I lock my knees to tamp down the desire to bolt toward the Volvo. “Are you also going away to boarding school, Nev?”
“Nope. I’m super excited to be in Nashville.”
Jeff slings an arm around his daughter’s shoulder, making her lose her balance.
“Dad,” she admonishes him.
He tickles her side. “What?”
She giggles. “Stop.”
“Stop what?”
“Tickling me,” she says between bursts of laughter.
“Oh, that.” Jeff grins down at her. “Fine. I’ll stop.” And he does stop.
As I stare at them, I see a loving father, but then I remember how vicious he was to Mona, and my sympathy fades like the closing bars of a song.
“Have a pleasant night, ladies,” he tells us before guiding his kids into my favorite restaurant.
I hate that Mom shared it with him. It was our place.
The knife twists some more.
When we’re back in the car, Mom asks, “You and Ten had a fight?”
I whip my face toward her.
“Come on, baby. I wasn’t born yesterday.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
As she backs out of the parking spot, Mom makes a small clucking sound with her tongue, because she imagines my chilliness stems from a romantic quarrel.
Halfway home, I decide to come right out with it. If I keep it in any longer, it will fester. “Were you ever going to tell me Ten and Nev are Mona Stone’s kids?”
Mom hits the brakes so hard my seat belt digs into my chest. All her earlier amusement drains from her face. There are no more dimples. No more smiles. No more glittery eyes. Just a hard jaw and an even harder stare.
23
The Destruction of Idols
We end up at the Dairy Fairy. At this hour, the place is real quiet, but Mom still picks a table in the farthest corner. I don’t feel like frozen yogurt, but I eat it anyway. It goes down like cold, goopy cement.
“Jeff didn’t want me talking about his private life.”
“But I’m your daughter. I go to school with Ten.” I stab the swirly cream. “I just feel so blindsided.”
“How did you find out?”
My cheeks warm. I’m so not giving Mom a play-by-play of homecoming, but I do tell her how, when Mona’s song came on at the dance, Ten flipped out. “I ended up guessing.”
Mom sighs and sets down her plastic spoon, then reaches over to take my hand. “Mona walked out on him. It’s normal that he feels angry.”
I snatch my hand out of hers. “Stop saying she abandoned them! It’s Jeff who shoved her out of their lives.”
Mom’s expression tightens. “Were you there, Angela?”
I flinch.
“Were you present when they decided to split?”
“No.” I lift my chin a fraction. “But you weren’t either.”
“True. But I’ve lived many more years than you, and let me tell you, a divorce is never black and white. There are a lot of gray areas. A lot of them.”
“How would you know? It’s not like you ever got divorced.”
Mom stares at her mountain of chocolate frozen yogurt. “I filed for divorce a couple of hours before your daddy died.”
Goose bumps crawl all over my bare arms. “What?”
“We didn’t have a happy marriage.”
“I thought you loved him.”
Mom looks up. “I did love him. Until he started drinking.” Her eyes begin to glitter. “He wasn’t very nice when he drank. I told him that if he didn’t clean up his act, I would take you and we would leave. And he said…” She blots the inner corners of her eyes with her napkin. “He said … fine.”
All the tender images I conjured of my father and mother go up in smoke.
“He didn’t even fight to keep us, so I called him and informed him that I’d filed for divorce, and he told me he’d sign the papers, and then I didn’t hear back from him.” Mom’s voice has become so low I can barely hear her. “That night, a cop called. Said your daddy had gotten into a car accident.” She lets out a ragged breath. “Ran a red light.” She releases another breath. “Collided with a truck.” Another breath. “Died on impact.” Her chest stills, as though she’s all out of exhales.
How did we go from speaking about Mona and Jeff to Mom and Dad?
“I thought … I thought—” But everything I’ve ever thought is wrong wrong wrong.
My life frays and unravels heartbeat by heartbeat.
“The accident was Dad’s fault?” I croak. That part seems so inconsequential compared to all the other things Mom has told me.
Mom nods as she rolls the tip of her paper napkin between her fingers. “He had so much alcohol in his system that the insurance company refused to pay out his life insurance policy.”
Silence stretches between us.
“I idolized him,” I finally whisper.
Mom gives me a sad smile.
I hug my arms around me. “I feel so stupid right now.”
“No.” Mom scoots her chair closer to mine and laces her arms around my hunched back, and then she sets her chin in the crook of my neck. “Don’t feel this way.”
“Why—” Why did you keep it from me? Why are you telling me now? I don’t speak my questions, yet Mom understands. She always understands. I feel even more stupid because I’ve never understood her.
“Your father loved you, baby. He just didn’t love me enough.”
“He left us…”
“I know, but before he did … before he started drinking … he was a good father.”
“You mean for the three years he stuck around?”
She bites her lower lip, which makes me wonder if he was a good father for all three years or just a couple of weeks here and there?
“When you were born, he would sit by your crib and play you lullabies on his guitar to put you to sleep.” Mom smooths back my hair. “And then, while I was completing my decoratin’ certificate course, he’d take you with him to band practice. He even got you a tiny pair of pink headphones. I still have them somewhere.”
