8. Lavender
EIGHT
lavender
I’m dressed as best as I can be before they walk in: white blouse, black skirt, dress shoes.
It’s like I’m dressed for a job interview.
For a meeting with my parents.
I see their BMW roll up, and I’m panicking. I tried to clean up the chalet as best I could. I never made a mess of it, anyway, but nothing is ever good enough for them.
My mother strolls in, my father at her heels. She’d married into my father’s wealth, but she always carried herself like she’s the haughtiest queen in the world. I swear she would make actual monarchs feel like peasants..
Her nose wrinkles. “You need some air freshener in here, Lavender. It smells like sweat and dirt.”
“Hello to you, too, Mom.”
“This place is a beacon of civilization. We saw nothing but the poorest neighborhoods, driving here, didn’t we, Brad?”
My father perks up, hearing his name. “Oh yes. More mobile homes than I have ever seen in my life.”
“I have no idea why you could call this place a vacation destination, Lavender. It’s atrocious. I’m already second-guessing our decision to join you up here.”
Slow, deep breaths. I want to defend Evergreen Valley. To tell her about all its wonderful people. All the sights I’ve seen. How I’ve felt more at home here than in the high-rises of Smithport.
“You shouldn’t be up here, either, Lavender. We need to get you out of here before I start to hear banjos and someone rushes us with a chainsaw.”
I snap at her. “That isn’t going to happen, Mom. You do know that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre is fiction, and not a documentary, right?”
She glowers at me. “Well, it’s far more likely to happen for real out here than it is back in our penthouse.”
“Yeah, instead, a plane is going to crash into our home with how high we are..”
Her brow furrows. “Are you making fun of me, Lavender?”
“I’m just trying to tell you not to treat everything like it’s how you see it in a movie, Mom.”
“Listen here, young lady, I am just looking out for you. It’s my job to protect you, and to make sure you are the proper and right heir to the Van Schneider empire. If you’re out here dying of dysentery, you’re obviously not doing that.”
I throw my hands up in disbelief. “Do you think dysentery is something that you catch out in the boonies, Mom?”
“Yes? They vaccinate for it in civilized places. Keeps it from spreading.”
I stare at her. I want to scream at her it’s something you can’t vaccinate for. That it’s not contagious.
It’s all irrelevant. She probably knows this. She just thinks I’m stupid and will accept whatever she says as an excuse to get me to leave.
“Let’s go, Lavender. I thought we could relax out here, but clearly not. You need to come back home with us. You should be preparing for grad school instead of wasting your time out here.”
“I’ve wasted no time out here, Mom. I’m not going anywhere.”
“You can’t be doing anything productive here. There’s nothing to do out here that's worth anything.”
“I’m learning how to be a baker.”
“A baker?” She cackles loudly. “Did you hear her, Brad? Our daughter—a baker. How terrible, as parents, would we be if we allowed her to do something so lowly?”
My father is completely shut down. He spent most of the time here just staring out the window, enjoying the view that my mother pretends doesn’t exist. “Yeah, sure, dear. I’ll call back Matt Baker about the merger.”
She rolls her eyes, and ignores his disinterest. “Stop the charade, Lavender. Stop this teenage rebellion. You have a duty to us. Fill your role, your purpose.”
“I’m twenty-one, Mom. This isn’t teenage rebellion anymore. This is like... young-adult rebellion?”
The situation is already pretty bad.
I didn’t know that it could get a whole lot worse.
“Lavender,” a deep, sweet voice announces as he throws open the front door.
Hawk. His heavy footsteps ring against the wood floor, and he sees my parents for the first time.
I stare at him. I’m always pleased to see him, but he’s the spark in the powder keg at this moment. “Hawk, I told you to leave. You can’t be here right now.”
My mother sees my beau, and is taken aback. “This? Is this what you’re defying us for?”
“No, Mother. I want to be here for more than just a boy.”
“Hi?” Hawk says as she approaches.
“You’re the lowlife seducing my daughter, aren’t you? Filling her head with rebellion and thoughts that being a baker is a worthy place for a woman of her status?”
“No? She wanted to do that before I even met her.”
“Sure she did. My sweet, innocent angel just randomly decides to come to the middle of nowhere and start working at your bakery on a whim. I see exactly what’s happening.”
“I... I don’t own a bakery?”
