Who Loves Her?

by Taylor Storm

  When we lost them, it was the worst. If we had believed losing Dad was a bad dream, then the loss of Anna and Bob was a nightmare. Nevertheless, after it happened, I did exactly as I had seen Anna do when Dad died. With Anna gone, no longer able to care for my Mom, I tucked her into bed at night and made breakfast for her each morning. I lasted two weeks as the adult. The pain was already suffocating enough. I’m not lying. There were days I didn’t think I was going to be able to keep breathing. Other than my dad, Bob was the only person to ever understand me, and without him the world was a strange hue of dark purple, no matter how many blue skies would appear during the summer.

  Bob was the one who first rescued me out of my “wild-thing-to piss-off-my-mother” phase. The therapist in the book said that with Anna being such a perfect child match to my mother, there really wasn’t any other roles for me to play. I thought I was just having a party. I dropped out of school for a bit and ran around in black t-shirts with rock bands my parents used to ignore. AC/DC, Iron Maiden. I thought I was the coolest thing in Alexandria. My sluggo friends and I used to just sit in the basement of their parent’s house and smoke weed or drink beer first thing in the morning.

  My biggest regret was that I broke my dad’s heart in the entire process. There was no way to take me fishing and listen to all the problems. He had Mom chewing his ear on one side and the sheriff bringing me home on the other. I even tried to run away, but that didn’t last long. I can imagine that all unraveled when I was in ninth grade. I was the freshman from hell. Bob was a year ahead of me and pretty clean cut. He was in the same grade as Anna because he’d been held back a year. All the girls adored him back then, and for some reason, his eyes lit up on me in third period Algebra. I was pudgy and had pink highlights in my greasy black hair. I found the coolest Army boots in some thrift store and used to put them up on the desk in front of me. Mrs. Climer would yell at me every period to put my feet down. I was good at Algebra; it just made sense. Bob sat next to me, and he saw that I never took notes or did any homework but aced the tests anyway. So one day, after class, I’m dragging my fake leather coat off of the chair and he stops me.

  “Hey, you’re pretty good at this stuff.” I shrugged, trying to pull a cigarette out of my pocket.”

  “You’re pretty when you’re not acting like a thug from the Rocky Horror Picture show.”

  “Your fat when you’re not trying to act…oh wait, you’re not trying to act, are you?” I shot back. He looked up at the ceiling and then grabbed my coat as I tried to walk by.

  “Look.” He looked up at the ceiling and then waved his buddy on. “I need to pass this class and nobody else is as smart as you here. He had these piercing blue eyes that could not be ignored, and he was not acting all macho like his buddies. Can’t lie. A football player asking you for help with a face that makes any girl weak at the knees. Don’t care what they pierce or tattoo.

  “I’ll mess up your pretty boy reputation with the football team. If you haven’t noticed, people are staring.”

  “Look, I just need to pass.” He just kept ignoring my tough exterior. “You meet me after practice?”

  “I’ll check my day timer.” I looked at the skull patch inside my jacket. “Says I’ve got dinner with the President and so I can’t make it.”

  “Damnit, you’re just like my asshole dad. I just need some help.” He turned beet red and stomped off. It hit me like a two-by-six between the eyes. We all knew about his dad, the scrawny little turd who drank too much and beat Bob’s mom. That’s why Bob was held back a year. It got so rough when Bob turned thirteen he missed about half the school year either beating his dad or helping his mom talk to the sheriff.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered as he spun around in frustration, and he nearly broke his leg tripping over the desk. Mrs. Climer squealed as a pile of the tests from third period flew into the air. He bolted up and almost ran out of the room. All I could do was go up to her and apologize. “It’s my fault,” I whispered in shame.

  I picked up the tests for her and then walked out the back door of the school. Tears were running down my face. I was going to go try and get high to soothe the pain, but it just didn’t make sense. I wondered why I had to act like such a bitch.

  I remember Bob’s mom in church one day when she couldn’t find enough pancake make-up to cover everything. I was always a loud mouth. “Gosh, “I exclaimed, “I wonder what the car looks like that she ran into!” I was pointing in her direction when my dad grabbed me by the arm and dragged me from the church. Truly his face was smouldering in fury, and he told me that he was deeply ashamed at my terrible behavior. It was the only time my Dad spanked me after church.

  I ended up wandering the streets all that day, alternating between anger and sadness. Admittedly, I knew what was wrong with the woman’s black and blue face, but I also wondered why no other adults seemed to come to her defense. I could not understand why we were politely ignoring something so destructive and allowing the loser guy to beat up his wife. To this day, I don’t understand why people pretend not to notice when some woman is being beaten every night, but I am just a motel clerk at the Skylark. Analyzing domestic abuse was probably something best left to the experts in the field.

