Cafe Silhouette (Credit: Jesncin on DeviantArt)
Now Playing: “How To Fight Loneliness” – Wilco
I wish I was a better boyfriend. Jordan deserves better. I promised her that today would be a day for us to make up for my distance this weekend, and all I can think about is the past. I’m glad that she and her friends are enjoying the movie, but I’m staring at a screen and my mind has unfocused the picture and turned down the volume on the sound. I’ve checked my ticket about seven times and still cannot actually process the name of the movie I’m seeing. The moving pictures playing in my mind are memories which sting to the touch.
The last time I saw my mother was a good day. It was a Saturday night, we had gone to the fair. Grantchester always brings the fair to town in August. It was a nice way for the kids to celebrate the end of summer before going back to school, since elementary and high school usually started about two weeks after the fair. It was the death bell for the summer.
Reilly had just started dating Justin about four months beforehand, so mom and dad were meeting him for the first time amidst funnel cakes and rigged carnival games. We all laughed. I remember us talking deep into the night, taking the evening to the diner and staying there for three rounds of milkshakes, which my mom seldom ever let happen. I should have known something was off. But I was too focused on college ahead, and Allison’s departure that June was still too raw.
So, I just let myself enjoy the night. I remember smiling so much at the diner, and how the cheeseburger tasted divine that evening. I remember almost spilling strawberry milkshake over myself. I remember splitting a brownie sundae with my dad. I can’t remember a damn thing we talked about.
But I do remember the conversation I overheard earlier that week. I had been out working at the record store, my job before the radio station, and had to do inventory and clean up for the night. My parents must not have heard the door open, because they never acknowledged my return, and that allowed me to listen to things they didn’t want me to hear.
“And you’re sure this is your only option?” My dad was the king of keeping cool. He always had a warm smile, and a gentle voice. The fact that he was approaching accusatory in his tone betrayed a fury I didn’t think he even possessed.
The dying lightbulb in the ceiling fan cast a warm glow on the kitchen and made sure that I was almost invisible in the shadows on the other side of the doorframe. I knew I shouldn’t have been listening, but I couldn’t help it. My gut had been telling me something was wrong for quite some time, but I didn’t know well enough to trust it at that point in my life. I thought I was just upset about Allison leaving, which I was. But that prevented me from seeing the other concerns creeping up on me.
My mother reached across the table and grabbed my father’s hands in hers. I saw the look in her eyes. They had begun to lose their luster and life. They were weary. They were scared.
They told me she had all but given up.
“It’s the only way.”
I could only see a little of my dad’s face from my angle, but he scowled. Another sign that the sky was falling. Again, my father never let his guard down. If he felt negative emotions, he found a positive way of dealing with them. His therapist was damn good, I guess.
“And why won’t you fight? Just giving up now?”
“They came to our house, Graham,” my mother snapped. “I have a responsibility to protect you and our children, that’s what a mother does.”
“And I have a responsibility to protect you and our children as well. There is nothing we cannot fight together. That was in our wedding vows.”
“I know,” mom sighed.
“So what? It’s all bullshit then?”
“Christ’s sake! It was never bullshit! This is my past coming back to haunt me and I’m a danger to you and Reilly and Casey as long as I’m here.”
My dad lost all energy and slumped back into his chair. But he reached back across the table and held her hands tighter.
“I can’t just let you go.”
“Graham,” mom said softly, as if she couldn’t muster the energy to speak any louder. As if a dagger were plunged into her lungs. “If you think I don’t wake up and look at myself in the mirror and remind myself that I’m a terrible wife and a horrible mother, then…” She trailed off. I’ve replayed this scene a million times, and to this day, I cannot tell if she truly believed it or was lying to make it easier on my father.
“Melanie,” his voice was hard, but not harsh. It was more determined, “It isn’t your fault. You aren’t a horrible mother. You’re only human. Don’t doubt yourself.”
“That isn’t the issue,” she protested, pulling her hands away from his.
“Sweetheart?” my dad’s voice was filled with hurt, concern, and love, all at the same time.
“I can’t be the mother they deserve! The only reason we’re in this mess is because of my decisions in the first place!” My mom snapped at him, causing him to jerk backwards slightly.
“Then we’ll sort it out together, like we always do. Like we always will.” My dad got that fire back in him, ready to go to war against the world for my mom. And she stayed him with tears in her eyes, and a pained shake of her head.
“This is something I have to do alone.”
I am my mother’s son.
“I love you, Melanie Winters. And there isn’t a damn thing you or anyone else can do to change that.” When my dad makes a sincere statement like that, it means he has begrudgingly accepted an outcome he’s not wild about.
“I love you too, Graham Adams,” she replied. My mind returns to the present as tears begin to well up in my eyes. Wherever she is now, I hate her for not reaching out sooner. Whatever her reasons for leaving…I just wish I could have gotten more time. I wish I could have figured out how to make things right. I feel a hand in mine and look over.
