[2013] Note to Self- Change the Locks

by Heather Balog

  “Well, I found those papers in your father’s office.” Mom was wringing her apron nervously. “I think they might be bills I was supposed to pay.”

  “Oh, Mom.” I sighed as I collapsed onto the couch, covering my face with my hands.

  “Elizabeth!” My mother grabbed my hand and yanked it to her face. “What is this?” She was staring at the diamond like it was a used tampon.

  Standing up, I smoothed my frizzing hair. Jersey in May was like constantly being stuck in a locker room after the football team showered. It was damp, humid, and smelled gross.

  “Well, Mom…guess what? Austin and I are engaged!” Before my mother could say anything at all, I added, “And it was Sadie Hawkins Day so I asked him! Isn’t that cool!”

  My mother eyed me suspiciously. “Sadie Hawkins Day is in February.” Really? The woman couldn’t remember to pay the electric bill, but she could remember when an obscure, obsolete holiday like Sadie Hawkins Day was?

  “Okay, it wasn’t Sadie Hawkins Day. But a girl can propose to a guy nowadays, Mom. It’s all the rage.” I smiled as broadly as I could. My mother turned my hand over, catching the diamond in the light. I couldn’t read her expression as she stared at it. Please don’t be mad, please don’t be mad.

  Finally, she said, “It’s a beautiful ring. Did you buy it for yourself, too?”

  Austin, no longer willing to be a passive participant in this charade, jumped in with, “No, I got that for her.”

  My mother was silent for a few seconds as she peered at the ring closely. Please like the ring, Mom. Tell me you’re happy, Mom. I need you to be happy or I can’t be happy.

  Finally, she let out a low whistle under her breath. “It sure is different than the one S…”

  My brain suddenly screamed, No! She’s going to say Simon! Stop her from saying Simon!

  I immediately began to cough and wheeze like I was choking on something. I cannot let my mother say the “S” word. Pretend you’re dying if you have to. I clutched my chest and staggered toward the couch with both Austin and my mother rushing to my side.

  “Are you okay?” Mom shrieked frantically while Austin immediately began pounding on my back. Damn, that hurts. But I couldn’t stop now. I think I actually was choking at this point.

  “I need water,” I gasped in an exaggerated raspy voice. My mother raced into the kitchen and returned with a glass of water as fast as her sturdy little legs would carry her.

  I eyed the glass, certain it was water from the unfiltered faucet, which had not passed my lips in over ten years, but I was in no position to be choosy. I nearly held my breath as I slowly sipped the Jersey tap water, trying not to envision all the microorganisms that were headed down my gullet.

  “Ah!” I exhaled with embellishment. “Thank you. I’m good now.”

  “Did you choke or something?” My mother was concerned and visibly shaken. She never did well when we were sick or injured as children. In fact, my brother Sonny got into a fight once and showed up at the front door with a bloody nose. Mom slammed the door in his face and ran to her room to cry.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.” And then I quickly changed the subject, lest it revert back to how this diamond was so much nicer than the one Simon got me.

  “Listen, Mom, about the wedding. Austin and I,” I glanced over at my fiancé who was fiddling with the TV remote. “Were thinking of an October wedding, after the season ends.”

  My mother scratched her head. “That’s less than six months to plan…”

  I interrupted before she could get off on the path of my first wedding and how quickly we planned for that. “Yes, it’s not a lot of time. So, I really need your help. I have some bridal magazines in my bag. All the magazines suggest you start with the dress in order to come up with the best theme for the wedding. Do you want to help me with the dress style?”

  I was figuring that if I got her involved, she couldn’t be angry about the engagement, could she? After all, she just wanted to be included. That’s where I think I screwed up last time. She felt left out of the wedding plans. I knew it hurt her, but I was so young and angry that she couldn’t be happy for me. Not to mention stupid for getting married in the first place.

  Just as I predicted, a big smile spread across her face. “I would love to! We could go shopping for dresses at Mabel’s!” She grabbed my arm and pulled me to the kitchen. “And we could see if you fit in my wedding dress…”

  Uh, no chance in hell, Mom. I nodded with enthusiasm anyway, hoping her train of thought would stay on track for my wedding to Austin and not derail to Simon again.

