Just You (3 page)

“Emma!” I yanked the remote from her hands
and changed the channel to something less obscene. “You’re not
allowed to watch that.”

“But it’s funny. There’s this one guy—well,
he’s not a guy, he’s really a girl—and he threw a chair at this
other guy—.”

“You are not allowed to watch that,” I said
again. “You’re supposed to sit quietly and work on your drawing
while you’re waiting for me to get up, remember?”

“I have drawer’s block,” she said, and then
laughed at her own joke.

Emma was your typical ten-year-old in most
ways, but she happened to have an amazing talent for art. She drew
unicorns and dragons, mostly. Mom had her in a drawing class every
Saturday, and she was supposed to practice the techniques she
learned there at home.

“Well, watching trash TV isn’t going to
help.” I deposited the remote onto the coffee table. “Did you have
fun with Aunt Gina yesterday?”

She nodded and picked up her sketch pad.
Emma had spent the previous day with our aunt, helping out in her
bakery while our mother worked from home for a few hours. “We made
lemon squares,” Em told me. “I brought some home.”

My appetite roused, I headed for the
kitchen. A large Tupperware container rested on the counter, full
of delicious-looking squares. I ate two for breakfast and then set
about tackling the chores Mom had assigned last night. To remind
me, she’d made a list before she left and stuck it on the fridge,
where I was sure to see it. As if I could forget my role in this
family, even for a minute.

The older I got, the more my mother harped
about
responsibility
. As she’d been reminding me daily since
I was twelve, she was a single parent now and needed me to step up.
So I had. With her working overtime and weekends to keep up with
the bills, cooking and cleaning and babysitting were duties I’d
come to accept. Still, there were times I just wanted to lay around
the house and goof off, like I used to do before everything
changed. I missed the days when my mother was home by four o’clock,
followed closely by my father, who was never too tired to hear
about our days at school. There were also times, like when I found
empty beer cans in the bushes by our driveway or felt the draft
seeping through my warped bedroom window, that I missed our old
house more than anything else. I could close my eyes and still see
the precise layout of it, hear the loud creaking sound the stairs
made, smell the flowers that grew in our garden each summer. I
missed it even more than having my father around every day. After
all, he was the reason we no longer lived there.

The day we left the house I’d grown up
in—the only home I had ever known—was pretty high up there on my
list of “worst days of my life”. After dumping my mother like a
week-old bag of garbage, Dad had wasted no time moving into Lynn’s
house in Weldon, a city about a twenty-minute drive from where my
mother and sister and I still lived, in Oakfield. Two months after
he left, Mom had no choice but to relocate us too, to an older,
smaller house in a less desirable part of town, the kind of place
that made our old neighborhood look like a safe, sparkly
paradise.

But that was only the second worst day of my
life. The first was the day my father left, when I’d come home from
the pool to find my mother at the kitchen table, crying into a
fistful of napkins. Several more surrounded her, crumpled up like
little snowballs. She didn’t want to say what was wrong at first,
but eventually I got it out of her. My father had fallen in love
with another woman, he’d left us to be with her, and he wanted a
divorce. Mom had seen it coming, she said, but I’d had no clue.
This was my father she was talking about, the one person I trusted
to never let me down. But there, in that warm kitchen with those
soggy napkins dotting the table and floor, my image of him—along
with life as I knew it—suddenly shifted.

In all my twelve-year-old innocence, I
actually thought he’d come back. He made a mistake, I thought, and
when he realizes it, he’ll come home. But he didn’t, not that day
or any day after. Still, it didn’t sink in that my father was gone
for good until about a year later, when I stood next to my sister
in a gazebo at Crawford Park and watched him exchange vows with our
new stepmother in front of all their friends and a few wandering
ducks. Only then did I realize how foolish I’d been. My father
definitely wasn’t coming back. He loved Lynn, and they’d started a
whole new life together. She and her kids were here to stay. So the
way I figured it, I either had to accept it or cut my dad out of my
life altogether. I chose to accept it. Or at least try to.

