by Sophia Duane
“She was a go-go dancer, which . . . yeah, she danced in very little clothing, but she didn’t take it off.”
“Oh.” It was al I could offer.
“She also choreographed some really off-Broadway productions. And then Anatolius Malenkov asked her to dance with him.”
“Who?”
“He was a pretty awesome Russian dancer. He toured and did special performances in major cities.”
“Was?”
“Yeah, he died a year after my mom joined his troupe.”
“So what did your mom do with you while she toured?”
Olivia slid graceful y off the bed and sat next to me. “I went with her.”
“And your grandparents didn’t like that?”
“No.”
“Is that why you said they wouldn’t let you go to school for dance?”
“Um, that’s part of it,” she said.
“What’s the other part?”
She rubbed her eye then arched her back as if she was trying to crack it. “They’re old?” It sounded like hedging to me, so I said, “They’re not that old, Liv.”
“I don’t know,” she said.
It was clear to see that she was uncomfortable, so I decided to drop it. “I think we’re ordering pizza tonight. Do you want to come over? We’l get you something without cheese.”
Olivia looked away from me and she nibbled her bottom lip as she studied the photographs of her mother above her dresser. “Do you miss your mom, Adam?”
Something heavy settled upon me. “I don’t know. I never knew her, so like you said about your father, it’s hard to miss something you never real y had.” I paused. “I mean, I guess I miss a mom, you know? I wish I had one. I wish I knew her. I wish . . .”
“Did you hear that Maya girl in class the other day? Talking about her mom?”
Maya had been going on and on at the end of Current Events on Friday about how much she hated her mother. I didn’t hear why she hated her, just that she did. If she was like the other morons who said stuff like that, it was because she hadn’t been al owed to do this or buy that. “Yeah.”
“Sometimes I want to hit people like that.” She turned to me with a sad expression. “And I’m a nonviolent person.” The truth of her words wasn’t lost on either of us. We might’ve spoken about it before, but it was important to both of us. Some people took everything for granted. Olivia and I didn’t have the luxury of hating our mothers. I tried to picture what it would be like and invited her to participate.
“Who knows? Maybe if ours were stil alive, we’d be complaining about them, too.”
“Yeah,” was her breathy reply. “Maybe.”
But I knew it wasn’t true. I knew that if our mothers were here, we’d cherish them.
I leaned back against the side of Olivia’s bed and together we stared at pictures of her mother’s lost life. I knew the girl next to me was thinking of the woman she knew, and I was sitting there regretting not knowing more about the woman who gave me life.
We sat in silence. After a long time, Olivia took a deep breath and said, “I miss her.” I understood the feeling.
Olivia declined the invitation to have pizza at my house, so I walked across the street alone, my head congested with the memories of the day and the thoughts Olivia had inspired about my mother. When I entered my house, my father was up, and I heard him and Aaron discussing the itinerary for the week. Aaron always had something new to do.
My dad was lenient because he knew that after a certain point in the evening he would be gone, and during the day he’d be sleeping. There was only so much overseeing the man could do with the schedule he kept. But he expected us to be forthcoming and honest about our lives. My father was ful y informed of my brother’s active social life, just as he was completely aware of my lack of one.
Olivia inspired a lot within me, but also, she was just plain inspiring. The way she handled being on her own, without a parent, was amazing.
Even though we weren’t very close, I relied on my father a lot—not just financial y, but emotional y. I liked seeing him every day. I liked being able to look at him and see just a little bit of myself in his face.
The two of them were in the living room. A sports news program was on TV, but neither was watching it. Dad was on the couch and Aaron was in the recliner.
I stood at the edge of the room for a moment before taking the step down into the sunken living room and alerting them to my presence. Aaron searched my face, probably for clues about how my day with Olivia had gone.
I sat down at the opposite end of the couch and Dad shifted so he was facing me. Although I thought he preferred Aaron’s company, my dad had always been decent about trying not to show it. It made me happy that he was focusing on me now.
