AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Thank you, Aunt Laura,” I tell her when she looks at me.
“Neither of you have room for me,” my mom says. “I'm not going to be in your way for any longer than I have to.”
“You're not in anybody's way,” I say, sharing a quick look at my aunt. “You could stay with me. I don't have a spare bedroom but the couch pulls out, and you wouldn't be in my way.” She’s done it before and I think my place being small and her feeling guilty is what led her to go back. I’m grateful my aunt loves my mom. I’m grateful she can crash here. I just know she doesn’t have money and he has it all. I don’t have to ask to know he’s turned off her cards, probably telling the bank someone stole them. I’m sure the savings and checking accounts are empty. I’m sure she’s screwed financially.
He says things will change every single time and they don’t. It always ends up like this. My gaze lands on her black eye. Well it hasn’t always been this bad. Each time it gets a little bit worse.
My aunt waves me off. “Oh, stop it. Renee's place is small. I have the room, and I mean it when I say you can stay here as long as you want. We can be the crazy old ladies who live in the corner house. I have a spare witch's hat you can wear when we pass out candy on Halloween.” That gets a small laugh from each of us even though my aunt wears a sad smile.
“If you have a hat, then I guess I can stay,” my mom says while wiping the corners of her eyes. She loves my father. She believes him every single time and tells me how it didn’t used to be like this. That he’s going to change back into the man he was…
My aunt hugs her a little tighter, and they both laugh together, but my mom's face falls as they laugh and tears spill out of her eyes. It’s then that I can’t help myself and the tears I’ve been holding back fall too.
We spend the afternoon together and while we do my phone pings. I checked it thinking it was Mags asking me if everything was all right. I didn’t tell her every detail, but Mags knows how this goes. Mags did send a message just telling me that she loves me and letting me know she’s there if I need anything. But I also got a message from Griffin.
Griffin: Wish I had off with you today. What are you doing?
I stare at the text knowing damn well he’s too kind for me. Too sweet and completely unprepared for the fucked-upness of my life. I don’t have the energy to answer, and I don’t know what to say so I don’t say anything at all. In the back of my mind I know he deserves an answer, but I told him, it’s all pretend with him. And right now, my reality is sending me on a spiral I’ve been on before too many times. I’m not taking him down with me.
After a while my mom excuses herself to the spare bedroom to lie down and apologizes too many times as she does. My aunt and I move quietly into the kitchen. She pulls out the box of tea bags and sighs as the cupboard door closes shut.
“I've been drinking too much coffee. Want another cup of tea?”
“I'd love one,” I answer solemnly.
I watch her move about the kitchen in a baggy sweatshirt that might be older than me and a pair of plaid pajama pants. She’s always been the caretaker of the family and when I went no contact with my father, she supported me in that decision even when it killed my mother. I know Mom’s racked with guilt and just wants it all to be better, but I can’t talk to him, think about him, or see him. I want nothing to do with him and Aunt Laura agrees.
With my mug in my hands, I sit at the round kitchen table and straighten the small round tablecloth that my aunt keeps under her sugar dish. It's white with white lace around the outside, and when the spring comes she'll switch it out for one that's green and yellow. She has a matching dish cloth that goes on the oven handle.
It's the tablecloth that suddenly makes me want to cry. My mom does some of the same things as her sister, but it feels like her life is constantly being disrupted by the ever-changing mood of her husband. It seems like a trap she can never get out of no matter how hard she tries.
I'm angry about all the things she can't have, all the things I want her to have. I can picture my mom being happy here for a few years or a couple decades. I can picture her and my aunt cooking dinner together and laughing about their days. As sisters, they've always been close. I don't know what it's like to have a sister, but if I did, I'd want to have a relationship like theirs.
When my mom went back the last time, my aunt had to come to my rescue too. I couldn’t believe it. How could she go back to him when he treats her that way?
My aunt says she understands, and we should just be there for her. But I don’t. I don’t know how you can love someone more than you love yourself. Well I know how but I also know what it does to you, and my mother knows that even better than anyone else.
I can't help but think that I played a part. I'm a big reason that my mom's in this situation in the first place, he even used my name last time. Come back to me so we can be a real family for Renee, my father said. I heard him say my name on the phone. I heard him myself and I saw how my mother’s expression fell. That’s when I decided he could never be in my life again. I thought in that moment my mother agreed. I thought she could see the manipulation as easily as I could.
I was so wrong.
My aunt pours water over the tea bags in two mugs, then leans on the countertop and looks at me, her expression patient.
“Do you think she'll really leave him this time?” I ask, keeping my voice quiet so I don't wake my mom...and so she doesn't overhear. This isn't a question I can ask my mom today, or maybe ever. The only way I could even see her again after she went back the last time was if she promised to never mention him to me again.
My aunt purses her lips. “I hope so. Have you spoken to him?”
I shake my head, looking out the kitchen window to my aunt's tidy backyard. There's a white fence between her yard and her neighbor to the back. The fence is low enough that you could stand on either side and chat. My aunt has flower baskets that she puts at the base of her fence in the areas where her garden doesn't reach. It's a nice place to sit and have a cup of tea when the weather's nice.
That's what my mom could be doing this summer if she left for good and let my aunt take care of her for a while. Not forever, if that's not what she wants, but for long enough that she can figure out how she feels about everything and what she wants to do with her life.
“I haven't,” I tell her. “I blocked him the last time this happened. I haven't spoken to him in almost a year.”
She knows this. But maybe she thought I was more like my mother. That I wouldn’t be able to let him go. He’s never hurt me physically. Only yelled at me and berated me growing up. He kept me in line with fear. Now I stay far away from him. I know the man he truly is.
“I want nothing to do with him ever again,” I tell her.
My aunt nods, her eyes compassionate. “Are you doing okay, baby?”
