Chapter 5
“Bye dad.” I mumbled one night, when I spotted him in the kitchen, not ten minutes after I had gotten home from work.
He looked tired, as usual. My dad hadn’t stopped looking tired since he got remarried five years before. He had gone from having three very average kids to having seven, two of the new additions being special needs and mentally ill, another one of them being a general pain in the ass. The oldest one was never around enough to know much about him, therefore making him my favorite new addition to the family. Yes, it seemed my father had inherited some exceptional little brats, and while his watchful eyes had stayed awake long nights taking care of them and his whiny new wife, days had gone by and his own children had managed to grow up without any help from him. Between his full-time job and his new full-time-job-children, it was no wonder that he always looked like he had just been through an obstacle course. I knew now that my grandmother had been right about him being an idiot to marry her. Sometimes I felt bad for him. Sometimes I felt that karma was giving him his. Every now and then I felt wrong for thinking that way, but much of life is all about lying in the bed that you made, and, unfortunately, he completely deserved it.
Dad, who had owned his own business hooking up surround sound systems for home theatres, pre-wiring new houses, and helping people set up their television equipment when we’d lived in Tennessee had said goodbye to his flexible schedule and lax hours to take a forty hour a week job. He had taken a job as a manager at a local hardware store, very similar to the one that I was working at, to better support the larger family. I remember being fifteen when my father had met Kathleen, and watching all the changes occur. My brother and sister were happy at first. We were finally going to have a mom and things were going to be easier, or so they’d thought. I had long let go of that brand of blind optimism, much earlier in my childhood. We all learn those lessons eventually. One day we all have to wake up and discover that Santa and the Easter Bunny were never real and this was no different in my mind. I already knew, somewhere in the back of my mind, that happily ever after did not exist. Though I had held out a flicker of hope that perhaps Elizabeth and Will were right, that we had finally become part of a functional, family situation, in the back of my mind, I knew better.
It seemed like all my dad and his new wife had done for the past five years was argue. They had a regular pattern going, as a matter of fact. Things would go really well for about two weeks, then, something little would occur. Like dad forgetting to fix the washer. Something little, like dad forgetting to fix the washer, would somehow become everything bad that both of them had ever done to one another, how mothers had been right about the wedding, the tragic crying about how the love was gone. All of those things would become my step-mom packing up her kids, asking for a divorce (bear in mind, that this is all because dad forgot to fix the washer), and going to her mother’s house for the night, as dad would sit in his room blowing up her phone all night. That's when I usually took the time to enjoy newly found peace and quiet of the house. That is, until she would arrive the back the next evening, so that they could have their little “I love you and I’m sorry” reunion with songs and poetry and all that wonderful shit. Then everything would go great again for another two weeks as everyone silently waited for the time bomb to go off again. Their whole marriage had PMS, I told my friends one time. I knew I couldn’t wait to get married, someday and live happily ever after like them. While some people my age were talking about the future, getting married and having children, I remember thinking to myself, growing up to be a crazy old cat lady didn’t actually sound like a bad prospect. As far as Kathleen went as a step-mom, she was a great mom, to “her kids” as she was always so quick to remind the rest of us as often as she saw fit. I can’t say she never gave us anything, though. If nothing else, Kathleen taught me the true meaning of conditional love. The conditions being that everything went well for her children and herself and the rest of us did what she wanted, then we were worthy of her “love”. Unfortunately for her, I didn’t have time for her warped sense of reality or her nails on a chalkboard children. One can only play charades for so long, I had finally decided one 4th of July a couple years prior that the game was up, when I had complained to Kathleen about her youngest daughter playing in a keepsakes box of old pictures of my mother and grandparents that she had found in the garage. When I confronted Leah and asked her to give me the box, she had replied in her spoiled seven year-old voice that she was playing with the pictures and I couldn’t tell her what to do. So, I snatched the box and all my pictures, despite her protests, and took them to my room to tuck away in a safe place. It wasn’t a full five minutes later that I could hear Kathleen storming down the basement stairs to my bedroom, banging on the door and in full form. I figured she’d be coming and had already prepared myself for the falling out. When I opened the door, I wasn’t at all surprised to see her standing in the doorway with that same familiar and sour look on her face. She always took Leah's side before hearing anything we had to say at all. I already knew that the best thing for me to do was listen to her whine for a second, tell her where she could put it, and then watch her storm back up the stairs, looking back at me and threatening to tell my father.
“Yeah,” I used to think to myself. “Just make sure when you’re telling him you mention my name because he’s probably forgotten it by now.”
That day, Kathleen had decided to try to cut me particularly deep. She told me that I had an attitude problem and that I had no right to take the box from Leah and that I was to give it back “this instant”. She let me know that since I was not even her real child, she would let my dad deal with me when he got home. I loved those moments when my dad’s wife tried to get bold and thought she was going to try and confront me about something. She liked to use big words like “deviant” and “juvenile,” but the fact that she slept with her door locked at night told me I was still winning this war. She didn’t seem to realize that her tactics only worked with people who gave a damn. She and her children were such sheep. Any sudden movement would send them barreling back off in the other direction.
