Absorbed in her thoughts, she ran into Jenny who was coming out of the bathroom. “Oh, I’m sorry!” Marissa yelled out. “Uh, there’s someone out there to see you.”
“Thanks,” said Jenny.
Once the boy left, Marissa ran up to Jenny. “Is that your boyfriend?”
Jenny started laughing. “Dan? No, we’re just good friends. He goes to my high school. He’s a senior like me. But he did ask about you.”
Marissa tried to contain her excitement. “He did?” she squealed. “ What did he say?”
“He just wanted to know who you were, where you went to school, you know the usual.” shrugged Jenny.
“O.K. Jenny, I’m like sooooo interested in him.” Marissa clapped her hands together excitedly.
Jenny, who was eighteen, remained cool in the face of Marissa’s enthusiasm. “Well, he’s coming to pick me up after work. My car’s in the shop. He can drive you home too.”
Marissa frowned. “No way, my mom would never go for that. She’s like this total control freak. She won’t let me ride in anyone’s car unless she knows who they are.”
“Well, I can give him your number,” Jenny suggested.
Marissa face brightened, “Oh, please do. That would be great!”
After that day Daniel came to the ice cream shop every time Marissa was working. It had been love at first sight for both of them. A few weeks later they were seriously dating. Apart from school, Marissa and Daniel were inseparable. For the next two years they would see each other almost every day.
Like Marissa, Daniel came from a divorced home. His parents separated when he was a baby and he practically never saw his father. He lived a few blocks away from Marissa in an apartment with his mother, whenever she was home. And like Marissa’s mom, Dan’s mom lived a double life. By day she was a drunken, stammering idiot and by night she was a nurse at a senior assisted living facility. Daniel’s brother and sister were quite a bit older and lived on their own. As an unfortunate consequence, Daniel was left pretty much to his own devices. Yet he was kind, caring, funny and extremely affectionate. Marissa often wondered how he turned out so well with such a messed up home life.
From the beginning, Marissa vowed she would always be there for him. When Daniel graduated from high school, not one of his family members even bothered to show up. But Marissa sat in the crowd cheering him on. Marissa encouraged Daniel to take college courses at the community college. And they talked about going to California together. Marissa planned on studying acting and Daniel wanted to be a police officer. They talked about marriage and kids. In Marissa’s mind, things were going to work out perfectly, like in a fairy tale.
Yet a few months before the end of her junior year, things began to change. Daniel began acting weird and distant. Marissa was terrified he might be breaking up with her. The more he pulled away, the more she held on until finally, he announced the dreadful news to her.
It was truly a day Marissa would never forget. They had been walking in a park on a sunny day in May. Conversation had been awkward and Marissa was sure that Daniel was going to break up with her. She wanted him to say it and get it over with even if she had no idea why. The silence was much more painful.
“Daniel,” she pleaded, “sit down and tell me what’s on your mind, everything that’s on your mind. You’re killing me!” Tears streamed down her face. “If you want to…to…” She stammered through her sobs. “To break up with me just…uh…tell me and get it over with.”
Daniel’s face turned bright red with shock and anger, “Break up with you!” He shouted. “Break up with you! Why would I want to break up with you? You’re my life! Doesn’t everything I do for you mean anything? When I say ‘I love you’ ten times a day, don’t you think I mean it?” By now Daniel was sobbing uncontrollably too.
Now it was Marissa’s turn to be shocked. She looked straight at him and said, “Then why in the world have you been so distant?”
Daniel, still sobbing, refused to look at her. He couldn’t look at the girl he so loved. It was too painful. But he had to do it. He had to tell her. It was time.
He grabbed her hands, “Marissa, uh, Marissa, uh remember how we are always talking about going to California together?”
Her heart started beating stronger because somehow she knew. She knew exactly what he was going to say. “Yeah?”
“Well, I have this, uh, opportunity, uh to go, I mean, uh, to move there,” he continued.
Marissa started shaking her head, “No, not now. NO! With whom? she screamed.
