The Newport Ladies Book Club: Daisy

by Kilpack, Josi S.

  “What?” He turned to look at me, his face showing genuine surprise. He held a spatula in one hand.

  “You say that like I’m always freaking out on her,” I said, looking for some way I could share the responsibility that was sitting so heavily on my shoulders. “It’s not like this is easy. She’s got two parents, but I’m the only one who gets to deal with the ugly stuff and, you know what? I’m so sick and tired of the ugly stuff. I’m tired of arguing about everything. I’m tired of feeling like the bad guy all the time. I’m tired of not being appreciated, of people questioning every little thing I do. Here I’ve worked hard to give her a good life, and I feel like I’ve created a spoiled little brat who only cares about what she can get out of people, who’s constantly looking for some kind of free ride. I mean, what does she do around the house? Nothing. What does she do to earn money for the movies and new clothes and makeup? Nothing. She’s lazy and rude, and now she’s a cheat—how humiliating is that?” I shook my head. “I’m just tired of . . . of . . .” I didn’t want to say it out loud, but the word hung there. “I’m tired of her. I’m tired of being the mom.” And I was just—tired.

  I looked at Paul, already feeling regret for my outburst. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking past me, his expression shocked. Before I even turned around, I felt a prickling sensation of realization that I’d done something horrible. I turned to see Stormy staring at me. Not angry Stormy. Not defensive Stormy. Sad Stormy.

  “Oh, hon,” I said, my whole body on fire as I rewound what I had said and played it back in my head. Maybe she hadn’t heard all of it, but I knew that didn’t matter. Whatever she had heard was enough. She ran back to her room, where she must have been when Paul came home, and slammed the door hard enough to shake the windows. She’d already locked the door by the time I reached it.

  “Stormy,” I said. “Let me in.”

  “Go away!”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things. I didn’t mean it.”

  She didn’t answer me, and I let my head fall forward until it hit the door. My words fell flat because, as wrong as it was to say what I’d said, I had meant it. And what made it worse was that Stormy knew I’d meant it. More points for Mom! I was swimming in maternal mistakes these days but felt absolutely sick about this one. How on earth would I make this right?

  Chapter 7

  Jared showed up at my door an hour later. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. I’d had a few bites of salmon but couldn’t stomach more than that, and although I’d tried to talk to Stormy twice through her still-closed bedroom door, she wouldn’t dialogue with me. I thought I had more time to let her cool off, to think of the right way to fix things between us, but apparently I didn’t because she’d called her dad for backup.

  Jared didn’t even say anything when I opened the door, just lifted his eyebrows as if to say, “Here I am to save the day!” He’d put on weight since we’d split up, and his hair was thinning, but he still had the looks and the confidence I’d fallen in love with eighteen years ago. I stepped aside and let him into the house.

  Paul looked up from the magazine he was reading and then stood and crossed the floor to shake hands. It was always weird to see them together—my past and my present facing off. But Jared was here to face off with me, not Paul, and as soon as the niceties were finished, Jared got to the point.

  “So,” he said, folding his arms over his chest. He used to work out religiously, but had slacked off the last few years; it showed more than he probably wanted me to notice. “A little drama, huh?”

  I wanted to slap him for being patronizing. Instead, I folded my arms too and gave him his share of the problem by relating everything that had happened at the school and how embarrassing it was and how angry I was about it.

  “And so then you said you hated her and didn’t want her living here anymore,” Jared added when I finished.

  My hands fell to my sides. “I never said that!” I looked to Paul for confirmation, but he’d stepped away from the discussion and looked as though he didn’t know whether to stay or go. Betrayal surged through me. Why couldn’t he, just once, stand with me instead of stepping back to let me handle the fight all by myself? He’d been there. He knew what I hadn’t said. Unfortunately, he also knew what I had said and that wasn’t a whole lot better.

  “Well, regardless of the words you used, she heard that you hate her and don’t want her here anymore. I came to pick her up.”

