Authors: Karen Reis
“Well, you should,” Nancy said bitingly.
“Why?” I asked curiously.
The subject and events surrounding my parents’ divorce was a state secret as far as Dad and Nancy were concerned. I was so young at the time of their split up that I had virtually no memories it. What tidbits I did know came from adult conversations I’d eavesdropped on. I do remember that one time when I was watching TV in my parent’s bed I was told to leave because Mommy and Daddy had to talk. I now know they were talking about divorce. The only other memory I have from that time is of my dad, my sisters and myself sitting down to dinner. It was just the four of us and I remember wondering where Mommy was. Other than that, I remembered nothing. Barbara had just been gone. Neither Lindsay nor Vanessa would talk about it, and the subject was otherwise forbidden by the adults.
“Why should I hate Barbara?” I repeated when Nancy didn’t answer me right away. I stepped casually between her and the letter so that she couldn’t rip it up, an action that I wouldn’t put past her.
“Because she didn’t want you, Carrie!” Nancy said in a rush. “She signed a paper at the divorce saying that she forfeited all custody rights to your father! That’s why! She didn’t want you; you three were a burden to her! She doesn’t deserve contact from you now; she doesn’t deserve a second chance!”
Nancy had raised her voice, yelling at me, her eyes bugging out the way they always did when she got a little amped up. However, if the news of not being wanted was supposed to shock me into obediently ripping the letter up and tossing it in the garbage, Nancy was sorely mistaken.
“I already know about that,” I told her quietly. “Lindsay told me a while back.” She’d told me about it when I was still in middle school. Lindsay had done so to make me cry when I’d accidentally on purpose cut up the hem of her favorite dress with pinking shears. She hadn’t offered any extra details, though she did succeed in making me cry.
“Oh,” Nancy said, suddenly deflated. Then, “Well, you still shouldn’t read it. It’s probably going to be full of lies about your father.”
I cocked my head. “What sort of lies?”
Nancy pursed her lips. “That’s none of your business. Are you going to open that letter or throw it away as you should?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure if I’m going to read it. I’m still thinking about it.”
“She’s untrustworthy,” Nancy bit out.
“She’s my mother,” I retorted harshly.
I regretted my words immediately. Nancy, for all her faults, was a woman who wanted to be loved. She was abusive, she was temperamental, but she was also a step-parent from an abusive background herself with a loser for a husband. She had raised me to be at the very least a moral person, even if she had screwed me up emotionally. So I added, because I had to show her that I was loyal to her despite her abuse, “But you’re my mom.”
Nancy’s eyes narrowed. “Not good enough, Carrie. Not good enough.”
“Too bad,” I shrugged. “You don’t control me.” I was starting to get a headache though.
Nancy raised her hand to me this time, fully intending to slap me I was sure, but I just glowered at her and stepped out of her reach, my heart beating wildly. “Get out of my home,” I said in a menacing voice. “Or I will call the police and have you arrested for assault.”
Nancy lowered her hand, but the look in her eyes was murderous. She left without another word only because she knew I was serious. I followed her out my door and watched her as she descended the stairs, shoving past Sean, who was coming up them in his dirty coveralls. He was home from work early.
“Hello,” he said congenially, but Nancy ignored him. He shrugged and then turned to look up at me as if I should give him an explanation for the actions of my rude departing guest, but I couldn’t.
My face crumpled as he looked at questioningly, and the tears came. I couldn’t stand to cry in front of him or risk having Nancy look back and see me, so I whirled inside and slammed the door, bolting it shut. I sat down in front of my door on the floor and sobbed, letting all the pent up rage and hurt that had accumulated over the last few minutes out. A soft knock sounded at my door, but I just ignored it, though it was likely Sean. I hoped it was Sean.
No one knocked again, and I made myself stop crying after a while and finish doing the dishes. I couldn’t help but rerun that horrible confrontation through my mind over and over, which made want to start crying again. I had accumulated a huge pile of soggy tissues in my garbage can by the time I was through.
