by Bruce Thomas
I didn't have the dilemma of having to choose if it was crossing the line to do so because Fred's fingers grasped onto mine in a strong hold seconds later. My nerves calmed somewhat with his hand holding me to the ground. I tilted my head sideways and gave him my best appreciated smile.
Walking up to her door felt like the longest seven seconds of my life. I wished the long driveway was longer though because I still didn't know what I was going to say to her. What if she was angry to see me? What if she was still ashamed that I was her daughter and she didn't want to claim me so she slams the door in my face? What if I say the wrong thing? Oh, this could go down hill quickly. I was teeter
tottering on my emotions if I wanted to go through with this or not. It then hit me that I didn't exactly know why I came here in the first place. Sure, I wanted closure but closure in what exactly? Why she left? Why she never got back in contact? Why she didn't love me like a mother should? Why I still cared if I got her approval in life or not?
A part of my wanted to walk back down the drive and get back in the car because I still wasn't sure why I cared so much that she knows I'm alive and well because she hasn't exactly tried keeping contact since she left when I was thirteen.
Being a teen in a world without your mother was hard. There were certain things I just couldn't get myself to ask my uncle. Boys, sure, he could tell me stay away from them until I was fifty. Periods, boobs, body issues, not so much. I was thankful that Cathie came into our lives when she did.
I came to the conclusion while I stood frozen, starring at the golden knocker with the initials B + N engraved in the shinning metal, that I just wanted to rub it in her face that I was doing well. Backing out wasn't an option, I decided once reaching forward to rapidly knock on the door. "Still time..."
"Fred, shut up," I hissed right before the door swung open.
There she was again; blonde hair piled on top of her head in a neat bun and her white blouse tucked into a pinned stripped skirt. She looked somewhat like a secretary and she
could pass for someone who never had the history that my mother had.
She said nothing. Her gaze stayed locked on mine before, what seemed like minutes later, her eyes roamed to Fred standing next to me, closely. His stance showed that he meant to pounce if needed. "We don't want anything," she spoke, starting to shut the door in my face.
My heart sped up at the let down and my emotions erupted in a instant. My hand shot out and stopped the door before she could succeed in closing it.
"I know you know who I am." My cheeks fumed red with embarrassment and anger. Her blue eyes peeked from between the crack where my face loomed along with a very annoyed looking ex-boyfriend. I shifted in front of him hoping he got the hint that he shouldn't speak or make a move. "How did you get this address?" She asked after measuring up Fred. "I don't want any trouble." Fred scoffed and I had to hold back from doing the same. I was her daughter. She was my mother. Fred's words bounced around hauntingly in my head. Just because she gave birth to you does not make her a mother.
"Pat," I stated. I watched her face contort in annoyance.
She blew air out of her nose and shifted on her feet. "We had a deal."
"I just want to talk," I confessed. I could guess what the deal was: Stay away from Annaanna and she will never know. Know what? I'm not exactly sure. My hand still held the door open and through the crack I could now see the little girl that I saw at the grocery store making her way to us.
"Mommy, who is it," she asked, pushing the door
open to see. Her mother stepped back, a sour look on her face, though it was different than the times when I was little. She looked more in control. She looked like a loving mother who was just worried about her family.
"Hi," the little girl--my sister, said.
"Hi," I croaked back, chocking on the words as they left my throat.
"Who are you?"
Before I could answer, another voice rang through the tense air. "Honey, I'm going to grab dinner. How does Chinese sound?" All the blood in my body went cold when the man stepped around the corner. His brown hair waved messily around his head, and the little mole just above his top lip made me look closer. I knew this man. I've seen him in pictures when I was a little girl roaming through my mother's room while she was out. I loved looking through her photos that she kept in a shoe box from TradeHome hidden under her bed.
I have seen this man before.
"Whose this?" He asked, his voice friendly. He tugged on the little girl's ponytail making her lean her head back and smile up at him. He smiled back down at her.
I couldn't speak and apparently neither could my mom. I looked to her to say something but she had her gaze focused on her bare feet.
Fred stepped forward and pushed the door further open. "I'm Fred and this is Anna." The man looked between his wife and us, ease set on his features. He clearly didn't know the bomb that was going to be dropped on him. Maybe I should keep my mouth shut? "Anna is this lady's daughter."
At the addition to Fred's sentence, the man's eyes went wide. Uncertainty
flashed in his eyes and he looked over at his--I'm guessing wife. My mother continued to look at her feet.
"Excuse me?" He said. He pushed his daughter and my mother a little to the side and opened the door all the way.
I gritted my teeth and turned to Fred giving him a hard look. Guess I didn't have to make another decision.
"Fred." That was not how I wanted things to go. He shrugged his shoulders carelessly, his eyes turning into slits as he watched my mother while she fought hard to not look guilty.
"I'm sorry," I apologized but was interrupted before I could say anymore.
"Don't apologize, Annaanna. She should be apologizing," Fred scolded looking directly at the woman standing next to the man and his child. "What is going on, Bethany?" The man asked, his voice becoming frantic.