  “What?” I snapped. “That’s why you’re here—to take her with you?” I looked at Paul again, sure that this outrageousness would incense him too. He was flipping through a magazine so I turned my laser stare to Jared, who shrugged as though he had no choice in the matter—Stormy was running the show.

  “Can’t you see she’s playing you against me?” I said, trying to sound calm even though I was anything but. “She’s done something horrible, and she’s trying to hide it behind my mistake.”

  He raised both eyebrows. “Sounds like you’re doing the exact same thing.”

  I clenched my teeth together but kept from saying anything else. It wouldn’t help, and I knew it. He pulled his phone from his pocket and typed in a text. I knew he was texting Stormy to tell her she could come out of her room and that he would whisk her away from all her troubles.

  “She’s got school,” I said.

  “I know that,” Jared said, his calm slipping.

  “She can’t afford to miss school, especially now. And she’s got a special meeting with the vice principal tomorrow.”

  “I’ve figured it out.”

  “How?” I asked, crossing my arms again, feeling the need to be defensive about anything and everything. He never took Stormy on school nights, never, not once in all these years. For him to come here acting as though he could fix everything was offensive.

  “I’ve figured it out,” he said again, this time slowly with clipped words. He spoke in a tone meant to make me feel stupid, like he had to use slow, concise words so my little brain could understand what he was saying. “I’ll call you in a couple of days, when you’ve both had a chance to calm down.”

  There was that word again—calm. I took a deep breath and was about to completely tear into him and tell him what a pompous jerk he was to come pick her up without even hearing my side of things. He was wedging himself between us, and I wasn’t going to stand for it.

  But I didn’t tear into him. For two reasons. First, I was afraid I might say too much—like I had when venting to Paul. If I’d minded my tongue then, I wouldn’t have to mind it now. Second, why not let Jared try his hand at raising a teenage girl? He’d been a weekend dad most of Stormy’s life and was rarely even that anymore due to her social life. He’d never gone to a parent-teacher conference. He’d never taken her to the dentist or had to explain the birds and the bees or teach her how to finish a math problem. He’d certainly never been called to the principal’s office. The reason he could judge me so harshly was because he’d never walked two yards, let alone a mile, in my shoes.

  I heard Stormy’s door open behind me, which gave me a chance to attempt to salvage something with her there to hear it.

  I raised my hands in surrender and changed my tactics. “Okay,” I said, thrilled to see disappointment in Jared’s eyes. He loved a good fight, and I was denying him the satisfaction of being able to rile me up even more. “I was over the top tonight, and I shouldn’t have said what I said. I understand if she doesn’t want to stay here right now.” I wanted to turn around and make eye contact with my daughter, but I wanted her to think she was overhearing something rather than being addressed directly with these sentiments. I met Jared’s eyes instead. “I’m really sorry,” I said, as though having to take care of his own daughter for a couple of days was a horrible burden to put on him. He’d see what it was really like to be the custodial parent. I gave him three days—tops.

  He was taken aback by my humility. Stormy moved forward, and I turned to look a
t her. My little demonstration fizzled. She’d been crying, and I felt horrible. “Sweetie,” I said. She wouldn’t look at me, and I didn’t try to force her to hug me or try to touch her at all for fear she’d slap away any attempts I made. She walked past her dad and out the front door without a word, a duffel bag in hand and her backpack slung over her shoulder. Jared looked at me as though he was going to say something, but decided against it and he pulled the front door shut behind him.

  Paul and I stood there for a few seconds. I stared at the door; Paul looked between me, the door, and the kitchen. “Well,” he said after a few seconds, clapping his hands together. “That was fun.”

  I glared at him. “Thanks for your help,” I said, feeling angrier than I logically thought was warranted but too emotionally fractured to curtail it. The whole day had gone from bad to worse, and I just wanted to throw it all away and start over tomorrow. Right now, I had to believe that was possible or I’d break into a thousand pieces, and I couldn’t let myself do that.