Now, two years after the wedding, our
relationship was still far from mended. It would never go back to
the way it was before, we both knew that, but at least now I could
look at him without my stomach clenching into a knot. For me, that
was progress. For him, it was a miracle. He’d had Emma’s
forgiveness within weeks, but I made him work for mine.

In fact, he still worked for it. His methods
were simple…he just carried on like the kind, devoted father I’d
known all my life. The same man who always walked through the door
with a smile. The same man who’d chased away my closet monsters and
bandaged my scraped knees and coached my soccer team when I was
eight. He tried so hard to show me that even though he’d done a
rotten thing, he was still my dad. And it worked too. Over the past
year, my anger toward him had melted down to a residual sting, and
I began to think that maybe he’d had a good reason for skipping out
on a fourteen-year marriage and shattering a family. And maybe he
wasn’t as evil as my mother liked to claim. And maybe—just
maybe—not all men were lying, selfish pigs.

Of course, this was before Brian decided to
cheat on me and dump me. After that, I went straight back to being
pissed at every male in existence.

****

When Mom got home at five, Emma was watching
The Simpsons
while I sat cross-legged on the chair next to
her, going over my French.

“Did you get everything done that I asked
you to do?” was the second thing to come out of her mouth, after a
hasty hello.

“Yes,” I said, keeping my eyes on my
workbook.

“Mom, I have a headache,” Emma said in a
pitiful voice as she lay slug-like on the couch.

No wonder, I thought. She’d been zoned out
in front of the TV for going on four hours now.

Mom sighed and put down her briefcase before
coming over to examine my sister. “You’re not feverish,” she said,
her palm against Emma’s forehead. “Why are you still in your
pajamas?”

“Taylor said I didn’t have to get
dressed.”

My mother sighed again, this time even more
wearily. I glanced over at her and was struck by how exhausted she
looked. Dark circles rimmed her eyes, and her skin was dull and
saggy. Even her hair seemed limp. Lately I’d been worried about
her, wondering if what my aunt Gina said all the time was true—my
mother really did need to get out and have some fun. Since the
divorce she’d been plowing through life like a machine. Work, kids,
groceries, house, bills, work. She didn’t go out with friends, or
go shopping for herself, or go to the gym like she used to. And she
certainly didn’t date. After divorcing my father she had sworn off
men, despite Gina’s endless lectures about Moving On (ie; meeting
men). Aunt Gina had been through a divorce herself, so she
considered herself an expert. But Mom wouldn’t hear of it. She was
done with men. Period. To me, this didn’t seem like such a
sacrifice. I mean, she’d recently turned forty-two—that’s
old
. What did she need a man for at her age? Aunt Gina had
some ideas, but I always bolted from the room whenever she started
in on that.

Now, Mom went to get some Advil for Emma,
plodding down the hallway like there were bricks tied to her
feet.

“Faker,” I whispered after she’d left the
room.

“I am not!” Emma yelled, making a big show
of kneading her forehead with her fingers. “Dumbhead.”

“Pest.” Fighting the urge to stick my tongue
out at her, I closed my workbook and got up, leaving the little
troublemaker to giggle at Homer’s antics all alone.

After dinner I helped with the clean up.
When my mother opened the dishwasher to find it empty, she smiled.
“The list was helpful, I see.”

I kept quiet and continued to rinse the
dinner plates. I could sense her eyes on me, tracing my every
movement.

“Is there something on your mind,
Taylor?”

“No, Mom.” I stacked plates in the
dishwasher with a little more force than was necessary. “I’m
fine.”

“Everything okay with school?”

“Yep.”

She picked up a sponge and started wiping
the counter. “Any problems with your friends?”

“Nope.”

“Nothing bothering you at all?”

You are
, I felt like saying. But
instead I answered, “Nothing.”

For a minute, the only sound in the room was
the swish of the sponge as she pushed it along the counters. I
sprinkled soap into the dishwasher cup, my stomach clenching as if
it knew subconsciously what was coming next.

