AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“So what happened?” June asks.
“It was almost summer. Hope had her fourteenth birthday party at her house. It was a Saturday afternoon, and my mother forbade me to go, but Hope helped me sneak out through my bedroom window. I was probably there for only an hour before my mother came to get me.” I bury my face in my hands and groan. “You should have seen her. It was the most embarrassing day of my life. Hope’s mother tried to coax her to stay—there were other parents there enjoying the party—and she offered her a glass of something that she’d poured from a large glass pitcher that had floating bits of fruit in it. But my mother stood there, her face white with fury, her lips pressed together into a thin line. She saw me, marched over and yanked me away. And that was it. I was grounded for the rest of the year.”
June jerks back in shock. “Theyear?”
I nod. “She found a project for me. A mathematics project.”
“What?”
“The Pentti-Stone conjecture.” I take a swig of my drink.
“I don’t really know what that means, Anna.”
“It was to punish me for disobeying her. Although I’m sure she’d argue it was for my own education. But after that party, my mother declared that I was too possessive in my friendships and it was unhealthy. I wasn’t, by the way, June. I really believe I was just a normal child, but she insisted I needed a distraction from my distractions. Next thing I know, she announced that we would solve the Pentti-Stone conjecture. I say ‘we’ because she was going to do it with me. She thought it would be…I don’t know. Fun, I guess. Her idea of mother–daughter bonding. Except that I did all the work. Her only contribution was to check on my progress. She’d come into my bedroom and pick up my work, go over it, maybe ask me a question or two. Sometimes I thought I was on the right track and I’d say to her, ‘Is it right? Would that work?’ But she’d just shake her head. ‘No. That’s not going to work,’ she’d say. Then she’d take my pen from me, put a diagonal line through the page and give me the notebook back. ‘Try again,’ she’d say, and I would cry myself to sleep. It felt so hopeless. I was never going to get it. I was locked up all summer. Every day. I missed Hope so much, I used to dream about her. I fantasized that she was trying to find ways to get me out, that we’d run away! Even after we went back to school the following term, I was locked up every weekend—metaphorically speaking of course, but still—in my room poring over it, trying to come up with a proof just so I could get out and play. Until then, no movies for me, no dances, no hanging out after school playing by the lake with my friends. Not that I had many of those to begin with.” I poke at an anchovy with my fork. “I was thirteen years old. Grown men and women had spent years trying to solve that thing. My dad just pretended it wasn’t happening. He deferred to my mother in every way anyway, a life-long habit he was not going to break, not even for his daughter’s welfare.” I feel a prickle of tears. I grab a napkin and press it against my eyes. “I don’t know why I’m getting upset,” I say. “It’s a long time ago.” The restaurant suddenly feels uncomfortably hot. I scrunch up the napkin into a ball. “It should go without saying I grew to loathe the Pentti-Stone conjecture. I still do. So you can imagine when Alex came to me with—”
I stop, leave the words hanging in the air. I want them to float away but they’re still there, between us. I can’t think of anything to say, and I look at June pleadingly, my mouth opening and closing like a fish.
“When Alex what?” June prompts. But she doesn’t frown or narrow her eyes and there’s no suspicion or shock in her tone, or anything to indicate I said the wrong thing. I feel my insides loosen and I shake my head. “Nothing,” I finally reply. “Ignore me. I don’t know what I’m saying anymore. Hey, shall we get another margarita?”
“Sure, why not?” She flags the waitress while I stare at my hands and will my heart to slow down. I can’t believe I almost blurted it: When Alex came to me with the proof.
June pats my arm. “And you did it, you did solve it.”
I smile. We sit there in silence for a while, staring into our glasses. “So what happened to Hope?” she asks.
I shrug. “The party was just before the end of term and I only saw her once after that, in class, and then her family moved away, so that was that. We drifted apart. I don’t where she is now. I don’t really like to think about those years, to tell you the truth. It’s in the past now.” I run my finger along my glass, leaving a trace in the condensation. “My mother used to say, back when she still talked to me, that I was an over-attached child. I would cling to her, she said; then I met Hope and I clung to Hope until they moved away. And maybe she was right, because now I cling to Luis, and my children of course, but especially Luis. Luis is the only friend I ever had after Hope, the only friend that is truly mine. I haven’t even seen my mother in years, as she refuses to visit us. I told you she didn’t come to our wedding, didn’t I?”
June nods, biting into a small mushroom.
“This is how horrible she is.” Are my words sounding a little slurred? “Before we got married, she called me. She said not to marry him. Something was ‘wrong’ with him. ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. But I knew what she meant. She saw I was happy. She was going to do it again, try to ruin it for me.” I scoff. “I mean, really? I’m about to get married to the love of my life, and she tells me there’s something wrong with him?” I make air quotes aroundsomething. “I laughed at her. I said, ‘Yeah, he loves me, Mother. That’s what’s wrong with him.’ Seriously, that woman will stop at nothing to ruin any chance of happiness for me. It’s like it’s embedded in her DNA. I told her, ‘Honestly, Mother, enough. I’m a grown woman, I can do what I like. Save it.’ She didn’t come to my wedding after that. And then she moved away.”
“Where to?”
“Some small town in California called Clearlake. I’ve emailed her that we’ll come and visit, take the kids on vacation—most grandparents would love that, wouldn’t they? You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But no, not this one.”
“But did you find out what she meant? About Luis?” June asks.
I give her a look. “Please. These were just the games she liked to play. There was nothing wrong with Luis. He loves me and she couldn’t stand that because she’s a sick woman. He is the only person left in my life who truly loves me. Sometimes, in my darkest hour, I believe that I will meet so few people in my life who will truly love me that when I find one, I have to hold on to them with everything I have.”
Eighteen
We’re talking about relationships and I want to know more about Trevor, but June’s not saying much, and I get a sense that she’s still too sad to talk about it.
I lift a greasy finger. “Okay, so final question. How would you describe him, in one word?”
She thinks about it, and smiles. “Funny,” she says. “He was really funny. He used to make me laugh a lot.” I try to ask more but she waves my questions away with a flap of the hand.
“What about Luis, in one word?”
I peel a prawn and sink my teeth into its flesh. “Unfaithful,” I say, sucking on the tail. She gasps and I look up abruptly. It’s like the word escaped from me without my realizing it was even there. I start to laugh, but she’s looking at me, her head tilted, her eyebrows drawn together. I want to say something but I’m stuck, and my eyes start to swim.
“Luis is having an affair?” Her eyes grow wide with understanding, but disbelief also, which makes sense considering I’ve just waxed lyrical about what a great husband and father he is for the last twenty minutes.
Hearing it like that, without adornments, is like having the carpet pulled from under my carefully constructed house of cards. I immediately regret saying anything, but it’s too late.
“It’s fine, June, he’s not having an affair anymore. It’s over.”
“Oh, Anna! How did you find out?”