“I don’t want them.”
Her hand rhythmically sweeps my hair back. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you. Because I don’t want you to hate him. He loved you. And he was talented. Besides, hating him will only hurt you.”
I stare past her.
“He’s gone, baby.”
I keep my gaze on the Dairy Fairy’s cheery turquoise wall.
Mom sighs deeply, then picks up her plastic spoon and rotates it slowly in the swirled cream. “I don’t know what happened between Jeff and Mona. What I believe happened, though, because I’ve seen it with friends of mine, is that her success made them drift apart. When you stop lookin’ in the same direction, you start going in different directions. And it takes a lot for people to stop and turn around, to check where their partners are at. And it takes a heck of a lot more for people to concede and retrace their steps. Hop over all those little cracks in the road. Sometimes, those cracks are so wide, hoppin’ over them becomes impossible.” She keeps churning her frozen yogurt. “But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe that’s not what happened between Mona and Jeff. Maybe they just fell out of love. Whatever it is, though, you shouldn’t judge people without getting the entire story.”
“You judged Mona. You’ve always judged her and you don’t know her personally. Unless you do…” I narrow my eyes. “You’re good at keeping secrets.”
Mom draws away from me. “I was trying to protect you. That’s what mothers should do. And that’s probably why I’m so harsh in my judgment of Mona. Because she’s a mother. But you’re right … it’s unfair of me.” She palms her shiny cheeks.
“Can I enter her contest, then?”
“Angela Conrad!”
“What?”
“Just because I’m admitting to judgin’ her unfairly does not change my opinion.”
I grit my teeth. “Are you worried it’ll get you fired?”<
br />
“Of course not. I just want more for you than—”
“Doesn’t what I want matter?”
“It’s a phase.”
“It’s not a phase!” My ambition is the only thing that hasn’t changed—the chorus that forever repeats and never varies when all the verses around it shift. “Stop thinking I’ll outgrow it, because I won’t.”
Mom’s disappointment is as pungent as the sweet vanilla scent of the Dairy Fairy. She lowers her gaze to her shoes—an übertrendy pair of white sneakers with sparkly smiley faces on the back.
I want to spring out of my chair and storm away, but a tear rolls down her cheek, and it drains the rage right out of me.
For now.
For today.
I clasp her hand. Her skin is cold. Mine isn’t much warmer.
I think back on our fortunes that day at Golden Dragon. “Should’ve worn your booties.”
She finally looks up from her sneakers. “What?” she croaks.
“Those made you happy, remember?”
Mom’s blotched forehead furrows, but then it must come back to her, because a laugh bursts out of her mouth.
“I love you, Mom.” Secrets and opinions and all, I love her, because I understand she’s trying to protect me from a passion she thinks turns people mean and miserable. It reinforces my desire to participate in the contest, if only to disprove her theory.
Her chair legs scrape, and then she stamps a long kiss on my temple. “You are my world.” Her hands flutter over my brow, my nose, my chin as though marking me as hers.
After a beat, I ask, “Mom, why didn’t you get involved with another man?”
She exhales a protracted breath. “I was frightened of getting attached … of you getting attached … and it not working out. And then I got used to the rhythm of the two of us.”
“What happens next year when I’m gone?” If I end up going away to college …
Both corners of her lips turn up. “I’ll visit you a lot.”
“You know what I mean…”
“I’m open to meeting someone.”
As Mom smooths a lock of hair behind my ear, something occurs to me. “Why is Nev staying over at our house by the way? Doesn’t she have friends?”
“Apparently, she’s been having trouble fitting in. Jeff was going to hire a nanny to watch her, but I suggested she could stay with us.” She stands, then picks up her cup of frozen yogurt. “You should give the Dylans another chance. They’re good people.”
Uh-huh … “Fine.”
Mom smiles. “Now we should probably get home so you have time to make that diorama of yours.”
“I don’t have a diorama to make.”
“What?” She claps a hand over her chest. “You lied to me?”
I roll my eyes as I rise from my chair and swipe my own paper cup from the little table.
“You’re a terrible liar,” she says with a grin.
“Must’ve gotten that from Daddy, since you’re a terribly good one.”
For a second, Mom’s features crinkle and smooth, crinkle and smooth, as though she can’t decide whether to smile or frown.
I grab her hand and squeeze it. “You’re also a terribly good mother.”
Her eyes get misty again, and then waterworks. It’s strange to see your mother weep, because parents should be strong … solid. But then I think of how strong and solid she’s been over the years during which she raised me on her own on ample amounts of love and on measly salaries—not supplemented by my father’s life insurance like I assumed—and I think that if anyone deserves a break from being so strong, it’s her.
24
The Drawer of Abandoned Gifts
On Monday morning, as I walk toward my first class, Mrs. Larue’s voice booms from the PA system: “If you create a storm, don’t get upset when it rains.”
I mull her words over as I head down the aisle toward my seat. Mrs. Dabbs hasn’t shown up yet, so the classroom is lively. I like the noise and movement. I like the way both screen off the nervous hush that settled over me after I got home from the Dairy Fairy.