My mother seemed lost for words which was ironic to me because I sure had plenty for the both of us. The little girl peeked around her legs and looked up at her mom expectantly as if she really knew what was going on.
The world seemed to shift on its axis at one certain fact. She was ashamed of me. She still didn't want to claim me as her own which I knew might still happen like it once had but the reality of it all was still a punch in the gut. The small hope that I had demolished with a blink of an eye.
"Mom..." The word sounded foreign on my tongue from not using it for so many years but it felt disrespectful and strange for me to call her anything else. Her eyes shifted up to mine, large and frightened.
"Don't call me that." She snapped
out of her trance like the name coming out of my mouth was cold water to her face. I flinched.
Fred braced my back with his hands which I would have appreciated if it hadn't been such a slap to the face. This felt wrong. My fight or flight was kicking in and I so badly wanted to run. This was a mistake. "I don't deserve you calling me that." She had the audacity of looking shameful. My eyes flickered to the man standing next to her in the doorway. His eyes were larger than his fist as he looked at me. He was studying me, that was for sure. His hazel eyes scrutinized every bit of my body, from my curly head of hair to my knee high boots.
I now knew who the man in the picture was and he seemed to have dawned on him who I was also. "You told me you got rid of it..." he softly spoke as if he meant to keep it to himself. My blood turned to ice at his words. Fred's grip tightened on me and I physically turned around before his fist went flying. My eyes pleaded with his to not cause any problems. Those eyes, those stormy, troubled eyes, looked sad. They looked sad, angry, and deadly. A terrible combination for someone like Fred Montgomery. I could see myself reflected in those eyes. I was just as sad, just as angry, and I felt just as dead.
"Don't," I pleaded out loud to him in a warning. Fred looked down at me as if I was crazy. He went to open his mouth to either voice his opinions or tell me to move but he hesitated. Maybe it was from the tears making
me blind or the urgent plea behind my eyes that made him stop. Either way, I was the thankful. Because if there was anyone who was going to give this couple a earth shattering revolution, it was me.
I turned back around to face them--my mother and my father. "Can we talk?"
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41
Their living room was larger than my kitchen and family room put together at home back in Iowa. Everything was beyond clean looking and white, like the rugs and the couch itself. It was like if I touched one thing, the entire pure room would set aflame and I would burn along with it.
"Can I get you something to drink?" Bethany asked uncomfortably.
"How about a beer?" Fred asked. I could tell that he was mocking her by the sneer on his handsome face and I elbowed him hard from beside me on the couch.
Bethany forced a stretched smile. "There is no alcohol in this house. How about a water or an ice tea?" Fred scoffed and I pushed down both of our pride as I accepted water for the both of us. Fred left barely any room beside my bouncing, nervous legs and his, which was uncomfortable yet reassuring all at once. My father, Nick Harrington, was now sitting on the pale couch in front of me, eyeing me like he was afraid that I would jump up and pounce. He didn't look mad that I was here but more intrigued as if I was some alien that crashed onto his front porch.
"You look like my mom," he said after a few awkward beats. "You have the same nose." I didn't know what to say to that. I didn't like this man. I never knew he was even a real person until a few minutes ago. I always thought of him as a fictional person in a story tale that road away on his white horse before saving the princess. I wasn't the princess. I see that now.
I didn't say anything. Bethany walked back into the room with water which she set on the glass table in front of us on coasters.
It was uncomfortable here. This place represented everything I was confused about. How could two people with such a messy past, drugs, alcohol, teen pregnancy which lead to a single mom, who soon up and left her own kid in the hands of her little brother because she didn't want this life, lead to this? And now she had this one, with the man she always blamed me for leaving her.
"So you two are together," I concluded, looking between the both of them. "How and when did that happen."
Bethany shifted in her seat and Nick placed an arm around her shoulders behind the couch. "Wait--" I said quickly holding my hands up. "I can probably guess that." I turned to my mother who sat like a statue. I was starting to wonder if these people were even real. "When you left Dyersville." Bethany nodded tightly. "I knew where Nick had moved to go to college. I had gotten in contact with him through Facebook."
"I have family here. Some cousins," Nick interrupted. "My parents soon moved here once I started my sophomore year at Columbia."
I could fill in the spaces to that one. My parents sent me away when they found out I knocked up my high school sweetheart. Having a baby would have jeopardized my golden future. "I figured you were better off without me so I finally left that place and came here after getting in touch with him. When I arrived, we talked, I put myself through rehab and then we got married a year later." Bethany laid her hand over Nick's knee. He looked down at her fondly but when he looked back over at me, his eyes turned sad.
style="text-align:left;">"I didn't know about you..." His jaw clenched then unclenched. "But I don't blame your mother... I wouldn't have made a very good father back then."