  “Or, we could go to the city and check out a bunch of different shops,” I suggested. Mom’s face fell until I added, “We could have lunch.” She beamed at me, her plump cheeks getting rosy. My mother sure did love food.

  Austin trailed behind us as we entered the kitchen, one eye trained on Sports Center blasting from the living room. Hell, we could probably march Simon in here and he wouldn’t even notice.

  I pulled the bridal magazines, a collection of which I had amassed in the last week, out of my bag and spread them on the counter. Flipping through the first couple of dog-eared pages, I showed my mother the styles that I was leaning toward. Mom covered her mouth with her hand as she gasped. “Oh my. So many choices! I had no idea there were so many different styles and shapes and lengths.” She smiled at Austin who was now poking his head into the pot on the stove. Sports Center was in commercial.

  “There are meatballs in there,” he told me in a hushed voice. “That’s not for breakfast, right?”

  I simply smiled. Oh yeah, that’s right, Austin. You’ve never been to my mother’s brunch, have you? You’re in for a treat. The menu was usually a smorgasbord of everything from waffles to sausage and peppers. Nothing ever went together at all. I usually left Mom’s brunches feeling like I was going to vomit and swearing I was never going to do that to myself again, yet every Sunday, I found myself on the train to Bloomfield.

  My mother was still thumbing through the magazines as she flipped the pancakes on the stove at the same time. “When I got married you just got a dress from the local shop and that was that. None of this fuss you girls put on nowadays. You remember Sonny’s wedding?”

  I nodded, thinking of my brother’s big shindig three years ago. It was the most ridiculous, extravagant affair I have ever been to in my life. Sonny and Michelle arrived via horse and carriage with trumpeters. There were live dancers at the reception along with a fourteen piece band. And after literally a roomful of dessert, they had fireworks for God’s sakes.

  Mom leaned toward Austin. “Michelle was a nightmare. She was…what’s that word you called her, Elizabeth?”

  “Bridezilla,” I chimed in as I poured myself a glass from the pitcher of mimosas. One good thing about Mom. She realized family gatherings could be painful without the alcohol. Thank goodness for trains.

  “Yes, yes, that was it.” My mother shook her head. “Always challenging, that one. She wanted everything just so. She made a stink about it all, from the napkin rings to the ice sculptures. And for what?” My mother threw up her hands in exasperation. “The wedding was over in the blink of an eye. Now, if she invested half that energy into her marriage...” My mother clicked her tongue with disgust. Smiling, she turned to me and stroked my cheek with the back of her hand. “It was so strange after you didn’t seem to care about those details with your—”

  Oh, dear Lord, not again! Sorry Mom, please forgive me! I had no choice but to stomp on my mother’s foot. “Ouch! Elizabeth!” My mother bent down and rubbed her sore foot. “What did you do that for?” She stared up at me with hurt in her bright blue eyes.

  “Sorry, Mom. I got a Charlie Horse in my foot and it just spasmed.” I hopped around the kitchen, rubbing my left foot for histrionic effect. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, thank goodness you’re not that strong. If one of your brothers had stepped on my foot, we’d be going to the ER for x-rays.”r />
  Gee thanks, Mom.

  Mom fluffed her hair as she turned back to the pot on the stove. She stirred the sauce for a minute and then made a face. “Meatballs are done and as usual, neither of your brothers are here yet. I’m sure Michelle had some manicure or pedicure or plastic surgery to get to before coming to brunch with her family.”

  As any stranger might be able to tell, my mother was not a fan of my sister-in-law, Michelle. Michelle had been born with a silver spoon in her bratty little mouth, and was, in all honesty, very demanding. She expected nothing but the best from everybody and she was constantly berating my brother. Not that he didn’t deserve it some of the time.

