until I’m suddenly aware of my
unawareness.
I think she might have a future as a hypnotist
or sleep therapist. But today, out of nowhere,
mid sentence—a sudden silence.
Christine and I both stop chewing and
turn to her, on alert. Which is when
Dee asks, ever so softly,
Are you doing okay, Laren?
Friday Night
This was a lousy week but it’s over now and Scott
is taking me to a concert. Some local bands
in the park, warming up for summer.
Mom does her best to kill the mood.
“Where are you two going?
Is there going to be any drinking?
What time will you be back?
Do you have your phone with you?
Is it charged?”
Then her Mother Brain recites the exact words I hear
every time I’m going somewhere with a guy.
“Call me if you need me. I don’t care what’s
going on or how late it is.”
Once we’ve escaped, Scott gets me laughing,
mimicking Mom.
“Why won’t you kiss me?
Do you like to see me suffer?
Don’t you know I’m crazy about you?”
I’m still giggling when he stops and pulls me tight
against him. His kiss is long and slow and his
voice is a soft moan when he tells me that he
likes me—so much. I want to answer, but I
can’t speak. All I can do is grab
this moment’s perfection, and place it ever so
carefully on memory’s shelf.
We take our time, walking toward the park,
watching the sun
slide into a golden pool,
and the world, with its night breeze and early summer
flowers, swells with the beating of my heart.
Too soon we are there. Too soon the magic
is jostled and crushed by the feet and faces of
the crowd.
Year-End Report
How did I not see this coming?
I knew my grades were slipping, but not
like this! This is a disaster. A free fall.
I barely made it through.
Meanwhile, Jackson’s grades have actually
improved, which makes him eager to
show Mom his report. That prompts her to ask
about mine, which I’d hoped she
might not think of until
it was misplaced somewhere.
Like in a shredder.
I brace myself for the big freak-out. As expected,
her eyebrows shoot up, then come together in a frown.
But when she looks at me, there’s no anger. No
yelling, no hands on hips—nothing.
Instead, she lets out a small, sad sigh and says she
understands and she knows I’ll get back
on track in the fall and in the meantime
I shouldn’t beat myself up.
It is like I’ve moved to an alternate universe.
Socorro
Socorro’s notepad is in hand, as usual, while
some manic version of myself has
taken over my mouth.
I can’t help but wonder what he might be recording
from today’s rave.
Patient’s brother dislikes eggplant?
As I try to think of a new subject, Socorro wonders aloud
if something about Jackson’s vegetarianism is bothering me.
“Not exactly. It’s just—
He’s never shown the slightest interest
in healthy eating before.”
It startles me to realize that Jackson must have
a reason—one of his own, that wasn’t
supplied by Brad’s mom. Why haven’t I seen that
or tried to find out what it is?
I wonder if that reflects badly
on me as an older sister.
I change the subject.
Drifting Days
I love the gentleness of early summer.
The warm breezes.
Walks in the evening’s
whispering dusk.
Food Fight: Part Two
Mommie Dearest has a new strategy to
force meat down Jackson’s throat.
She’s decided to starve him into
submission.
At dinner, she plunks steaks
on the table.
Nothing else.
I’m surprised the salt and pepper shakers
are still there.
She sits down to eat, acting like it’s
perfectly normal. Like we’ve ever had a
meal of nothing but meat.
Jackson stares ahead with his
chin up until Mom looks ready
to crack, but all she does is tell him,
“You can leave the table if you
aren’t going to eat your dinner.”
As soon as I can, I smuggle a peanut butter
sandwich to his room. His door opens the
second I tap on it.
That tells me he
was waiting,
which means he
knew I would come. And for
some reason this
breaks my heart a little.
Disappearing Familiar
Some kind of makeover frenzy has taken hold
of my mother. It started slow—a new
hairstyle, acrylic nails, a gym membership and some
wardrobe additions that, if you ask me, are
not quite right for someone her age.
That was fine. But her new obsession is
taking over the house. Everywhere you
look there are stacks of home-decorating magazines with
colour-coded Post-it notes in cryptic messages.
A hieroglyphics professor couldn’t crack
Mom’s codes. LvC W ov BMCr: H b X C
She corners me at least once a day and
forces me to invent an opinion, which depends
more on my mood than anything else. It’s not
like I could care a whole lot less—
except, that is, about my parents’ room.
Her room now and she has changed
everything. My father wouldn’t know
where he was if he walked in there today.
Scott
He insists that he is not
insisting, but I feel the
change, the way he
presses me.
I tell him wait because
I do not want to say no
even if no is what I am
thinking.
And when he asks me
what I am waiting for
I do not seem to know
the answer.
I only know there is one.
Aunt Rita and Grandma “Help”
Grandma and Aunt Rita remind me of chickens
pecking away at each other non-stop.
Peck, peck, peck. Pick, pick, pick.
I don’t even think they notice
what they’re saying
half the time.
Today is different. Today they have
hatched a plan to talk Mom into
signing up for a painting class.
With them, no less.
They lay out their persuasions.
Anyone can learn to paint.
It will be a hoot and, most of all,
Mom spends too much time cooped up.
Mom clearly doesn’t think their idea
is all that it’s cracked up to be.
She tells them thanks but no thanks.
Painting doesn’t interest her and
with work and errands and whatnot,
she gets out more than enough.
I am surprised when they give up wit
hout
an argument, although Grandma does
look a little like she has had
her feathers ruffled.
Suspicions
The voices in the back of my brain will not stop,
hinting, probing, whispering words that
cannot be true and do not belong.
I hate them because I know they
are false—must be false and yet
they will not leave no matter
how many times I
tell them to go.
Socorro
I say, “I am writing a letter but I do not want to
talk about it and I still do not want to talk about my father.”