“I’m certain I’m nobody’s child.” I just laughed at her. “Just keep your fugly children out of my shit please.”
I smiled at her sweetly before slamming the door, and then listened for her to go storming back up the stairs to reign over her kingdom; the part that was still safe at the moment. It made me smile to imagine her sleeping with weapons under her bed in preparation of the night I actually went up there to get her. I wasn't planning on it or anything, but it was a nice thought that helped me sleep better at night. I could faintly hear her calling my dad at work and telling him what I had said to her, how I had no respect. Because my dad was totally going to drop everything he was doing at work to come home and spank his eighteen year-old daughter. And she thought I was the one who needed a mental adjustment. It had been a long time since my father had laid a hand on me in anger, but at that point in my life I already knew I wasn't going out like that scared, whimpering little fifteen-year old girl I had been the last time. At eighteen, I was a little bigger since the last beating and he was a little older. Nope. Next time he tried that shit, I knew I was going out kicking, screaming, and fucking his ass completely up. Don't get me wrong. He was my dad and I did still care about him on some level. However, I also needed him to realize that jail was just a free place for me to go stay if he tried anything at all. I always kept a straight face and never let my guard down. I could never let anyone see me cry. I just held the silver key right to my heart and whispered to myself, “This too will pass.”
So, in the wake of Queen Kathleen’s reign, dad, Elizabeth, Will, and I had dissolved in our separate directions, finding our own escapes. Elizabeth with her music, Will with his videogames, dad with his stupidity, and me into my own mind. Maybe it was more of their hopeful optimism, or maybe they had even decided that something was better than nothing, but my dad and the other two had don
e their best to, at least partially, maintain this on again off again family. Up until my senior year of high school, I had done all that I could to play the game and pretend for the sake of my siblings, smiling and laughing and hating it all, but not anymore. At some point they had all continued to play the game as I slowly disassociated from all of it.
What was left of dad, Elizabeth, and Will was what remained of my blood family. My real mom was out of the picture completely and I knew very little about her. I knew I probably wouldn't even recognize her anymore if I was to pass her on the street. Not seeing or hearing from someone for years and years tends to have that kind of an effect. I assumed she still lived in Tennessee, but it had been a long time since we’d heard from her, a lifetime ago it seemed, when we had all been different people. If not for the child support checks for Elizabeth and Will, which arrived faithfully each month, we probably wouldn’t even have known she was still alive. Dad had mentioned about a year before that on the child support documents and checks he received from her for my younger brother and sister that he’d noticed the last name had changed on the documents. She had remarried. I still remember the feeling. I wasn’t sure if it was shock or surprise. Maybe a little bit of both, but that seemed so long ago now, back before a time when nothing surprised me anymore. I had shrugged it off like I didn’t care and didn’t know why he had even bothered telling me, but despite my nonchalant attitude, just the thought of it had consumed me for a week, despite my desperate efforts to keep myself busy. I wished my dad hadn’t told me a little more every day. I had even gone searching her online, out of curiosity one afternoon when I had been bored in my dorm room. It turns out that literally everyone facebooks or tweets nowadays. I had clicked the name and stared at the face in the picture only for a brief second before scrolling down to read the profile details. I was already sorry I had found it. It turned out she had children. They looked pretty young, probably no more than about eight and thirteen. Kayla and Aaron were their names. I’d read them on all of the captions of photographs that showed the two smiling with their perfect, happy family. My mom had stepchildren that her profile said she loved taking back and forth to dance classes and football practices. There were pictures she had posted from Christmases when her own children had received no call, or even a card. I wanted to click on the link that blinked to “send Kelley a message”. I wanted to pour every bad thing I could say into one message and make her feel the way I had felt upon seeing the pictures. There was probably much more to be discovered, but I closed the profile. I had read enough.
“Bye” He replied after a second, barely looking up from the mess he was cleaning up on the counter, before my step-mom got home from work, during one of those breaks my they sometimes caught when all the younger kids were settling down for the night; precious time that they used to read week-old mail or catch up on dishes. Precious time that if I were my father, would have been used to burn the house down children and all, and walk away, using the insanity plea while people would still believe it.
Thinking it was going to be like usual, no questions asked routine, I attempted to make my getaway through the front door when I heard him wake up for a moment and ask me, “hey, didn’t you just get home?”