Daniel pushed his hands out to tell her to lower her voice, “Just let me finish. This isn’t easy for me,” he swallowed.
“Not easy for you!” she screamed through sobs. “Not easy for you! What do you mean this isn’t easy for you? You don’t have to go!”
“Marissa! Let me finish! Freddy, my brother, has a job opportunity in Orange County, and he’s asked me to come with him. Look Mariss, it’s my ticket out of here. I can’t live in this hellhole any longer. I can’t live with that drunken bitch. I can’t. You know it, Mariss, you know she drives me up the fucking wall!”
“But what about us, Daniel? Huh? What about us?” yelled Marissa, while she wiped her face with her sleeve, “I still have a year left of high school and you know that.”
With gathering courage, he grabbed her shoulders, “Look at me! Look at me!”
Marissa looked into his deep brown eyes like she had so many times before. She couldn’t believe what was happening.
“Marissa, I have to do this! It will only be a year, then you will meet me out there. I’m doing this for me and for us.” Daniel pleaded, “Please try to understand!”
Marissa drew in a deep breath. “So uh, when do you leave?”
Daniel bit his bottom lip and whispered, “This weekend.”
*****
Marissa was in a trance. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t eat or sleep. He was gone.
She had watched from the sidelines as Freddy and Daniel packed up the U-Haul. She stood there for hours in disbelief as they loaded object after object. She was sure that Daniel would run up to her and say he wasn’t leaving, that it was all a big joke. But it didn’t turn out like that. At the end of the day, they left bidding a brief farewell. Daniel hadn’t shed a tear. He seemed almost excited at the prospect of a new life. Marissa felt so alone. The ride back home seemed interminable. He was gone.
That night after hours of staring into the void and listening to The Smiths, Marissa came up with a plan. She would get a summer job to save up for California and to pay for Daniel to come back for vacation. Barbara would be away at a convention in July, so he would be able to stay with her and Pamela. Now that Marissa was nearly eighteen, Barbara would surely leave the girls in charge for the week. Since Barbara strongly disapproved of Daniel, for some ungodly reason, Marissa could never invite him to stay with her knowledge. And Daniel couldn’t possibly stay with his mother. She would have to keep it a secret. Yes, three months was definitely a little more bearable than one year. The plan helped comfort her and let her sleep a little.
Accordingly, Marissa woke up everyday, at the crack of dawn, to head out to the dry cleaners. With every paycheck, she was that much closer to buying Daniel’s plane ticket. She counted the days until Dan would come and see her. It was the only thing that kept her going. Finally she called Daniel with the news.
“Daniel, I’ve got a surprise for you.” Marissa blurted out one day in late June.
“O.K. shoot!” He said sounding a bit confused. He couldn’t imagine what it might be. He was sure that Barbara would never let her come out to see him. She had that leash on pretty tight around Marissa’s neck. But he couldn’t imagine what “good news” might mean for him. Things had been pretty bleak since he and Freddy had moved to Orange County.
“How would you like to come for a visit?” smiled Marissa as she paused to hear his reaction.
“Look Mariss, we’ve been through this, I can’t afford it
. I’ve got to pay rent now,” said Daniel quite annoyed.
“I know. I know. And that is why I bought you a ticket,” she said excitedly.
There was silence on the other end of the line. Marissa grew confused. She made a second attempt. “Dan, I said, I got you a plane ticket. Aren’t you excited?”
“Yeah, I heard what you said. It’s just not that easy.”
“What do you mean ‘not that easy’? I bought the ticket, you come while Barbara’s away and we have a wonderful time together. What’s difficult about that?” Marissa asked with worry.
“Marissa, since we’ve been here, things have been rough. Everything is so expensive. It was hard enough to find a job. I can’t just go and ask for time off. Plus, we have bills to pay and I’m supposed to bring half. Freddy will never go for me leaving like that.”
Tears welled up in Marissa’s eyes. “Oh, I see,” she said choking back her tears. “It’s Freddy who calls the shots now. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Wait Marissa, don’t hang up!” Dan shouted. “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll come. I really will. I do want to see you.
