Chapter 1 #3
It’s true that as far back as we know our family’s history, at least the last four generations, Lemieux women have not married, and they’ve only had female children, all of whom have carried on the family name.
But it’s hard to know if that’s choice or circumstance, and I think it’s safe to say it’s not the freaking curse my mom has always insisted it is.
It’s a story her mom told her when she was young, before my grandmother died and my mom went to live with her aunt, who raised her with her own daughters.
Her aunt believed in the curse, too, preached it like it was gospel.
It’s hard to know where the story originated—did my grandmother and great-aunt start telling that story, or had it been passed down from previous generations, told so frequently that it became a self-fulfilling prophecy?
“I’ll be happy to be the first to break the curse, Ma.”
“Oh yeah, like your sister Lydia did?”
Lydia was engaged, too, but got pregnant and then her fiancé disappeared.
No goodbye, no note, no car left behind, and no trail to follow.
He just didn’t come home from work one day, and no one has heard from him in the three years since.
Lydia swears it was the curse, and I can see why it’s comforting to believe that.
Much easier than having to admit to yourself that your fiancé didn’t have the balls to tell you he didn’t want to marry you and raise your kid together. Lydia’s a lot like Ma—difficult.
I’ll admit that the experience did give me pause.
Every single woman in my family has followed a similar pattern—got pregnant before marriage, then never got married.
As far as I know, Lydia’s is the only case of a disappearing fiancé.
Ma was never engaged to my dad or the twins’ dad and as far as she knows, neither her mom nor her aunt were ever engaged either.
Still, I may have visited my gynecologist and gotten an IUD a few years ago when Lydia’s fiancé disappeared. Because even though I think the idea of a family curse is ridiculous, I also don’t want to tempt fate by accidentally getting pregnant before I get married. Better safe than sorry, always.
“Don’t bring Lydia into this,” I say and press at the space between my eyebrows.
It’s hard to know if it’s the smoke or the conversation, but this headache is coming on strong.
I wish Sydney was here with me. My other little sister is my ally in this crazy family but, like me, she moved away as soon as she could.
Now she lives in Boston with her boyfriend.
Maybe she’ll be the first to break this curse?
Stop it. There is no freaking curse. There’s just a family full of dysfunction and difficult women.
“Whatever,” my mom says, pausing to light up another cigarette.
I wonder when she started chain-smoking?
When I still lived at home, she was a casual social smoker and she never smoked in the house.
“I’m just trying to help you set reasonable expectations.
You’ve always been too much of a dreamer, envisioning yourself as so much better than the rest of us. ”
My eyes dart around Ma’s trailer. As far as mobile homes go, it’s a fairly nice one, but the windows are coated in a hazy layer of grime from all the cigarette smoke, the TV is always on even if the volume is off, and every horizontal surface is covered in knickknacks and mail and junk.
“I don’t think I’m better than anyone else.
” This life my mother leads isn’t for me and it never has been, but I can’t say that to her.
I was the straight A student who never got in trouble at school.
I turned down some great colleges and instead got a full-ride to a state school nearby to stay close to my sisters, to protect them from Ma’s crazy as much as I could.
But when I graduated from college, I’d had enough.
By then, Sydney and Lydia were halfway through high school, and mostly self-sufficient.
I spent a few years in Boston working at a startup and running their very successful marketing campaign, then I started my own company as a social networking adviser.
Companies hired me to help them develop their social media marketing strategy, their branding, and their online aesthetic.
Once Jackson started working at the Elite Training Center, which houses the offices and training facilities for the National Ski Team, in Park City, UT, she suggested I apply for a marketing job there.
I haven’t regretted that move for a day, not even when my best friend moved back to Blackstone.
“You can run your fancy ass all the way to Park City,” Ma says, “but you can’t outrun the curse. Admit it, baby girl, you’re just like your mama and her mama and her mama before her.”
I push myself away from the countertop, walk over to my mom, give her a kiss on her cheek, and say, “It was nice seeing you, Ma.”
She coughs out a laugh, knowing how not nice the last two hours were for me. Still, I did my daughterly duty and visited my mom while I was in town.
Now, I can get on with my weekend, celebrating my best friend as she takes her walk down the aisle that my mom insists I’ll never take.