I couldn’t cry forever because I had a date to get ready for, and so I ate some chocolate, took a shower and tried to think positive thoughts. I liked Singin’ in the Rain. It was a happy, up-building movie and I was going to go see it with a man who, while weird, seemed in general to be mentally well-balanced.
I still couldn’t help being depressed by the time I was ready to go, despite giving myself a pep-talk. When I opened my door to leave for my date I couldn’t help but smile though, because laying on my doormat was a little bouquet of yellow daffodils.
I bent over, picked them up, and smelled them. Sweet perfume, I thought. I glanced backwards to my kitchen counter, where my bouquet of white daisies sat, and then I glanced at my next door neighbor’s door.
Sean. They had to be from Sean.
Dear Dad,
I remember you once commenting that I ate so fast I was like a squirrel or a rabbit gobbling up my food. You thought it was because I didn’t have a lot of time at school to eat my lunch and that I just formed a habit of eating quickly. But that’s not why. As the youngest, I was the one stuck sitting next to Nancy at the dinner table. Gee, but I remember supper times with great fondness. There was no conversation because the dinner table was a place to eat, not talk, and I had to eat the food on my plate in a certain order. God forbid I eat all my mashed potatoes at once without touching my corn or chicken at all. I had to eat my food all at once, rotating foods with each bite. Jesus, do you realize that Nancy had to control everything I did, down to way I ate?
There was the usual yelling and berating at the table too, so I started to wolf down my food as fast as I could so that I wouldn’t have to spend so much time sitting next to her. Then I came up with the idea that if I ate less, I could finish that much faster, and so, I spent my entire teen years sneaking food after meals so I wouldn’t go to bed hungry. After a while, I got used to being hungry, and just plain did without.
I don’t really hate you for this, I just thought it might be one of those things that you didn’t care to take notice of, and I just wanted to point it out to you.
With Much Confusion,
Your Daughter
“I’ll call you, okay?”
I eyed Dan Doherty as we stood in the middle of the parking lot of the coffee shop that was right across the street from the library, and I realized just why it is that I don’t date. People are insane. I had taken the time to blow-dry and curl my hair, which was no mean feat because it is stubbornly straight, heavy, and thick. It always wants to curl in the wrong direction too. It is evil.
For the occasion, I had put on my nice jeans, dabbed some of the mascara and eye shadow that I had bought that same day on my eyes, and I’d cleaned the dirt off my sneakers. And how had Dan repaid my efforts? He talked through the entire movie! He made comments. He made jokes. He knew exactly where in the filming Debbie Reynolds had collapsed from exhaustion. He told me how much of a perfectionist Gene Kelly was, and how much he hated the dream sequence because of the lady in the sexy green dress. He said her legs bothered him.
Now, under normal circumstances I would have replied and told him that I think that the lady in the green dress is really hot, and that her legs looked just fine. I also found it interesting that Miss Reynolds collapsed because the Genester was a jerk, but I would not have a discussion about it in the middle of the movie! I too like to sing along to the lyrics of a song, but at home, not in a theater! And I really don’t care about the symbolic meaning, the moral of the story, or any philosophical blahbity-blah. It’s Singin’ in the Rain, not Schindler’s List!
So I looked skeptically at Dan, who of course had brought his key collection along; it jingled from his belt like he was a school janitor, and thought, Call me? Yeah, right. I vowed then and there to never date a coworker again.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said slowly, backing away towards my car which was just a few steps behind me. I tried to speak kindly since I didn’t want to hurt Dan’s feelings and I certainly didn’t want to get into an overly emotional confrontation. I’d either burst into tears or call him a freak of nature. Neither was ideal. “I think it would be better if we just saw each other in a professional capacity and left the memory of this evening behind us, okay?”
Like a pro, I unlocked my car, dove behind the wheel and waved goodbye to Dan as I started the engine and zoomed out of the parking lot. I hadn’t given him a chance to say a word in reply. If I didn’t want to get into a messy confrontation with him, then I certainly didn’t want to give him the chance to try to talk me into having another date with him. I hoped that he would get the message and not try to confront me at work. The prospect of him hounding me at the library, maybe even telling other people, like our boss, that we had been out on a date together, was nerve racking. We had entered the library’s theater separately and had left in the same way for just that reason. The idea that I might get in trouble for going out with Dan the Key Man pissed me off.