And so it was planned. Daniel would be coming back for two weeks. Marissa dreamt about what they would do together and about how things used to be. It would be like old times. She concealed her plans from Barbara and only told her sister. She and Pamela had become partners against Barbara in the past couple of years. They promised each other they wouldn’t tell when the other broke the rules. It was the only way either one of them could get any real freedom.
But Barbara was like a CIA spy. She wanted to know exactly what her girls were doing and when. She felt it was her duty to force her daughters to obey even if it meant spying on them or calling them everywhere to make sure they were where they said they would be. Barbara was like the character, Javert, in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, who pursued Jean Valjean until the end. She refused to give up even if it killed her.
Marissa remembered the time when she and Daniel went to her junior prom. They had taken a limousine to the restaurant and planned on going to the dance hall afterwards. Barbara had Marissa paged at the restaurant and at the dance, then forced her to come back in the middle of the dance because she had supposedly loaded her camera wrong and wanted to take more pictures. She shuddered as she thought of that time and how Barbara had completely ruined the prom for her. But little did she know things were about to get much worse.
Chapter Three
One particularly hot day in June, Barbara offered to take Marissa out to lunch. Marissa wasn’t overjoyed about the invitation and suspected that something was up for her mother to act so kindly. But Barbara had called from work and cheerfully insisted that it would be fun to have a girls’ time out. It was Marissa’s day off work and she didn’t have any other plans or any excuse to say no. So after careful consideration, she figured lunch was doable.
At about quarter to noon, Barbara drove home to pick Marissa up. The sun was blistering hot at that time of day and the humidity nearly choked them as they left the driveway. Marissa remembered burning her legs on the upholstery of Barbara’s small car. Barbara didn’t believe in air conditioning so Marissa had to prop herself over the vinyl bucket seat until the wind cooled the interior.
“So where do you want to go, Marissy?” Barbara smiled.
She always called her that and Marissa hated it. When Pamela was a baby, she mixed up Marissa and sissy and ended up calling her Marissy. It stuck with Barbara because she thought it was cute, even though Marissa insisted that wasn’t her real name. “I guess Ned’s Diner is fine,” said Marissa. “It’s close by.”
“Oh, I hate that place,” grouched Barbara. “It’s always filled with smoke. Let’s go to that new steakhouse over on Jefferson. I’ve been dying to try it.”
Marissa rolled her eyes and sighed, “O.K.”
“Don’t you roll your eyes at me, young lady,” shouted Barbara. “What’s with the attitude anyway?”
“It’s just that you always do that. You ask me where I want to go and what I want to do and you do what you want anyway. It’s annoying!” Marissa shouted back.
“I do not do that. Here I wanted to have a nice afternoon with my daughter and you’re ruining it. You’ve been such a grouch since that Dan left. Just get over it Marissa, he’s one fish out of many in the sea.”
Now Barbara really did it. She stepped over the line. “What do you mean ‘that Dan’ mother? He’s my boyfriend and I love him and he loves me, which is more than I can say for you!” yelled Marissa.
At that moment Barbara screeched the car into an empty parking lot and turned off the ignition. Marissa looked over at her mom and scrunched up her eyebrows. “What are you doing?” she whined.
“I need to talk to you Marissa,” Barbara announced coldly.
“Why do we have to stop here?” Marissa protested. “Why can’t we just go eat, we can talk there can’t we?”
“No, Marissa. I thought it would be better if we talked here. I don’t want to embarrass you in the restaurant,” Barbara stated firmly.
“Embarrass me? What in the world are you talking about?” Marissa said irritably.
Barbara turned off the engine, unbuckled her seatbelt and turned to face her daughter.
Confused, Marissa looked at her mother as if she were crazy. “Can we go now? It’s boiling in here!”
Barbara blasted out accusations. “I know what you did. Are you going to come clean?”
