10. rents – Mar
CHAPTER 10
'RENTS
MAR
My work meeting went about as well as it could. We talked about discussion board questions to keep the students engaged. Students hate them just as I did in school, but maybe if I allow them to be more opinion-based questions, then they will like it. Sort of like when people ask opinions on social media. Instead of Which book should I read next? I’ll make the questions more engaging. When we go over classic literature, I’ll pose the question, ‘If you could design a cover for this book, what would it look like?’ For book reports, I’ll allow them to choose their novel as long as they can give a detailed explanation of the book, and it can’t be from one of those quick notes search engines. I’ll let them know I’ll be making sure they aren’t plagiarizing their work.
Ninth-grade virtual English shouldn’t be too hard to teach. Hopefully.
When I emerge from my room, I find Mom and Dad sitting in the living room watching an old game show from the seventies. I love the fact that they aren’t glued to phones twenty-four-seven like the rest of the world. The living room is small, almost den-like. My parents fill two worn leather chairs. They are separated by a side table where the remotes are kept. The television is bigger than the one I grew up watching, but modest compared to the large screens you see in most American homes.
The old leather sofa is where I used to sit back when they forced me to watch game shows with them because my mother read somewhere that families should have time together. They weren’t bad parents at all, but I believe whatever she read was referring to actually talking to your children about their day—not consuming television together on Friday nights.
Dad raises his head in my direction. He smiles and then frowns. The grooves in his face deepen with each passing year. I see less and less of the young man he once was. “Have we been too soft on you?” he asks.
I frown too. I wish I could be the daughter they want. “I want so badly to make you two proud of me. I just couldn’t do classroom teaching. It isn’t for me. The students don’t listen, and their parents are no help with their behavior. It’s awful. The administration’s answer was to throw a behavior party, but the students knew how to manipulate the system in their favor.” I pause and get my bearings as I try to not cry. “It was dreadful; it really was. Maybe the school was too large. It was much larger than River Falls.”
Dad moves his glasses down on his broad nose. “In my day, the principal whooped those who were out of line, and it wasn’t nice either.”
Mom chimes in, “We are proud of you, Amarynth. We just worry.”
I want to tell them that I worry too, but I won’t. I thought I had until I was at least thirty before they’d start on me. “I didn’t know I was supposed to have everything figured out by the time I was twenty-five. I’m sorry.”
Mom sits up straighter in her chair. “God knows we didn’t have it all figured out when we were your age, but we’re getting old, and we want to make sure you can take care of yourself after we’re gone is all.”
I do not ever want to think about life after they are gone. I know it’s the natural way of things, but death is so depressing. So permanent. This conversation needs to make a turn toward happiness, or I am going to cry about my parents’ fictional death. “I didn’t want to jinx anything, but I’ve got an online teaching job lined up for now. I was thinking of enrolling in courses to get my School Librarian teaching certificate. I love to read and maybe that would be a better fit. Or maybe I could be a public librarian. It’s something to think about anyway.”
Dad coughs and clears his throat. “We trust you.”
Mom questions, “What are you getting into tonight?”
That means they are done talking about my failed career. At least for now. I say, “Nothing that I’m aware of…”
I hear the front door open and Verdi holler, “Your favorite houseguest has arrived!”
When Verdi enters the room, Mom says, “Verdena, it’s so good to see you.”
Verdi is dressed in a cropped black shirt baring her midriff and ripped light-wash denim jeans. She always leaves her shoes at the door, so the only thing on her feet is a pair of socks that have rabbits on them. With her hands on her hips, she huffs, “Paul, I helped you close down the store an hour ago…”
I walk toward her. “I didn’t know you were back in town…” The last I heard from her was last night when she said she had made it where she was going, shared her location, and I got lost in Sihn. I did check earlier before my meeting, and her location was the same, so even if she did help Mom close up shop, she didn’t work today.
“Yeah, I came to talk to you about the shambles you left my apartment in.” She smiles, so I know she’s just looking for details of what happened. Or maybe Sihn destroyed her apartment! He does not strike me as the type, but I also left him alone…probably shouldn’t have done that.
“Come on, let’s go out to the patio to gossip about girl stuff. No need to get the ’rents involved.”
“If it’s about the two of you’s sex life, I’d rather pretend you’re both virgins for a little while longer,” Dad admits.
“We are virgins, Ellory. Or at least I am… are you, Amarynth?” She’s only ever been with women, so to my dad’s standards, she is still virginal to vaginal penetration. She used my full first name, which she never does, just to get a rise out of me.
My eyebrows pull in as I glare at her. “We’re leaving now.”
“Ohh, where are we going? Patio?”
I’ve changed my mind. My room is safer and farther away from my parents’ listening ears. “My room, smart ass.”
“Mouth,” Mom warns. I usually don’t use cuss words around them. They don’t mind, but it’s mostly out of respect for them as neither of them use profanity in their day-to-day language.
