Mom walks in from work a few minutes later, tired circles under her eyes, and finds me at the kitchen table, trying to do homework. She plops down beside me and Cheese hops into her lap. After taking a look at me, she says, “Looks like we both had long days, huh?”
I shut my history book with a loud thud. “You’re not kidding.”
“School okay?” she asks. “No one gave you a hard time about getting sick at the party, did they?”
“Nah, it was fine.”
She reaches over and pushes my bangs out of my face a little. “You want to ditch dinner at home and see a movie?”
“Are you serious?” Mom isn’t usually the type ofparent to spring a trip to the movies on a school night, but whatever’s gotten into her is working in my favor.
“Serious as my love for buttered popcorn.”
Mom loops her foot around the leg of my chair and drags me closer to her, slinging an arm over my shoulder and giving me a quick kiss on the forehead.
Chapter Eighteen
Paper, Paper, Get Your Paper!
“Sweet Pea,” my mom coos in my ear.
I lie curled on my side with Cheese purring into my chest. “Noooo,” I moan. “Just ten more minutes.”
Mom squeezes into my twin bed, making a Cheese sandwich. He lets out a low yowl and repositions himself on top of my feet.
“How is it already Thursday?” Mom asks. “At least I get Thursday this week.”
I almost say something sarcastic about how maybe we wouldn’t have to split my days between the both of them if they’d just figured out a way to stay together. But I don’t say anything because for Mom, the divorce was somekind of major failure. Like, not only were things messed up between her and Dad, but what kind of therapist can’t even keep her own family together? I think that’s where her mirror-house theory came from. If she was going to fail, at least she could be really good at it.
The day Mom and Dad sat me down to tell me they were getting a divorce, I knew immediately something was up. They waited until after Christmas, and the thought of that—them deciding to give me one last Christmas with us all together—makes me feel a little lucky and a little sad at the same time. It was a Sunday morning in January, and I woke up to the smell of cinnamon rolls. The homemade kind. Mom and Dad always made breakfast, but never something like this that was basically all dessert.
They let me finish one whole cinnamon roll before Mom said, “Sweet Pea, we have something to tell you.” I froze and looked up at them.
Dad took Mom’s hand. Mom always had to do the serious stuff, so I remember thinking it was so weird that Dad was the one to drop the news. “You know your mother and I love each other very much. We love you most of all. But Mom and I have decided not to live together anymore, which is why we’re getting a divor—”
Mom coughed loudly, the kind of cough that sounded fake.
Dad gave her a look and then tried again. “Your mother and I have decided to end our marriage.”
I guess for whatever reason my mom had some issue with theDword. It took me a minute to get what he was saying, but then all at once his words sank in, and all I felt was the hollowness of shock in my chest. This was the last thing I’d expected. I had even thought maybe Mom was pregnant or that we were moving. Mom had always talked about teaching at a university. But this? Mom and Dad getting a divorce? I couldn’t believe it.
Nothing about it made sense. They were happy. We were happy. “W-w-why?” I asked, brimming with tears. “What happened?”
Mom looked to Dad, like that was his cue.
He reached across the table and took my hand, sticky from cinnamon roll icing, so that he was holding mine and Mom’s hands. “Sweet Pea, I need to tell you something. It’s something I think I’ve known for quite a long time, but I thought maybe it would go away.”
Tears began to roll down my cheeks. “Are you sick?” I turned to Mom. “Is Dad dying?”
“Oh, mercy, no,” she said, almost laughing, but not in a cheerful way.
Dad squeezed my hand and gave me a hopeless-looking smile. “I’m not sick. There’s nothing wrong with me. But Sweet Pea, I’m gay.”
I sat there for a while, the only thing finally breaking the silence was Cheese jumping on the counter to lick a spatula. Besides Mrs. Young and her wife, most of the gay people I knew of were on TV. Mom and Dad had always made sure I knew there was nothing wrong about being gay, and they’d even made a point of making me watch all the celebrations on the news when gay marriage was legalized. Mom said it was history being made. And I think one of Dad’s cousins is gay. But other than that and the possibility of Oscar being gay, I hadn’t thought about it very much.
In the end, though, Dad being gay was the kind of information I filed away in my brain to deal with some other time, because the real, looming issue I couldn’t stop thinking about was the fact that my family was suddenly falling apart.
“Why can’t you just stay with us?” I found myself asking. “It doesn’t have to be a big deal.” I knew they couldn’t stay together. I knew it even then, but I had to ask.
