Where Is The Edge

Chapter 4

It was a picture of Peter Westerholt. He was holding me, posing by the Christmas tree. It seemed like I wasn't older than four years, we were both wearing matching ugly sweaters. What the fuck was he doing there? No, he couldn't be. My mom had told me my dad died in an accident, and Peter had been with his wife for almost two decades, his daughter was older than me, it wasn't possible. Maybe he was a family friend, and he for some reason isolated himself and became the person he was.

I took the photo out of the album, and ran to where my mother was, she was already snoring on the couch but this time, I didn't care, I needed an explanation.

I moved her more abruptly than she liked.

"What the fuck is this?" I asked her once she woke up, she opened her eyes and snatched the photograph from me.

"What did I tell you about searching my stuff?" She demanded.

"That's it? You're not going to tell me? I deserve to know why the man who makes your life miserable is carrying me in this picture," I was raising my voice more than I should.

"I'll explain tomorrow, I promise. I'm tired..."

"No! You're going to tell me right now, you don't have time to lie or at least to lie properly, damn it," tears started to take over my face. I was so angry, it couldn't be possible that we ever had anything to do with him.

"Peter and I were boyfriend and girlfriend, when he separated with his wife. We had you and he was about to arrange the divorce, nevertheless he left us when he decided to go back to her instead," she explained, she didn't even try to be tactful, but I was partly grateful, because it was better the raw truth than a sweet lie.

"And how did you end up working for him?" I questioned this time, I could somewhat understand that she had lied to me all my life and apparently didn't even plan to talk about it, I could understand that I was the product of a small romance between a separated man and a single woman, however, I couldn't understand how she would go out of her way for hours working for him, for my father, and that he wouldn't have a little consideration for her.

"When I was fired from my previous job, you know how many jobs I looked for," she explained, "in all those places, they refused to hire me when I told them I was a single mother," her look was reflecting disappointment, she probably never imagined we would have this conversation, and in this way. I could imagine her in her nineties, on her deathbed, confessing all this to me, where I could not get angry because she was weak and old.

Since I was two years old, my mother had been working as a salesperson in an appliance shop, but unfortunately that business closed down two years ago when the owner was forced to pay off so many debts that he was left with absolutely nothing, and many people were affected by this and had to leave their jobs. Since then, she spent about a month applying for every job in every corner of Los Angeles, every day without fail, but apparently, people were so nosy that they cared so much about her personal life. She lied to me at the time, telling me that everywhere she applied she was rejected for "lack of experience" and other excuses that I can't remember, and it wasn't until today that I learned that perhaps most of the job rejections were because she was a single mother.

During that month, I got the job at the pharmacy, which I still have to this day, stopped my studies and worked twelve to even sixteen hours, I depended a lot on coffee and adrenaline pills that I had to beg my boss to let me use, which were not prescribed for anyone and were only sold if the customers presented a valid prescription. I got depressed, I got sick, I had a terrible time, and honestly, I would go through it again and again, because what motivated me was to give my mother a little of what she had given me all my life.