Chapter 17 #3
Amy plants her hands on her skinny hips. “That is not a replacement for a classroom experience.”
Naomi looks distinctly uncomfortable and buries her face in her bouquet, sniffing the sharp-sweet, grassy scent.
“Mac,” Amy continues. “You’re damaging your daughter’s chances of getting a degree. As an educator, I can tell you how critically important attendance and classroom participation is. Don’t you care about her education?”
“I care about her living to get her degree. If that’s what she wants.”
Naomi shoots Mac a glance that I’d swear is grateful.
“Of course, she wants a degree. I won’t have you talking her out of finishing college just because you stopped at high school.”
“This isn’t about me,” Mac says evenly, although I’d be pissed at that dig if I were him.
“It’s about Naomi deciding what she wants.
If it’s a degree, she knows she has my full support.
If it’s something else, I’ll support her in that, too.
What she’s not doing is going back to school and starting up on the speed again. ”
“It’s not speed,” Amy hisses. “God, Mac, you can be so ignorant sometimes.”
“I know how to Google,” Mac responds. “And I can read an entry on WebMD. I also know you’re defensive because you’re using again.
I can see it in your eyes and the way you can’t sit still for two minutes.
You’re not mine anymore, Amy, and I don’t have a say in how you poison yourself, but I do have a say in Naomi’s future, and I’m telling you both right now, it’s going to be drug-free, whatever she chooses. ”
Amy shoots a glare at me that’s so venomous I recoil in my chair.
“How dare you criticize me in front of this pre-teen you’ve brought—”
Mac pinches the bridge of his nose. “Amy, let’s take this out into the hall.”
“Oh, no, you brought her here. You can stand there and listen while she hears some home truths—”
“Actually, I’ll go wait in the hall,” I say, starting to rise out of my chair. “Seems like you need to discuss things as a family.”
“Please stay.” Naomi’s thin hand circles my wrist. “Mom, if you’re going to yell at Dad, could you do it outside?”
Amy swings an incredulous glare at her daughter. I guess Naomi’s used to that medusian gaze because she just shrugs.
“Fine.” Amy grabs up her designer handbag and stomps past Mac, pushing open the door into the hallway.
With a sigh, Mac follows her.
I can hear Amy ranting at Mac before the door even closes.
Naomi and I sit in awkward silence for a long minute. Finally, she says, “I apologize for my mom.”
“Don’t apologize for her. You didn’t make her act that way.”
Naomi shrugs. “She says I did . . . I do. She says I just need to get myself under control and everything will be fine, and she could stop treating me like a baby.”
“Do you feel out of control?” I ask.
“Yes.” She sighs. “I feel like I’m running on a treadmill that never stops and just keeps getting faster and faster.”
“What happens if you step off the treadmill?”
Naomi offers me a weak smile. “The world ends. At least according to my mom. I don’t graduate and I’ll never get a job and I’ll end up homeless with no teeth.”
I laugh at the absurdity. “I didn’t get into college and I don’t have a degree and I have my own business and the homeless guys I know have all their teeth. There’s life off the treadmill.”
“What’s your business?” Naomi asks. “Dad didn’t tell me much about you other than he was bringing you up to meet me.”
“I have my own tattoo parlor in the East Village.”
“Really? Can I see some of your tattoos?”
“Sure.” I take out my phone and flip to a folder full of my favorite, finished work.
Naomi scrolls through the pictures with utter concentration. She’s so fiercely focused that I find it hard to believe she needs to take speed to stay on top of the academic treadmill.
“These are really good,” she says. “Like really, really good. They’re art.”
“Thanks.” When she hands me back my phone, I thumb over to the design for Mac’s mermaid. “This is the one I’m doing on your dad. To replace that terrible thing on his back.”
Naomi covers her mouth with one hand while she laughs. “Oh God, his mermaid. I used to get so embarrassed when he took his shirt off at the pool or beach. I’m glad he’s finally getting it covered.”
“It’s one of the worst I’ve ever seen. I’m thinking about using it in before and after ads. The before is going to be titled, ‘flounder with boobs’.”
Naomi giggles. It’s not as nice as Emily’s giggle, but it’s still good to hear, and it transforms her face into something much less zombie-like. “It totes is.”
I grin at her, feeling the age difference between us in that one sentence. Any worry I had about being too young for Mac finally dissipates.
“How did you get into tattooing?” Naomi asks.