  When they met at a night club four years ago, Sonny told her he was in “waste management”. Michelle immediately saw dollar signs and a future as a mobster’s wife. What she didn’t realize until it was a tad too late, was that Sonny really meant he was in waste management. As in, garbage man. He made a decent living and was able to afford a very nice four bedroom house in Livingston, but it was not exactly the life Michelle was accustomed to. And to add insult to injury, she discovered that despite her daddy’s very generous wedding gift of a hundred-thousand dollars, she was going to have to, (gasp) work!

  It made me laugh to hear my mother mock Michelle because nobody in the family seemed to like her at all. We were a real family and she was just the fakest thing on two legs. If her legs were even real. She didn’t have one drop of cellulite on them. I know she spent just about every waking moment at the gym, but come on! Her figure was just not possible. Her arms didn’t jiggle, her ass didn’t sag. Not only was her body perfectly toned and proportioned, her boobs were perkier than kid with ADHD guzzling a can of cola. Sonny thought he was the luckiest guy on Earth to have her. The rest of us thought he needed his head examined for marrying her.

  My brother Pete was three years older than me. A vet with a brood of dogs, he wasn’t married, but he had a longtime girlfriend, Vicky, who Sonny and I dubbed as “Baby Mama” behind her back.

  When Pete met Vicky five years ago, she was just getting out of an abusive relationship with a guy named “Stu”. She had been with him for ten years (ever since she was fourteen), and had two kids with him. The biggest brats on the planet, I might add. My brother rescued her and the kids from the relationship much like you would rescue a dog from the pound. She played on his sympathies with her puppy dog eyes and tales of woe. Pete fell for it, moving them all into his very nice house in Short Hills. Vicky took advantage of my brother’s altruistic nature and immediately made herself at home in Pete’s house. For some reason completely unbeknownst to us, he wanted to marry her, too. He asked on at least three different occasions, only to be told by Vicky that she “wasn’t ready”. Not to mention in the five years they were together, she managed to get herself knocked up not once, but twice, by another guy.

  Yet, my brain dead brother continued to let the tramp live in his house. And he let all four of her bastard kids treat him like dirt. My mother wasn’t fond of Vicky either, but I think she tolerated her a little more than she did Michelle. She told me that she “felt sorry” for Vicky because of the abuse she had endured at the hands of Stu. Yeah, sounds terrible, but I think if Vicky had been my girlfriend, I may have slapped her around a bit, too. She had a whiny, nasally voice, brayed when she laughed, and was just the biggest trailer park bitch I had ever met. Not that I condone domestic violence or anything.

  Needless to say, I was glad none of the clan had arrived yet. It was rare that I got to spend any time alone with Mom without my brothers’ loud and obnoxious significant others vying for my mother’s attention. I always felt like screaming at them, “She’s my mother! Go hang on your own mother!”, but I bit my tongue and kept my mouth shut. They were usually too busy screaming at each other anyway. It’s funny that the old saying goes that boys tend to marry or be attracted to women like their mothers. Neither Vicky nor Michelle were anything like Mom.

  “Come help me set the table.” My mother handed me the linen tablecloth that she used for every brunch, birthday, and holiday since I could remember. It was a faded old thing made of lace. I think it used to be a sage green, but now it was more of a beige color with a plethora of unidentifiable stains. Last year, Sonny and Michelle had given Mom a new expensive tablecloth for Mother’s Day, but it still sat in its package in the linen closet.

  I brought the tablecloth to my face, inhaling the scent Mom’s laundry detergent, a timeless combination of lavender and lemon. The olfactory assault made me melancholy for my childhood, back when the biggest problem I faced was making friends on the playground. Despite whatever went on outside the walls of this house during my youth, I always felt as if home was my sanctuary.

  “Where do you want these papers?” I asked, gathering the stack in my arms.

  “Is burning them an option?” Mom called from the kitchen.

  I laughed, but I wondered if she wasn’t serious. “I’ll put them in the guest bedroom!” I shouted as I started up the stairs.

  “Where are you going?” Austin asked nervously, trailing close behind.

  “Just getting these papers out of the way. I’ll be right back down. Go hang out with my mother.” I glanced behind me and saw the panicked expression on Austin’s face.

  “What, what am I going to say to her?” Austin was mortified.

