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“Hello? Your favorite daughter is here…Mom?”
My father’s truck is gone, and I know he is at work all day since its Thursday, but I didn’t really come to see him. He never seems interested to even listen when words come out of my mouth, so, I just brush it off and ignore him as well. I stopped trying to impress him a long time ago, but the feeling of not being good enough definitely stems from that.
I walk to the dining room where the sliding glass door is to the back yard, and I see my mother in her garden. She is swaying her hips and dancing to whatever music she is listening to in her headphones. I lean against the door frame and just watch her be carefree for once. I haven’t seen her like this in so long and it makes me so happy that she still has these moments. I start to laugh when she starts singing the song she is listening to, and its Love is strange by Mickey and Sylvia.
We would watch dirty dancing all the time growing up when it was just us home. I think that was my fuel for being attracted to older men because Patrick Swayze was a ten and he was so much older than I was. I always said that I was going to find myself my own Patrick Swayze. My mother turns around while dancing and jumps back startled when she finally notices me. She plucks her headphones out of her ears.
“You scared me half to death Allison.”
“Sorry, I was enjoying the show.” She gives me a smile and starts laughing with me. She holds her arms out for a hug and I make my way down the back porch to her.
“How much did you see?”
“Ehh, just the part where you were telling your lover boy to come here.” My head tilts back and laugh. She smiles and shakes her head and gives me the biggest hug.
“I didn’t realize you would be here so early; I would have fixed something up to eat.”
“That’s okay, coffee sounds good though.” She wraps her arm around my shoulder, and we go back inside and get ourselves a cup of coffee and sit out back on the porch.
“So, tell me everything. How is Baltimore?” I can’t contain my smile when she asks.
“It’s absolutely amazing! I wish I went there sooner. All of my classes are fairly easy even though I get a lot of work assigned now that we are getting into the midway point of the semester.”
“That’s great honey, I can’t wait to come out and visit you there.” I take another sip of my coffee and start telling her all about my apartment.
“I usually walk everywhere since my place is right downtown. I have these huge windows in my living room that look out into Willow Park and school is a few blocks away. I actually live right above a Chinese restaurant, so my place smells delicious all the time.” She laughs at my latter statement.
“What about friends or teachers? Have you made any new friends, how are your teachers?” I choke a little on my next sip of coffee. I try to cover up my rising heat when Dexter pops into my head.
“My professors are all great and no new friends. My friends are here.” She gives me a half smile.
“I just want to make sure you’re not lonely there by yourself.” I smile at her and remember the picture in my purse of Dex and me. I want to pull it out and show her that I’m most definitely not lonely.
“I’m fine mom, I’m truly the happiest I’ve been in a long time.” She frowns and I realize that me saying that probably made her feel like shit. I go to reiterate my words differently, but she cuts me off.
“I know I’m partially to blame for that and I am sorry. I just wanted you to have everything we couldn’t give you, that’s why I pushed you into so much. I wanted to give you options to have a better life, but I never asked you if that was truly what you wanted, and I am sorry for that Ally.” I smile and give her a hug.
“It’s okay mom, I understand where you were coming from. I eventually got to where I wanted to be.” She squeezes me even tighter.
“I don’t know what I did to get such a sweet girl. I love you honey.”
As we break our hug, we hear a knock on the front door. We both go to the door and when she opens it, my breath catches, and I instantly wish I would have stayed out back.
“Hey Mrs. Pierce, I came to drop off Alison’s…” My mother opens the door more and he catches his words when his eyes meet mine.
“I didn’t realize you were here.” I give him a half smile.
“What were you dropping off?”
He raises his hand with the stack of magazines in them. I completely forgot that I subscribed to a writer’s edition magazine. I was reading them while trying to get back into writing full time, but why wouldn’t he just through them out.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was still receiving those. You didn’t have to go out of your way to drop them off.” My mother clears her throat and I turn towards her.
“Andrew has been coming at the end of every month to drop these off so you could get them.”
“Oh, well, thank you. Ill cancel the subscription now so you won’t have to do that anymore.” I grab my phone and login to the website and click cancel while Andrew and my mother just stand there.
“There, all done.” I see Andrew’s Adam apple bob as he swallows.
