“Sorry, mija. She didn’t take the move well,” he whispers.
“She started drinking?”
He pulls down water glasses, more to give himself something to do than anything, the faint outlines of a hand-shaped bruise on his forearm.
“I brought home a few cases of wine, hoping it’d cheer her up. And with my employee discount, it seemed like a gift I could afford to give her.” He fills all the cups with ice and water, passing them out to people who’d asked for nothing. “It backfired. She’s stopped working, saying there’s no point anyway. That we’ll always be poor and that I’m…” he trails off, not saying the rest. But I know it, the same as he does. That he and I are her biggest mistakes. That if she’d just listened to her parents, she could be married to a banker or a surgeon, drinking poolside at one of her many vacation properties.
I can’t help but glance at Trips, hoping neither of us ever feels the same way. My palm slides to my lower belly as I jolt with the realization that we’re almost out of time on the first birth control shot. We could end up with our own unplanned pregnancy. Shock and doubt stream through me, decades of hearing what a mistake it is to have a baby too young, unplanned, on accident, how it ruins absolutely everything. It’s a tsunami of terror, fear that it might already be too late, that one day soon when I’m handed that pink and white stick, it could be positive. That I’d be exactly the same as my mom. Young, unmarried, unsettled, my future destroyed because I took a stupid risk, one that I could have, should have, prevented. I can’t breathe. I can’t have a baby, not now. Never have I wanted what my parents have. Not ever. My vision dims at the edges while I battle against my panic.
Trips wraps his fingers around my elbows, gently tugging me closer to him, knowing that I’m losing control and trying to give it back to me. “It’s okay, Crash. Easy in, easy out,” he mutters, demonstrating deep, calming breaths for me that I struggle to match. “That’s it. Listen to my voice. Fuck knows if it sounds nice, but you can tell me one way or the other once you’ve got yours back.” The corners of my lips twitch, panic and humor fighting for my attention.
But Trips doesn’t stop his muttered directions. “Feel the texture of my shirt.” I brush my fingers over the fine fabric, the weight still unfamiliar to me. “That’s right, it’s kind of silky, isn’tit?” he asks.
I nod, the fear still squeezing my lungs. “Okay, now, what do you smell? Does any of this smell like your old house, or is it all different?”
Forcing myself to breathe slowly enough to catch a scent, it takes a few tries, but after a while, I find my voice. “It’s different. I think the people who lived here before had a dog.”
My dad’s chuckle has the last of my panic clearing, and I wish I could smile for him. But I feel sick and dizzy, like my world’s tilted onto its side, the possibility of being pregnant stealing what little joy I felt seeing my dad again.
“They did have a dog. A little, yippy one that peed everywhere, from what your mom and I have figured out. At least your mom got our place spick and span. She’s more than got the skills for it.”
“The bleach smell is familiar,” I whisper, admitting that one thing here is the same as my childhood home. The scent of Walker’s cookies tickles my memory, and the comparison is stark.
My house growing up was always, at best, only half a home. I never walked in to the smell of cookies or simmering spaghetti sauce. I wasn’t welcomed by my mom’s hugs and questions about my day.
No, she greeted me with indifference, the faint scent of bleach clinging to everything in that house. It was like she believed that if the house were perfectly disinfected, she could pretend it was something else altogether.
Like she could bleach away the consequences of her youthful indiscretions or scrub my dad and me into something she deemed worthy. If we failed to meet her exacting standards, that was always our failure, never hers.
My dad’s voice cuts into my memories. “Are you okay now, mija?” he asks. The question is for me, but he nods at Trips with approval.
“Dad?” I whisper, not okay, not really, but needing to understand how we got where we are. “Why did you stay? Why didn’t you take me and go?”
His smile falls away as Trips steps back, Falk invisible as only a security guard can be.
“It’s not that simple, mija.”
“Wasn’t it? She hated me from the beginning. I spent years, my entire childhood, trying to be perfect so maybe, just maybe, she might love me. But she never did, Dad. At best, I was a trophy. At worst? You know how she is at her worst.”
“Clara—”
“No, let me finish. You told me once about your dad, about how much you regretted leaving your sisters there with him. But what about me? Mom wasn’t as bad as your dad, I know that, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t cause irreparable harm. Worst of all, she made me vulnerable. She made me think that love had to be earned, that if I ticked every item off a list, then I might be worthy of respect. I thought that what I had with Bryce was love, when it was nothing but coercion. I see it now, but…” My dad shakes his head, knocking my words from his ears. “Why can’t you see it? Mom isn’t good for you. She isn’t good for anybody. She saved you more than twenty years ago. And you’ve paid your debt. Leave. Come with me. Go somewhere, anywhere. Just please. Go. She’s not worth it.”
A shriek sounds from behind Trips, and I know my mom heard my quiet plea. But with efficiency borne of trainingwith RJ, and now Falk, Trips contains my mom before she can lash out.
At least with her body.
Her words sting, however. “You ungrateful little bitch. We did everything for you. We sacrificed more than you could ever imagine to give you the life you think so little of.”
“No, Mom. Dad did those things. You just made me feel small.”
Her laugh is sloppy, her bottle of wine still clenched in one fist. “Well, I did the hard part first. You wouldn’t even be here without me.”
I want to fight with her, to get her to understand. But for the first time, I realize she never will.
Something in her is broken.
Maybe it always was.