  You can’t carry on a conversation with a harmless old lady? Then I reconsidered; she may not be harmless. She might mention something about Simon in the thirty seconds while I’m upstairs.

  “Come with me,” I motioned to Austin. “I’ll show you my old bedroom.”

  “Sounds kinky!” He obediently followed and slapped my rear end as I climbed the steep carpeted staircase.

  “Stop it, Austin.” I giggled. “Don’t slap my butt.” Translation, please, slap my butt.

  I stepped inside the guest bedroom, aka, my old room. My mother didn’t change much other than the jet black bedspread and neon green walls I had painted in a fit of rage or depression. Which was pretty much the entirety of my teen years. The bedspread was now some paisley nonsense, while the walls were creamy peach. My mother had proudly announced it was called “melted ice cream”. Anything to do with food, of course.

  My fifth grade spelling bee trophy was still on the shelf and my framed certificates for being named “Reader of the Year”, five years running, were all still proudly displayed on the bookshelf. My dolls, which I had not played with in about twenty years, sat lifelessly displayed on the bed. My stuffed animals were all in this net thing, hanging from the corner with a three inch layer of dust. A Backstreet Boys poster still hung on the wall, which amazed me because I assumed Mom had to take that down to paint. Maybe my mother was a closet Backstreet Boys fan. Or she had my room set up the way she would have liked me to have it when I still lived there.

  Austin quickly shut the door behind me and gazed around.

  “Ah, the old bedroom.” He pushed me toward the bed and nuzzled my neck. “Bet you have a lot of memories here. Cutting high school, bringing your boyfriend home to roll around in the sheets—”

  I had a lot of memories of high school, but they probably weren’t what Austin was thinking. No, in my teenaged years, this was the room of a nun. In high school, I never brought any boys home, other than Steve, and I wasn’t allowed in the bedroom with him. No, there wasn’t any teenage lust in this bedroom. Instead, this room saw tears, heartbreak and marathon poem writing sessions.

  “Well, not rolling around in the sheets. But definitely a lot of memories between these walls,” I explained to my fiancé as he nudged me near the bed. “This was the only place that I was comfortable when I was a teenager.” I clarified as I pushed him off of me.

  “Oh, what…was my Dizzy Lizzie a poster child for teenaged angst?” His hands pushed up my shirt.

  “Something like that.” I let him kiss my neck, ignoring the nickname he promised he would not call me. If he only knew how miserable I was back then. If
he only knew me then, there would be no way he’d be here right now.

  “You probably brought a ton of boys to this room and teased them,” Austin murmured as we fell onto the bed. Sticking his head under my shirt, he pushed my bra aside with his nose and started licking my breast, making me wet instantly. Damn, he knew just the right buttons to push.

  “I definitely was not a tease.” Austin’s tongue started trailing down my abdomen and his hand inched into my jeans.

  Oh God, yes. Keep going, Austin…bring that succulent mouth a little lower.

  “I’m sure you gave the boys what they wanted. You gonna give me what I want?” He tugged at the button on my jeans.

  “I didn’t really have any boyfriends in high school.” Grabbing ahold of his hair, I pushed his head toward my abdomen.

  He pulled his head out of my shirt. “Oh, I find that hard to believe, Elizabeth. A hot, sexy thing like you. They had to be falling all over themselves to get in your pants. Just like I am now.” He winked as he unzipped my jeans.

  “Not so much. I didn’t have a lot of friends. I was kind of like an outcast.” I was practically panting as Austin pulled down my underwear and started caressing the top of my pelvic bone with his tongue.

  Okay, maybe this wasn’t the proper forum for this conversation…

  Suddenly, there was rapping at the bedroom door causing both of us to sit up at the same time and smack our heads together.

  “Elizabeth! Your brothers both just pulled up. Can you please finish setting the table?”

  “Ouch,” Austin and I cried at the same time, both of us rubbing our heads.

  “Everything okay?” my concerned mom asked from the other side of the door.

  “We’re fine!” I shouted back, feeling a lot like a school girl caught in the act. “Just showing Austin my old room. I’ll be right down!”