Chapter Fifteen
Chelsea
Challenge: Have a good cry
I couldn’t resist lingering for a minute before facing my phone call to my mom. Kissing Bas was almost as good as the promise of his pumpkin pie. Almost. Bas tasted like sugar and spice or curry and rice. Everything nice.
High on a delicious meal and ready to spend the rest of the night showing him exactly how much I appreciated him, I closed the door to my bedroom and climbed onto the bed where I planned to make Bas come long and hard. I smiled, remembering that terrible snow pun. What was I going to do with him?
Hopefully reverse cowgirl.
I decided to try my mom on the video chat so I could lay eyes on her and properly wish her a happy Thanksgiving. I wanted to spy on her a little, make sure she looked good, see if she’d popped off to Florida, and get some clue about why she’d left me to fend for myself.
I wasn’t sure if I should expect her to answer, and it kind of surprised me when she did.
“Happy Thanksgiving!” I said, as chipper as possible.
“Hey, there. Happy Thanksgiving to you, too!” She wore makeup and real clothes, so I knew she’d made an effort. That was a relief.
“Are you getting a turkey dinner?”
“Already ate. We’re watching the bowl games now.”
Football? That wasn’t something we ever did. After Dad left, Mom and I had come up with our own tradition of going out to a movie on Thanksgiving. It didn’t matter what was playing. “You’re at home, then?”
She glanced to the side, like she was surprised to discover she was, in fact, at home. “Well, yeah.”
It stung, knowing I could have driven over after all.
“Is everything okay?” A sudden worry gripped me. Why had she decided to be alone on Thanksgiving? Was she drinking? Was she… Wait. “Did you say we ?”
“I was hoping to talk to you about something,” she said. “But I know you’re gonna overreact.”
I braced for whatever she had to say. “You’ve got my attention.”
“I’ve been seeing someone, and it’s been going real good.” I presumed her suitor was there, watching the bowl games with her.
“Oh, I kind of figured you might have, even though you told me you hadn’t.” When had that changed? I didn’t begrudge her a love life, but she had a shitty track record. “Where’d you meet?”
A man laughed. “Did she ask where we met?”
Ice ran through my veins at that voice. Surely not. “Mom?” My mouth felt like I’d eaten cotton. “ Mom ?” I said again, panicking.
She looked beyond the phone, shaking her head, like she might be telling a waiter to come back once she’d studied the menu, but then the camera lost focus, and his face filled the screen. “Hey, kiddo.”
I dropped the phone on the floor, ignoring my mom’s voice saying, “Chelsea? Are you still there? I knew she’d freak out.”
And then I was rushing to the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet before vomiting up an entire Thanksgiving dinner. Fear gripped me, colder than it had since I’d first started therapy, and I was back in that house, ten years old and cowering in the bathroom.
I curled up in a ball on the floor. It was a familiar enough place. Not this bathroom, but tile was tile, and I’d lain face down on ceramic often enough, making myself small, hiding from the yelling.
Whenever I spoke of my dad, I avoided using the word “abusive” because that earned me scorn from anyone who didn’t recognize emotional abuse. Technically, he was just mean, but appallingly, abusively mean. Vicious. He once said he’d rather be respected than loved, and if he couldn’t have that, he’d rather have fear. He sometimes yelled, but he rarely hit us. It was the everyday stress of living with him, like walking on eggshells, that made life hell. Tiny changes in his mood could be far more frightening than the outbursts. I’d be reading on the sofa, perfectly relaxed, in my own world, oblivious to my parents. Then I’d hear a whispered curse in another room, and I’d tense, hyperaware of every sound.
Clattering in the kitchen, a cabinet slamming, and a passive-aggressive fuck meant my mom or I had done something wrong. Quiet curse words all had secret significance. I’d done something wrong. I’d done a shoddy job of wiping the counter. Or maybe my mom hadn’t taken out the trash fast enough.
Since he could go long stretches without seeming to care about those things, we’d get complacent. I’d start to feel a false sense of safety, and then his anger came out of nowhere. Rules changed unpredictably, and breaking them was never the trigger on its own. I knew that. That was just the thing that set off whatever rage he’d bottled up for however long.
I usually wouldn’t know what I’d done wrong, because asking would only invite the yelling. Worse, sometimes, I’d go out of my way to do something right, maybe clean the dishes piling up on the counter. And he’d fly into a rage because I’d thrown out a glass of tea he’d been drinking.
Rules were arbitrary, contradictory, impossible to get right.
I’d sit on the sofa, with my book forgotten, pretending to read, but paying attention instead to my dad’s every action. When he’d pass through the room, I’d watch him for flexed muscles or a tight jaw. I couldn’t let him see me flinch because that alone would provoke confrontation. We weren’t supposed to make him feel bad about his rage-aholic behavior. When he was down the hall, I listened for the sounds of objects breaking, wondering if they were replaceable, if they were precious things. I waited for the muttered insults meant to shame me or my mom.
Goddamn filthy cunts.
I’d worked hard for years to eradicate the trauma response that lived in my bones, but hearing his voice, knowing he was right now at my house with my mom, brought it all back up.
How could she betray me like that? Betray her own self? Was she stupid or just weak?
I could imagine the conversations she’d try to have with me, once the storm had passed. She’d ask me to give him another chance, to see that he’d changed. Or worse, that he was never as bad as I remembered.
At least until he hurt her. Was I supposed to pick her up again when he inevitably did?
A hand settled on my back. “Hey, I’m here.” Elizabeth patted my hair, then sat on the tile beside me. “You’re safe. You’re loved.”
She closed the lid and flushed away the food that had been the best part of my day, like a metaphor for my joy circling the drain, then pulled me up, and I let my head fall on her shoulder. When she handed me a cup of water, I drank and breathed until I could speak.
“She took him back.”
“Oh, fuck.” Her hand threaded with mine, and she stroked my arm with the other. “I’m sorry. Since when?”
“I have no idea. Probably at least since she canceled Thanksgiving on me.” I let my eyes close, trying to fight waves of nausea. “Why?”
“Because they’re a real toxic stew, those two.” She hugged me tight. “But you are not your parents, Chelsea. Their decisions are their own. You don’t owe them your emotional labor.”
“She asked me not to overreact,” I said, laughing through gallows humor. “I guess I failed.”
“You’re not overreacting,” Elizabeth said. “She was gaslighting you. She dropped a bomb on you, and it was cruel of her to try to make you the bad guy for knowing exactly what a monster he is.”
The tears started flowing again.
“Come on. Let’s go have some pie.” She handed me a tissue, and I wiped my nose. “Bas made some coffee with liquor in it. We can get fucked up and forget about them.”
I started to stand, then thought about Bas out there, expecting me to be this flirty, sexy, romantic girl I’d pretended to be. “Fuck. I don’t think I can do this.”
I wanted to crawl into bed and hibernate for the next month. I wanted some space to process the actual heartbreak I was feeling, the anger at my mom, the audacity of my dad.
She rubbed my back. “Do you want me to send them away?”
I shook my head. What kind of selfish asshole would I be to let Bas cook for me all day and then just kick him out? Although he’d probably want to leave when he saw me for who I was. I’d tried to fake being someone I wasn’t—tough, easygoing, worthy of love. The mask was off now, though. I couldn’t muster any pretense tonight.
Dr. Rubin had warned me from the start that I couldn’t become a different version of me through sheer force of will, not even with the help of a magic penis. Maybe I never would. I’d been living in this fantasy land where I could be the princess for once. But I was always going to be the villain.
Welcome to my shit show.