Our Finest Hour (The Time #1)(2)
Not me.
I haven’t told Britt that Owen broke up with me. I can’t stand to say the words. I’m humiliated. Mortified I even dared to be happy. Worse, I’m sad. The kind of sadness I promised myself I’d never allow anyone make me feel again. Through fake smiles and an early bedtime, I hide it all from her.
By the next afternoon, the misery has seeped through the cracks in my walled-off heart, and Britt notices.
“I’ve never seen you like this." She leans over, plucks a mandarin orange from an old, chipped fruit bowl on the counter, and tosses it in the air twice before her eyes come to rest on me. “What’s your deal?”
"I don't know what you mean." I say. Obviously I know exactly what she means. Call it a reflexive action, like putting your arms up when a ball comes flying at your head. No need to analyze the hows and whys of my automatic denial. Thanks to the therapist I stopped seeing long ago, I already know. Fear of abandonment, she said. When I left my session that day I told my dad he should get a refund. The only gem in our entire session was when she said it's a natural reaction to what I've been through, that she would expect me to push everyone away. If you didn't push people away, I'd wonder if you were facing an inability to feel. And if that were the case, our visits would be very different.
I should have told my therapist not to worry, that I'm not facing an inability to feel. If anything, the opposite is my problem. I feel too much. I feel every part of my mother's departure like little stabs of pain all over my body. Most of the pain is concentrated in my heart. That's where the pinches and pulls hurt the most. Right in the center of my chest, where my breath stops in my throat and my chest tightens. Even after thirteen years, I can't get rid of what my mother left behind when she walked away.
So, no. I don’t believe in the ghosts of the dead. But the ghosts of the living? Yeah, those are real.
That night I tell Britt what happened.
She flies off the handle, cussing and pacing, talking fast and making references to mob movies. Which is almost funny, considering she’s five-foot-two, and only when she straightens her shoulders. Hardly a formidable foe.
“Nobody is going to sleep with the fishes.” I speak with my most placating voice.
My chest warms as I watch her from my spot on the arm of the couch. For once I feel cared for, like someone worthy of defense.
It’s not fair for me to think that way. My dad would defend me to his dying breath, if I ever gave him the opportunity—which I don’t. I like handling things on my own.
“Aubrey, we can’t just let him get away with this.” She throws a hand up in my direction. “You need to call him back. We need to call him names. Lot's of bad names.” She wrinkles her nose and makes a sound of disgust.
I shake my head. “Let it go." Calling Owen ranks very low on my list of things I want to do, falling somewhere near using pliers to pull out my toenails.
Britt blinks twice. “Why aren’t you having the right reaction to this?”
I give her an answer, something about having a forty-eight-hour head start on feeling angry. Truthfully, as devastated as I am, a part of me knew Owen would leave me eventually. On some level I’ve been mourning the demise of our relationship since the second I let his smile carry me away.
“Owen is going to regret his choice.” She wraps an arm around my shoulders. “I promise.”
I smile because it’s what I’m supposed to do.
Just before I fall asleep that night, I see her. From behind, like always. I think maybe this time she’ll look back, because my heart was broken by a boy, something that’s never happened before. Shouldn’t mothers be there for their daughters?
Even my imagination can’t make her turn around.
My mom was pretty. No, my mom was beautiful. A kind of beauty that belonged in the pages of the fashion magazines she kept stacked on the side table in the living room. My friends wanted to come to my house because they loved my mom, and I loved that they loved her.
Not only was my mom beautiful, she could bake like Mrs. Fields and Betty Crocker all wrapped up in one. She made the very best blueberry muffins that anyone ever put in their mouths. They would sigh as they took a bite, saying things like, “It’s a crime how good these are.”
The mothers of my friends liked to visit my mom too. Maybe they were envious of her. Beautiful woman, happy home, husband with a good job. My dad wasn’t the president of the bank or anything, but he was a journeyman. Working with electricity is a dangerous job, but the trade-off is that it pays well.
Despite his good-paying job, he insisted on keeping an old Chevy truck that never ran well. “Broken more than it runs,” my mother would grumble. She had a car that worked just fine, so she didn’t complain too loudly about the old Chevy.
The Saturday she left was like all the other Saturdays before it. I sat playing with my dolls in the living room. My Barbie could bake blueberry muffins that were better than all the rest, just like my mom could. Dad was in the garage, probably lying under his truck, rolling out every so often for a tool.
Mom came through the living room, her chin tucked against her chest. That’s what I remember most about the day she left. Normally she walked with her head up, her eyes calm and clear. But on that day, she rushed past me, only five feet away from where I sat. I looked up as she passed. I couldn’t see her eyes.