By a Charm and a Curse(36)
“Seriously?” I flatten my palms on the tabletop. “You were eighteen and your uptight parents didn’t like that you wanted to work outside instead of in the secretarial pool. So you ran away. Leslie’s dad let you join the carnival and eventually you became master carpenter.”
Mom mirrors my stance; her palms press against the table until her fingernails seem bloodless. It’s like this is the Singer fighting stance.
“That’s mostly true. I was a girl, in a time when women were supposed to be housewives and happy about it, who left home because my parents disagreed with my career choice. It wasn’t unheard of for a woman to work in a field that required manual labor, though. And I’m sorry if I’ve vilified your grandparents all this time, Benjamin, but that’s not the whole story.”
The curtains shift in the breeze, and they catch her gaze. She stares at the milky moonlight as she continues. “Like most stories where a girl runs away from home, there was a boy involved.”
At first I almost don’t believe her. It’s too weird to acknowledge there was anyone besides Dad in her life. But I’m not naive enough to think that there wasn’t.
“He was so handsome. Curly hair like you wouldn’t believe and a smile that would make an angel think about sinning. But his family had upset my family, and they didn’t want us talking to each other. We thought we were our generation’s Romeo and Juliet.”
Her expression darkens, her eyebrows furrowing together. “He convinced me to run away. He suggested the carnival. He got us jobs here. Or rather, I became the carpenter’s apprentice while he bounced around trying to find a job he actually could do. One month. We were here one month when the stress of being on our own together got to him, and instead of trying to work things out…” Her voice breaks and wobbles. “He got drunk and kissed the Girl in the Box.
“It was Sidney, Ben. I ran away for Sidney.”
Sidney? Imagining Mom being with smart-ass Sidney instead of Dad is like trying to jam a square peg into a round hole. And if she’d stayed with him? I wouldn’t even exist.
“The curse took the thing that I valued so much that I was willing to leave everything behind. I stuck around for thirty years. Thirty years of watching him half-heartedly trying to get a replacement, of him coming up with crackpot schemes to get out of the box instead of just passing the damned curse along like everyone had before him. I left my parents, my friends, my everything only to have the life I was building ruined a month later. And then, when I couldn’t take seeing him trapped in that box any longer, I left again. I abandoned the carnival and found your father, who made me so happy that I forgot about this place. I had you. And then, because the real world is harsh and painful and isn’t protected by a charm like this stupid carnival, your father died in that car crash and you almost died, too. So that is why this is a big deal. That is why I want you to stay away from her.”
She takes in a big, gulping breath of air. Tears line her eyes and make her blue irises glow. “The curse doesn’t get to take you, too.”
I stand so quickly that the tabletop rattles, making my mother press against the back of the booth. “Are you telling me that the whole reason you can’t trust me around Emma is because Sidney couldn’t keep it in his pants?”
The flinch shifts her expression from shocked to angry, but I can’t stop. Not when she’s just dropped this bombshell on me.
“You mean to tell me that you don’t trust me because Sidney’s a jackass? Because you made a mistake by falling for the wrong person and think I will, too? That is not how things work in the real world, Mom. You have to let me be my own person. And you should trust Emma. She’s not going to do to me what Sidney did to you.”
At least, I don’t think she would.
Anger roils in my belly the moment the idea forms in my head. Emma would never betray me like that. And I hate the fact that I thought it for even a second.
Words trip and stumble and die on my mother’s mouth but she doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t tell me I’m wrong. Doesn’t try to defend her actions. So I grab my coat from a cubby near the door, jam my arms into it, and leave.
My feet carry me among trailers and tents, through the small grassy area separating the yard from the carnival proper. Anxious prickles run up and down my spine, as over and over, my mother’s words ring through my head.
A twig snaps behind me, and I whirl around, ready for round two with my mother. But no one’s there. I turn again, looking all around me for the source of the noise I know I heard. Nothing.
Shame, cold and slick like an egg yolk, slides into my belly and settles there. What does it say about me that my first thought was my mother had followed me to continue our fight? I’m not saying she’s right to be pissed, but isn’t this just another aspect of her overprotective-mom shtick? Was I too harsh? And what the hell had Sidney been thinking?
Not ready to apologize, not sure where else to go, I cross the grounds until I get to Lars’s Ferris wheel. I’m sure Emma would let me sleep in her wagon, but something tells me Mom expects me to run straight to Emma, and I, stupid though it may be, can’t stand for her to be right.
The wooden struts groan in the wind like an old woman who can’t settle for the night. I climb into the car parked by the platform and curl up against the walls. If I crane my neck just so, I can pick out the constellations I showed Emma not even an hour ago. Sleep comes as I’m tracing their lines in the sky.