by Sophia Henry
“Should I put this movie in now?” Jason held up the chick flick he’d brought with him.
“No offense, but we need a man-hater movie. Let me check my stash.” Kristen jumped up and ran to her room.
“Hey, Auden,” Jason said quickly.
“Yeah?”
“I just, thank you.” He chuckled. “It means a lot to me to hang out with you.” He paused and lifted his eyes to meet mine. “It’s funny how life works out sometimes. I never had a desire to know my biological family, now I couldn’t imagine life without you.”
Tears filled my eyes. Just as I was closing the door on the man who I thought would be my family, in walked my brother, who in just a few short weeks, already was family.
Funny how life works, indeed.
Chapter 26
“What’cha doing?” Kristen asked, sliding a lemonade across the table to me and setting down a drink and a small salad for herself. She had just finished up her shift at Peak City. I’d come over straight from band practice to wait for her shift to end.
“Thanks.” I shoved my empty glass to the side and pulled the new one closer. “I’m trying to write a letter to my grandparents.” I looked up with heavy eyes. “It’s for an assignment, but instead of making up some bullshit thing, I wanted to use real life.”
“You’re the only person I know who puts any thought into their assignments.”
“It’s kind of a requirement for my major.” Which was somewhat true. Most people could take themselves out of the equation. Though my ultimate goal was to help others, especially children affected by a traumatic event, I sometimes wondered if I chose to major in social work as a way to heal myself. Probably should have picked psychology.
“What’s got you stumped?”
“Can’t think of the right thing to write.”
“You’re speaking to them now, aren’t you?”
“Um.” I sunk my teeth into a roll, then pointed to my mouth and shrugged. The old can’t-talk-when-I’m-chewing excuse.
“Can I be honest with you without you pushing me away and never talking to me again?”
I nodded, though my stomach lurched in preparation of what she’d say. So far, only Aleksandr and Kristen could call me out without me blowing up. So far.
“Seriously?” She stabbed a piece of lettuce with her fork. I felt bad for the poor iceberg leaf, but was glad it hadn’t been my hand.
I nodded again, the dry roll scraping my throat as I tried to swallow the large chunk I’d bitten off.
“You should write an apology for being such a jerk to them about this Jason thing.”
“What?”
“Look, I agree with you to an extent. How they handled it was shitty. I get that you’re hurt and upset, but you can’t push them away and pretend like you can live without them. Because you can’t. They are your rock. Your tie to family. Your everything. And, not to be morbid, but they won’t be around for much longer. So get over it.” She shoved a forkful of salad into her mouth as if emphasizing her point.
“I don’t know how.”
“Don’t know how to apologize?” She hadn’t finished swallowing before spewing her irritated interjection, and bits of lettuce sprayed onto the table. She brushed her hand across it. “Sorry.”
“I don’t know how to start. I’ve been a jerk since they first took me in,” I admitted before taking a sip of lemonade.
“Well, that’s understandable, considering what happened, Aud,” she told me, her tone softening.
“Yeah, but I was totally two-faced. I was this good student who never got into trouble and would go out of my way to help everyone at school, and then turned into Medusa when I came home. I felt like my grandparents ignored everything I felt when I tried to talk about it. Everything they did ticked me off.”
“I’m sure they were just trying to make life as normal for you as possible. I can’t imagine it was easy to raise you when they were still grieving their daughter. There have been thousands of parenting books written, but I doubt there were any books on how to raise you.” Kristen smiled, but it was hollow and sad. “I’m sure they were trying to do the best they could with the resources they had, you know?”
“How could I have never thought about that before?” I asked, rubbing my eyes with my fingers.
My heart ached for my grandparents in a way it never had before. I was selfish. So wrapped up in my anger about growing up without my mother that I never stopped to think about how it affected them.
That they hadn’t been able to protect my mother must haunt them every day. All the time and effort they’d spent as parents worrying and sheltering their daughter when she was young didn’t stop her from being murdered. It was suddenly easy to understand why they were excessively protective of me.
Why hadn’t they learned? Worrying hadn’t made a difference. They couldn’t stop it. All their protective intentions couldn’t save her. Or me.
“Because you were a child. Children are selfish. Teenagers are selfish. The world revolves around them, right?” Kristen smiled again at me, shaking her head. “We all thought that way, not just you. You’re pretty mature, but you were still a child, Auden.”
“I should have realized. Should have given them a break.” I pulled my glass back to my lips to cover the fact that my eyes were filling with tears. “I was such a complete jerk to them.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You wouldn’t have realized any of this at the time. You can’t see the full picture until you’ve taken a step back and looked at it from the outside.”
“It makes so much sense.” I marked a huge X through the superficial words I’d written. I couldn’t work on it now. I’d have to figure it out once I got a handle on the emotions flooding me.
“And just think, you still have time to make it right.”
“Thanks,” I told her, closing my notebook and shoving it in my bag.
“What else can I solve for you? World peace? Global warming? I’m on a roll.” Kristen held up her drink, and I clinked my glass with hers.
