me feel awful.

  Maybe it’s the fact that he knows how hard it is. That it’s already partially happened to him. It’s different at this age, when you’re an almost-adult yourself.

  Dara says she can hardly even remember her parents’ divorce. “Give it time, and it won’t feel like that big of a deal,” she was always saying to me.

  But it is a big deal. It’s the whole deal. Maybe it’s because I know he’ll understand me now.

  Or maybe it’s because I know he’s the kind of person who would at least try to understand anything.

  I take another deep breath, then go. “My parents split up, too,” I say. “But they aren’t getting back together.”

  Noah sets his cards down. “I’m sorry. That sucks.”

  I shake my head. “It’s not that, really. Or maybe it is. I don’t know. It happened almost a year ago. I’ve moved on. I mean, I’ve adapted. But, well—” Lord, this is hard.

  “What?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “It’s embarrassing.”

  Noah tilts his head to the side. “Everything’s embarrassing when you really think about it. It’s okay.”

  “My dad left us. The usual story, you know, except for that it wasn’t with a woman at work or whatever, it was with a freaking yoga instructor he met on an REI trip, if you can believe it.”

  Noah’s eyebrows scrunch up for a second.

  “What?” I ask. “What is it?”

  He shakes his head vehemently. “Nothing. Keep going.”

  I cross my arms, wanting to get through this stupid story as quickly as possible. “See, the thing is, I came up to Hudson for ten days last summer. I met my new family. I even kind of liked them—well, besides my stepmom.”

  Noah shrugs out of the comforter and leans back on his palms.

  I don’t say anything for a moment, and he scoots closer. “What happened?” he asks. “You can tell me.”

  I realize I’ve been unconsciously picking at my nails, and I force myself to stop. “I don’t know what happened—really, I don’t. See, my mom was always anxious. But . . . I guess after my dad left, she just kind of unraveled . . .”

  He nods, encouraging me.

  I see a flash of her screaming at me the last time I suggested that she log off of Facebook for a minute.

  So now you’re pretending that none of this ever happened, just like your dad?

  “She became, like, obsessed with his new life. Following it all on Facebook. She even found one of my stepsister’s Instagram accounts.”

  Noah offers a weak laugh. “We’ve all tried to stalk our exes at some point, I guess.”

  I shake my head. “With her, it was obsessive. And she kept trying to get me involved, too. I would tell her I didn’t want to spend my afternoon that way, but she wouldn’t listen. And then when the wedding invite came—”

  “The wedding invite?”

  I sigh. “My dad’s girlfriend—she’s this New Agey person, and so she has this idea that she wants to make their relationship valid in the eyes of some spirit nymph or something, so she decided to have a commitment ceremony. She can’t have a wedding because my parents aren’t even fully divorced yet.”

  “How’d your mom like that?” Noah asks sarcastically.

  I shrug. “How do you think? The Facebook stalking became even worse. It was suddenly all she ever wanted to talk about—no asking how my school day was or where I wanted to go to college or any of that normal stuff—all the stuff I’d found annoying before, but I started to kind of miss it. Even the way she talked about everything was circular, just going on and on around the same topics. How does she think she can do this? Does she know we aren’t even divorced yet? How can he let this happen? That kind of thing. And then every time she’d see something about the wedding, she’d lose it. She had four panic attacks in a month. And I was the one who h
ad to take care of her. If I even suggested she shut down all her social media accounts and take a break, she’d just yell at me.”

  Noah shakes his head, too. “That must have been hard for you to watch.”

  My eyes start to water. “It was. I just wanted it to stop. It was like a roller coaster. I was always just waiting for her to freak out again, for her to see something that set her off. She had this whole stupid thing planned for today. We were going to watch Gilmore Girls and a bunch of sad movies and ‘be there for each other,’ which really meant just bitch about my dad. Last night, when I told her I didn’t really want to, she flipped out, and I got so mad. Suddenly it was like I wanted to come to their stupid commitment ceremony. I wanted to be part of the family that, even if they were all tools who had no problem with breaking up marriages, at least it felt like they were sane. Normal.” I feel the first tears start, and I wipe them away. “But now I just feel like I’ve taken his side. Like I’m abandoning her, too. And it was all for nothing. Because I didn’t even make it to the wedding.”