I tell her about Edz taking me to see Rufus, my unexpected apprenticeship, and taking over the shop from Rufus when he retired. As I’m winding down my story, Naomi reaches out and taps her fingernail against my collar.
“I know what this is,” she says quietly.
I swallow as though the collar’s suddenly tightened around my throat. “You do?”
She nods. “My mom used to wear one. A metal ring. Engraved in the back was the word ‘property.’ She always kept her hair down over it but I saw it a few times. Are you like that with my dad? Are you his property?”
“Not exactly. I’m submissive. Do you know what that is?”
She spends a long moment studying the flowers she’s set on the arm-table attached to her chair before she nods. “I read about it.”
“What did you read? Because there’s all kinds of garbage online.”
“Yeah,” she says. “Never believe everything you read on the internet. But I read a lot about it, about being submissive. I bought some books. I wanted to understand . . . my mom said that she didn’t want those things.
What my dad did to her. She said he beat her and forced her to have sex with him in ways that hurt her.
But—” Naomi lifts her shoulder, the sharp bone moving under her expensive blouse. “That’s not my dad.”
“Naomi, I’m not sure anyone knows the truth of a relationship when they’re outside it.
I only know what your dad’s told me. What I can say is that Mac is one of the most conscientious Doms I’ve met.
I’ve never had a moment’s fear that he’d do anything to truly harm me.
He goes out of his way to make sure I feel safe and cared-for. ”
She offers me a small smile. “He always makes me feel that way, too. The things Mom said he did.” She shakes her head.
“That’s not my dad. I know him. He loves my mom.
Even though everything got fucked up between them, I know he loves her.
He didn’t do the things she said he did.
Or if he did, it wasn’t in the way she said. ”
That makes my throat tighten again. Things I don’t want to hear? That Mac’s still in love with his ex.
“I’m sorry you’re caught in the middle,” I say. “It’s a shit place to be.”
She sighs and strokes her flowers. “It is. I thought by coming up north to go to school, I’d get away from it. I guess I fucked that up, too.”
“Sounds to me like you’re getting back on the treadmill,” I say. “Maybe step off and let them run on it for a while.”
Naomi’s deep blue eyes flash up to mine. “Yeah? I’d like to see Mom try. She’s always at me because she has her doctorate. But, like, humanities? C’mon. It’s not exactly rocket science, is it? I’d like to see her try nonlinear equations.”
I chuckle because the moment seems to call for it, but I really don’t have any idea what she’s talking about. “What’s your mom a doctor of?”
“History. The late Victorian period, specifically.” Naomi rolls her eyes. “Dickens.”
“Yeah, I think I’ve seen the Bill Murray version and that’s about it.
” That’s not really true. I’ve read A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations.
I’m not sure why I’m playing dumb except that people always seem to expect it of me.
And I’ll admit that beyond the novels I’ve read, I don’t know much about the Victorian period.
Humanities were not my best subjects, either.
Naomi laughs but it doesn’t turn condescending and I appreciate that.
“I know you said not to apologize for her, but I am sorry. She just—she’s still so angry at Dad.
Everything that ever goes wrong, she lays at his door.
And he just takes it. Sometimes he pushes back a little, but mostly he just lets her yell at him.
That’s why I thought . . . well, for a while I thought he might be getting back at her in private. But I just can’t see him doing that.”
“I don’t know what he was like when he was younger, Naomi, but I can tell you that now? He never brings anger into our private time. Not ever.”
She smiles a very sad smile. “You know he’s never hit me? Never even yelled at me except when I used his electric razor to shave the dog.”
I have to laugh at that, and Naomi’s smile brightens a bit.
“Yeah, I was grounded for like a year for that. Other dads, they used to shout at their kids. Dad never shouted. His disappointment was worse than a hundred hours of shouting.” She pushes off her pump, draws up her knee, and curls around it. “That’s all I do now, disappoint him.”
I tentatively touch her back and when she doesn’t flinch or object, rub it gently. I can feel each rib through her blouse and it almost makes me recoil.
“Naomi, I don’t think that’s true. Mac has so much love for you. I see it every time he talks about you. It’s right there in his eyes.”
She tips her head and rests her temple on her knee so she can look at me. “You think so?”
“I know so.”
She sighs. “I’m so tired. I never thought I’d be this tired at twenty-one.
I’m tired of trying to keep up. I’m tired of failing at everything I do.
I’m tired of disappointing him. I’m tired of mom trying to turn me into something I’m not.
I’m just tired. Are you ever tired before you even get out of bed in the morning? ”