The Truth Lucy Saw (The Truth Turned Upside Down Book 1)

by Penelope J Bristol

  That was one of the significant differences between their two moms. Lucy’s mom might handle her stealing food with a jab at her weight problem. She would add in enough plausible deniability that she could laugh it away and accuse Lucy of being sensitive if she did something ridiculous, like cry.

  Depending on Dianna’s mood, she might outright humiliate her in front of Finn or anyone. Last week, as Dianna pulled into the driveway, both children in the car, Lucy, had mistakenly asked if her report card had arrived. Excitedly, Finn changed the subject, wondering whether he and Lucy could walk up to the gas station to buy some gum after being trapped in the car for most of the afternoon. Ignoring Finn completely, Lucy’s mother parked the car. She turned around slowly to face both children, still strapped compliantly in the back seat. Her eyes locked on her youngest daughter as Dianna, triumphantly, delivered her punch.

  “Your report card did arrive in the mail yesterday, and you made a C in math, I guess you didn’t do as well as you thought you did this time,” she said. “I think your dad put it on top of the refrigerator.”

  Dianna casually turned back to the front seat, grabbed her expensive purse, and cheerily consented to the kids having permission to walk to the store if Finn’s parents agreed. The sound of her mother’s car door slamming shut jolted Lucy almost as much as the sting of the words still floating in the air around her. Lucy looked straight forward and tried to think of what to say to lighten the mood quickly. Finn dropped his head back, let out a barely audible sigh, and reached down to scratch awkwardly at his leg. If she did not look at him, it would not happen, the tears would stay in place, and it would not matter that she had a mom who seemed to like hurting her. Anne’s report cards were full of Cs, Lucy thought to herself. Nothing in her family ever made any sense.

  “What kind of gum do you think you want to get?” Lucy said in her most normal, casual voice unbuckling her seatbelt, glancing at Finn and then turning to open the car door.

  Finn looked at Lucy, “I bet you made As and Bs on everything else. Don’t let the dumb stuff she says make you feel bad, Lucy,” said Finn tipping up his pinky finger and sticking out his thumb like he was throwing back an alcoholic drink.

  Lucy smiled, almost laughed as she watched Finn stumble out of the car like he was drunk, and then she shoved him playfully, and he stopped and smiled back at her. His kind words acted like an invisible plumb line helping to straighten her spine and fill her lungs with healthy, breathable air. She decided to forget about the report card and go with her best friend, who always made her feel loved on a quest to find new bubble gum flavors.

  4

  Not My Job

  The last job Lucy’s dad quit had fired him before he had a chance to set the record straight. John was on his umpteenth job by the time they bought the house beside Finn, but Dianna had been firm on one thing, they were not moving again.

  Still, it was not unusual for Lucy to hear her parents discussing late into the night all the inept co-workers John had to put up with at his latest job and how the best jobs would probably require them to move. However, Lucy placed her bets on them staying as her mom had made it clear one night, driving away without the promise that she would ever return, in response to her father -telling them- more than suggesting, they would need to move for his next job opportunity.

  It was a strange temporary flip in power between her parents and one of the few times Lucy had been proud of her mom for standing up to her dad. Once Dianna came home again, and the talk of moving was over, everything slowly went back to normal, with normal being her dad sporadically acting like a maniac, while nightly, Dianna’s eyes went dull behind glass after glass of cheap wine. Lucy often retreated to her room in the evening, but tonight, the chaos broke out early and without warning.

  John’s fist busting a hole in the living room wall was the first indication things were not going well. Lucy, who had been mindlessly tying a pink, yellow, and green threaded friendship bracelet on the couch, jerked her head up instinctively to see her dad pull his hand out of an obscene gash in the drywall. Seconds passed, and Dianna appeared as silently as a ghost, quickly drying her hands on an old kitchen towel, her jaw set and shoulders squared.

