11. Sorry Not Sorry #6
He smirks. “Your stepmom threw a party here a few months ago for all our parents, and Trent went snooping around hoping he’d find some stashed booze.”
“Any luck?”
Jase doesn’t skip a beat, strolling right over to the back wall where a row of cabinets rests beneath the window. Sure enough, he opens the third door from the left to showcase a row of what I can guess is whisky.
However, that doesn’t seem to be his destination, as he shuts the door and heads over to the desk instead.
I know I should be concerned with what he may be up to, but any of my attention is stolen as I steal a glance at the shelves beside me.
My mom.
A three-piece picture frame sits right at eye level, containing images of my mom at the hospital holding Derek, Vanessa, and me on the days we were born. Alongside it is a collection of home movies, a high school yearbook, and another frame with a prom photograph inside.
Curiosity gets the better of me at the sight of the yellow tabs peeking out the top of the yearbook. The spine is cracked from wear and age, so I take care with opening it to each marked page, finding…
My mom.
Every tab highlights where she appears in the yearbook, from her senior picture to the group shot of the debate team to candid class photos.
The last page is one for the football team, and at the bottom sits a still image of a cheerleader kissing the quarterback.
I can only see the sides of their faces, but the long black hair is undoubtedly my mom’s, and the number of the player’s jersey is the same as my dad’s when he played professionally.
A clamp tightens around my chest at the sight.
As far as I knew, the only photos of her around here are hidden away in bedrooms. Vanessa and I both have pictures on our nightstands, and Derek has several on his dresser…
but that’s it. The entire house used to be filled with pictures of Mom, but they were phased out over the years, replaced with new memories.
My eyes take in anything and everything around me, and I find more and more that makes my heart crack wide open.
A thin, tall glass display case rests in the far corner. Inside…
My mom had gifted my dad an engraved watch for their first anniversary. He had worn it every day until I was eleven…when Blythe bought him a new one.
I thought he had thrown Mom’s away or shoved it into some random drawer. But there it sits, lovingly on its own shelf, where a small light glows down upon it.
Looking at the other shelves, I quickly realize they’re all gifts from Mom.
A signed football from a player I don’t remember with an illegible signature, a cigar box for a stash of Cubans he got years ago, a personalized Scotch glass…
And on the top, a matching set of wedding bands.
It takes everything in me to digest what I’m seeing that I’ve all but forgotten I’m not alone in here. Jase’s hand brushes mine, and I startle at the touch. He crooks his finger, indicating I follow him over to the desk.
He’s awakened the screen on my dad’s laptop, looking at me expectantly.
“I don’t know the login,” I say, seeing the password box in the center of the monitor.
Jase rolls his eyes but can’t fight back a grin. “Take another look.”
Confused, I do as he says, seeing…
Oh.
Without logging in, the laptop’s wallpaper is blurred, but I don’t need a clear image to know what it is.
The vague outline of a man in a black tux and a woman in a flowing white gown fills the screen. It’s obviously my father in the photograph, but that isn’t Blythe with him. The long waves of black hair make that painfully evident.
The portrait of this very photograph used to hang in the main hallway just off the foyer.
It’s my parents’ wedding day.
Jase also hands me another photograph from the bureau. It shows a group of kids no older than ten, but I still spot my mom immediately.
Because she looks an awful lot like me .
Unlike the pictures of her from high school, Mom obviously hasn’t gone through puberty here, showcasing familiar gangly limbs and rail-thin body. Add in the long curtain of black hair and light blue eyes, and the resemblance is uncanny.
“If she wasn’t such a bitch, I’d actually feel bad for her,” says Jase.
I startle, whirling around to face him.
When he sees my expression, he laughs, taking the frame back.
“I mean about your stepmom. Not only did she marry a guy who never got over his first wife, but their youngest child is a spitting image of his dead spouse, serving as a constant reminder of what he lost. If you’re petty enough, you might just come to resent that child. ”
For the next several hours, I try to mull over what Jase has shown me.
As much as I want to say I can’t reconcile any of it with what I’ve experienced…
I find that Jase is onto something. Sure, your parents don’t treat you the way they should all the time, but the more I ask him, the sicker I become.
When I was twelve, Blythe grounded me for two weeks after she said I’d been going through too much shampoo and conditioner in the shower.
She expected me to use the same amount as my sister, despite Vanessa’s hair being only half the length of mine.
And Blythe told me if I didn’t make the necessary changes, she’d cut my waist-length hair off to above the shoulders.
My hair was (and is) very important to me. It’s always been the perfect curtain to hide behind, and the thought of not having it is enough to make me break out into a cold sweat.
Blythe gave me specified bottles and marked the level after every shower to make sure I wasn’t refilling it with the communal bottles everyone else used. So I either had to skip hair washes—which was just gross—or I had to find an alternative.
What did I do?
For the past three years, I’ve had to skimp ever so slightly on my lunch at school to save up for visits to the drugstore, where I buy what I need and then smuggle the hair products into the house. They’re currently stashed away in an old shoe box at the bottom of my closet.
To my horror, when I told Jase this, his expression told me something I should have already known:
That…
Is.
Not.
Normal.
Neither is flinching whenever there’s a loud noise, assuming it’s your stepmom ready to yell at you.