  “What did I do?”

  “Exactly my point,” I said, turning on my heel. I needed to be alone. I grabbed Poisonwood Bible off the counter—an excuse for solitude—and stormed into our room, shutting the door rather than slamming it, even though I was sure a slam would make me feel better.

  I dropped on the bed and closed my eyes, clutching the book to my chest as I listed all the injustices that had been waged against me today. Tears rose and I choked them down. Big girls don’t cry, right? After a few minutes of self-pity, and feeling rather disgusted by myself for every word I’d said since entering the house tonight, I flipped open the book and turned to the first page. I could only hope that I could lose myself completely within the words of the story. I wasn’t good company, and I needed to get far away from my life. What better way than with a missionary family in the jungles of the Congo in the 1960s? Thank goodness for a distraction that could keep me from seeing myself in all my ugly glory.

  What a horrible day.

  Chapter 8

  “I’m sorry,” I said, standing just inside the doorway of the living room. I felt like a petulant child, but that wasn’t undeserved. I’d gotten lost in the book for a while, but as I read about the family’s interactions and saw the dysfunction there, I saw myself a little more clearly. Too clearly.

  Paul looked up from his laptop set up on a TV tray and closed the lid. He leaned against the back of the couch and put his hands behind his head. I didn’t want to meet his eyes, didn’t want to see the censure I knew I deserved, but the silence stretched too thin and I couldn’t avoid it. Paul was staring at me, waiting, but his eyes were soft, and I felt a lump form in my throat. He was a good man. That acknowledgment made me feel even worse.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, and I knew he wasn’t just talking about this moment. “You seem . . . out of sorts.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on with me,” I said, which was true. “I don’t feel like I’ve been sleeping well.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know,” I said sheepishly. I considered telling him that I worried I was coming down with something too—hence the reason why dinner had turned me off—but I knew that wasn’t what we were talking about either. He extended his arms, taking them from behind his head and holding them out as though inviting me into them. I didn’t hesitate and hurried across the room to snuggle up next to him on the couch. I tucked my feet beneath me and let him put his arms around me.

  “I love my daughter, but I’m tired of raising teenagers,” I said, though I was distrustful of saying it out loud. After all I’d said earlier tonight, it seemed an even greater betrayal of Stormy to say it again, only using different words. “It’s impossible for her to not take that personally.” I sighed, heavy and laden with regret.

  “Well, if I said I was tired of my wife, you might take that as a hit.”

  “I might.”

  He gave me a shoulder squeeze and kissed my hair. How was it that Paul could talk about almost anything and stay calm when I couldn’t? “You’re a good mom, Daisy,” he whispered.

  I felt the tears rise in my eyes. Was I a good mom? Since the moment December had been put in my arms more than twenty-seven years ago, I had wanted to be a good mom. But ever since then I’d felt as though I’d been trying to force myself into a mold I didn’t fit. It shouldn’t feel that way.

  Something one of my mother’s well-intentioned friends said to me when they learned I was not putting my baby up for adoption came back to me: “There are some choices you can’t undo. You’ve already made one; don’t follow it up with another bad decision.” That comment had haunted me. Had I simply been building on that first wrong decision—getting pregnant in the first place—all these years? When that woman had shared her thoughts, I’d been seventeen years old, bloated with a baby that, honestly, freaked me out when it moved around in my belly. I took her words as a kind of challenge. I would prove I could do this. I would not give in to people’s limited expectations of me.

  My own friends were avoiding me by then; I had broken the illusion of invincibility that teenagers needed to justify their dumb choices. The people at church were judging me and advising me and making predictions they couldn’t know were true: “You’ll end up on welfare.” “You’ll never get an education.” “You’ll ruin that child’s life.”