I decided that this was all Genny’s fault. My mood was not helped by the fact that I had had a horrible time and I was very hungry. Coffee shops don’t have dinner menus, just sweets and bakery goods, and the cheese Danish I had had was quickly wearing off. I didn’t want to cook that late in the evening and as I pulled into my apartment complex and parked, I figured I’d just choke down a bowl of cereal or a piece of bread and butter or something equally depressing. I walked up the stairs to my apartment in a huff, but just as I was about to pass Sean’s door, I stopped, turned around, and halted in front of it.
I thought about the flowers he had left on my door twice now. I thought about Genny’s words to me. He was interested in me, she said. The flowers proved that he was kind, considerate, and concerned for me. The notion that he could feel such concern for me freaked me out, but I didn’t run away as my instincts told me to. Sean was home; his truck was in its spot and there were lights on inside his place, which meant he was awake, it being only 10:15 pm.
I felt the sudden desire to talk to him.
Not knowing precisely what I was doing or even what I wanted to say to him, I raised my hand, which only shook a little bit, and knocked. And waited. But he didn’t open the door. I knocked again, my nervousness vanishing at his lack of appearance. Nothing. I sighed. Maybe he was avoiding me. Maybe he had caught sight of the evil look Nancy had sent his way and had decided to avoid me. I wouldn’t blame him, really. Sometimes I wished that I could avoid me too. Feeling rather dejected, I happened to glance down at his welcome mat. It had a picture of Garfield on it, and he was looking up at me imperiously with a word bubble above his head that said, “If you don’t have any lasagna, GO AWAY!”
“I don’t have any lasagna,” I whispered to Garfield, depressed once more.
With that I turned and started to walk to my apartment door, unconsciously biting at my nails, wondering about why Sean would avoid me. He probably wasn’t as nice as everyone thought he was, I decided.
I started to unlock my door and it was then that I heard some voices coming from the other side of the parking lot, make voices, and my heart rate increased. As a single woman in the city I took my personal safety very seriously. I carried mace and a stun gun in my purse, and I had taken self-defense classes at the community center. I had been a teacher’s pet in the class because I didn’t seem to have the usual female hang-up against hurting someone physically.
However, that didn’t mean that I took casual strolls at night or hung around to look at men as they prowled the darkness. I might be paranoid but I was not a moron. So I quickly let myself into my apartment and locked the door after me. Once safely inside, I forgot about the creepy men and went back to thinking ill of Sean. Maybe he thought I was a dork, I thought as I wandered about my kitchen, looking for something to eat. Maybe he had company over, female company. Maybe he lived a double life and had pulled the wool over Genny’s eyes and was busy getting wasted. Maybe despite the flowers bouquets Sean was really a rat bastard and a puppy killer and maybe I didn’t really want to get to know him after all.
Maybe he deserved a slow death.
The sound of breaking glass jerked me out of my reverie. I dropped the crackers I hadn’t even realized I was eating on the counter and raced to my front window to look outside. I didn’t see anyone, so I grabbed my stun gun, tucked my mace spray into my back pocket, and went outside to investigate.
Maybe I really was a moron after all.
My neighbor Charles’ window had been smashed through with what looked to be a rock or a brick. Glass littered the walkway outside their door, which had the word FAGS written across it in angry red spray paint. Other people were emerging from their apartments to see what was going on, but I called inside to Charles and his boyfriend Glen, “Everyone okay in there?”
“Yeah,” Charles called out after a moment. “Glen’s calling the police now.”
“What happened?” I asked.
Charles opened the front door, and when he saw the hateful graffiti on it his whole body tensed. He looked angry and afraid at the same time. “I think it’s pretty self-explanatory,” he said stiffly. “Some homophobe threw a brick through our window in an attempt to terrorize us.”
I looked through their window. They had a couch right in front of it. “Neither of you were sitting on the couch, were you?” I asked in alarm, looking Charles over. He didn’t have any cuts on him though.
“No,” he said. “We were in the bedroom.”