Just Like Home(39)
Maybe, Vera thinks, this is just what love is like.
“Why did Brandon do that?” Vera asks as her mother dabs petroleum jelly over the split in her lip. Daphne uses her middle finger, and Vera tries to memorize the warmth of her touch. She doesn’t really expect an answer, but she gets one anyway. “Why did he say that stuff about Dad? It’s not true, right?”
“He was probably confused,” her mother says absently. “Boys that age are confused all the time. They want things that they don’t understand, and they don’t know how to stop wanting them, so they get mad. I’m sure he’ll apologize to you soon.”
Vera wrinkles her nose, which makes her lip hurt more. Normally, she wouldn’t risk asking questions, but maybe her mother’s kindness can bear the weight of interaction today. “What kinds of things do they want?” she asks.
But she never gets to find out what her mother means—what the thing is that boys want but don’t understand—because a big hand lands on the half-open bathroom door, pushing it open.
“Hey, ladies, what’s going on in here?” Vera’s father pads into the room on sockfeet. His eyes get big when they land on Vera’s swollen face. “Oh, wow, Vee. What happened to the other guy?” His voice is light but his hands are both clenched into tight fists, and Vera feels a low thrum of guilt, knowing that he’s upset. Knowing that he’s worried, and it’s her fault.
“Vera fell off her bike,” Daphne says softly. “Going too fast around a corner, I bet. I keep telling her to slow down, but she never listens. Just bad inside, I suppose.”
Vera draws breath to protest this lie, this blame—she didn’t fall off her bike like a baby, she can go fast and it isn’t dangerous no matter what her mother thinks, and the accusation of falling down is an injustice that she will not let stand. But then, with a quick hand, her mother grabs her by the elbow, pressing against that raw patch of flesh in a way that stings even worse than the hydrogen peroxide did.
Vera looks to her mother, shocked at the sudden pain of this touch, and their eyes meet for the briefest of instants, and in that instant, Vera sees her mother’s eyes flash don’t. She doesn’t quite shake her head, but it’s there, between them: a warning, an insistence, a demand for silence. And so Vera turns to her father and dips her chin into a nod.
“Yeah,” she says. “Mom’s right. I was going too fast and I … I ate shit.”
“Vera!” Daphne’s voice is sharp, but her grip on Vera’s elbow vanishes, taking the pain along with it. “Language.”
“Sorry,” Vera says, knowing that, somehow, she has done the right thing.
Vera’s father clicks his tongue. “We all forget ourselves sometimes, but you shouldn’t swear around your mother,” he says. He winks then, and Vera gives him a very tiny smile, because he’s the one who told her that ate shit could mean fell down, and it’s their secret. He smiles back, just as small. “I’m going to go take a look at the bike, make sure it’s in good shape. I’ll be in for dinner.”
When his footfalls disappear down the hall, Vera’s mother grabs her again, by the arms this time. Her grip is tight and painful and her face is drawn, urgent, tight-lipped. She gives Vera a tiny shake, not hard but hard enough that Vera feels her lip start bleeding afresh.
“What!” Vera says, an unwelcome whine in her voice.
“Don’t tell your father what really happened,” Daphne hisses. “Don’t tell him what Brandon said about him. Do you understand me?”
Vera does not understand, not at all. She has almost no secrets from her father, and she can’t think of a single reason why this should be one of them. “You’re hurting me,” she says, but her mother doesn’t let go of her, doesn’t stop punishing her with that hard wild gaze.
“Tell me you understand,” Vera’s mother says. “You can’t tell him what happened. You can’t tell him about Brandon, or the kiss, or any of it. Promise me.”
Vera tries to wiggle out of her mother’s fingers, but there’s no breaking that iron grip. “Fine,” she says, “I promise, I won’t tell. I said I promise,” she repeats, and only then does her mother release her.
Daphne’s lips are pursed together into a bloodless knot. She will not look Vera in the eyes. “Good,” she says.
“It’s not true, though, right? Dad loves us.”
“He loves me,” Daphne says crisply. “Your relationship with him is your own business.”
Vera knows that she has done everything right, that she has done exactly what her mother wanted from her, but it doesn’t matter. The Daphne who might have loved her for a few minutes there is gone, vanished without warning. She stands up, walks to the door, pauses with her hand braced on the doorframe. She looks like a made thing, like someone poured plastic into a mold and then chipped her out of it.
“Put band-aids on your knees,” she says, not turning. “So you don’t get blood on everything if they ooze.”
And then she’s gone. Vera grabs a wad of toilet paper and uses it to mop the fresh trickle of blood from her chin. She bites back tears, pointless baby tears, no reason for them.
She doesn’t understand everything that’s just happened, and she knows she doesn’t understand it, and that’s a horrible, terrible feeling. Somehow, Brandon hurting her has turned into a secret that she has to keep from her father. She’s only ever kept one secret from him before and it’s not one her mother knows about.