“What? Mom, I still have no idea what you are talking about.” Marissa wondered what her mother could be thinking of. She didn’t know Marissa smoked and even if she found out, why would she stop in an abandoned parking lot to question her? That made no sense. Her life had been an absolute bore since Dan left, no parties, no drinking, nothing. “Are you going to tell me why we’re stopped here or not?”
“I know you bought a plane ticket for Dan,” Barbara bellowed, her eyes bugging out in anger.
Marissa’s face turned flush. How did she know? Everything was kept an absolute secret. Only her sister, Pamela knew and Pamela would never tell a single soul. She decided to call her bluff and keep it cool. “Yeah, so what’s the big deal,” Marissa shrugged. “I want to see him, he wants to see me, so what?”
“I can’t believe my daughter bought a plane ticket for a boy!” She yelled. “This can only mean one thing: that you want to have sex with him. I will not have my daughter be a tramp.”
What an accusation! Marissa thought. O.K. What century are we in? She knows I’m almost eighteen. And how dare she call me a tramp.
Marissa and Daniel couldn’t deny the physical attraction between them. They were two young people extremely in love. But sex wasn’t the reason Marissa wanted to see Daniel. Why couldn’t Barbara understand that? Hadn’t she ever been in love? Marissa looked at her mother who resembled more of a drill sergeant than a mother. No, she couldn’t imagine her in love.
As she felt anger boiling inside of her, Marissa shouted back, “What’s the big deal that I bought him the ticket? I happen to have the money from my own paychecks. And what gives you this big idea about sex? I want to see Dan for him. Is there anything wrong with that?”
“You are going to have sex, I just know it. I talked to Betsy and she said that any girl who pays that kind of money for a boy is bound to have sex. You are going to be a teen-age statistic. You’re going to be an unwed teen-age mother.” She sobbed.
Betsy, who was Barbara’s best friend, spent her time watching soap operas and milling around in other people’s affairs. Whereas Barbara was intelligent and hard working, Betsy sat on her ass and lived off alimony and welfare. Marissa had no idea why Barbara continued a friendship with such a lame person.
Marissa felt trapped. She didn’t know what to do or say. And the heat in the car suffocated her. She touched the door handle. She could leave. But where would she go? If she walked home, Barbara would beat her there.
“Look, “ Marissa said through gritted teeth as sh
e looked at her sobbing mother, “Dan is coming here whether you like it or not. Why does it matter who paid for the ticket? He will be staying with his mother. As for the sex, we could have had sex anywhere, anytime. That didn’t seem to concern you for the two years we were together in the same state. Why does it take a plane ticket to make you go berserk? And here’s something new mom, your friend Betsy has always been crazy. I don’t know why you even listen to her.”
It was no use. Barbara was not going to listen. She had her mind made up that Marissa had become a sleazy girl overnight, and was “paying for sex”. How sick was that?
Marissa bit her lip to hold back tears of anger. She would never let Barbara see her cry. That would be a sign of weakness. But she wasn’t about to let Barbara ruin her time with Daniel.
After twenty minutes of ranting and raving, Barbara finally said that Pamela and Marissa would have to stay with their dad while she was gone. Their dad would be notified of Daniel’s visit and she would have to respect her curfew every night for the rest of the summer.
Just when Marissa assumed the tough part was over, the month of July got much worse.
*****
Daniel arrived right on time. He seemed cheerful enough and Marissa, who was beside herself with joy, never thought she would see the day come. The first few days were pure bliss. Marissa had hoped that Daniel could stay at her house while Barbara was away so he could avoid his drunken mother as much as possible. But Marissa knew it was too risky. All of the neighbors were Barbara’s friends and Marissa was sure that Barbara had told them to be on the lookout for any boys entering the house.
Yet once they were together, those minor details didn’t seem to make much of a difference to Marissa. She took the first week off work so she could spend most of her time with Daniel. But the second week she had to work her normal hours. Working while Daniel was in town totally bummed her out, but at least they had one more week together.
Forbidden Fruit: An Unlikely Love Story Page 2