  I was determined, though, with the help of my eighteen-year-old Prince Charming, to prove otherwise; I wanted so badly to prove otherwise.

  December was three months old, and I was still unmarried and living in Scott’s parents’ basement, when the bloom began to fade on the rose. Three months after that, I was living back at my parents’ house and trying to ignore the “I told you so” glances from pretty much everyone. I finished my GED via night school and avoided welfare because my parents let me live at home expense-free in exchange for being able to use me as an example to my brother and sisters.

  I’d tried to be the right kind of mom, but I couldn’t do it on my own. And my mother’s help came at a high price—mostly self-respect, independence, and good ol’ pride. At the age of twenty, I moved out on my own for the first time, with more predictions of failure nipping at my heels as I went. My job as a secretary at an insurance company made it possible for me to get a studio apartment for December and me, so long as we were both content with eating ramen noodles most of the time—which we were. Mom still watched December while I was at work, but I reveled in no longer having a crib next to my bed in my childhood bedroom.

  After a year with the insurance company, I received my certification to do quotes for potential clients. I added a few more certifications to diversify my potential and finally got my license to be an agent after I’d been working there about three years. As soon as I was offered an agent position—I’d been applying within the company for several months by that point—I jumped on it and moved to Los Angeles, California, where, for the first time, I had my very own office and my very own clients. December was five and didn’t like going to day care after having been with Grandma every day, but what else could I do? She started kindergarten that fall and we . . . adjusted.

  I had a few relationships in those first few years in LA, but nothing that took off until I met Jared through a woman I worked with. He was the sun, moon, and stars, and if I ever questioned that, he was quick to remind me of it. We were just getting serious, just beginning to talk about a future together, when—surprise—I was pregnant.

  Out of wedlock.

  Again.

  I panicked.

  I could not have another baby alone. Hadn’t I learned this lesson already? I saw only one solution—one thing that would prove I was not some kind of bimbo idiot. I needed to get married this time. Lucky for me, Jared wasn’t completely opposed to marriage.

  With a weekend trip to Napa and a two-hundred-dollar ring from Kmart, we sealed the deal in a small ceremony. I sent pictures to my parents. They said they were happy for me, but why couldn’t I have g
otten married in a church? Jared wasn’t religious, and despite my parents’ refusal to acknowledge it, neither was I. The Christian ideals I’d been taught all my life had soured when those same believers had condemned me at the age of seventeen to a life of poverty and delinquency because I wouldn’t part with my own flesh and blood.

  Jared wanted to be an actor, which meant he waited tables and provided security at events while waiting for his big break. I continued with my career, making sure we had a reliable income, and did the best I could to juggle everything—new husband, demanding job, new baby, and a ten-year-old girl. Despite all my good intentions, however, we never quite found our groove, Jared and I, before he decided that a groove with me wasn’t what he really wanted anyway.

  The miscarriage right before our official separation hadn’t helped my view of myself in a maternal role. Ever since, I’d harbored a secret fear that God had taken that child away from me because He knew I couldn’t take care of it. I didn’t necessarily disagree with Him, but it was one more reason to regard God with suspicion.

  After we officially split, Jared took a job as a salesman for a computer software company in Tustin, while I stayed in our overpriced apartment in Chino before transferring to the Irvine office and tried, again, to keep up with a life I hadn’t really wanted and didn’t feel cut out for.

  I wasn’t a bad mother all those years, but I had a lot going on, and I couldn’t honestly say that I felt like I’d ever been a good mother to my girls.

  I considered saying this out loud to Paul, but it was one of those questions that came with the obligation of a specific answer. Kind of like “Do I look fat in this?” If I told Paul what I really thought about the kind of mother I’d been, he’d try to convince me I was wrong. How could he do otherwise? I was very self-aware, so manipulating people into offering empty reassurances wouldn’t do me any good in the long run. I just wished I could see the job I’d done as a mom as good enough. Tonight of all nights, however, was not helping.