Carrying The Weight Of The World [on hold]

05 - Surprise, Surprise

We weren’t very talkative as we passed the potatoes and cauliflower around while we each held out our plate to Declan, who was assigned to serve the chicken roast.

“There is something I would like to tell you,” Mom broke the silence as soon as everyone’s plate was filled and we were ready to dig in.

If by miracle, I had any appetite at all by the time I sat down for dinner, I lost whatever was left of it at my mom’s enthused announcement. Involuntarily, I looked over at Declan and saw my worries mirrored on his face. Even Jessie couldn’t form more than a wry smile as we waited for our mom to fill us in on her big news. The only one who seemed remotely excited was Tommy, who beamed at Mom as he waited for her to say more. He was so easily fooled by her charades and I didn’t have the heart to rip that away from him. One day, he, too, would learn the unstable and impulsive ways of our mother, and if I had any hand in it, that time wouldn’t come anytime soon.

“I haven’t seen you much lately, but getting away for a bit was something I needed to do. For me.Not only did this leave me some time to myself to think, it also provided me one of the best things that has happened to me lately. I know this will feel a little out of the blue to you, and I wanted him to be here, by my side, to tell you together –“

“He?” I asked, afraid that my worst case scenario would become a very unwanted reality. “What do you mean?”

“I ran into an old friend of mine and we hit it off, again. This time, it felt right and we realized that life was too short to waste even a minute of it to spend as much as a day apart. That’s why we decided that it would be best for him to move in with us.”

My mom’s excitement sickened me and I failed to hide it from her. I had hoped to keep a straight face for Tommy’s sake, but I couldn’t bring myself to stick to that plan. With a grunt, I planted my face in my right hand, making a pained face.

“Can’t you just, just this one time, bring yourself to be happy for me? This is a good thing. After everything I’ve been through, I deserve some happiness.” Mom’s cheery façade had traded places with a saddened one. After years of practice, I could easily see she was faking it. She was exaggerating things and intended on making me dwell in guilt. Well, she could think again.

“How about…” I began as I removed my hand and faced my mom. “How about you do what’s best for us, you know, just this one time.”

“Don’t you begin, Cassandra! It’s not because you’re eighteen that –

“Nineteen.”

“What?”

“I said, I’m nineteen. For the last four months, I’ve been nineteen. This just shows how much you care.”

“That’s not what this is about. Maybe you’re an adult, in theory, but you’re still my daughter. You’re not the parent in this house!”

“I might as well be,” I muttered under my breath. I didn’t intend for Mom to hear. I knew how that was one of the things that would set her off, ignite the explosives that lay buried under her charade. Nevertheless, she heard. Her reaction was exactly what I knew it would be. Questioning her parental authority, or her credibility of loving mother, always had, and always would result in a loud scene. She yelled a lot of things, things I never could tell if she really wanted to say them. A lot of her breakdown-vocabulary wasn’t appropriate for Tommy’s young ears. She shouted them nonetheless. Besides the verbal attack, Mom tended to crowd your personal space when she lost it. She’d come up really close, pointing her finger right at your face, and shower you with the most explicit profanities. This time wasn’t any different.

Mom leaned sideways over the table, hadn’t bothered to stand up, and had her index finger pointed at me. Her face had colored a nice shade of red, and as I absently ate my potatoes, the occasional drop of spit ended up on my cheek. I didn’t bother wiping them off. No. That would mean I actually acknowledged her outrage and I wasn’t about to give her that satisfaction. From experience, I knew that by not paying any attention to her when she had one of her episodes, it wouldn’t take too long for her to just give up and pretend nothing ever happened.