I spent the darkest hours of the night thinking about my father and the palest hours of the morning thinking about Ten’s mother. Head spinning, I went downstairs and sat in front of the piano. Mom was already gone—she had an early meeting with a restaurateur out in Nashville—so I played long and hard. Pieces ranging from Ravel’s “Boléro” to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” to Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger.” The only songs I didn’t play were my father’s. I was afraid his music would make my heart cramp all over again.
After jotting down Mrs. Larue’s quote in my notebook, I ask Ten, “How did you like Golden Dragon?”
Ten doesn’t answer for so long that I think my question got lost in the din surrounding us. “It was good.”
Probably not up to his standards. I bet he goes to way fancier places with his dad. I draw a squiggly frame around the quote.
“How did your diorama turn out?” he asks.
I add a second squiggly frame, and it feels like I’m drawing the rhythm strip of my heart. “It didn’t turn out as expected.”
He snorts softly.
Five minutes go by and still no Mrs. Dabbs.
I dig through my tote for the phone, then slide the sleek apparatus over to him.
He sits up straighter. “You took pictures of your diorama?”
I smile. “I know you don’t need the phone, but I really can’t take it. Not after … Anyway, I’ve rebooted it.”
“My mother sent it to me as a welcome-home present.” His jaw is smooth today. No stubble in sight. It makes him look a little younger, a little softer. “If you don’t want it, I’ll leave it in the lost-and-found box. I want nothing to do with it.”
Just like he wants nothing to do with his mother. And yet she sent him a housewarming gift. I don’t get it, but I promised Mom I’d try to.
“Don’t give me that look,” he says.
My lids pull up. “What look?”
“The one like I’m this evil, ungrateful kid.”
I bite my lower lip and lower my eyes. I don’t think that’s the way I’m looking at him, but I doubt he’ll see anything else after our conversation at homecoming.
Mrs. Larue’s assistant walks into the classroom and announces that Mrs. Dabbs is out sick, then urges us to get some homework done, that she’s trying to find us a supervisor for the hour.
The second she walks back out into the hallway, the noise level grows. I doubt anyone’s going to be doing any homework, but I’m wrong. Ten pulls out his history notebook and starts making annotations in the margins.
“Are you visiting the boarding school this weekend?” I ask.
“No. Colleges.”
“Which ones?”
“Brown. Cornell. Princeton.”
“You really like New England.”
“I really like any place that isn’t geographically close to Tennessee. Or Nevada.”
“Why Nevada?”
“Mona got her start here, but blew up with her Vegas show.”
Right …
He underlines a sentence in his notebook, then adds, “Our names were her idea.”
I frown. His sister’s name is Nev—oh … “Nev is short for Nevada?”
“You didn’t know?”
I must’ve read about it but filed it in the dusky recesses of my brain. “I like your names.”
He grunts. “Of course you do. She came up with them. You like everything about her.”
I flinch but don’t lash out. I allow him to be angry. “Will you look at colleges on the West Coast? Or maybe in Europe?”
Ten’s eyebrows pull together. “Maybe.” He leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. “Did Jade tell you to be nice to me or something?”
My pen jerks across my paper, slashing through the quote.
“She did, didn’t she?” He shakes his head, and his hair, which seems spikier than usual, doesn’t e
ven budge. “You don’t have to act interested in my life.”
I’m too tongue-tied to tell him that I’m genuinely intrigued by his choice of colleges. I haven’t given college any thought because I’m planning on taking a sabbatical next year to work on my music. I’ll probably have to send some applications out, but I’m choosing easy schools in the area. Hopefully, Mom won’t make me go to any of them.
We don’t talk the rest of study period even though every single other person around us is chatting. Ten’s silence is louder than all their voices put together. As soon as the bell shrills, he puts his stuff away and barrels out of the classroom. I’m about to leave when I notice the cell phone he’s left behind.
I’m tempted to leave it behind too, but don’t. I take it. He might not need it—functionally speaking—but it’s a gift from his mother. If my father had left me a gift, I’d keep it. In a drawer, but I’d keep it.
As though the universe has conspired to make me prove it, I return home to a tiny set of pink, noise-canceling headphones nestled on my comforter beside my refurbished cell phone.
Last night’s Angie would’ve shoved the headphones into the InSinkErator, but today’s Angie picks them up reverently, studies them for a heartbeat, and then places them in a drawer, alongside Ten’s phone.
25
Some Ashtrays Have Warts
I don’t cross paths with Ten on Tuesday. I see him from afar even though he doesn’t see me. He’s not looking for me.
On Wednesday, though, we have art together. Miss Bank has set out pottery wheels and globs of wet clay, which we’re supposed to fashion into vases. I haven’t done any pottery since middle school, and that was a major fail as my mug turned into a saucer after it accidentally slipped from my fingers and got trampled by two students who gave me grief for getting clay on their shoes.
Laney pats the empty chair next to hers.
As I sit, I ask, “Where’s Brad?”
“He’s sick. Stomach flu. Apparently it’s going around.”
Not Another Love Song Page 11