“It’s not that I’m unhappy about her getting married, but there’s something not right about them. I don’t know. I want to be happy for Mom. I really do. But, it’s like she says that she’s happy, but then doesn’t look it when we are here. When we were away at Gran’s house she was smiling and happy, just the way that she was when it was the two of us.”
Shit, just spit it out. She’s your oldest and closest friend. She won’t judge you or your mom. She loves you too much!
Teresa shook her head and we started picking up the pace again.
“Your mom is a grown woman. If she isn’t happy then she needs to do something about it. Not you. Besides they’ve only been married six months.”
I nodded, “And only knew each other six months before that. They dated for four months, then he moved in. After that, they get married a short two months later. What the fuck? It was all so rushed. It made no sense, and I asked her if she was pregnant. She told me that she was too old for that.” I rolled my eyes as I remembered it, remembered how I’d sat back, stunned as I watched it play out. Nobody had asked me if I wanted a stepfather or had even bothered to ask if I liked the guy. Mom had just married him, moved him in, and by her actions, told me to suck it up.
“My parents thought that she was pregnant.”
See, I wasn’t the only one! I was going to tell her the truth. All of it. Lay it all out on the table, but before it I knew it, we’d reached Ava’s house. It was a couple of blocks away so it made sense that it wouldn’t take us long to get there. I brushed off the conversation, thinking that I’d tell both of them. This thing was eating me up and I had to tell someone. I couldn’t talk to Abe. It had to be them. They were my eldest and closet friends, nothing would change that. Nothing
“Your parents think everyone’s pregnant.”
We burst into laughter, as we reached Ava’s front door and Teresa pressed the bell without hesitation. Unlike Mom and Teresa’s parents, Ava’s were relaxed about bedtimes and her friends being over. She didn’t have to sneak out. Her first alcoholic drink? Her parents gave it to her. Smoking a joint? Her parents gave it to her. They even gave her condoms and took her to the doctor for birth control when she told them she needed it. Not only her mom, but her dad went along with them to the doctor. They were new age parents or from a different planet? I could never figure out which one it was.
I asked her mom once why was she so cool?
She told me, that she wanted Ava to make her own choices and avoid mistakes. She’d made her own mistakes one too many times trying to sneak around and be the bad girl, the complete opposite of what her parents tried to bring her up to be.
Why couldn’t my mom be like that? Shit, if she was then I wouldn’t have to nearly break my neck climbing down a tree to go to my friends’ houses or just to get away for a little while.
Teresa had even asked why all moms couldn’t be like Ava’s?
I’ve never figured out the answer to that question.
My hand was just about to touch the doorbell when Ava opened the door. The plan was for me to sneak out, Teresa to say she was staying at mine, but she refused to climb down the tree so she waited for me outside, and then we were to meet up at Ava’s so we could all ride in her car to the party.
Yeah, her parents bought her a car too!
And then we would be at the party of the lifetime. The one that Abe would be at too and I was saving that piece of information for when we were in the car, but only when we would be stationery like at a stop light or something. I didn’t want Ava having an accident.
“We’re not going,” Ava choked as she looked at us with pitiful emerald eyes that normally lit up the room. She moved her long dark hair from her face as her eyes started to fill with tears. At last, her parents had decided to be strict and normal, like everyone’s parents, I thought.
“There’s been an accident.” She hiccupped her way through the first part, but managed to gain some strength as she continued. “The hospital. We need to get there now.”
“Why?” I asked scared to know the answer to my own question. Because, I realized that not only was she shaking, but she was talking directly to me.
Sure, we’d spoken on Skype but neither of us had seen each other since we got back. I’d seen Teresa briefly this morning when we went shopping and then when she called to make sure that the plan was still in place, but Ava no. I expected the normal screams and hugs that we would do if we hadn’t seen each other in three days. But we hadn’t seen each other in four weeks and she was acting kind weird. That’s all I could think about, where were the hugs and screams, not the part where she said we had to go to the hospital. Then she confused me even more and spoke again.
She whispered to me, her eyes welling over with tears. “It’s your mom. She’s in hospital.”
I didn’t blink or say a word as Teresa held one hand and Ava held the other as they guided me to her car. So, I could see my mom. In the hospital.
I’d only just left the house and it hadn’t taken that long to walk over here. What could have happened in that short span of time? I felt my face scrunch up and looked over at Ava in the driver’s seat.
“What happened Ava?”
“I had a phone call from your neighbor who said that she saw you sneaking out and knew that you would be here,” she took a deep breath. Yeah, I wanted to know how Nosey N -our nickname for her- knew Ava’s number and that I did this regularly, but I also felt cold, numb, afraid.
The whole thing felt like a tidal wave as I tried to reply to Ava. I could hear my mom and Stuart screaming and then they stopped so I just continued to get ready. I was distracted thinking about Abe, and feeling guilty about being back home. Part of me was glad to be back and the other part was just damn scared. What if it happened again? What would I do? Would I go along with it and tell them the truth about what happened when I left? My friends would hate me for keeping it a secret and Mom was so into Stuart, would she think that I led him on somehow? She may think that. Damn!
So many thoughts were racing through my mind, but then the only thing that was going to get me through my fears were answers. Or maybe not?
Chapter Three
I stood like a lost lamb in the hospital, wishing that none of it was happening. Wishing that all of it would go away like I’d done so many times before. This wasn’t the first time, that I’d been in the hospital in the last year. The first was when Gran was on her death bed and the second was when Mom had an accident, pretty much like this one. She claimed to have fallen down the stairs and even went so far as to tell the nurses that. They insisted on calling the police but Mom tried to talk them out of it. They did it anyway and for some reason both her and Stuart managed to talk their way out of it. The same stairs that she’d been walking up and down for the last ten years since we moved in. Stairs she hadn’t fallen down a single time before she married Stuart.
Aunt Rose, mom’s twin sister held my hand, “I told her not to marry that man. Who knows how many times he hit her? I mean, this must have been going on for a while. He couldn’t have just suddenly decided to kill her, this must have been ongoing… Sorry this isn’t helping…”