Verdi and I raid the kitchen like we did when we were teens for snacks and drinks. This time we get to take alcohol to my room because we’re old enough to drink. No need to sneak. My parents never cared if I drank as a kid, though. Dad always said he’d rather I did it at home where he could keep an eye on me than for me to be out at some party and get taken advantage of. It was fun to sneak them to my room, but I know they knew as one of my parents kept a six-pack stocked in the refrigerator at all times for me. Neither of them drinks wine coolers. Mom likes rum and Diet Coke. Dad has always been a dry red wine drinker.
Using the heel of my foot, I kick shut the door to my room after we’re both inside. Our hands are full of carbohydrates—potato chips, chocolate, candy, white cheddar popcorn, and wine coolers. Carb coma here we come! We dump the contents on my bed and then we both sit cross-legged facing each other.
The ceiling slants in my room, so we position ourselves where we get the most headroom. My desk is across from my bed and between the desk and bed is a window. The window leads to the roof of the back porch. I sat on the roof a lot as a teen. Being back in here feels like I’m little again. If I close my eyes and breathe deep through my nose, I feel ten years younger. A simpler time.
With a Twizzler dangling out of her mouth, Verdi demands, “Give it up. Out with the juicy details about your night with…” Her voice deepens, “The Sihnner!”
I laugh and toss a Gusher at her. “What happened with your dating app serial killer?”
She scoffs. “Am I dead?”
I roll my eyes. I fear for my life too much to get tangled up in the online dating scene. No one is truthful. The women lie about their clothing size, and the men lie about the size of what’s beneath their pants. Everyone pretends they like to hike. No one likes to hike, and if they do, they are most likely a serial killer.
“She was cute. I’m gonna see her again if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Tell me about her and I’ll tell you about him,” I suggest. If she gets to talking about herself, she might not care to know about my dating life.
“She’s cool. We mostly talked about where we are in life right now. She’s a painter and not like an artsy painter. She paints people’s houses for a living.”
“Like the outside of houses?”
“Well probably, but she was talking about how she was currently painting the inside of this elderly lady’s house. Her husband was a doctor, and he passed recently. She has more money than she knows what to do with, I guess. Repainting the entire inside.” She shoves another Twizzler in her mouth and takes two gulps of a wine cooler before continuing. “And get this! The color she picked is red! Like red-red. Every wall.”
“You still haven’t given your date a name yet. You normally only avoid telling me their name when you’re hopeful it will work and don’t want to jinx it.”
Verdi has this superstition that letting me know her date’s name somehow dooms their relationship from the beginning. She might be on to something. While I was off in college, she called me up one late night to gush about this girl she ran into at the Dollar Mart. Eve. Two days later Eve stopped responding to Verdi. Then there was Dana. Dana walked into her life when she came into Coffey Cafe looking for directions out of River Falls. She took a wrong turn off the highway, and her cellphone wouldn’t reroute her. She called me immediately. I was at work so I had to call her back afterward. Verdi and Dana lasted a month in their long-distance relationship before Dana said she had stumbled into someone else’s life who was closer.
She finishes her drink and sets it on my side table. “And I’m not telling you.”
“Fine.” My diversion is clearly not working.
In less than a minute, I consume two packets of Gushers. If I keep my mouth full, I can’t talk. Maybe she’ll get bored of the silence and leave. I could fake being overly tired, but she’d just assume it was related to tumbling in the sheets with Sihn last night.
“I know your game. You’ll get full eventually, end up on a sugar high, and tell me all of your secrets about last night.” She lays back on my bed and stares up at the ceiling above. It’s still covered in pictures of my favorite things. My family. Verdi. A little house in the middle of town I swore I’d buy one day and live happily ever after with my husband and two dogs—both named Jim. And a poster of Paul Rudd.
“He messaged me,” I admit after a long pause.
She leans up on her elbows. “Do tell…”
Nonchalantly, as if it’s not a big deal in the least, I say, “He asked me over to his place sometime.”
“That’s good! I don’t know personally , but I don’t think he’s one to keep going after the same girl, so he must have liked what you had to offer!” I know she doesn’t know personally, but part of me wants to know how she even knows about his reputation. It’s a small town though, likely patrons of the Coffey Cafe gossiping while waiting for their order.
“I know it’s cliche, but I have never had a sexual experience like the one with Sihn. I can’t quit thinking about it.”
She makes the bed bounce. “So do it again.”
Anxiously, I stutter, “N…no. No, I can’t.”
She stops moving. “Why not?”
“The one-night-stand rule.” Be prepared to leave and under no circumstances can it lead to more. The relationship is forever doomed.
“Rules are meant to be broken. It was probably a man who created that rule anyway.”
“One of us could end up developing feelings. Likely me in this scenario.”
“What if you both develop a mutual attachment to one another?”
“That won’t happen. I’m not his type.”
She stands and begins picking up her candy wrappers and empty bottle. “He wouldn’t want to spend more time with someone who isn’t his type, but you know that.” She tosses what’s in her hands in my small trashcan by the door before hugging me. “I gotta go. Early morning shift. Gotta make sure the church crowd gets their uppers before they go confess their Saturday night sins.”