“Yeah,” I said, poking my head back around the corner of the kitchen, trying to come up with something, in case he decided to ask any tough questions about where I was going. I hadn’t been through this routine in awhile. Dad had long stopped the level of interrogation that he used on me from high school; the old who, where, when will you be back nonsense that never made any difference, anyway. Maybe he had started to sense that I was maturing and had long outgrown that type of juvenile treatment. By this time I was old enough to understand dad would be pissed if he had to get up in the middle of the night to go identify a body. Over-publicized news/media stories about adolescents who randomly killed their families in the middle of the night didn’t hurt my cause any, either. If the only reason my dad didn’t say anything to me anymore about my staying out after four in the morning, was so that he and his wife didn’t have to start sleeping in shifts, I was alright with that. We all have to make sacrifices sometimes.
It wasn’t like I ever really went anywhere that was so shady that I’d have to lie, but needless to say, there are always details that need not be volunteered, certain names of individuals and places that could cause blood vessels and vital organs to pop. Usually people just fill in the blanks themselves, anyway, with answers that are easy enough for their own minds to accept. That’s one lesson I learned that summer, for certain. Plus, dad didn't particularly like Jolene or Danny, not that he had ever given either the time of day. I knew he didn't like Jolene because she had thoughts of her own. Danny was awkward so that one made sense. I had done a pretty good job of making sure he hadn't met any of my other friends because he still thought I was going to some girl named Pearl's house on a regular basis, who I hadn't seen or heard anything from since the tenth grade.
“I don’t think I’ve seen you a complete two hours in the past three weeks,” he took off his glasses and rubbed them on his shirt for a moment, before replacing them and then shifting his gaze back upon his stack of mail.
It was true. Seemed like the only time I saw anyone at home anymore was in passing, as I left to go to work or elsewhere. If I spent any quality time at home, it was to go to bed so I could recuperate and run away from home all over again the next day.
“Well, now you’ve gone and destroyed what a beautiful thing we had going.” I answered smirking. He didn’t even look up. He just kept rifling through the pile as if he didn’t hear the comment. Maybe he knew I was just trying to push his buttons. More likely he just didn’t give a damn.
“Where are you headed?” He asked me, glancing at the microwave clock, which read a quarter after ten, but since my father was raised in Mayberry, it may as well have been three in the morning. “Pearl’s house this late?”
“Yeah,” I replied flatly. “A group of us are going to her house to read the bible.”
He grabbed a pen off the counter and began scribbling some dates down from one of the bills he was reading in the stack.
I could remember a time when that sort of thing would have made him smile, but my dad had stopped laughing with me a long time ago.
“Do you work in the morning?” He asked me.
Not that he was legitimately curious. Dad asked me about work every time he saw me. First about if work was busy. Then usually he’d ask when I worked next. All questions that required less than a sentence answer. They were just filler questions because he didn’t know what else to say to me. The kind of questions that you ask when you either already know the answer or don’t care enough to hear one.
It was no secret that my dad felt like he’d woken up one day to a daughter who was now a total stranger. The same kid who, at one time had functioned as his living, breathing keychain, confiding in him, chatting with him, keeping him updated on her life would now all of a sudden rather be killed than have to kill time at home with her “family”, and my dad had no idea what to make of it. He let himself believe that it was college that had changed me because that was the easier answer for him to accept. Why couldn’t he see that that kid had gone away years ago and that up until a year or two before, he had been simply dealing with the shell of someone who once was. The same kid who had faked that smile at the dinner table so many times would now rather sit on hot coals than take a seat with the so-called family, and to dad it was out of nowhere. He could attribute it to my being a teenager. He could tell himself I was just tired or too busy, but he could never really figure it out. And at some point, he’d given up trying to figure me out. He didn’t have time to wonder about the thoughts of a possibly troubled adolescent mind when he had his new wife and her children to think about. They needed time, attention, money, and I just needed him. I just needed him to hear me and he never did. Maybe if he’d sat down with me early on in my transition, things may have turned out di
fferently, not that there's any way of knowing now.
At some point, I had made the transition from living at home to just boarding in his house. I knew that wasn’t as if I just woke up one day and everything had changed, but I couldn’t pinpoint when or how exactly it had all come to be. It was lots of little things. One day I had just gotten tired of all the arguing and the uncertainties of living with a family that wasn’t really mine, and I had just checked out I supposed. It was easier to walk through the front door when I wasn’t really checked in. It was easier to walk through rooms when I wasn’t attached to them and past pictures of a girl I no longer was and had never really been. I could spot my dad, my brother, and my sister in the pictures, if I really looked, but there was no family in the photographs. Just two groups of people, brought together by chance, and stuck together by circumstance. It was simpler to walk past photos of a family that I had never really been a part of, just so long as I didn’t give it too much thought.
“Not till eleven.” I answered him.
“Well have fun, I guess,” he replied, yawning.
“Getting caught up in the scripture is always a good time.” I said.
He just turned around to finish his tasks in the kitchen. “Be careful if you’re going to be out late.”
“We’ll see.” And with that I was out the door, into the night, and on my way to “Pearl’s house.”