“How’d it go?”
I could’ve given him a rundown of my day, or told him about how exciting it was to slowly discover who Olivia was. I almost wanted to, but like with many things, I felt better keeping it to myself. I wanted to keep al of my memories of today—Olivia kissing her fingers and pressing them to the glass, Olivia laughing, Olivia grabbing my hand and racing through the aisle to get away from Beast—in the little treasure chest I carried within my head. Tel ing people about it would cheapen it.
“Was Mom good at anything?”
Dad was obviously not ready for the question. He sat stil ; the only things moving were the shifting muscles in his face. His eyebrows stitched together as his lips pursed. He looked as if trying to figure out a riddle. “What?”
“Was Mom good at anything?” I repeated. “I mean, what did she like to do and what were her talents?”
“I, uh . . .” he trailed off. He glanced at Aaron for a quick moment, then he looked back at me. “Crys was good a lot of things.” He looked uncomfortable as he scratched his neck then pinched his eyes with his hand. “She liked making little animals out of paper. What’s that cal ed?”
“Origami,” Aaron said.
“Yeah, that’s it. She’d do it al the time. Our first date, she made a fish out of the paper menu.” He shifted his eyes from me to an imaginary spot on the wal . I started to feel bad about bringing up the subject of my mother.
Just when the quiet got real y uncomfortable, he looked back at me and said, “She was a cheerleader. She was the one at the top of the pyramid. And she was smart, like you boys. Things just made sense to her. Things clicked in her head and she just got it.”
“Did she like music?” Cheerleading was considered a sport, so Aaron must’ve gotten some of her athleticism. I wanted to know what I got.
“She liked listening to music, but she didn’t play an instrument. Beyond the paper animals, she wasn’t very artsy.” I sighed. “What subjects did she like in school?”
My dad looked at me, his expressed fil ed with deep sadness. I felt bad for him, but I was tired of not knowing. “I don’t know, Adam. High school was a long time ago. She liked al her classes.”
“Did she want to go to col ege? Did she want to study something before she got pregnant?” Again, he pinched his eyes, digging his fingers into them. “We talked about col ege, yeah, but it was ‘what-ifs.’ Her parents weren’t going to be able to afford to send her and by the time we graduated, she was already a couple of months pregnant.” I glanced at my brother but I couldn’t read his expression. If I had sat down and done the math, I would have realized earlier that not only had she been pregnant wel before they were married, she’d been pregnant before high school was over. She didn’t have a chance at going to col ege.
Especial y after learning she’d have twins. Maybe she wanted to get an education and we’d ruined that for her.
I thought about al of the lectures and comments my father had made about if we were going to have sex, that we should practice safe sex. I thought about his wil ingness to make sure that happened—at least for Aaron, since he was the only one of us actual y having sex. Thinking about how passionately he told us not to get a girl pregnant made
me uncomfortable now.
“Did you and mom not want us?”
For a moment, Dad’s face shifted into a mask of neutrality, but then his eye narrowed, his jaw jutted out, and his lips settled into a straight line.
He let out a hard breath. His voice was firm. “We were just kids, and we were scared out of our minds about having a baby. And when the doctor said two, we both nearly crapped our pants, but of course we wanted you both.”
His hands were bal ed into fists on top of his thighs. “Your mom wanted you boys so badly that she . . .”
“What?” I said. “That she what?”
“The doctor put her on bed rest for the last two months. One, she was a smal woman,” he said, “so having two babies growing was risky enough, but then the doctor could tel that your cords were probably entangled. We didn’t know it was around your neck, but she took every precaution she could to make sure you two were okay.”
