Broken - 2
Women's fiction in 4 parts
photo credit: Barb Miller
I go back to the garage and see two plastic bags sitting beside the steps up into the house. One has my bloody clothes. I feel in the pocket and find the police woman’s card. I feel like I have a connection now to the outside world. The clothes I toss in the trash. The other bag has forms, instructions and my wallet, cell phone and comb.
I carry it back to the kitchen counter. A driver’s license, a medical card, two well-worn credit cards, pictures of the kids and no money. At least I can drive. I read the instructions from the hospital and they say not for a week. They also say I am not to be alone for two days. Since we have ignored that I choose to ignore the other.
I sit at the kitchen computer again, the one where Bill said I could key in recipes, but where I worked nights on business plans for clients. It’s all coming back now in a comforting wave. I am a person. I have done good work. I matter, but not here in this house. No wonder I want to get back to work.
Is there anything else I need to know? I go into the den where a desk is covered by a confusion of papers similar to the pile in the dining room. After a hour’s perusal of the piles of bills it is clear to me that we could never lead this lifestyle just on Bill’s salary, that my income is essential just to stay even. So why didn’t he remind me I have a job. Did he think he was being protective?
And what about college for the kids? That’s why I had gone back to work in the first place. They might be spoiled and selfish, but they must be educated. Doesn’t he care about the future? Doesn’t he understand I need a life, an identity apart from him and the children?
I look at the clock just before the timer goes off in my head to start dinner. That will be a snap, his mom’s meatloaf, a salad and rice pilaf for a change. As I work I realize there is one more thing I have to get in touch with, my children. What is the point if I cannot reconnect with them?
While everything is cooking or baking I find the photo albums. It is a shock looking at a much younger version of myself holding infants and toddlers. I don’t look happy even then, but frightened. Yes, I have done all this, but I have not been happy, and not just because I was taken for granted. I have felt both underutilized and misused at the same time.
I remember how hard I had to fight to go back to work, how I had to pack the lunches at night or get up long before everyone else, to make sure they had their gym bags. Surely they can pack their own lunches and clothes. They are fifteen and seventeen. I leaf forward to try to figure out where the magic ended. Had the distance happened because I went back to work when Nancy started school?
No, she is still happy taking her horseback lesson, in her ballet outfit, at the swimming pool. It’s less easy to tell about Billy. I was the one who said he couldn’t have a quad, or go hunting at 12. But still he looks happy at his last birthday party with the camera I gave him.
I leaf back and forth. Something happened when Billy was six and Nancy four. After that most of the pictures are not of me and the kids. They are of Bill and the children. First it was Billy and little league, then fishing, canoeing. Then he made Nancy go out for softball. That ended the other lessons of all kinds. That ended the smiles too. But I was out of the picture behind the camera as though I was a spectator of my own family.
What was happening to me? Why did I still feel so detached?
I shed a few tears over the album, but that was the past. I have to worry about the present. The phone rings and I pick it up.
“Mom,” Nancy wails. “I was in the bathroom and the sports bus left without me. I can’t get to the game.”
“Where are you?”
“At the school.”
“Be a little more specific, dear. Remember Mom isn’t firing on all cylinders yet. What street is it on?”
Nancy stops sobbing and carefully tells me how to get there.
“If I can find the keys to the monster in the garage, I’ll be there in ten minutes. Otherwise I’ll come in a cab.”
No key for the SUV on the rack. I remember to turn the stove off and feel proud. The meatloaf should be done. I grab my tote and put a bottle of water and some crackers in it for Nancy, then lock the door. As I run out to check the vehicle itself I see the mailman at the curb. I never get the mail because Bill gets home first, so I run out to get that and shove it into my tote. I almost need a ladder to climb into the SUV. The spare key is under the floor map. Bill always hides keys under mats. Good one for me.
The garage door opener works and I carefully start and back the monster from its lair, then pause as I gulp air and close the garage door. I hope I don’t wreck the thing. Well, no I really don’t care, but not till after I have accomplished today’s mission. I have not hated being a mom. In fact it has been good training in how to handle emergencies. The household emergencies flick through my mind like a jerky movie reel, bike wrecks, broken arms, lacerations. If that’s all I remember of my kids I would conclude they are stupid.
But they are just careless, thoughtless and used to being rescued. And I was the enabler. No wonder they all hated me working. Well, get over it.
Nancy is crying again when I pull up. “Get in, where is the game this week?”
“It’s an hour away. We’ll never make it.”
“When does it start?”
“Five-thirty.”
“So they must be stopping for dinner somewhere. We’ll get you some take out and still beat them there.”
At the drive thru window, I have to reach down to get the food. I pay for it with quarters from the console. I remembered my wallet but it’s empty. I check the gas gauge and decide we probably have enough to get across the country.
We actually arrive before the school bus, but the other team is there, so Nancy knows it is the right place. I share her fries with her on the bleachers while the other kids work out.
“I’ve been thinking your teammates probably knew you were missing. Why didn’t they tell the driver to wait or tell the coach?”
“The coach was going in his car with his kids.”
“And your teammates?”
“They aren’t my friends.”
“So why do you play?”
“Dad likes me to play. He said he’d try to be here, but. . .”
“But what?”
“I hardly ever get to play, so he doesn’t come anymore.”
I shook my head. “Nancy. You are going to have to do a lot of jobs in this life you don’t like. Don’t start now.”
She looks up at me. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t let people push you into something you don’t really like doing. Just say no.”
“This isn’t drugs, Mom, it’s softball.”
“Is there something you would rather be doing?”
