Child of a Broken Home
During all those weeks, I only heard from my father that one time.
My mother had yet to call. This was a relief.
After all the years of listening to the angry sound of the two of them fighting with each other—that, or their deadly silences—it felt good to get a break.
I almost forgot about my parents for a while.
Then came another call. My mother this time.
“I couldn’t decide if I should wait until the end of the summer to tell you,” she said. “I didn’t want to ruin your time there, but I figured you should know. Your father and I are getting a divorce.”
She said this as if it would be some big hard news.
“I know this will be difficult for you,” she said.
Not as difficult as she thought. The hard part had been everything that came before.
She was still talking. My mother was not big on leaving a person space to contribute their own feelings to a situation. She had so many of hers to tell me about.
“We’re still working out the details. Your father isn’t what you might call helpful. He has to move out. In the meantime, I’m basically living in hell.”
I didn’t know what to say, but there was no need. She kept talking.
“We’re out of money, by the way. If you were thinking we’d be going back-to-school shopping, I’m sorry to say it’s not happening.”
I hadn’t been thinking that, actually. Any clothes shopping I might have done that fall would have been paid for by me. As it was turning out, my summer earnings had gone to tennis lessons. Money well spent.
“He says he’s getting an apartment with some guy he knows from poker. ‘Once I sell my novel, everything’s going to be different,’ he says. The man lives in fantasy land.”
We’d been on the phone for more than five minutes by this point. She had yet to ask how my summer was going. Or anything about me. If I’d said to her, I’m thinking of getting into drugs or I’m pregnant, I doubt she would have registered the news.
At some point—mostly just out of curiosity, to see if she’d respond—I told her I’d recently taken up tennis. She said that was nice, but made no further comment.
“So that’s it,” she said. “I figured you had a right to know. I just didn’t want you to get your hopes up.”
“I have to go,” I told her. “I have a job to do for Regina.”
That part was true. Having had no luck locating an assignation between Forrest and Brenda at any of the first three locations on the map Regina had provided for me, I was on to the next—the remnants of an abandoned farm stand on the way out of town, on the road headed to Bangor.
Regina had explained to me that in their younger days, before they had the children, she and Forrest used to go out there with a picnic basket.
There was this natural pool there that they loved, just beyond where the farm stand had stood, behind some blueberry bushes.
Not deep enough to swim, but one time they’d taken off their clothes there and plunged into the water, up to their knees.
Just then a car had pulled up—a couple of kids smoking pot—so they kept very quiet and remained undiscovered.
“After they left, we made love on the banks of that little pool,” Regina told me.
“If Forrest brings Brenda there, I’ll probably want to kill him. But he might just do that. It’s just his kind of place.”