  Still stinging from the shame and isolation of my behavior, I planned to skip school and get high. Instead, I skipped school and ended up sitting in the bleachers to watch practice. I think Bob saw me there, but he made sure to not pay any attention. Again, my shame was tweaked, and I knew that I deserved exactly what Bob was dishing out. Between me acting like a bitch about helping him in school work, and the snarky crap I pulled where his old mother was concerned, the guy really should have gone to his grave never having spoken to me again. In desperation, I skipped class most of the day, but went to Algebra just so I could apologize to Bob. I sat down next to him, but he got up and moved desks. I felt more tears forming, but I was stuck in class because the tardy bell rang.

  Leann wasn’t a perfect student, but she was my friend when I wasn’t an asshole. She remembered how we played back in fourth grade and she always tried to see that part of me when I had all the black t-shirts. She sat down between Bob and I and passed me a note. “You look like shit. What’s with the eye make-up?”

  “Fuck you,” I wrote back.

  “Get a grip. Lighten up and I’ll figure out how to talk to Bob.” Mrs. Climer must have seen us and asked, “The square root of forty-nine is…”

  “Seven,” I blurted.

  “Very good, now see that you pay close attention. We all need to do well on the final to pass.” She spoke like there was an extra hole in her nostril. A slight whistle came out with everything she was saying. She turned around to write more things on the board and I half stood up while she wasn’t looking, and spun around on Bob.

  “Look, I’m sorry I acted like such a douche. I’m an asshole. I’ll help with your…”

  “Susan! Please sit down. Honestly!” I tried, but my butt spun strange in the chair and the entire desk tipped over and crashed. The class all busted out laughing. Bob kind of grinned, but he hopped up to help me while Mrs. Climer tried to restore order. Bob whispered to me as I brushed my hair from my face and turned to face the board. “Do you always make such a ruckus whereever you go?” I had him laughing as he sat behind me. Ah, the feel of his big, strong hands as he helped me up was absolute safety. The gaze of those gemstone blue eyes was mesmerizing. But the sound of his kind, gentle voice, deep and low as he teased me, well, I suppose it was love.

  So that was it. I was hooked. Like I said, it wasn’t an instant transformation. At first the only class I started to attend on a regular basis was Algebra. I calmed down at home and made small peace treaties along the way. At first I figured out that if I just didn’t answer Anna and her control-freak ways, then I could just eat breakfast, walk into school, out the back door and do whatever I wanted until Algebra. Well, until lunch. That’s when it was easiest to sneak back into the building. There were attendance c
alls home every day, letters, and even long talks with my aunt in the third grade. None of it mattered. Dad quit talking to me for a great long while and that hurt. Our close friendship and warm memories were frozen by me and my rude, obnoxious behavior. Bob was the only thing that mattered to me. Making sure he was learning and succeeding in his classes was all that drove me. Occasionally, a bittersweet thought of my Dad would peek into my mind, but shame and guilt would push it away again just as quickly.

  Bob was the only thing that was saving me. After I helped him out with Algebra we discovered his writing was atrocious and I started helping with that. I told him it was a dirty trick because English was first period and it made it more difficult for me to ditch the rest of my classes.

  His dancing blue eyes twinkled as he teased me, “Why do you keep ditching class?”

  “It is easier. I hate all the teachers harping on me about stuff I don’t care about.”

  “Like the War of 1812?”

  “Exactly like the War of 1812! I am more interested in the War of Me!” We laughed together and continued. “Actually Bob, I don’t like the conversations about me and my future. Everyone always wanting to know why I can’t be more like Anna.”

  Bob shook his head knowingly, “Oh….the Anna-syndrome. They wrote a book about that, y’know.”

  “No, they didn’t.”

  “Yep. Called it the Anna’s Drama Duh! Strain…get it Andromeda Strain…we watched the movie in seventh grade and you held my hand?” Bob winked.

  “No I did not!” I mocked, “and besides, Anna drama makes my life hell! Maybe you held Anna’s hand during the movie! Hah!”

  “Must have been some other girl back then.” He smiled.

  “I like my version better. Anna flashes a red light and you just stop what you’re doing and spread an epidemic of stupid all over the country.”

  I laughed hard at the image of Queen Drama Stupid then pushed him on his shoulder, “Take it easy Bobtail.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Just light up a bit. She doesn’t have it all. People who are that tightly wound don’t know how to have a good time. And besides, you scare the hell out of people with all your crap. Surely you know that.”

  I jumped up to leave as he hit a nerve, a quick wave in his direction as I started on my way home.

  I knew he didn’t mean anything by it, but it ate me that he pinned the Anna thing down. Nobody understood that it was easier to disappoint everybody than to be some shadow character of the almighty and perfect Anna. It wasn’t until years later when Bob and I had been married a while, that it all evened out.

  Part of what made Bob and I work was that we both had to lighten up on our expectations of life, and when we did, things just seemed to fall into place. He got his job. I was still working on my degree and working as a waitress for Fran’s Fish and Chips. The tips were good in the summer with the tourists, and Bob was always busy. On top of that, Bob was such a good talker that he was always swapping and selling this and that, most of the time at a little profit. Once and a while he would score big and refurbish a motor or relic and sell it for three times what it was worth.