“You don’t even own your own business? This is worse than I could have ever imagined.”
“Mom, no. Hawk has nothing to do with why I’m here. I came up here before I even met him.”
“Don’t you lie to me, Lavender. You met this disgraceful piece of white trash on the internet. He whispered sweet nothings in your ear, and you spent our money to come up here to see him. I bet you aren’t even using protection!” She shudders. “Imagining a waste of flesh like you in my family tree. It’s a travesty!”
“I swear on my family’s honor I’ve done no such thing.”
“Your family has no honor to swear on!”
“Mom, shut up!” I scream, having enough of this. “I didn’t come up here for him. I came up here because I heard the views were beautiful. I took a job at a bakery because I wanted to learn how to be a baker, and you’d never let me enroll in a proper baking school. I did all this for me, Mom. All for me. Don’t you dare insult Hawk over this. Me finding him was by happenstance, and it’s the best happenstance to ever happen to me.”
My mother is seething. She stomps over to me and tries to stare me down. We’re about the same height now, my natural growth finally catching up to me, so she can’t try to intimidate me like that anymore. “You are a child.”
“I’m twenty-one. An adult. I can make my own decisions. My own mistakes.”
“Not as long as we are funding your life, Lavender. We’re taking care of you. You’re a child. You can’t do anything without us.”
She’s right about that. I have nothing without them. No money. No connections.
“If you want to be so adult, I want you to think this through, then, little girl. Your father and I? We’re leaving. If we don’t see you back home by the first of next month? I’m writing you out of the will. I’m freezing your bank account. I’m canceling all of your credit cards. You won’t even have a phone plan without me, Lavender. If you want to be an adult so bad, you go be an adult. No more of the love and care we’ve shown you. You can have the freedom to go die naked in the streets for all I care.”
I stare at her. I’m trying to stay strong, even though I know she has the nerve to do those things. Which is why it’s so terrifying.
“The only reason I’m not setting this ultimatum at this moment? I want you to think this through, Lavender. I don’t want you to make a foolish, passionate decision. We are the reason you exist, Lavender, and I expect you to respect that.”
My fists are clenched, and my eyes are closed. I’m trying to think of some word to convince her that all of this is so unfair. But nothing comes to mind.
“Brad! We’re leaving! Let’s go!”
“Right,” my father says. He follows her as they head for the door, power-walking the whole way.
I stand strong and hear their BMW’s engine start, and they are soon driving away.
Potentially out of my life for good.
With them gone, I don’t have to pretend to be strong anymore. I drop to my knees and let the tears start to flow.
Hawk rushes to my side.
“Why’d you come back?” I ask him.
“Because I thought maybe you were ashamed of me. And I didn’t want to keep being a secret.”
“I’d never be ashamed of you, Hawk. I’m ashamed of them.”
Hawk glances outward, making sure they’re good and gone. “Yeah, I can see why you are.”
“They’re so unreasonable. I’m not even a human being to them. I’m a tool.”
“What do they even want you to do?”
“Go to grad school. Then business school. Then be a good little management drone until it’s time to take over the family business.”
“That sounds boring and soulless as hell.”
I nod. “It is.”
“And they’ll leave you with nothing if you don’t?”
“My mother is a woman of her word. She’s backstabbed longtime friends of hers just because they outlived their usefulness to the business. I have no doubt she’ll shun me if I’m proving too inconvenient.”
“From the sounds of it, you’re being pretty inconvenient to her already.”
“Exactly. It’s why she will just cut me off. And I’ll be on my own. Van Schneider will just be a useless last name to me, and I’ll have to get a job at McDonalds.”
Hawk cocks an eyebrow. “You already have a job at a bakery, Lavender.”
“Oh. Right. And I guess she can’t take that away from me.”
“She can’t take a lot of stuff away from you. The friends you’ve made. The connections you’ve had. And she can’t take me away from you.”
I smile somehow, through the tears. “I know. But... just... What if this stuff doesn’t work out? My life’s always had a thick, secure safety net until now.”
He embraces me closely. “You’ll be fine. I love you. And I’ll always be there for you, without any expectations or ultimatums.”
In his arms, I feel safe. Secure. Almost hopeful for the future.
He’s only been in my life for a week, though.
My mother has been for twenty-one years.
It should be an easy choice.
It’s anything but.