  “What the hell is wrong with you,” Dianna whispered through tight lips “This is our home John, not the neighborhood looney bin, one day someone is going to call the police on us.”

  John looked at Dianna blankly for several seconds as if he was not able to fully process her words, and then he started to laugh. The laughing was a bad sign, and both Lucy and her mom knew it. Her dad quickly picked up his leather work bag, opened it’s flap like there was something magical to see inside, and then let it slip lazily right through his hands where it landed in the new pile of what used to be the wall.

  Lucy slowly stood from her seated position on the couch as not to draw attention to herself and planned to walk invisibly past her parents and stealthily down the hall where she would lock her bedroom door and wait it out. Unfortunately, John unexpectedly grabbed her arm and spun her around, so she and her mom were facing each other, and she could not see her dad anymore. The blood in Lucy’s neck started to thump quickly, and her legs felt heavy and numb.

  “We should call the police Dianna, because if we did, they could measure your blood alcohol level, and then we would have it in writing that right now you are intoxicated in our home, in front of our children and that you are an unfit wife and a drunk of a mother,” John taunted.

  The harsh accusations seeped through the veil of calmness Dianna had worn around her when she first entered the room, and she hurled her small, damp dishtowel across the living room. The towel came nowhere near to hitting anything, but rage flashed across John’s face, and in one vast swath, he upended a row of heavy books from one of the shelves that lined the wall by their front door.

  The books took different trajectories based on their mass and distance from the force of John’s hand. Some books gave into gravity quickly landing near Lucy’s feet, and others flew far away, splaying open, taking dramatic odd angled spills causing a mess around the front door and a good portion of the living room floor. If anyone had been close enough to knock at the door, Lucy thought, the entire scene unfolding tonight would have been impossible to hide. Lucy’s dad must have read her thoughts because he mumbled something about this, not being his job.

  “Get this mess cleaned up before I come back,” was what Lucy heard him say as she watched her father grab her mom, shoving her down the hall as she defiantly held on tightly to both sides of the wall to slow herself down. Lucy balled up her fists and screamed for her dad to stop.

  This must have infuriated John because he began to spank Dianna like a child, holding one of her arms back until she quit fighting altogether and willingly went into their bedroom, and the door slammed shut. Lucy dropped to the floor and sat watching the door, listening for her mother’s voice, but in the end, heard nothing but muffled voices and occasional thuds.

  This was her family. The dysfunction of it had always deeply troubled her, but there was no one to step in, no one to tell. Her mom would not leave her dad or ask for help or even talk to Lucy or her sister about the ways their dad abused all of them. Dianna had her way of dealing with the pain. Lucy told Finn about some of it, but she told no one about most of it, she honestly believed no one would understand or even believe her. If she decided to tell a teacher what was going on in her family and they did believe her, she knew she might have to leave her parents. Her dad might go to jail- although she thought he deserved to go to jail or get in a lot of trouble for the things that he did, which made her feel guilty all the time, which made her even angrier at him.

  Lucy took a big breath. She was alone again but safe with a big job in front of her. She willed her mind to focus and stacked the books with the covers facing up and began to organize them by size. One by one, she placed the books neatly back in their home and even dug out books that had fallen behind the bookshelf collecting layers of g
rey dust and matted hair. When Lucy finished, she looked up at the digital clock on the VCR.

  It was almost eleven o’clock, Anne was supposed to have been home thirty minutes ago, but Mom and Dad had forgotten about her; it seemed. Lucy decided she would sit on the couch and wait for her sister, but as soon as she stood up, headlights ran across the hole Dad left in the wall, and she witnessed a car full of loud girls drive up extremely close to the front porch. A figure jumped out and threw her hands up before slamming the door shut and waving as the car backed up, honking it’s way back down their gravel driveway.

  Anne flounced into the house and dropped her bag on the floor in the exact spot where moments before, there had been a sea of angry books covering the floor. It looked like she’d been riding around with the windows rolled down, her hair matted and hanging around her face in a tangled, erratic mess. Her t-shirt, which clung tightly to her shapely breasts, was stained in the front with what looked like red Kool-Aid.