  Noah waits a second, to see if I have anything more to say, but when I don’t speak, he does. “Man,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’m so incredibly sorry. That’s awful. It’s so sad.”

  “Tell me about it,” I say, trying to force a laugh, but it comes out as a stifled sob instead. Noah leans closer, but I hold up my hand. “No,” I say. “I’m okay. I just need a tissue.”

  He’s up in seconds, jetting over to the shitty vanity by the bathroom. He pulls the whole box of tissues out of the countertop, the metal door that once held them in falling to the floor with a clang.

  “Here,” he says, pushing the box at me. I take two and wipe the bottom of my eyes. My mascara leaves black streaks on the tissues.

  “So that’s your biggest regret?” he asks. “Leaving your mom for this wedding?”

  I shake my head. “No, it’s not. That’s not it at all.”

  IT WASN’T THE first time my birthday had fallen on Thanksgiving—it was the third, in fact—but I was turning seventeen this time around. It felt special.

  And of course, it wasn’t the first time my mom had stressed out over a holiday—had caused a scene, if you will—but, again, this time was somehow special.

  I’d been asking for a Kindle for the last two months. As an avid reader, I’d at first been reluctant to embrace the e-reader thing—you know, the romance of paper and all that—but then I learned that you could get library books, and that books before the 1920s were free, and suddenly, I wanted that bookish little gadget like nothing I’d ever wanted before. I could take it on camping and hiking trips with my dad. I could even tuck it in my backpack on days that I had to lug my huge calculus book around and didn’t want to weigh the bag down with Madame Bovary or whatever.

  My parents were never huge on gifts. It wasn’t my mom or my dad being weird about it—it’s just that they were always kind of thrifty. It was about the thought more than the dollar amount. I can’t remember a single time in my life I got anything worth more than forty or fifty dollars or so. But I wanted that Kindle. And not the cheap one, either. The nice one, the one that looked white like real pages, the one that let you read at night, perfect for the times I slept over at Simone’s but fell asleep long after either she or Dara did—the hundred-dollar-plus price tag was, of course, out of my limit.

  But I launched my campaign nevertheless. Explained how it was educational, really, and I could probably use it in a couple of years at college. And how I wouldn’t be hassling them to drive me to the library all the time, and I wouldn’t have to cruise the bargain bin outside of the used bookshop for classics—I’d have them for free.

  I reminded them that it wasn’t just my birthday—it was Thanksgiving, too. And sure, you didn’t usually get presents for Thanksgiving, but hey, it was two holidays. If we were ever going to go above and beyond our normal gifting limits, this was the time.

  I may have even reminded them that as an only child, they’d already saved buckets of money on presents over the years.

  I delivered a persuasive argument.

  I must have, because I got it.

  My dad looked so happy that morning. My mom did, too. I was in pj’s watching the parade, as I always did on Thanksgiving, and Snoopy was floating down Sixth Avenue when my parents came in.

  “Ready for presents?” my mom asked. She was already dressed. In black capri pants and this beige silk top that my dad had had his boss get her when he went to Paris. My dad always did things like that. Things to make her feel special. Her hair was pulled up into a topknot that made it easy for her to cook but also looked incredibly chic. My dad was still in pj’s—flannel pants and a Carolina Panthers T-shirt. You could tell just by the way he looked at her, even in moments like this, that he loved her. That he thought she was beautiful.

  Of course, I didn’t care about that, then. Right then, all I was focusing on was somehow hiding the inevitable disappointment on my face when I didn’t get the Kindle.

  “Sure,” I said, turning the volume of the parade down just a touch and sitting up straighter on the couch, crossing my legs.

  My mom pulled a box from behind her back. “From both of us,” she said.

  It was small, book-shaped, about five by seven inches. I looked at my mom, then to my dad, and then I reached for it eagerly.

  After the Kindle was opened, after I’d loaded up the entire Jane Austen, Henry James, and Thomas Hardy collections, after I’d figured out how to set up library books and all that, my mom pulled me aside.