"Yeah, having one horrible parent was worse enough for her," Fred bit out, hands wringing in his lap. I didn't bother defending them as I would have an hour ago because I was crushed and confused, hurt, and all of the above. "Which is why I left and never looked back," she answered. Her voice showed no sadness like Nick's had. She sounded more embarrassed. It sorta made me want to hit her. "I thought I should go and get my life together and stop putting you in the middle of my troubles. You were such a good little girl and I realized that it wasn't right for me to take my blame out on you. So I left."
I looked over at Nick to see him
watching my reaction with an equally embarrassed look on his clean face. How was he so calm when the bomb that he had another child for nineteen years just blew up on him? "And that's that?" My voice sounded like it was flat. The anger I was feeling turned into to liquid betrayal. It bubbled up from my chest and into my ears where the blood rushed with hatred. This wasn't closure. This was a cold rush of a reality check with a side of a wake up call. "You've got to be fucking kidding me?"
I was on my feet before my mind could grasp how much my chest was hurting. Both of my parents--no, Nick and Bethany's--eyes went wide. For
once I made myself in charge and bigger than the both of them. "Do you two have no hearts? No conscience? How could you just up and leave your daughter without any contact what so ever to pawn after a guy who asked you to abort her or he was leaving you because it would be a disgrace to his hokey-doke of a family? And then sit here like you're the picture perfect framework of an American fuçking dream?" I shouted shaking my hair wildly around my face.
"And you." I turned to Nick with a pointed figure. "You sit here acting like this is an every day business meeting and your discussing ceiling tiles for your office instead of a daughter you didn't know you had for years! And you're not even showing any emotion that this woman didn't even tell you about me. You both may have not have wanted me but I am human. I have a heart and I have a soul and it's half you and half you but you know what? I am nothing like either one of you! I stick around for the once that I love. I take responsibility for my actions and I fight until the battle is lost but I never give up hope. Do you want to know who taught me that. My father. Pat.
"Yes, Bethany, you are right. I am a good girl and I was raised by a man who taught me to stand above people such as the like you two. I used to believe that I would do anything to be loved by my biological mom and dad. I would stay up at night coming up with scenarios of how reconnecting with you would be. But I now see that I'm just an idiot for thinking any good
could come out of a relationship that was never real in the first place."
I couldn't see their faces through the blur of tears rimming my eyes but I'm sure they were not how I would want them to be. I'm glad I couldn't see them because I would hope they would look ashamed and saddened and I didn't want to be disappointed even more when they didn't.
"After hearing all this, I'm glad you two found each other again and decided you were ready to have a family. I'm happy you have the perfect little daughter that you can both love and cherish. But I'm not happy that you can get up every day and act like I still don't exist in your minds when I'm out here in this shitty world trying to survive with the idea that nobody loves or wants me. I don't need you, though. But I'm glad that you two have each other because you deserve each other."
I reached down to the couch to grab my purse. "Come on, Fred. We're leaving."
I waited for Fred to meet up with me by the doorway before I turned around to face these strangers for the last conceptual time. "Promise me one thing," I said letting the tears run down my face. They said nothing, so I continued on anyway. "Raise that little girl better than you did me. Show her self love and show her to believe in herself like you should have done with me so she's not pawning after anyone when she deserves more."
With that, Fred steered me out the door and to his car silently with me walking blindly. He
opened the passenger side door for me and I slide in having trouble meeting his eyes. I really blew up in there. But in all honesty, I didn't have the energy to be embarrassed because I think I was still in shock. The people that gave me life were still together, got their lives together, had another daughter, and still wanted nothing to do with me. Fred kept looking at me while he drove back into the city but he didn't say anything. I continued to cry silently. It felt like I was getting every uptight feeling about my life out in one long cry. I would say it felt kinda good but I had snot running out of my nose and my chest h
urt from silencing my sobs.
"Just let it out, Anna," Fred quietly instructed in a soothing voice and I did. I sobbed into my hands and I wailed until my throat hurt. I was thankful that Fred didn't say anything even when we pulled back into his parking ramp because I think if he had, I would have cried myself to death.
I stayed in the car unable to move while Fred undid both of our seat belts and came around to my side to open the door.
He didn't say anything. He wrapped his arms around my midsection and pulled up slightly until I was halfway out of the car. He didn't let go though but instead buried his nose into the crook of my neck and just held me tight. The tears rushes quickly down my cheeks and the hushed sobs grew louder once again as I cried all over. I
held him tightly, as he did me, and breathed in the smell of his musky cologne and the pure aroma that screamed Fred. His sturdy body that was pressed against mine held me upright so I wouldn't fall to the ground. I could feel his heart beat in his chest as I tired to calm down.
"You're so brave, Anna," he murmured into my skin. He placed his lips against my neck as softly as a feather brushing my skin. "I love you so much. You're not unloved or unwanted because I want you and I love you more than anything."
That, of course, made me cry harder because I wasn't only hearing his words but feeling them. I could feel his warmth seeping from his body into mine and generating itself like a tornado around my heart. I hugged him back tighter than before to let him know I appreciated his words more than I could express in my own words. I can't pin point when he started feeling this way. Maybe it was after our first time. Maybe it was in Iowa. Either way, I didn't want to overthink it.