“I’ll let you decide where we’re going out tonight.”
“How about tomorrow? Tonight you’re going to Detroit.”
Chapter 27
Face-planting was not how I usually started my days. Evidently I was so startled by the loud rapping on my door, and disoriented by my surroundings, that I’d rolled right off my bed. I lifted my head and wiped the drool off the side of my mouth, before realizing I had fallen onto the familiar hardwood floor of my childhood bedroom.
When I’d arrived at my grandparents’ house last night, they hadn’t been home, which was odd, because they didn’t have a very active social life. I waited up until eleven p.m. before I’d wandered into my old room and collapsed.
Reluctantly, I got to my knees and lifted myself up. When I opened the door, Grandpa stood in front of me with a sandy brown shoe box in his hand. I stepped aside, and he swept past me. He looked around my room before taking a seat on my bed. I couldn’t remember the last time Grandpa was in my room. Standing in the doorway, a hundred times, but in my room? Not since I was a child.
He patted the bed next to him, and I sat down. He seemed calm. At least I wasn’t getting yelled at—or smacked.
Grandpa removed the lid of the box and pulled out a picture. My mom stood behind a microphone on a stage at Our Lady of the Lakes High School, the place we’d both attended. The wall behind her was blurred out since she was the focal point of the picture, but I could make out a banner, balloons, and streamers.
“Your mom was in a band when she was in high school,” Grandpa finally spoke. “This was her playing at a school dance. Probably one of her first times on stage.”
I sat without speaking, without moving, in shock because my grandfather sat on my bed about to tell me a story I’m sure he never had any intention of sharing with me.
“She loved music and she had a beautiful voice. She and some friends from school got together to play. Just kids having fun. She fell in love with one o
f the boys in the band. His name was Vince. I thought he was a good kid.” Grandpa rubbed his lips with the palm of his hand, before cupping his chin and taking a deep breath.
“Vince got your mother pregnant when she was fifteen. She shut us out at first, too scared to tell us. But she knew she couldn’t raise a child at fifteen. Vince told her she should have an abortion. But your mother didn’t want that. She wanted to give the child up for adoption. So your grandmother and I took her to a Catholic social services group. Together we interviewed and chose the family who would get the baby.
“And on the day the baby was born, she signed the papers and gave him up. It wasn’t easy for her. But she made the decision because she couldn’t give the boy a life.”
Grandpa rummaged in the box again, pulling out another picture of my mom. This time she was in a hospital bed, her pale lips pressed to the forehead of a tiny, red face peering out of the blanketed bundle in her arms.
“That’s the only picture we have of Baby Boy Berezin. Valerie didn’t name him, of course. A few minutes after that picture was taken he was given to his new parents, who were waiting in the hospital.”
“So this is Jason?”
“Jason? That’s a strong name.” Grandpa looked down, silent for a moment. “Was he the one in the diner when your grandmother and I were there?”
“The one you wouldn’t stop staring at?” I asked.
Grandpa nodded.
“Yeah, that was him. Did you know?”
“No. It never crossed my mind. But he looked familiar. I was trying to place him.”
“He’s a nice guy.”
Grandpa ignored my comment and handed me the shoe box. “These were some pictures of your mom’s. Maybe you’d like to keep them.”
“Can I give this one to Jason?” I held up the one of him and my mom from his birth.
“It’s yours now. You can do whatever you wish.” Grandpa started to get up.
“What about me?” I asked quickly. Since I’d already staged the big confrontation, I wanted all the skeletons out of the closet.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, that’s Jason’s story. What about mine? Did you know my dad? Was he an idiot like Vince?”
“He was.” Grandpa sat back down. “In fact, it was the idiot Vince.”
“What?” I almost snapped my neck, as I instantly turned my attention from the shoe box in my lap to my grandpa’s face.
“She was young and in love.” He chuckled, but the sound was distant and weary. “He said all the right things and she took him back. She was out of the house at that point, so your grandmother and I didn’t know she was seeing him again. We didn’t know they got married.”
“What?” I asked. I felt my eyes bulge from my head. I didn’t know my mom had been married to my sperm donor.
“Yes, well, it didn’t last. As soon as he found out she was pregnant, he left and never came back. Your mom had taken on three jobs before she even told us about her pregnancy, just to prove that she could take care of you on her own.” Grandpa took my hand and looked into my eyes. His expression was soft but pained. I couldn’t imagine what he thought when he looked at me. Probably that I ruined everyone’s life: my mom’s, my sperm donor’s, my grandparents’.
“She loved you, Audushka,” he said, his eyes glassy, as if he’d read my mind. “She loved you so much.”
The tension harbored in my shoulders for fourteen years released in a massive slump. I didn’t realize a simple sentence could be so powerful. My stoic, seemingly unaffectionate grandpa was the first person to tell me my mom loved me. I’m sure everyone assumed I knew how she felt, but since I couldn’t even remember one minute with her, hearing him say it was extraordinary.
“I’m sorry about the way your grandmother and I reacted when you told us about Jason, Audushka. We were startled and didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry we never told you about him. We should have. In all these years, he’d never tried to find us, so we never thought you needed to know.”
