Crash Test Dummy

Chapter 2

"Wrong and wrong. You need to rehydrate, so you get lots of water. The Virgin Mary is laced with aspirin and some medicinal herbs. Drink everything and go back to bed. When you can sit up without your head feeling like someone's taking a sledge hammer to it, we'll talk." Mom looked pointedly in my direction. "I swapped shifts with a colleague, so I won't be going to work today. I'll be here when you get up, whatever time that is."

I picked up the tomato juice and took a sip. My stomach rolled in protest. I set it down quickly and picked up the glass of water. It went down more smoothly so I drank the whole thing without stopping.

"Your stomach is not going to want the tomato juice. You're going to have to chug it. Just take a deep breath and do it." She picked up my water glass. "I'll just refill this so you can have a liquid chaser that won't cause nausea."

"I guess you've had experience." I  cast an inquisitive look her way. "I thought you were always a moderate wine drinker."

"I am," she said dryly. "But I'm a nurse who was married to a guy who drank too much. That's where I get my experience."

I didn't say anything else. I just picked up the glass and chugged the Virgin Mary. I managed to get the whole thing down. Then I grabbed the glass of water and drank half of it in a couple of gulps. Everything stayed put. I stood up, "Night." As I headed out, I noticed that she had not touched the plate of food on her side of the table. I heard the whine of the disposal as I went up the stairs. I guess she didn't have a stomach for bacon either.

As I lay in bed, I tried unsuccessfully to reconcile the lying witch with the concerned Mom who made me a Virgin Mary to help with my first ever hangover. I'm not sure what herbs Mom put in the juice, but I was soon asleep. When I woke several hours later, the jack hammer in my head had been downgraded to a dull ache. My appetite had returned. I could smell something baking; that's probably what woke me.

I sat up and realized that I had gone to bed fully dressed. I picked up the card from Dad where I had dropped in on the floor the night before. The picture still smiled at me, but there was no letter. I frantically searched, throwing covers and shoes every which way in my haste, but no letter surfaced. Had I left it downstairs? I didn't think so. I clearly remembered having it in my hand when I waved the whole thing at my Mom. "Mom," I thought bitterly, "she came in and took it while I was asleep, so she would have ammunition to refute what Dad said. She would call them the lies of a hopeless addict. I knew how she thought."

Freshly enraged, I bounded down the stairs and into the kitchen. "What did you do with it?" I demanded.

Mom was removing something from the oven. She placed it carefully on the butcher block. "Do with what?" she asked.

"My letter from Dad," I said.

"Isn't that it you have in your hand?" She gestured towards the card I held.

"You know it isn't. There was a letter, too. You took it last night while I was out cold."

Mom sighed. "Come with me, Wayne." She led me into the den. Pointing at a piece of paper covered with tiny writing lying by the chair I had tripped over, she asked, "Is that what you're looking for? You probably dropped it last night in your attempt to make a grand exit."

"Yup," I mumbled. But I wasn't letting her off the hook that easily. "I guess you read it for ammo and then put it there for me to find. With your experience, you knew parts of last night would be hazy today."

"I was too busy to worry about whatever your Dad wrote." Mom waved her hand to include the room.

For the first time, I actually saw the room. The graffiti was gone. The walls and mirror and cabinet doors were pristine, as though my crazed graffiti party had never happened. The only sign that anything had occurred in that room the night before was the tell-tale letter and the empty liquor cabinet. Evidently Mom had decided it was prudent to remove all future temptation.

I snatched the letter off the floor. "Why'd you do it?" I brandished the epistle on the general direction of the freshly scrubbed walls. "Too afraid to face what you've become? It must have taken you half the night. I figured you'd make cleanup part of my penance."

"You'll do enough penance." Her mouth was set in a grim line. "Sit down, we need to talk."

I considered storming out of the room, but the look in her eyes stopped me. She had that look down pat. It said, "behave or regret it," without the need for words. I had obeyed those eyes for years and was afraid to stop now. I sat on the edge of a chair, the one closest to the door.

Mom, pulled another chair over so that she was positioned between me and escape. I guess she was determined to have it out whether or not I wanted to cooperate.

She took the bull by the horns. "What did your father tell you?"

"Like you don't know."

"Wayne," she signed. "I told you I didn't read it. I haven't lied to you before; I'm not going to start now."

"Haven't lied to me!" Incredulity had to leak from every pore in my body. "You've lied to me for six years. Here, let me read it to you: 'I imagine this will simply be returned to me unopened like every other letter I have sent you over the last six years.'" I fumbled with the letter. "And this, 'If you come visit me, I'll give you the six years of letters and cards I keep in my locker. They're all stamped return to sender and are unopened.'" I looked her in the eye. "You let me think my father didn't care about me and that was a lie."

"I never told you he didn't care," Mom had the decency to look ashamed. "I just didn't tell you about the letters. At the most that's a sin of omission, not an outright lie."

"You're playing word games, Mom, just like President Clinton – 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman.' Come on, Mom. Every year on my birthday or at Christmas I would say, 'Maybe I'll get a card from Dad.' And you'd say, 'I wouldn't get my hopes up.'"

"That wasn't a lie, Wayne." Tears were running down her face. "I was just trying to protect you."

"Protect me from what? A man who loves me? He's my father, Mom. He may not be your husband but he's still my father. You had no right to keep me from getting to know him." I thrust the picture at her. "Your fear turned you into a wicked mother, not a step-mother, a biological mother. Every time I smiled at you, you saw him. You didn't believe in me. You were so afraid I might become him that you denied me my rights as his son."

"Wayne, try to see things from my perspective." Mom's eyes pleaded for some scrap of understanding. "The only thing he had to offer was pain."

"Says you." I ignored her eyes and offered only condemnation. "I'm old enough now to make that decision for myself. You can't shield me anymore. Your self-imposed job as guardian angel is over. I dismiss you. I'm going to go see him. You can't stop me; I'll find a way. If you try to stop me, I'll run away from home, and I'll never write to you. You'll never see me again."