Open Road Summer(64)

“Yup. Brenda.” I roll my eyes. Even my pronunciation of her name is mockery, puffing up my cheeks with the “B” sound and drawing out “da.”

“You don’t like her?”

I shrug. “I don’t get her. And she doesn’t get me.”

“But she’s okay? I mean, she loves your dad?”

“I guess.” I pause, blowing a strand of hair off my face. “I mean, she’s cares for him. She’s good to him. But I think Brenda is too practical to love anything.”

Matt looks surprised again, like I’ve said something unnecessarily mean. It’s not mean; it’s true. But now I feel like I have to defend my surliness. What comes to mind is the field of lavender Brenda planted as soon as she moved in. Before, the side yard of our farmhouse was a big, blank space. She went out every day, digging in the dirt for hours. It took two years for the plants to fully grow, green-gray stems and purple blooms. Now she spends hours harvesting the stalks, which she sells to a local soap company. I never see her standing on the porch, admiring the field the way I do, for its beauty. But she’s devoted to caring for it. I’m not sure if it’s something I can quite articulate to Matt. “I mean, I think she loves gardening, but she doesn’t gush about it or seem particularly happy while she’s watering her plants. That’s how she is with my dad. She’s not very affectionate, not like he is, but she’s . . . devoted, I guess. She seems to enjoy taking care of him.”

“And she makes your dad happy?”

“Yeah,” I admit. “I’m not sure why, exactly, but she does.”

I’ve never really given Brenda credit for that. She may not be warm or maternal, but she’s reliable, a steady post for my dad to lean on. If my dad hadn’t married Brenda, I never would have left him this summer. I’d be too worried that he’d get lonely and start drinking again.

“So what about your real mom? What was she like?” Matt asks, glancing up to gauge my reaction. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”


Of course I don’t have to. I look straight at him, his eyes like choppy ocean water on mine. He told me about his mom, after all, and that counts for something. I take a breath, so deep that my stomach rises. “I used to think she was like magic. She pulled me out of school to go to the movies and woke me up late at night to catch fireflies. She let me wear the fairy wings from my Halloween costume to school whenever I felt like it.”

Clearing my throat, I pause for a moment. I can’t believe how fast I recited those memories. Most of the time, I can only find traces of my mother, even when I search the furthest-back shelf of my memory. I’m not sure how I found them just now.

“For a while, I thought maybe she left because my dad wasn’t fun enough.” I sigh, running an edge of the picnic blanket through my fingers. “The older I get, the more I think she was immature and selfish. But I kind of miss it—believing that she was magical.”

My mind flashes to my dad, asleep facedown on the kitchen table, as I got up by myself for middle school. By the time he got sober, I was so sick of being responsible, so sick of worrying about him. I wanted someone to worry about me, for once.

Last year, I overheard my dad and Brenda arguing as I walked by their bedroom door. The school had called to report that I’d skipped class. It wasn’t even a class—it was my lunch period, but the vice principal blew it completely out of proportion. It’s not like I left school to sell drugs. I left because I had the worst craving for a banana split. So I drove to Dairy Queen and was back before math class. Big deal.

“You have to be stricter with her,” Brenda was saying to my dad. “That girl is begging for boundaries.”

“Bren,” my dad replied, and I could hear his exasperation through the heavy door between us. “She took care of herself all those years. You expect me to turn around and start micromanaging her life?”

He still beats himself up for it, still feels guiltier than I ever meant for him to.

“She’s not in any real trouble,” he insisted. “She’s not putting herself or others in danger. She’s a teenager, and she skipped her lunch period.”

Ha, I thought at the time—ha, my dad gets it. I think he really believed what he said to Brenda that day. I think he believed it right up until I got arrested.

“You okay?” Matt asks after a few moments, and I shift back to our conversation.

“Yeah.” I force a smile, trying to prove it.

“Do you ever think about trying to find her? Your mom?”

It takes some nerve to ask that question, and I like that he came right out with it. Shaking my head, I say, “No. I used to, but not anymore. We have our problems, but my dad and I are pretty great most of the time. If she couldn’t see it, she doesn’t deserve either of us.”

Between us, his hand finds mine, and he pulls it toward his mouth. He plants a kiss on the back of my hand and says, “You are pretty great. Most of the time.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I say, rolling onto my back. Talking about my mom sucks the energy out of me. I rock onto my knees, changing the subject by pointing the camera at Matt.

“This is a no-paparazzi zone,” Matt says. In an act of melodrama, he pulls his aviator sunglasses from the collar of his shirt and slides them on. The metallic lenses reflect my own image, the camera held up to my face and framed by my dark hair.