Chapter Twenty-nine
Kael
I followed Fischer back to his room. As he shut the door behind us, he turned on his heel and faced me, shame clear on his exhausted face.
“It’s a long story, but my mom has been around for a little bit now. She hasn’t seen my sister yet,” he explained quietly, his words coming out in a rush.
I immediately thought of how Karina thought she’d imagined her mom in the alley; had it really been her after all?
“You’ve seen her?” I tried to make sense of the situation as a knock tapped at his door.
He nodded and pulled the door to his assigned room open. A woman, appearing no older than thirty but who had to be, sat on the bed with her hands in her lap. Her dark-blond hair was the color of sunflower petals covered by a shadow. She stood up and her long dress swept the floor as she greeted Fischer with open arms.
“My god. Are you okay?” Her face was shockingly similar to both of her children’s but especially Karina’s.
The shape of her eyes, the slightly wide bridge of her nose, her square chin, they were nearly identical to Karina’s. I could see now how much Fischer looked like his father compared to how much Karina looked like her mother. From all the stories I had heard about her, I felt like I had met this woman at least a dozen times.
The beaded bracelets on her wrists clinked together as she cupped his face. Nothing about the way she had decorated herself or her embrace with her son made any sense to me.
“I’m okay.” Fischer began to explain the short version of what had happened. I could barely follow his words because I was too busy staring at the ghost in the room.
Even her reactions were exactly like Karina’s, from the way she nodded slowly as she followed along with the story to the way her eyes went wide at the violent parts.
“This is Martin, by the way. He’s the main reason I’m alive today. He’s saved my ass more than a few times, and he’s the one I told you about, who helped me enlist.”
Her attention turned to me. “So you’re the famous Martin?”
From what Karina had told me about her mother’s emotional relationship with the Army, I expected her to get angry with me, or at least be cross. Instead she smiled at me, the same smile I’d seen on her daughter’s face a million times. The same heart-shaped face, the same thick dark eyelashes. It made me uneasy as hell. According to Karina, her father was the only one who had a photo of her mom, so I’d never seen one and now wished I had, so I wouldn’t have been so caught off guard. Genetics were strong, but this was uncanny. No wonder Karina’s father couldn’t help but compare the two of them.
I realized I hadn’t responded to her question. Fischer was watching me with an anxious smile.
“Yeah. That’s me,” I managed to say.
“My boyfriend is in the Army too. Newly stationed here.” She perked up.
I always considered myself to be an extremely grounded person, someone who could make anything make sense, but I was dumbfounded. Not only by the realization that Fischer had been in contact with this woman and his sister didn’t have a clue, but that she had a boyfriend in the Army and was acting like she hadn’t left her family in the middle of the night. It was obvious that she didn’t have a clue who I was or that I had a connection to Karina. It took every bit of my self-control not to be rude to her. In my head, I was screaming at her, telling her that she had some fucking nerve to just show up here like nothing had happened. I could feel my jaw ticking, it was so fucking hard to bite my tongue.
“Mom, Martin is also Karina’s boyfriend,” Fischer told her when my silence became awkward.
He knew me well enough to know that it would be impossible for me to smile and simply ask her about her boyfriend or pretend that I didn’t know how big of a deal this would be for Karina and should be for him. Her entire demeanor changed as she took in this information. She went from breezy and smiley to nervous and mildly defensive. She reminded me of a prisoner I had to babysit once in Afghanistan. The sudden change in behavior when held in captivity was a very specific human behavior. It said a lot about her that the mere mention of her daughter made her react this way.
“Oh. Karina’s dating a soldier?”
Her words weren’t what I had expected. I assumed she would ask where Karina was, what she was up to, how she was.
“I’m discharging, medical retirement, so technically only a soldier for another week or so,” I explained.
Fischer looked like he was going to vomit.
“I’m surprised, honestly.” She stared at me, taking in the details of my face. She had a curious, attention-to-detail gaze, just like her daughter.