  Anne stood poised on her long tanned legs, poking out of cut off shorts, waiting for something to happen. Lucy knew better than to ask her sister any intrusive questions, so she thought she would offer up the good news.

  “ Don’t worry about the time, Dad busted a whole in the wall and I think they forgot you were out,” she explained.

  She proceeded to tell her Anne that their parents had gotten in a huge fight and that right now, they were both barricaded in their room perhaps for the night, which meant she would not need to answer questions about her appearance or the missed curfew. This did not have the pleasing effect Lucy imagined it would have on her sister, and she watched a shadow fall across Anne’s face as her eyes took in the new hole in the wall of their living room.

  “What do you mean they got in a fight? Anne demanded. “What did they say, Lucy, what did Dad say?”

  Anne wanted the rundown of the entire altercation as if she needed to hear a second-by-second playback of events. Lucy tried her best to remember every detail. She loved having her sister as a captive audience and drug out some of the lines between her parents to extend the moment they were sharing, but it wasn’t making Anne happy. She was looking specifically for something important that their dad might have said to their mom, and Lucy could not deliver.

  Finally, exasperated, Anne huffed and declared that everyone in their family was an asshole and that she was done and going to bed. Before she turned to go into her bedroom, Anne cocked her head and in her most grave tone reminded Lucy that she was just a kid who had no clue what high schoolers’ lives were like and that telling their parents what time she had come home tonight was not Lucy’s job.

  5

  Breakfast

  The four of them sat around the oval kitchen table like it was a regular thing, eating breakfast peacefully in the aftermath of Dad’s violent physical outbursts and Anne’s questionable outing and late return the night before. Mom looked healthy, with no bruises and minimal sulking, which was good, Lucy thought, on both counts. Anne was all washed up with shiny, combed hair and had lots and lots to say today.

  She rambled on about everything she had done the night before, giving an ironclad timeline of her whereabouts preemptively before being asked or questioned by anyone.

  “Sarah’s car needs a lot of work, so we had to call her dad after the movie to see why white smoke was pouring out of her tailpipe. It was really embarrassing!” Anne remarked dramatically. “We sat there for thirty minutes.”

  John and Dianna seemed utterly indifferent to the careful details and chronological replay that Anne was spinning like an intricate spider web for them. Lucy sat silent, vigilantly watching. She was an expert on their body language and could detect even the slightest emotional shift between them.

  Dad must be feeling regretful this morning, she surmised, so he cooked a big breakfast for the family. John asked Dianna how she was doing several times between when she initially walked into the kitchen, and now as she sat quietly, sullenly chewing her toast. Each time she replied, she was excellent, and then the last time she replaced the word “excellent” with good.

  Lucy knew her mom was not excellent or good but stuck in a looping nightmare with her dad. She would probably drink a lot tonight and then go to bed early before making dinner. This meant Lucy might have to cook something which was not so awful because she liked to cook. The past two days had been relatively stressful, and she was looking forward to tomorrow because it would bring work in the morning for her parents and a break for them all from each other. The next event that unfolded was completely unexpected.

  “When did you start cutting grass for the Smiths, Anne?” said Dianna, not looking up from her half-eaten breakfast plate.

  The tight smile on Anne’s face slipped slightly but returned so quickly, that only Lucy noticed.

  “I’ve been doing it for a while, maybe a month,” Anne answered confidently. “They pay me forty dollars to do both the front and back yard, which is pretty good money for a two-hour job, don’t you think?”

  Anne answering Dianna’s initial question with a follow-up was a clever diversion tactic, thought Lucy. John seemed surprised at this news and looked back to Dianna for a reaction. Their mom said nothing at first, but then seemed to have a rehearsed response at the ready.