  Bob was a master genius mechanic. He would pick up a Yamaha motorcycle out of the barn of some farmer for seventy-five bucks and with a little TLC sell it for three hundred easy. That’s how we got the houseboat. He had been doing some swapping and trading so we could scrape a little money together for a house. Turned out that one of his best customers had some situation come up and needed to sell a house and the houseboat for cash really quick. We didn’t have quite enough, but Bob sweet-talked him a little bit and swung the deal. We had the house free and clear and all Bob had to do in the contract was service a couple more boats until we had the houseboat. We dreamed of fixing it up and wandering around the lake, or maybe even renting it out to tourists, to have a way for Bob to set up his own shop someday on the lower end of Lake Carlos.

  We were always dreaming, and Bob was the reason most of the tears I shed over my sister’s world were dried. Well that, and it ended up that Bob was right. Anna had a dark side to her control-freak ways. With all the success she experienced in school, it was impossible for her to develop any kind of friendship with boys. She always ended up chasing men off. Although she was lonely and really wanting a boyfriend like all the other girls our age, she just could not make it happen. In some ways it was like she wore man repellant in her cologne or something. It always started out the same way. Some guy would see her, and he would either talk to a mutual friend or introduce himself to her. She would be nervous but flattered, and then begin to believe he was going to be the one. Before they were on their second date, Anna was decorating their non-existent first home and naming all their non-children. At first I tried to tease her about it a little, but she would get up and burst into tears. My mother would always side with Anna and remind me of how I was lucky to have Bob with the mess I was in during high school.

  Bob and I really felt bad for Anna and her man troubles. We finally developed a plan to introduce David, a guy he worked with, to Anna and make them go on dates with us for a while. Bob thought we could keep Anna from doing all her creepy wife behaviors until later in the relationship. For sure the other boys thought Anna was cute, and would have dated her all the time. The problem was that she was so perfect. She made people really uncomfortable because she did not seem to fail. When David saw her and agreed on the double date, Bob and I believed we had finally found an answer to her problem. Everything was going great that first night. We had gotten pizza and told funny stories about high school. When we were choosing a movie to go see, Bob made the joke to go see a horror movie. We were all grossing out and squealing with delight when Anna interrupted us in her controlled, motherly voice.

  “Excuse me David. Do you often go to see slasher movies?” The car grew silent.

  “Uhm well…I guess I do. I mean, I like them but I keep my eyes closed.” Bob snickered and called him a pussy and we all laughed, relieved that the moment was over.

  “Well David, I wonder, have you ever considered how you would feel if your children wanted to watch a movie like “Friday the Thirteenth?” I froze. She continued.

  “I was reading an article that children, even teens exposed to that type of graphic nonsense have a lower IQ and a reduced level of reading.” I closed my eyes and shook my head as Bob checked the rearview mirror for the expression on David’s face.

  That was it. Ultimately, we decided to avoid the IQ killing movie and call it an early night.

  Anna’s tears flowed like a river as she tried to explain herself, “Susan you don’t understand! You don’t care about reading and being smart so you never think about it. I love reading and I enjoy using my brain. I don’t want dumb kids and I don’t want to marry a man who would take our kids to see bloody slasher movies with raw violence!”

  “You are not marrying David.” I screamed. “It was just a date! One single first date!”

  “But why waste our time dating if he is just going to turn out to be a disappointment who takes my children to slasher movies! What will be next? He might show our kids pornography movies!”

  I screamed: “YOU DON’T HAVE ANY CHILDREN, ANNA!”

  I tossed my hair as I bounced out of the house, “…and at the rate you are going, you never will have any children!”

  It was a terrible date, a terrible night, and a terrible memory. Bob tried to reason with David, but it was too late in the end. He met a nice girl from the next town over and they had a really great time going to slasher movies and getting grossed out together. Last I heard, they were married and had three little ones. Anna continues to claim she would rather be a spinster teacher than married to the IQ killing daddy David.

  Most of those early Sunday dinners ended up with someone in tears. Either it was Anna at the table because of her latest break-up, or me at home with Bob after having to swallow all of Mom and Anna’s advice about my next piece of clothing or career move. See, just because Anna coul
dn’t get a man, didn’t make her lighten up. In fact, I think it was because she couldn’t get a man, she decided she needed to make me relive every day of my life where I had let down the family. I later learned that my mom and Anna would “bond” by discussing my lifestyle choices while Bob and I were off pillaging the other villagers. Anna was quick to tell Mom when I had changed clothes before school, and my Mom was eager to tell Anna about the latest call she had gotten from the school regarding my behavior or grades. My Dad would tell her to stop at the dinner table, but she would just chew me out in the kitchen when we washed the dishes. The worst was when the men were in the living room cheering for the Vikings, and Anna and Mom were telling me why marriage with Bob was not going to work. It was during one of those meetings that I blurted out I was going to college before I had even talked to Bob. They both sat with eyes wide, and mouths hanging open like fly traps.

  “Yeah! I said it. I’m going to college, so shut up!”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Skylark Motel. Best skyline in America’s best little town. Can I help you?”

  “Do you have any rooms available?” It was a very soft voice.