“I was too. She always said she would never date a soldier, but these two are pretty serious. Like, marriage serious,” Fischer claimed.
Were we? I guess we were, but I had a feeling Karina would not like her brother talking about our relationship without her being present.
“Marriage? Really? I can’t imagine Karina married. Wow, she must be really infatuated with you.”
My fist tightened at my waist, and I tried to ignore the burning feeling of wanting to speak for Karina and wipe that look off her mother’s face. What did she know about her daughter? She had left when Karina was in high school and didn’t have a clue who Karina was as a woman, and her blasé tone made it evident that she didn’t feel nearly as guilty as she should.
I couldn’t help it, I had to react. “And what do you imagine Karina to be, exactly?”
The playfulness disappeared from her face. Her brows turned down and she glared at me. I hadn’t expected her to be so hostile. From the image Karina had painted of her, she was fragile, lost, and dreamy, desperate to be loved and have a purpose in the world. And maybe she was , but the woman in front of me was not.
“I imagine her to be like you. Harsh and cold. Like her father.”
“Mom.” Fischer tried to interject but both of us ignored him.
“She couldn’t be further from that.” I defended Karina, entirely sure that she was wrong. Karina was nothing like her father; she didn’t have a ruthless bone in her body.
Their mother studied me further, looking for a hole to probe. I could practically read her mind now that the idea of who she was had evaporated.
She shrugged, and the butterflies on her chaotic dress looked like they were dancing. “I guess people change.”
“Are you planning on telling her you’re back?” I asked her. All pretenses were gone now. I may as well ask the most important question.
She turned to Fischer, as if looking to him for guidance. He was lost, unable to help her, but I could tell he would have done anything to make the room less tense. The machine in the corner beeped steadily as the seconds passed. It suddenly dawned on me that the person Fischer had been on the phone with was his mother, not a drug dealer. I didn’t need to know how long the two of them had been in contact—it would only make it worse that he’d hidden it from Karina. She overlooked all his bad behavior, his addictions, his selfishness, but could she overlook this?
“I do. I just need to get my grounding here first. I just moved back. Everything is going so well with my boyfriend, and I don’t want to rock the boat by throwing in any variables.”
Variables? What the fuck was this, a science lab? She was not equipped to be a mother and certainly didn’t deserve Karina’s empathy or sympathy. And her boyfriend? What kind of person puts something as trivial as a boyfriend before the child they’d abandoned?
Nothing I could say would change her mind, and I didn’t want to. If she didn’t want to see her daughter, I wasn’t going to force her. Karina deserved better than that. She was already a mess from Phillips’s breakdown, and with her not being aware of her father’s illness, it was too much.
“I’m going to go.” I didn’t want to spend another moment breathing the same air as this woman, and I wasn’t in the business of cussing women out.
Fischer nodded. His face told me that he had a lot to say but couldn’t. I wanted to flip him off. That casual little fucker always stirred up a storm and walked away unscathed. He had somehow become the favorite, easier child, and it didn’t make any damn sense to me. Given his current state, you know, being in the damn hospital because of a screwdriver being stabbed into his torso by his girlfriend’s husband said it all. What a headline.
I didn’t turn back around as I left, disappointment and worry filling every crack in my armor.
I couldn’t shake the memory of Karina’s mother’s face as I drove to Karina’s. She texted me that she was leaving her dad’s and going home, so I wanted to meet her there. I called my ma, hoping to get some advice. She was enraged and confused by Karina’s mother’s return and behavior. She immediately advised me to tell Karina, that I couldn’t hide something like this from her. While I knew she was right, she always was, I couldn’t imagine breaking Karina’s heart while it was already in recovery. By the time I pulled up to her house, I felt sick. I could have just walked in and told Karina that her mother was at the hospital, and she could go see her right now. As many times as I’d played the scenario in my head, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I went back and forth as I walked up the nearly finished deck and heard Elodie’s voice coming from inside.