The newly confident part of me wanted to ask why they would only tell me if my brother came looking for us. Why didn’t they think having a brother was something I should be aware of no matter what the situation? Though Grandpa and I turned a corner in our relationship, I knew my questions would start a fight, and we’d come too far for me to take it there.
“It just doesn’t seem right,” I said, abandoning my questions and looking at the picture of my mom and Jason instead.
“She loved you, Audushka,” Grandpa said again, squeezing me against his side. “She never once thought about giving you up. She said she could never do that again, which is why she worked her ass off. We helped, of course, if she needed it, but she rarely did. She was a strong, stubborn girl. That’s where you get those qualities, in case you were wondering.”
“Funny, I thought I got them from you.”
Grandpa laughed, which made me happy. I was sick of fighting with my grandparents. Sick of being mad at them. Sick of anger and withdrawal always being my first reactions. I didn’t want to live that way anymore.
But how do you begin to change after being ingrained with ideas for almost twenty years? Maybe I already had changed, because even with Kristen’s insistence, I never would have come here if I hadn’t.
“Thank you for being honest with me. I’m sorry about how I brought it up and how I acted. It was childish and immature.”
“Well, so were we. We should have been prepared. We knew it might come up someday. I promise to be better next time.”
“Next time?” My shoulders stiffened as I wiggled out of Grandpa’s half embrace. “More secrets?”
“No, Audushka, no more secrets. I meant next time we find ourselves in a highly emotional situation, I need to react better.”
“Well, I hope we don’t find ourselves in too many more.” I scavenged through the shoe box, flipping through photos and concert ticket stubs with my index finger. “As long as we’re being honest…”
“Yes?” Grandpa’s tone lowered.
“I, um, I went through that envelope with articles about mom. The one in your locked cabinet upstairs. Sorry for snooping. I was just curious.”
He nodded. “And?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just wanted to know what happened.”
“It’s very hard for your grandmother and me to talk about.” Grandpa cleared his throat. “But you can ask us questions if you have any.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it and shook my head.
“You sure?”
I nodded. “I just wanted to be honest.”
“Thank you. You have grown up, Audushka. Your mother would be very proud of the woman that you are.”
With that, I buried my face into Grandpa’s shoulder, wrapping both arms around him in a massive bear hug. I almost felt bad soaking his navy blue Michigan University Language Department polo with tears. Almost.
Your mother would be very proud of the woman that you are.
Every kid wants to hear their parents say they love them and are proud of them, but it’s especially crucial for those of us who don’t have parents. Like forgotten fish, we race to the top of our bowl, desperately chomping the water for flakes of love to fill us up.
Chapter 28
“Here.” I threw a candy necklace at Kristen. The candy necklace was a prop we’d used in our younger days when we were on the prowl for men. What hot-blooded male wouldn’t want to nuzzle up to a girl and bite a piece of candy off her neck?
“Auden, I don’t think we should use these tonight,” she warned, twirling the necklace around her index finger.
“Come on, KK. You’re the one who said I needed to get back out there.” Though I dreaded using the necklace myself, I knew Kristen would in order to help me get over Aleksandr. Even if I had to pull out the big guns to make it happen.
“This isn’t what I meant.”
I ignored her and ran my straightener through the final section of my hair before sliding s
moothing serum over the strands. I checked my outfit in the mirror as I wiped the greasy hair product remains on a towel.
Once Kristen and I had both finished getting ready, we grabbed our drinks and walked to the apartment next door where Scott, Lacy’s boyfriend, lived with three other guys. I had forgiven Scott for the whole bringing-a-friend-who-tried-to-drug-me fiasco, but I was still leery of him. It was business as usual to keep my guard up around him again.
“Damn, ladies!” one of Scott’s roommates called out when we walked in the apartment. He hit a button on his CD player and the mellow hum at the beginning of Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” filled the room. It was Kristen’s favorite song. Yet another reason we’d become best friends—our shared love of nineties music.
Lacy and the guys were playing “I Never,” a drinking game in which someone says they’ve never done something and everyone who has done it must drink. There were two ways to play. We could say something we thought was outlandish to see who had done it. Or we lied and said something everyone has done so the group got drunk quicker. The latter seemed to be the case with tonight’s game.
“I’ve never been drunk,” Scott lied, and tipped his beer back along with the rest of us.
“I’ve never been to a party.” Kristen raised her beer so we could all toast before taking another long drink.
“I’ve never fucked an—” Bobby began. I didn’t hear him finish because Brett, the guys’ fourth roommate, pushed through the door.
“Hey, man! Pull up a seat.” Scott slid Brett a chair from the kitchen table with his foot.
Brett was one of Central State’s star rugby players. I’d known him since freshman year because he lived on the floor below Kristen and me in the dorms.
“Drink, Auden. We all know you’re fucking a hockey player,” Chad teased me.
“I didn’t even hear what Bobby said.” I’d laughed at the previous responses in the game, but scowled when Chad mentioned a hockey player.