  “I know holidays haven’t always been perfect,” she said to me. “But today’s going to be different. From now on, everything is going to be different. We’re going to have a perfect Thanksgiving and a perfect birthday. You deserve it.”

  I should have said that there was no such thing as perfect. I should have said that perfect didn’t matter one bit to me. Maybe things would have been different.

  We had enough yams that time. That wasn’t the problem. And my mom was trying. She really was. She had the turkey in the oven—it was almost done—and a bunch of dishes laid out and ready to go in as soon as it was out. Green bean casserole (my favorite). Yams and marshmallows. Macaroni and cheese for my dad. We’d have leftovers for weeks.

  There were twenty minutes left on the turkey, and she told me to keep an eye on the mashed potatoes while she went up to do her makeup.

  My dad was setting the dining room table. Pouring wine.

  I was supposed to stir the potatoes so they wouldn’t burn. She was afraid if we took them off the heat they’d get tough and sticky and she’d have to add a ton more butter, so she had the burner on low, and I was on stir duty.

  It was the first time she’d done potatoes that weren’t straight out of a box, and so she was being particular. I understood.

  The only thing was, stirring wasn’t exactly thrilling. And I had my brand-new Kindle, and I’d downloaded The Return of the Native by Hardy, and—well—I don’t remember what happened, but all of a sudden, it smelled like smoke, and my mom was bolting into the room, eyeliner on one eye, none on the other, screaming.

  “How could you be so ungrateful? After all I do for you? After your dad and I got you that stupid expensive thing, and I ask you to do one thing so our dinner isn’t ruined and you can’t even do that!”

  Immediately, my dad was in the room, but that didn’t stop her. There were tears in her eyes, and her face was red.

  “All I want is one fucking holiday where everything doesn’t go to shit. Is that too much to ask?”

  “I’m sorry,” I stammered, tossing the Kindle onto the counter, flipping the burner off, trying to salvage the potatoes, feeling my own eyes well up. “I’m sorry. I guess I got caught up reading.”

  She stormed in front of me, grabbed the Kindle. My dad was yelling, too, now, but she wasn’t listening. “You ask us for this expensive toy, and this is how you repay us. I’m returning this.”

  “No,” I said. “You can’
t. It’s mine.”

  I tried to grab it back, out of her hands.

  But she wouldn’t let go. She pulled back, and then I pulled back, and then I don’t know quite how it happened, but I must have lessened my grip because it went flying out of her hands, landing against the wall. It left a subtle dent, chipped eggshell paint.

  I think that was it for my dad. I think that’s when he officially gave up. He signed up for the REI trip the next day. Two weeks in Patagonia at the beginning of March. I had school, so I was obviously out. He weakly offered for my mom to come, knowing there was no way in hell she’d be backpacking for two weeks. When he wasn’t working, he spent the next three months planning the trip, stocking up on gear, chatting with other attendees on their trip’s Facebook group. He didn’t even see how much my mom was trying to get better. I just don’t think he really cared anymore.

  I try to tell myself that maybe it wasn’t my fault. I do.

  It’s impossible to deny it: if I hadn’t put so much pressure on her—if I hadn’t asked for that stupid, pointless gift—well, then maybe he wouldn’t have taken that trip; maybe he wouldn’t have met Sophie. Maybe my family would still be my family.

  Maybe I wouldn’t be here after all.

  NOAH

  8:02 P.M.

  WE’RE SITTING SO CLOSE OUR KNEES ARE PRACTICALLY touching. It’s hard not to lean in and hold her after everything she’s just said.

  She was right. It’s not a sob story. No cancer. No car accident. No abuse.

  But I can tell it’s tearing her apart.

  It would tear me apart, too.

  “That’s my biggest regret,” Ammy says finally. “All right?”

  I shake my head, looking at her. Her eyes aren’t wet or teary anymore. They’re sad, empty. Lost. I wish harder than anything that she’d never had to go through that. That she could have been dealt different cards.

  I felt so guilty even contemplating Ammy having frostnip. So awful breaking up with Rina, hooking up with another girl. To think that you did something, no matter how irrational it may seem, that could cause your parents to split up. It must be awful.