Okay, so it wasn’t the time. I would have taken any excuse, and was grateful for Elodie’s presence. I knocked lightly on the door before stepping inside. Elodie had a small suitcase in one hand and a duffel bag over her other shoulder.
“Going somewhere?” I asked her as she greeted me.
She nodded. “I’m going to meet my parents at their hotel. They’re staying for a little while.”
“That’s good,” I told her, realizing how uninterested I sounded. “Not good, given the circumstances, but I’m glad you get to see them and be with them right now.”
She smiled, waving her hand. “I knew what you meant.”
“Sorry.” I nervously brushed my hand over my chin. “I’m a little out of it.”
“I think we all are.” She kissed my cheeks and yelled bye to Karina, who I assumed was in her bedroom.
I moved with caution, as if I was approaching a war zone. Little did I know, I was. Her room was a disaster, clothes thrown everywhere in little piles that looked like visible land mines. She was standing by her dresser, tossing clothes over her head.
“Karina?” I said her name slowly as I approached her.
She didn’t turn around. Had she found out about her mom’s return on my way here? Her brother must have called her.
I moved closer to her and put my hand on her shoulder.
“Are you okay? Why did you leave your dad’s?”
Her eyes were bloodshot with lilac circles under them. Her lips were a deep pink, and I could see the blue veins in her forehead. She looked exhausted, mentally and physically. She looked away, avoiding eye contact with me. I began to feel more than a little on edge.
“I couldn’t sit there anymore. I have to work tomorrow since Mali is leaving, and my house is a mess.”
It wasn’t the time to point out that she was in the middle of covering her bedroom floor with clothing. On cue, she tossed a purple sweater over both of our heads.
“Do you need help cleaning?”
Both of us were on edge. I tightened my light grip on her shoulder and turned her around to face me. She opened her mouth, then closed it. I was about to blurt out that I just met her mother, but she lifted her hand up to cover my mouth.
“I don’t want to talk about it. Or anything. I want to clean my house and have a normal day. I feel like I’m losing my mind, Kael, and I can’t talk about anything that has happened in the last seventy-two hours. So, please, I know you want to talk it out and have a therapy session, but can we just pretend like everything is fine and have a normal night as twenty-one-year-olds? Please?”
That was the last thing I wanted to do, but I couldn’t imagine how overwhelmed she felt. I didn’t blame her for wanting to ignore everything and pretend, but I knew that disassociating usually caused more pain in the long run, so it was difficult for me to agree to her plan. I did anyway, nodding in silence while my mind screamed at me to fix this for her, to take her pain away. It wasn’t possible, and I knew that but hated it all the same.
“Thank you. I don’t want to fight with you or talk about how I feel or what the future means. I want to be a twenty-one-year-old girl manically going through my clothes and ignoring reality for a bit.”
I sighed. “Okay. Let’s ignore reality for a bit. What exactly are you doing with these clothes?” I looked around the room. How could one person have this many clothes?
“Not sure. Donating them? I need a fresh start. A new style. I wear the same clothes all the time and I can’t afford to buy new ones, so I want to get rid of at least half and restyle the rest. Oh, and I bought hair dye. Want to help me dye it?” She was speaking a mile a minute.
My eyes found the box of hair dye on her dresser and the pit in my stomach grew. I wished I had her ability to be so spontaneous, changing parts of my identity every time something was out of my control, but I wasn’t programmed that way. I was a dweller, a hyperfixator.
“Sure?” I agreed to her plan, and we spent the day organizing every inch of her house, dyeing her hair dark brown, and ordering Chinese takeout.
As the hours passed I began to settle, coming to the realization that maybe sometimes the answer to handling trauma was to temporarily shut it off. Processing it immediately didn’t have to be the only response. Karina’s sporadic yet meticulous way of thinking was contagious, but I knew deep down that the clock was ticking and Karina’s bottled-up emotions were going to explode without a warning.