Without any warning (of course not, since I shut off all avenues to the outside world), on Wednesday, my parents show up outside my apartment door.
This is quite a serious turn of events, since visiting me in the city goes against some sort of moral code my father lives by, unless he’s been given free tickets to a Broadway show. They both pound on my door with fists and something that sounds a lot like a battering ram.
I crack open the door, hesitantly, thinking of all the ways this day is going to go straight to Hell if I let them both inside. Before I can even come up with a solid excuse as to why I can’t let them in, my mother shoves all her weight against the opening and bursts her way inside. It was like something out of a police raid. The woman’s upper body strength impresses me every single time. She’s in her late fifties, aren’t her bones supposed to be getting brittle?
Standing in my living room, my mother lifts her hand over her mouth and does a poor job of covering up a garbled gasp. Her eyes shoot wildly around the room and immediately fill with tears. My father stands behind her with wide eyes. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he mumbles to himself.
I’m suddenly fully aware of the massive amounts of wine bottles that litter every surface of the apartment, and the pizza boxes and cupcake wrappers strewn across the floor. In the middle of the coffee table, my fondue pot sits with a small fire inside where Julia and I burned all things that had to do with men. A line of white smoke stretches and curls up to the ceiling from the embers inside. There’s also the fact that I am wearing clothes caked with frosting and pizza toppings and my hair is tangled into one ginormous dreadlock, decorated with little sugary cupcake crystals.
Julia sits on my couch, a glob of chocolate frosting spiking the front of her hair, watching the events unfold. She pours more wine in both our glasses then drinks one after the other, in quick succession.
“We were worried. We’ve been trying to call you,” my mother cries. “What’s going on, Janie?” She darts her eyes to Julia and back to me.
My father closes my front door and leans against it, afraid to step any farther inside. He stares at me with huge worried eyes.
“We almost called the police, but I talked your father into coming all the way here instead,” my mother’s voice cracks.
My father grunts, back still pressed to my door.
“Did you leave your phone at the airport? The last text I got from you was that you landed safely.” My mother has her hand to her chest, gripping the fabric of her shirt in a fist.
I’ve been home for two weeks.I haven’t spoken to my mother is two weeks?Who am I right now? I start scooping up as many wine bottles as I can, but for every one I pick up it seems two more appear in its wake. “I-I’m sorry,” I mumble, clanking them all onto the couch. I push them to the side and collapse onto the edge.
“Janie, sweetie? What happened? What’s going on?” my mother asks.
Julia pours us two more glasses of wine and pulls out a slice of cold pizza from the box and starts nibbling on the end. I really wish I was her right now. She hands me my glass and I take a small sip. It tastes like way too many bad decisions.
“I-uh, me and Dex. We broke up,” I whisper over the rim of the wine.
My father’s eyes get wider, and his head thuds back against the door. “This is all over a guy?”
My mother throws him a stern look. “Harry, shut up. Do you know anything about women at all?” I always love when she tells my father to shut up and then asks him a question.
My father grumbles an inaudible answer and rubs his hands over his face.
My mom tosses her purse on what’s probably the cleanest surface she can find and rolls up her sleeves. “Harry, just go and get the recycling bags, she keeps them in the cabinet under the sink. Make yourself useful and start cleaning.”
My mother clears off a small spot on the coffee table and sits. Then she slaps the pizza out of Julia’s hand and takes away our wine.
Inside the kitchen my father curses loudly to himself. He probably noticed thebaking incident. It happened while I used the bathroom and Julia thought using the microwave would be faster to bake cupcakes in, with aluminum trays. There was a small fire. She promises to buy me a new microwave. There are also raw eggs splattered across the ceiling, but neither of us recall how they got there.
“Sweetheart?” My mother taps my knee to get my attention. “What happened?”
I look around awkwardly. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. It hurts too much.
“Oh, Janie,” my mother whispers. “Come on now, it can’t be that bad.”
“Dex had a baby.” I sniffle and tears start to fall. “Dex’s ex-girlfriend had a baby. She never even told him she was pregnant. She just went into labor and showed up at his mother’s house asking for help to get to the hospital. And now he has a daughter. Olivia.” The words tumble out of my mouth in a garbled mess of slurred emotions.
My mother gasps. “Jane Valerie Nash, I raised you to be a good, decent woman,” she growls. “If you really care about that man, you should be willing to accept that innocent baby into your life and your relationship!” She wrings her hands together. “Look at all the celebrities that do it. I mean, of course, yes, it would take a great deal of effort and commitment and you would have to learn to be a bit more selfless and realize you won’t be his first priority and—”
“Hedidn’t want to,” I whisper.
Julia reaches over, grabs my hand and holds it tight.
My mother blinks blankly at me, not understanding.
“H-he said he still loved me but he couldn’t leave her with a baby like his dad left his mom. His mother raised him and his sisters, alone.” Jesus, he has five sisters. She was a single mother with six kids to raise. No wonder Dex remembers how hard that was. “And his ex wants to be a family.”
