by L. M. Reed
Chapter 2
There was a message on my answering machine when I got home; it was from my mother.
“Allison, do not forget the social this weekend at the country club. Richard will be at your apartment to pick you up at seven on Saturday. Your dress and shoes are to be delivered on Friday afternoon, be sure you are there when they arrive. We must not leave a designer dress sitting outside your door for anyone to steal. You are to be at the salon no later than ten on Saturday morning to have your hair and nails done. Stefan does not like to be kept waiting.”
I rolled my eyes, and promptly erased the message. I couldn’t wait until I graduated from college and was truly out on my own. I hated having to make deals with my parents in order to get a college education.
They hadn’t seen the necessity of my going at all. In their mind, my future was all mapped out. Marry Richard, raise two children, preferably a boy to join the law firm and a girl to marry off to someone equally wealthy, live rich, and die rich. End of story. It had taken all of my powers of persuasion, plus Richard’s input to convince them that a degree in home economics would be exactly what I needed to finish off my well-rounded education.
I had to convince them because I didn’t have the guts to strike out on my own without some solid means of supporting myself. Living the sheltered life that I had I was fairly clueless about what making my own way was all about and the cold, cruel world scared me silly. If Hannah had lived, I might have found the courage to leave them and start over—Hannah would have helped me—but when Hannah died, so had my strength.
Instead, I struck a bargain with my parents. They would pay for my college, an apartment, a car, and give me an allowance and, in return, I would be there for any and every event they required me to attend dressed to a ‘T’ with Richard as an escort. We had to present ourselves as a happy, cohesive family to help my father attain his all-consuming goal: Texas Supreme Court Justice.
That was a small enough price to pay for ultimate freedom. For all intents and purposes, I was getting an education to help me in my future role as Mrs. Richard Stover. What no one knew, because I had chosen not to tell anyone, was the fact that I was taking education courses along with my home economics courses in order to become a teacher…my ticket to freedom.
My parents were willing enough for me to get what they considered a worthless degree knowing that they still had me where they wanted me, under their thumb, but if they ever discovered that I was going for my teaching certificate, they would…I shuddered to think how quickly I would be married off to Richard. The fact that I didn’t want to marry him would mean nothing to them.
Eager to get out of the house, I had begun my college career during my junior and senior years in high school, taking English classes at the university, which counted towards high school as well as college credits. The summer immediately after high school graduation, I convinced my parents to let me start college right away implying that the sooner I graduated from college the sooner they might hear wedding bells.
I had to call on Richard’s powers of persuasion in order for them to see the merit in having my own apartment, but it had worked like a charm. Richard thought I was getting the apartment so he and I could have some privacy but, in reality, I needed my own address so my report cards came to me instead of my parents. There was no way I wanted to risk them seeing what classes I was taking or how quickly I was going to be able to graduate.
By the end of the fall semester, I would be classified as a senior and be able to do my student teaching after Christmas break, even though it would only be the spring of my third year. By attending classes every summer, and as full a load as I could manage during the regular fall and spring semesters, I was thankfully going to be able to graduate a whole year ahead of my fellow classmates.
I had learned how to manipulate my parents early in life. Although I despised myself for doing it, I felt that I didn’t have any other choice except to be miserable. I was at the mercy of my parents and their expectations of me. I needed some type of self-defense and manipulation seemed to be the only thing that worked with them.
My sister was jealous of me because I was my mother’s favorite pet, a position she coveted, but I hated it and would have gladly switched places with her.
My two siblings were booted off to boarding school as they grew older, because our mother was vain and didn’t want anyone with the ability to add to realize she had children their age. She spent a lot of time and money trying to appear younger than she actually was and didn’t want the fact that she had older children to spoil that image.
Even so, my sister could have stayed home to go to school except she had turned out looking too much like my father, brown hair and brown eyes, and not enough like my mother, blonde hair and blue eyes. My brother had inherited Mother’s features, but he was a boy and as such, worthless as a pretty china doll. My sister was very attractive, but in a different way than I was and that wasn’t good enough for our mother.
By the time I was three years old my mother realized that physically I was a carbon copy of her only in miniature. I was born late enough in her life that I didn’t give her the appearance of being too old—in fact I made her seem younger…she had to be young to have a child my age—so she could keep me around and show me off without causing undue speculation about her age. Hannah would frill me up and then Mother would trot me out to show all of her envious friends.
At four years old, I began rebelling against my role in life. Although Hannah knew I hated it, and totally sympathized with me, she made sure I also knew that every thing I did was a reflection on her and how she was training me, which in effect meant that if I messed up they would fire my beloved Hannah. I wasn’t about to let that happen. She was, in all the ways that mattered, my true mother and I loved her.
When I turned five, Mother decided I could get along without a nanny since I would be in school most of the day. The housekeeper, maids, and cook would be able to keep an eye on me and make sure I stayed out of trouble whenever I was home. I threw a fit, but it didn’t help. My mother didn’t care if I was happy or not as long as she had a china doll to dress up and show her friends. That was what gave me the idea, my first conscious manipulation of my parents.
Hannah had been gone for a week when my mother decided to have a garden tea party. One of the maids obediently dressed me up, and sent me downstairs to parade myself in front of the guests.
By the time I arrived at the party, my bow was askew, my dress dirty, and my shoes scuffed up. I knocked over a teapot soaking one lady’s skirt, picked up a miniature cake and stuffed it in my mouth wiping my hands on another’s dress, and then proceeded to climb into the lap of a third lady asking her in a very loud voice if she liked children.
My mother was, needless to say, horrified. Hannah was back the next day and with a raise as well as a five-year contract. She’d been offered a position with a different family and my mother had ‘the devil’s own time’ trying to persuade her to come back.