Or having your stepmom call an actress a “butterface,” only then to say that you remind her of that actress ten minutes later.
Or having your stepmom belittle you for crying, because it’s a sign of “immaturity.”
It’s not even normal for a child to learn where all the loose floorboards are in the house, because if you get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and you so much as make a peep, you’ll get yelled at in the morning and be blamed for your stepmom “not getting any sleep.”
By the time evening arrives, I’m practically shaking with the worst kind of cocktail: anxiety and adrenaline. All I can do is lie in wait for my dad to get home, praying I can talk to him before Blythe does.
Unfortunately, Mr. Walker and his wife arrive first. It takes another ten minutes for Dad to arrive, and though I’m right at the top of the staircase in the foyer, my stepmom greets him at the front door before he even reaches out to open it.
Blythe whispers something to him, and after he introduces himself to their dinner guests, he follows my stepmom back into the kitchen.
Crap.
I can only imagine what story she’s going to spin.
Without another option, I hurry down the stairs and head right after them.
Whatever Blythe is in the middle of saying stops abruptly the moment she notices me.
“Hey, sweetie.” Dad sounds tentative, looking at me in clear confusion. “I thought for sure you would have already left.”
“She wasn’t ‘feeling up to it.’” Blythe says this in the kind of ‘polite’ doublespeak I’d imagine one might use when talking about an escaped mental patient while they’re in the room.
The pitying look she adds with this only cements the statement as she mouths, “Stress,” like I’m not literally facing her.
I’m about to tell them both that I’m ‘feeling’ more than ‘up to it,’ but Blythe cuts in front of me, telling my father that he should go change. “Dinner will be ready any minute,” she coos. “Ali, would you mind setting the table?”
I ignore her, following Dad up the stairs to the master bedroom. “Actually, I still want to go out,” I tell him as calmly as I can, “but Blythe said I couldn’t.”
He waves me off with a smile, like I’m being silly. “I already talked to her after I got off the phone with you. It’s fine. Go.”
Taking Jase’s advice…I tell him.
I tell him what really happened.
I tell him about her cornering me in my room. I tell him about her threats of sending me to Camp Zurich and St. Vincent’s—
And he’s looking at me like I really am crazy.
It’s only at this moment that I realize how ridiculous Blythe’s comments were.
And that’s what she intended.
She knew if I tattled, I would sound stupid. It would sound like the kind of impulsive, exaggerated lie of a bratty teenager.
She played me like a fiddle…
“Seriously, Ali?” Blythe’s voice cuts through the quiet like a chainsaw. Not because of its abrasiveness.
No.
She sounds anything but .
She sounds hurt.
“Doctor Fritz talked to you about this victimhood mentality,” she says, all too patient.
“Making excuses to rationalize your stress will only hinder your progress. You should have gone to the party, but if you didn’t think you could handle it, throwing somebody else under the bus is really unfair, for everyone . ”
Is she fucking kidding?
My therapist has never said shit about such a thing, because I don’t do it!
“She grabbed my face hard enough that it bruised,” I insist, lifting my chin high enough to show my dad the purplish red mark on my jaw from where Blythe’s thumb had been.
“Ali was using a tennis racquet earlier.” She says this like it’s all the explaining she needs, making a sound I can’t decipher…until the crocodile tears begin.
I’ve never hated a person in my entire life.
Until this very moment.
I’m trying to get my dad to listen, to tell him that she’s the one who’s lying, but it’s clear I’m the designated “problem” in the room.
Because he’s consoling her . He’s whispering words of assurance to her .
He’s ignoring me completely, as if it’ll make me go away, because he obviously doesn’t want to have to deal with me at this moment.
Not when their precious dinner guests are waiting downstairs.
Blythe’s tears may be bullshit, but mine aren’t. The choked cry that escapes me may as well be a death rattle, because that’s what my insides do as I race to my bedroom. They die. What else is there to do when your heart breaks, when it no longer serves its purpose?
Jase must be psychic, because the moment I slam my door shut, my cell vibrates from the nightstand with an incoming text message.
“Ding-dong. Is the wicked bitch dead?”
I have to blink away my tears as the words come in and out of focus. My hands shake so hard that I can’t even manage to text anything coherent. Ducking inside my closet, I dial his number.
Without hesitation, he answers on the first ring, and it’s all I need.
The sound of his voice anchors me, and I manage to steady myself enough to explain what happened. To my surprise, I’m not the blubbering mess I thought I’d be.
I’m too angry.
Grabbing a sweatshirt off the nearest hanger, I open the closet and head over to the window, all too ready to climb out and down…when there’s a soft knock on the bedroom door.
“Ali?” The tentativeness in my sister’s voice tells me enough. Whether our father and Blythe gave her specifics or not, she knows something happened. “Dad said to be down in five.”
I don’t reply.
All I can do is stand there and seethe, listening to her footsteps retreat toward the stairs.
“Do you trust me?” Jase asks after a long minute.
There’s something conspiratorial in his tone. It’s the kind of mischief that would normally raise every red flag in the book. But tonight? It’s the sweetest thing I’ve heard. “To do what?”
A dark laugh. “Just let me work my magic, little Birdie.”