“You haven’t been spending time with Brian
lately,” Mom said, running the sponge under the tap. “Did something
happen?”

There were so many ways to answer this
question, but I settled on, “We broke up a couple of weeks
ago.”

“A couple of
weeks
ago,” she said in
a
Where the hell was I?
tone. “What happened? And why did
you not tell me?”

I closed the dishwasher door and turned it
on. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know why it happened or you don’t
know why you didn’t tell me?”

My sigh mimicked hers—long and weary. “I
know why it happened, and I didn’t tell you because it wasn’t that
big of a deal. It’s not like we were serious or anything.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “You’ve known
Brian for years. His mother and I were on the PTA together in
elementary school. I thought you really liked each other.”

“We did, but everything changed when we
started dating.”

“What happened?” she asked again, putting
the sponge down in order to give me her full attention. “I’m sure
whatever it is, you can work it out. It’d be a shame to throw away
a decade of friendship over a little spat.”

“It wasn’t a little spat.” I gnawed on my
lip as I debated on whether or not to tell her the truth. But
before I could decide either way, it came bursting forth like an
overeager sprinter before the “go” signal. “He cheated on me.”

“Oh.” Her shoulders slumped a little and she
looked away, toward the window. “I see. Well then…you’re better off
without him. Right?”

I let out the breath I’d been holding.
“Right.”

Chapter 4

“No,” I said, crossing my arms firmly over
my chest.

Robin had come over to Dad’s house the
second I arrived, gushed over her latest date with Devon for a half
hour, and then revealed her plans to hit another party tonight in
Redwood Hills. Then she insisted—no,
decided
—that I go with
her.

“Come on. Live a little, will ya?”

She said this to me at least once a week. As
if I weren’t “living” unless I went to out-of-control parties,
drank beer, and hooked up with random guys.

“Dad would never let me,” I said, even
though I knew he probably would. He trusted me implicitly.

“Sure he will. Your dad’s awesome.” Robin
was borderline obsessed with my father. She adored him, even after
learning about his past transgressions. Everything he said was
gospel. Everything he did was wonderful. I attributed her
father-obsession to not having one of her own. “At least you
have
a father,” she liked to tell me when I complained about
him. Her father died when she was a toddler, so I didn’t mind her
getting her Dad-fix with mine.

“I wouldn’t know anyone,” I said. A
last-ditch effort.

“You’ll know me,” Robin said. “Stop making
excuses and come with me. When was the last time we did anything
fun like this together? You never want to go out with me.”

I never stood a chance against her pouting.
Resigned, I swung my legs off the bed and went to hunt for Dad. Of
course he said yes, I could go, as long as I was home by midnight.
He asked where the party was and seemed impressed, even relieved,
when I told him. I guess he thought rich kids didn’t drink as
much.

Right.

I told Robin the verdict and she went home
to gather supplies, promising to come back in an hour so we could
get ready together. Already regretting my decision, I trudged out
to the kitchen for an inspirational jolt of caffeine. My stepmother
stood at the sink, scraping burnt food off a casserole dish. She’d
recently gotten home from a day shift and still wore her uniform.
Lynn was a nurse at a children’s hospital, and sometimes I didn’t
see her the entire weekend. There were times when Dad didn’t see
her all
week
, but the time apart made them even more
lovey-dovey and nauseating.

“Hey, honey,” she said, glancing over her
shoulder at me as I extracted a can of Coke from the fridge.
“How’ve you been? I feel like I haven’t seen you in months.”

She came over to fold me into a hug, and I
breathed in her customary scent of Ivory soap and hospital
antiseptic. Back when I first started visiting Dad here, it took me
a while to warm up to Lynn, for obvious reasons. But adultery
aside, it wasn’t hard to see why Dad had fallen for her. She was
sweet, with a round face always curved into a smile, and an
attitude so positive that simply being around her made you feel
hopeful, like the world was on the verge of something wonderful.
She hardly looked like a home-wrecker at all.

“You’ve been working a lot,” I reminded
her.