The Space In Between(60)

That was true. Ladasha was my sister. If anything showed that, it was how harsh Mom was towards her—the same way Mom was harsh towards me. After Mom welcomed her as part of our family, she began to scold her about how dangerous stripping was and said Ladasha should have thought more of herself to stoop to that level. She turned to me, pointing her finger, and sassed me on the same topic. She informed Ladasha that she would, indeed, finish her college degree. She followed all the sassiness up with hugs.
It was kind of what my mom did—worried, judged, worried some more, and then hugged. I told Dasha that she would get used to it. She smiled and told me it was the most mothering she had ever received in all of her life.
Daddy walked into the room smiling at me with what looked like a toy robot in his hands. It was made of metal and stood about five feet tall with a weird looking tail. “Look at this.” His eyes glimmered through his thick-glasses that sat across his gray sideburns. All of us raised an eyebrow to Daddy’s newest creation.
“What is it?” Ladasha asked.
“It’s my automatic snow blower! I fixed it!” he squeaked with excitement. Mom’s eyebrows lowered.
“That’s nice, dear. Maybe we should wait until after lunch to test it out…” I giggled to myself when I heard the hesitant sound in my mom’s voice.
Daddy pouted when she said that. “But the snow just fell to the perfect levels.” He sounded like a whiny five year old who wanted his mom to allow him to go play in the snow. Walking over to Mom, Daddy pushed out his bottom lip and gave her the biggest puppy dog eyes I had ever seen in my life. He began to give her puppy dog kisses all over her face until she reluctantly agreed.
“For Christ’s sake, Walter! Fine. Let’s get this over with!”
Daddy jumped up with excitement and told us all to go get our winter coats on. I was pretty excited. I hadn’t seen one of Daddy’s creations in quite some time and I was ready to be impressed. As he sat it in the driveway, Mom made Ladasha and me stay behind the porch, in case something went wrong. Daddy made sure to hush my mom as he turned on the snow blower, but he too, stepped behind the porch with his remote to control the robot.
“This is going to be amazing,” he promised as he pushed the on button. Nothing happened at first. “Just give it time. It has to warm up.” We waited. The weird robot started to shake. Daddy insisted it was normal. The robot started to walk down the driveway, Daddy guiding it with his remote. It was working! It was a three foot, mini TinMan, shoving our snow. We all cheered for him as the robot finished clearing most of the snow. It approached the end of the driveway. Daddy shut off the robot and tossed his hands up in celebration.
“You did it!” Mom hollered as she kissed Daddy’s cheek. She was so proud of him in that moment.
“Um…Daddy…” I stuttered. I nodded in the direction of the robot, now heading out into the street.
“Oh no,” Mom murmured.
The robot started to smoke. Daddy flicked on his remote again and started trying to control the robot to come back to us. His remote started to spark flames. “Holy shit!” Ladasha and I hollered as Daddy tossed the remote into the snow. Mom pinched both of our arms for our foul language as we mumbled an apology.
The robot was still on the move. “Go get it, Walter! Before the neighbors see!” My mom warned him. He went heading to the robot but stopped right as he saw it blow up across the street.
Ms. Kathy came out yelling as she watched her newly replaced dog-shaped mailbox go up in flames with the robot explosion. I saw the doggie’s tail land on her roof. She started hollering and shaking her fist at us, saying words that would have made Mom pinch me to the point of drawing blood. Mom’s eyes widened as she looked at us girls and Daddy. “Run! Come on! Inside, go!”
As we entered the house, the four of us busted out into laughter, replaying the horrified look on Ms. Kathy’s face. It felt good to be back with my parents and able to laugh. It felt better than I could have imagined.



Chapter Forty

AFTER I LEFT Wisconsin, I headed back to New York. It was time to get back together with Kyle and get my career going again. It seemed like a whole life had been lived since I’d last sat across from him at his desk. He was scrolling through his emails while checking messages on his cell phone, and for the first time in awhile, it felt like things were slowly getting back to normal.
“What do we have?” I asked him, wondering what offers were being shot my way to clean up this mess I had made for Ky.
He started sifting through the papers stacked on his desk. “The norm for magazines. Us Weekly, People, Star. Television offers started flying in after those magazines came out. They want you to host shows—Wedding Disasters, Couple’s Therapy, Dr. Drew’s Rehab.” His voice started off excited and he glanced up at me. He must have seen how uninterested I was in all of it, but I knew it had to be done.
“You know what, f*ck them.” Kyle picked up all of the papers and ripped them in half.
“What the hell are you doing?”
He loosened his tie, shut down his computer, and turned off his phone. “Screw them, Coop. They don’t deserve to hear your story. You know what you need to do?”
I looked to him, knowing I was talking to my best friend and not my manager. “What you need to do is go to South Carolina and be with your mom. Fuck all this other bullshit. You’re a freakin’ amazing photographer, not a cheap reality star. You go be with your mom, you decide exactly what it is you want, and you come back here. And I will make it work.”