“Are you okay?” Jordan’s whisper is the only thing I can hear clearly, as the film is still muddied out.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I don’t even convince myself. And the way Jordan squeezes my hand tells me she didn’t buy it either. I try to focus on the remainder of the movie with varying degrees of success. I question what Allison is up to. Contemplate what songs we could work into the setlist for the next Runaways show. Think about ignoring everyone for a day and sitting with my guitar on the back porch and listening to the ocean.
The movie ends and we all shuffle out to the lobby. Jordan’s friends ask her if we’re coming out with them, but she says the two of us are going to dinner together. I never get the chance to argue, and before I realize it, we’re at St. Stephen’s, which is Jordan’s favorite restaurant in town.
“What’s going on, honey?” Jordan sighs. She’s in pain, I can tell by the way she’s faking her smile. I fake one back.
“Nothing,” I try for warmth but only end up coming across as insincere. She lowers her head and looks at me with a frown to insist that I tell her the truth. “Okay, Allison coming back into town had stirred up some old feelings. Bad ones.”
Jordan parses my words and looks crestfallen, like I’m about to break up with her. Shit, I need to explain further.
“No, I’m angry at her. Allison and Martin were my best friends growing up, and Allison up and moved away at the end of senior year of high school. She told me barely three weeks before she actually left.”
“And now that she’s back, you’re feeling all of those things you felt while she was gone?”
“Exactly. I’m super grateful to see her again, but I’m also furious that she left and now comes back and tries to pick up where we left off.”
I had never said any of these things aloud before. At least, not to Jordan. It’s oddly freeing in a way. Even if it makes our relationship more ‘real’ than I think I intended. Christ, what a hypocrite I am, making these determinations on my own as if she doesn’t have a right to voice her own feelings on the matter.
“So I take it the whole experience was a shitshow?”
“Allison’s parents went through an ugly divorce. As she tells me, she chose to move to Seattle with her dad for his new job to alleviate the burden on her mom. That way, her mom would only have to worry about her sister. Then her dad met up with an old flame in Seattle and they rekindled. Allison and her stepmom did not get along, so after college, she decided to come back home once she saved up enough money.”
“And you still blame her for everything?”
“Unfairly,” I sigh, in full awareness of my hypocrisy. “Allison left about two months before my mom disappeared. I used her as a proxy for a lot of my anger and hurt, since she abandoned me right before I needed her the most. Not like she could have known ahead of time or anything, but I’m just…irrational.”
Jordan gives me a sympathetic smile and reaches her hands across the table to hold mine. Some of the pressure in my chest I hadn’t realized was building until now relaxes, and breathing feels a hair easier than it did a minute ago.
“Your mom?”
I opt to sate Jordan’s curiosity. I owe her the truth.
“Summer before I started college, everything was going great. Then Allison left in June. Then, in August, my mom was gone one Sunday morning. There was a vague note she left on the counter about how this was best for the family, and she would always love us. But I never got a straight answer out of my dad as to what happened. Eventually, I stopped asking.”
“But you never stopped wondering.” Jordan knows me better than I give her credit for. Even if I’ve been purposefully incomprehensible. I appreciate her concern, and it feels nice to be known. But I think part of me will always feel the gap I feel between us now. She’s gone through life without significant struggle on her own, and I think it means I will never let myself relate to her. Or let her in.
“I’m sorry for not inviting you to the family dinner the other night. I had spent the day with Allison and her family, just catching up, and then she and I got into an argument. On the way back, my sister called to tell me she was engaged, and we were having the family over and then was all, ‘Oh, Allison you should totally come!’ and I didn’t want to rock the boat by saying anything. I didn’t want you there because I didn’t want to subject you to the whole family at once, when my sister’s going to be the star of the show, and Allison and I were feuding. She and I don’t fight often but it used to be catastrophic when we did. Lots of collateral damage.” I take a pause. “I wasn’t brave enough to have you see me at my worst.”
“You’re real sweet, Casey Adams. An idiot, but sweet.” Jordan seems have brightened up a bit. Makes me question whether she’s here for the same reasons I am or if this is something she cares about more on her end.
“Yeah.” This time, I convince myself that I wasn’t just thinking about what I was thinking about. “Thanks for hearing the story.”
She seems to buy it too. Jordan sighs in relief and sits back in her chair. “It actually explains a lot. Thank you for sharing.”
“All right, now I want to hear about your life. Give me your great tragedies.”
“I have no great tragedies, as you well know. Some of us didn’t need mommy issues to make all sorts of poor decisions,” she teases. I stick my tongue out at her in return, and we both laugh.
Perhaps I’m overthinking things again.
Ark of the Lost Angels 
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