To which he says, “Why do you think that is?”
I could tell him that it hurts when I think of
past things that are gone forever, or
future things that will never happen, but he
must know that.
I wonder, though, if he knows that the greatest
pain is in the smallest details and it is the
details that I do not
want to examine.
5
Where we were going or why has long since faded
in memory. It is that place in the road that I recall,
the place where our attention was caught by
several men gathered around a fear-frozen
young deer. They pushed and tugged until
the frightened animal took a few halting
steps and then began to move,
jumping forward toward the ditch.
Joy filled me. A crystal clear moment at the thought that
these kind men had stopped to help
a creature of beauty
to safety.
But then, a terrible sound shattered the air.
The sharp crack of a shotgun and the truth
penetrated my heart. The hands I thought were
helping were instruments of death—
driving the deer from the road
so that they could shoot it.
I sobbed so hard that my father pulled our car
to the side of the road, where he came around to
my side and knelt in the gravel
circling me with his arms. He listened while
I said appalling things about what I hoped
would happen to those men.
Dream
Last night I dreamed that I had fallen
from a great height.
Down, down, in a plunge
toward a dark and terrible
place filled with
nothing.
I reached to grasp a rope,
dangling there,
but each touch
of my hand
made it unravel
until my only hope
was a single
frayed
strand
that
could
never
hold
me.
Jackson’s Fat Lip
Jackson comes home from a Friday night at Grandma’s with
his lip split and swollen to about twice the normal size.
He heads straight for his room while Grandma tells us
how he started a fight with a boy on her street. Mom yells,
“Jackson, you get back out here right now.”
His shoulders slump more with
every step toward the table.
She fires questions at him, the kind that have
no answers, and quite frankly
I don’t see the point of the interrogation since
she already got the whole story from Grandma.
I know he’s not going to answer but
I wish I knew why he did it.
Jackson never gets in fights.
He likes everyone.
Letter to Dad.docx (continued)
Dr. Socorro says that we have built-in defences that can block things until we’re ready to deal with them. That must be why my brain changes the subject every time I think about The Passenger in your car that day.
Scott says I should give you the benefit of the doubt. But I don’t know how much doubt I even have, considering Mom’s reaction.
All I know right now is that I don’t want every thought I have of my father to be about That. I’m still adjusting to you being gone. That feels like about all I can handle right now.
Do you remember last year when Mom moved the clock that used to be over the kitchen sink? I must have glanced at the empty space it left behind hundreds of times.
Well, not to compare you to a clock, but it’s a bit like that. I keep “glancing toward you” and finding an empty space over and over again.
Even when life seems normal, it isn’t. I miss you. So much.
Empty Days
This is the
most horrible
summer of my life.
First of all,
Scott is gone away
with his family for
the whole month of July.
A month long holiday.
Who does that?
Meanwhile, I’m stuck in the house,
babysitting Jackson. When he’s home
that is. Sometimes he’s at
his friend Brad’s place. I picture them
sitting around eating chunks of
tofu with lentils and beans and
Even with that, I can’t helping thinking that
Jackson’s life is more exciting than mine.
Friendless
Christine and Dee seem to have
disappeared, which is a bit strange.
Not that we got all that close, but to go from
eating lunch together, chatting on
the phone and even hanging out
a couple of times, to
a whole lot of
silence ...
I can’t help but
wonder what happened.
I try to sound casual on the phone
when I ask Christine why
I haven’t heard from her lately. Somehow
it comes out like an accusation.
There is silence before she asks,
“But when did you ever call me, Laren? I
wanted us to be friends, only
sometimes I felt
more like a stalker.”
I have no answer. What she said is true.
That will be that, I guess. I am about to
end the call when she adds, “Dee and I are
going to a movie tomorrow afternoon.
Do you want to
join us?”
Standing My Ground
I’m ready and waiting when
Mom comes through the door.
It is about time she found out that
I am not
a built-in babysitter.
I am going
to a movie with Christine and Dee
tomorrow, if it means
Jackson has
to stay by himself.
Rehearsed words are in my head but anger
pushes them out of order and they fly
out of my mouth and into the air
like stray bullets.
I brace myself because I know Mom will say,
“I am not in the mood for this, Laren.
You are not asked to do much around here.
I do not like your attitude.”
Instead, hugs and
promises turn my
anger to
tears.
It is a strange,
guilt-filled
victory.
Show Time
By the time the coming attractions begin to play
I’ve learned that Dee finds Zac Ephron and
Robert Pattinson super hot, but that if she
had her pick, she’d go for Chance Crawford.
This elicits an inside joke from Christine,
which makes both of them laugh and reminds me that
I am still an Outsider.
I try not to think about Morgan and Angie and even
Nina. I tell myself that I am here at a movie with my
new friends, even though I don’t believe it, and then
as the show begins, a scene makes us laugh and
something shifts ever so slightly.
A tiny shard of warmth makes its way into me.
Socorro
I let Socorro know how much I want to be there
by flopping into a chair and answering his
annoyingly pleasant greeting with a grunt.
“You seem unhappy,” he observes.
“Amazing diagnosis,” I say. “That must be
why you make the big bucks.”
He counters with silence
an impassive face,
out-waiting me.
Classic Socorro.
“It’s summer,” I grumble.
“You might find it hard to believe but
sometimes I have better things to do
than sit here and talk about nothing.”
“I see,” he says with his shrink voice.
“In that case, please feel free to switch or even
cancel now and then. My summer schedule is quite
flexible and I want our sessions to benefit you.”
Now I feel foolish because there were no big plans
but I am still glad I told him how I felt. Finding out I
have options changes everything. Sometimes,
it’s just about having a choice.