My eyes began to water. “Wel , what happened when she died? Was it . . . was it . . .?” I couldn’t finish the question. The speed of my breathing had increased, and I felt like I shouldn’t be asking al of this. My brother sat quietly in the chair, not looking at my dad or me. Dad was looking at me with an intense expression. His jaw was clenched. He didn’t look angry, just intense. “Did she get to hold Aaron or even see me?” He turned his eyes up to the ceiling and leaned back, resting against the couch. “We’ve talked about this before.” We hadn’t real y talked about it. He’d told us she died right after delivery, but it wasn’t a discussion. It had been so long ago that I could barely remember what was said. “But did she—?”
“No! She couldn’t see you. They’d knocked her out when we realized you weren’t coming out right. Aaron’s delivery was smooth and we kept waiting for you. The doctor made the decision, they let me kiss her on the forehead as they gave her the anesthesia, and then they made me leave.
It took forever.” He ran his hands through his hair. “When the doctor came out, he told me I had two boys and Crystal was dead. She’d bled out, her blood pressure dropped, and that was that.”
My dad stood, dragged a hand down his face, and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Adam,” he said. “I can’t talk about this anymore.” He left the room and I didn’t know how to feel. Al kinds of emotions assaulted me, but mostly I felt bad for him. I felt horrible for bringing it up because obviously almost eighteen years later it stil hurt.
“What the hel was that about?”
I looked up at Aaron and couldn’t respond.
“You know he can’t handle that kind of thing.”
I shook my head. I hadn’t known anything like that. “I just wanted to know about her. Don’t you want to know about her?” He stood and stretched. “Yeah, but I don’t want to make him feel like crap doing it.” As he passed me on the way out, he said, “Next time, you should ask Aunt Tricia.”
“I didn’t mean to make him feel bad,” I said before he was out of the room.
Aaron stopped and shrugged. “I know. But he does.”
Sitting in the living room for a while, I heard Aaron place the pizza order, while dad tooled around the kitchen, getting his food ready for work. I felt bad, obviously, and didn’t know how to fix it. Feeling sad about my mom, I missed her even though I’d never real y had her. I felt horrible about making my father sad, but at least now I knew she made little origami animals.
When the pizza arrived and the plates were on the table, I left the living room. My dad was in the kitchen, pouring sodas. I stood next to him, but didn’t know what to say. After a moment of silence, he set the two-liter bottle down and turned to me.
Final y, after a long moment of silence, I said quietly, “I’m sorry, Dad.”
He put his hand on the side of my head, covering my ear, before careful y pul ing me toward him, and enveloping me in a hug. While I would consider him a loving father, he’d never been much of a hugger. In fact, he wasn’t much of a fan of affection. Maybe he wanted to be, but couldn’t quite figure it out. Maybe if my mom was alive, he’d be better at it.
“Don’t be,” he said before patting my back twice and pul ing away.
After dinner, I spent an hour in the garage looking through the bin of old photos.
Olivia wasn’t in school on Monday. We had no plans to study together, but I was worried and upset that she wasn’t there. I wanted to go to her house and find out what was going on, but felt that perhaps that would be too aggressive. I didn’t want to come off as a weirdo. I didn’t want her to think that I was obsessed and couldn’t handle an entire day without seeing her.
Besides, I had practice. Casey and I got pizza with Blake, Seth, and Cory right after school. They were in marching band with us. Seth and Cory both played the trumpet and Blake played the saxophone. Cory was the only one who played wel . While al three of them were in our garage band, Cory was the main contributor. He’d learned the bass guitar when Casey had mentioned we needed one. The other two just sat in the garage while we played, occasional y adding a little flare of brass and woodwind to a song.
At practice, we played the familiar songs we’d been perfecting since ninth grade. Gary Glitter’s “Rock & Rol Part 2”, Queen’s “We Wil Rock You”, “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge, and 2 Unlimited’s “Get Ready For This”. They were the typical marching band fare and while I knew them al wel enough to play them with my eyes closed, it was the new dril s and formations that kept it interesting.