“Softball is free, more or less. I’d rather take dancing lessons, but they cost money.”
“Then you got it.”
“But Dad said no.”
“Dad just bought a car that costs as much as a small house and he did just go elk hunting last winter.” Wow, where had that come from? “Dad was being a tad selfish, but he probably didn’t realize that.”
“Mom, you’re different.”
I feel my heart start to thud and it gives me a sudden headache. “Is that good or bad?” I care so much more about her answer than I thought possible.
“Good. I was having trouble talking to you because you always agreed with Dad though you didn’t really seem to like agreeing with him. Lately you’ve been working so hard there wasn’t time to talk.”
“Well, brace yourself, because I am going back to work. If there’s going to be a college fund, I’m going to have to create it. That means you can have dance lessons but you have to clean your own room, do your own laundry and help with the housework. Billy will to. That way there will be time to talk.”
“And not forget stupid stuff like my lunch,” Nancy says.
“It would help, but we all forget stuff once in a while.” I give her a hug and feel something come together, some kind of healing. It’s as though a bond that had been broken suddenly grows back together. This is the child who had sat on my lap in the picture so long ago.
The coach for the other team approaches. “It’s ten after. If you can’t field a team, your side will have to default.”
“Well, Nancy is here. You can’t say the team isn’t here since one of them is.”
He smiled. “Ok, we’ll give them another five. Nancy, do you want to warm up with my girls?”
“Sure,” Nancy says, excitement plain on her face.
Actually he gives them another ten minutes before the bus pulls in.
Nancy’s coach, Mr. Garfield, is a few minutes later and is still drinking a milkshake.
“What are you doing here?” one of her teammates asked. “You’re not going to get to play anyway.”
She catches her breath and I go to her. Both coaches hear that and the other coach sends a piecing look at Garfield.
“Holding the field,” Nancy says. “Did you break down?”
“Not me,” Garfield says.
“The bus left her at the school,” I complain.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to play her today anyway.”
Nancy is biting her lip.
The other coach approaches and this time he is not smiling. “This kid just saved your ass, and you plan to treat her like that—correction—continue to treat her like that?”
“I’m the coach.”
I look toward my daughter. “You still want to play on this team?”
“No, I think I quit about three o’clock today.”
I smile. “Guess they default.”
“What are you talking about?” Garfield demands.
“I don’t know much about softball, but if you don’t show in time you forfeit the game. No one from your team was here until twenty minutes past game time.” I hear the other coach laughing.
Garfield glares at me. “You bitch.”
“You can treat kids like dirt, but they don’t have to take it.”
Garfield walks back toward the bus driver and talks to him.
The other coach introduces himself as Matt Hallowell. “You know we have a summer league. Even though Nancy isn’t in my township, she can play in that league if she wants.”
“Is it fun?” Nancy asked.
“I guess a lot more fun than you’ve been having. Let me write my phone number down. Call me after the end of May.”
“Thanks so much,” she says as she takes the paper. It looks precious to her and she slips it into her pocket.
Before we start for home, I figure out the console phone. That must have cost a bundle. “What’s our number again?” Ok, so I wasn’t good with numbers yet.
Nancy punches it in and Billy picks up.
“Mom, where are you?”
“Driving Nancy home from her game. You need a snack before dinner?”
“I found some ice cream. Are you in the truck? You better not wreck.”
“I thought you were lactose intolerant.” Whoa, where had that come from?
“I was, but I’m better.”
“It’s your gut. We should be home by seven.”
After I hang up Nancy asks, “You think he’ll remember to tell Dad?”
“He better.”
****
“Where the hell have you been?” Bill meets us in the garage. “You’re not supposed to be driving.”
“Nobody told me.” I unload Nancy’s duffle bag and hand it to her while Bill walks around the beast looking for scratches.
“I’ve been worried sick.”
About the vehicle anyway. “We told Billy we’d be home at seven. Didn’t he tell you?”
“Billy!”
Bill’s shout is so loud I see Nancy cringe in the sound wave. “Let’s go get dinner on the table,” I tell her.
As we work together, Nancy smiles at me. “I think I’d like to take the dance lessons during the school year, Mom, then play softball in the summer with that other league. Those girls are nice.”
“Sounds fine to me. I’ll do everything I can to get you there.”
Bill comes to the table like a bear. We’re eating in the kitchen because the dining room table is still covered with his paperwork.
“Where’s Billy?” I ask.
“Grounded.”
“He needs to eat real food. He can’t live on ice cream.”
“He’s being punished.”
“If you really want to punish him, make him eat your mother’s meatloaf. I think it’s dry.”
I go to the bottom of the stairs and call my son.
Billy sulks for all of thirty seconds then gobbles up mass quantities of food. I remember that now. Billy isn’t sensitive like Nancy. He’s more like his father. So my job is to keep him from turning into his father.
When we are finished eating, I say, “Dish duty, both of you.”
“I have homework,” Billy says.
“Nice try, but the dishes take only twenty minutes. And we all have homework. I’m going back to work tomorrow.”
Bill’s head snaps up to fast I think he might break his neck.
“I’d hoped you’d forget about that place.”
“Yes, I know.” I remove the leftovers and put them away.
When I come back for the salad bowl he is still sitting there staring at his place mat.
“We don’t need the money.”
“Liar, we do need the money to get out of this hole of debt we’re in. If the payment on that tank is what I expect I may have to get a second job.”
“That’s my worry.”
“And that’s the problem. You think by worrying about something you can magically fix it, but you can’t.”
He stands up then. “If you walk out that door tomorrow, don’t bother coming back.”