  “It seems odd that Finn wouldn’t want to make that extra money, and I’m not sure you should be prancing around the neighborhood in that bikini top you wore yesterday, it was almost obscene.”

  Dianna blew out a long breath of air and placed her hands on her lap as if bracing for the incoming backlash. Anne sat very still for a few tense moments and then laughed so loud, that Lucy jumped, and Dianna looked up at her older daughter and reluctantly smiled.

  “What is so funny, Anne?” she said quizzically, forcing her face to hold a smile, desperate to remain composed.

  “Mom, my bathing suit is totally normal, and who is going to be gawking at me, Finn? He is what…. five years old,” Anne snorted, dramatically.

  “Finn is not who I’m worried about,” Dianna replied bluntly, getting up from the table and putting her breakfast plate in the sink. “Any man with eyes in his head was getting a show yesterday, and with your body, you have to be careful,” Dianna said flatly.

  Lucy thought about her own odd body that was soft in the middle, ending in muscular legs. If she were cutting the grass in her bathing suit, most likely, Mom would not need to be concerned. She wondered if she and Finn could steal this job from Anne if it kept causing problems and made a mental note to speak with Finn about the forty dollars.

  The jelly on Lucy’s toast had begun to run. Her eggs were cold because she had taken so few bites of anything since being seated. Anne wrinkled her face up at Dianna’s last statement and just shook her head. John watched his oldest daughter closely, and it seemed gears began turning in his head, cranking out thoughts that Lucy could not read. His face slowly clouded over, which was something she knew to keep an eye on.

  Lucy started to think about yesterday, remembering Anne outside Finn’s house talking with Mr. Smith in her bathing suit top and cut-offs. She must have been working out the details of the job, which made sense now because money was a private thing to talk about, and they seemed to be conducting a private conversation. As Lucy ate her rubbery eggs, she wondered what her life would be like if she had a job making forty dollars every weekend. She might start investing in her appearance, and the first step would be going to a hair salon and getting a permanent dye job. Any hair color other than red would be a drastic improvement.

  The rest of the morning proceeded smoothly. Anne brought a People magazine to the table. Both parents continued to refill their coffee cups as they talked about work, the price of a new lawnmower, and a coupon Dianna wanted to use to buy a new brand of multivitamins. Lucy went and found the friendship bracelet from the night before, brought the yarn, tape, and a pair of scissors to the table and began tying knots in a pleasing pattern- enjoying the togetherness.

  Anne picked
up her foot and stretched her long legs across to the empty seat beside Lucy. She rested one foot against Lucy’s crossed knee and began to tap it back and forth to an imaginary beat. Lucy looked up at her sister, who was smiling and nudging her head in the direction of their mom. Dianna’s unmade face was scrunched up, right between her eyebrows, trying to read the percentage of vitamin B12 and C on the back of the multivitamins she and John were currently using.

  “They make this stuff so small, no one can read it. It’s like they don’t really want us to know what’s in these things, so we can’t sue them,” she griped.

  Anne made her thumb and fingers into the shape of circles and turned them upside down, pressing them into her face like a pair of large glasses. Lucy laughed and reached across the table for her mom’s drug store reading glasses.

  “Here, Mom,” Lucy said, extending her bare arm across the table to her mother.

  Dianna looked up, annoyed, but reached for the glasses and put them on. Anne mocked Dianna’s face again, which was not as scrunched as before, but still dark and intense as if her task was vitally important.

  This sent Lucy into a permanent smile, and her heart slowly bloomed open, wanting to pull out of her chest and move across the table towards her sister. Lucy finished the last few knots and slipped the bracelet around Anne’s ankle, testing to see just where to cut the yarn so it would fit perfectly.

  Anne, feeling the bracelet tied on, started to dart her eyes back and forth dramatically, pretending to be entirely baffled by what might be touching her foot. Abruptly, she dropped her foot off the chair and ducked her head under the table to check out the colorful bracelet. When she came back up, her eyes were soft.