It was late by the time I got home. Aaron and I ate a snack—peanut butter and jel y sandwiches—on the floor of the kitchen while we discussed practice. I didn’t think he was real y interested in how mine went, and he knew I didn’t care about footbal practice, but we had a silent agreement.
Each of us wanted to have someone to talk to about things like this, so both of us would put up with listening to the other, just for the opportunity to speak about what interested us.
Afterward, I went upstairs to finish up the homework I’d started earlier in school. When I looked out the window, I noticed Olivia’s curtains were closed, leaving me feeling just as uneasy as I had when I’d realized she wasn’t in school. I hoped she wasn’t sick, but she’d been real y pale at the bookstore the other day
It was hard concentrating on my homework, which had never been a problem before. I struggled through it, trying to find something to motivate me, but when I final y finished it, al I had left to do was get ready for bed.
I felt better on Tuesday when she walked into Current Events. She was late, which seemed to be her custom, but today she was later than usual.
She had a yel ow note in her hand that she gave to Mr. Bel man. Olivia’s hair was pul ed back, a long braid running down her spine. She wore a dark brown shirt and loose-fitting jeans.
I wanted to go talk to her when the bel rang, but Aaron beat me to it and I didn’t get another chance until that night. We hadn’t coordinated our schedules as she’d suggested, so Casey dropped me off at the mal . As I changed out a display in the front window, I saw Olivia walking toward the toy store in her uniform. It might have just been my overactive mind, but it seemed like she was less energetic than usual.
Beginning to worry about her health, but not wanting to focus on it since I knew nothing for sure, I pushed the anxiety aside.
I focused my thoughts on doing constructive things at work. I built the display properly and helped a few customers find the exact book they’d come in looking for. I suggested a few to others. As always, I was pleased with myself for being able to convince them that they needed to own the one I was pushing. I had an in-depth debate with the assistant manager on the Nook versus hard copies of books. Neither of us was pro one platform over the other, so we came out the other side of the conversation the same as when we started. We had a lot of conversations with similar outcomes.
When he told me to take my break, I clocked out quickly then went to the toy store. I found Olivia in the action figures, straightening and picking up al of the items th
at little kids had discarded. “Hey,” I said.
She turned around. Her hair was stil in a braid, pul ed over one shoulder. Her work shirt had a few wrinkles in it. Now that I’d been in her room, I knew why. “Hey, Adam,” she said.
Olivia brought her hands in front of her, flipping the package that contained the Marvel superhero Thor over and over again. I pointed to it then blurted out, “Did you know that Thor first debuted in 1951 and his hammer’s name is Mjolnir?” For a moment I berated myself for being an epic dork, but then she smiled. Twisting around, she found the hook the toy belonged on and placed it there. When she turned back to me, she said, “I didn’t know that. Is it Fun Facts time?” I shrugged. “It can be.”
“Want to go eat something?” Of course, I agreed. “Help me straighten this section and then I’l take my break.” I immediately started helping her and putting toys back in their proper places and pul ed boxes on the lower shelves forward. It took less than two minutes to complete. Then she was off to the backroom. I found the Magic: The Gathering cards near the register and thought about buying a few packs. It was unnecessary, but I stil wanted to. Before I pul ed out my wal et and made the impulse purchase, Olivia was back next to me, and we left the store.
She had a smal fabric lunchbox in her hand obviously having packed for her dinner. We stood in line together and when I’d gotten my tray of food, we sat down at a smal table on the edge of the food court.
“So where were you yesterday?” I asked in between bites of burger.
The salad she’d pul ed out of the lunch bag looked complex. It seemed like every vegetable known to man was in that bowl. White chunks of what I thought was tofu and red kidney beans were scattered over the top of the leaves. Olivia finished chewing, set down her fork, then leaned back into her chair. She folded her hands together against her abdomen and said, “Had to go to the doctor.” It was vague and it didn’t get me any indication on why she saw a doctor. It wasn’t my business, but I needed to know, “You okay?”