Years later, she secretly told me she would have returned without the extra money, but my parents didn’t need to know that. What she had really been after was a contract so we could stay together. I hadn’t realized until that point that Hannah felt about me the same way I felt about her; we were family.
Even though Hannah scolded me for misbehaving, and I went without dessert for a week, it didn’t matter. I could have been on bread and water the rest of my life for all I cared. We were together again, and all was right with the world.
The second time my parents attempted to separate us I was about to start junior high. Hannah’s contract had expired the year before so my mother was all for letting her go in order to have that money free for other things. My mother did protest, however, when my father decided it was also time for me to go to boarding school because she didn’t want to lose her dress-up doll.
Luckily, Richard had convinced
his parents to allow him to stay home and continue attending public schools. Not wanting to give up his freedom, Richard went into overdrive, planning every detail of his ‘stay in public school’ campaign. He was very persuasive even speaking off-the-cuff, but when he actually organized and planned his speeches, well…his parents didn’t stand a chance.
I often told him that he should follow his uncle’s footsteps into law rather than waste away in some corner office of his father’s bank, but I knew his father would never allow it.
Listening to him as he rattled on and on about how he could get his parents to do anything he wanted, I felt sick…I was no better. I manipulated my parents every bit as much as he did, the only difference was I didn’t enjoy it and preferred that no one else knew. I simply wanted to survive my childhood.
After Richard finished his bragging, he said something that gave me an idea how to trick my parents into letting me stay in public school, too.
“We’ll have it made, Allison, when we get married. Our parents will give us whatever we want.”
That was it, the way to stay in Austin. Our parents were counting on the fact that they could manipulate us and that we would eventually marry so I had to show them that distance was detrimental to their plans.
First, I had to let them know that Richard wasn’t going and then I simply had to imply that I would no longer be so easy to control from that far away. My mother would already be on my side so all I had to do was convince my father.
Before I tackled my parents, I had to put the idea in Richard’s head so his parents would be on my side when push came to shove. They would be my greatest ally, albeit unwittingly.
“Who knows,” I told Richard with studied carelessness, “Since you’re not going, I might meet a handsome prince while I’m away and decide to marry him instead of you. The school is co-ed after all.”
The frown on Richard’s face was all I could have asked for. I could see that thought hadn’t occurred to him.
“Your parents would never allow that,” he protested.
“We’ll see,” I replied mysteriously.
I put the rest of my plan into action as soon as I got home that day. Hearing my parents talking in the study, I knocked on the door. My father didn’t like being interrupted when he was in his study, and I could tell when he yanked the door open that he was not happy about being disturbed. He looked down at me impatiently.
“What is it, Allison?”
“When am I supposed to leave for boarding school?” I asked innocently. “Richard was asking me today.”
“The same time he is I suppose,” my mother answered resignedly from inside the room.
“Oh, well Richard isn’t going,” I replied, faking confusion. “He doesn’t want to go. I don’t know why, I’m very excited; I’ll get to meet all kinds of new people. I told Richard I wanted to be sure and say bye to him since I may not see him for a long, long time. It is a co-ed school right? There will be boys there…?”
“What’s this?” my father bellowed. “Richard’s not going? We’ll see about that.”
He marched over to his desk, picked up the phone, and began dialing furiously.
At that point, Mother shut me out of the room. I never knew exactly what transpired between Richard’s parents and mine, but the upshot of it was that we both were able to stay home and go to public school. I had discovered a powerful ally: Richard.
I wasn’t proud of how I used Richard to keep ‘would be Lotharios’ at bay over the years as well as help in the manipulation of my parents, but in my defense, it worked both ways. Richard was not averse to using me whenever it suited his purpose like when one of his ‘friends’ got too possessive and wanted more than he was prepared to give. He would suddenly begin spending all of his free time with me until the unfortunate girl finally admitted they were through.
We were quite a pair and we were stuck with each other, for the time being at least, since my parents never allowed me to pick my own friends, so we both determined to make the best of a bad situation; well, to me it was bad…Richard didn’t seem to mind.
I yearned to have other friends, but every time I tried to befriend someone not on the parentally approved list, the potential friend would inexplicably stop speaking to me, actually run from me in terror, or move away. I knew my parents were behind it, but I had no idea what they were doing or how they were doing it.
Eventually I gave up. Somehow, my parents were hurting people because of me, and I didn’t want to be responsible for that.
By high school my “circle” consisted only of other rich kids who ignored the rest of the student body out of snobbery; I did it out of compassion. I knew from experience that a relationship with me wasn’t worth the risk.
Still, I couldn’t totally blow people off, not the way the others could. I was vivacious, outgoing, and friendly to everyone, all the things that made me popular, and it was a mask, keeping people at a distance without them realizing it.
I never allowed myself to become involved in any meaningful discussion or relationship and Richard, as my ‘boyfriend’, kept away any unwanted masculine attention. I flitted from person to person, pretending gaiety, being witty, complimenting people without committing to any type of deep or meaningful conversation.
My popularity continued through all four years of high school culminating in the titles of Homecoming Queen as well as Prom Queen my senior year. Richard, as my ‘boyfriend’, and my parents were ecstatic. My facade was flawless. I had learned at the feet of the master, or in my case, the mistress: my mother. I was an expert.
No one ever knew what hid behind the mask, except Hannah. She was the only person who ever knew the real me and loved me for myself; I missed her terribly.
Meeting Mrs. Wilson seemed to have opened the floodgates to all of the memories I had stored so carefully out of sight. I could take them out and look at them with less pain than I had before. It excited me to think that I might have found someone I could share myself with again, my true self. Although it was too soon to say, I had high hopes that Mrs. Wilson might become a good friend. I had felt so alone since losing Hannah and needed one…badly.