Chapter 20
Driving to my parents’ house after spending the night at Blake's apartment, I couldn't stop smiling.
For the past few days, things were exciting. Joey, Ian, Marc and Adam came over to Blake's apartment and we watched the hockey games. Didn’t matter which teams were playing, if there was a game on, we’d watch it.
Ian kept telling me how much my team sucked, that they were the worse hockey team in the league but I didn't care. My home team always had my heart, win or lose, it didn't matter to me.
I could actually start to see why Blake liked them so much. They all had their personalities and were all so different. I could tell that Marc and Ian were close. They had their 'inside jokes' that only they understood while Adam just shook his head at them. It was easy to see that Joey was close to Blake as well as Adam. The way they spoke to each other was great to see.
I found it strange, never had lived it or anything close to that, but it was still fascinating. I wished I had more friends like Blake but…
Blake was right when he said they were all very different but somehow they were all close to each other and made it work.
They told me stories of when they were in High School, how they all got together and became friends. The pranks they played on each other and on the guys who were bullying Adam.
Adam wasn’t tall like Blake and wasn’t fit like Ian, he was short and skinny. It was hard to accept that he was mistreated like he was in High School. It made me angry because it didn’t matter what size the person was, big or small, it didn’t give people the right to torment others.
With every story they told me I laughed and smiled wishing I had friends like them growing up. Lisa had more friends than me but the second they were rude or mean towards me she cut them loose. She always protected me... just like the boys did with Adam. I just wish I had more people like Lisa in my life.
I was getting closer to my parents house, going by familiar houses that I had passed many times before. I hadn't spoken to both my parents in a few days. I had a message from my mother this morning asking me to come over. I was nervous, just thinking about the last time I had seen them and the tension in the room as I told my parents and Justin about my meeting with Jesse's son while Blake was holding my hand.
I pulled into their driveway and parked my car. I hadn't called in advance and I was happily surprised when I saw Felix running out of the house coming towards me with a big smile on his face.
I opened my car door and Felix came to a halt blocking my way to get out of the car.
"Hey kiddo." I said to him.
"Hi!" He said smiling. The black empty space at the end of his smile caught my attention.
"Did you lose a tooth?!" I asked him.
His smile got bigger and he started to laugh.
"I lost it last night before bed." He said all proud of himself.
"Wow! That's great!" I told him. "Did the Tooth Fairy pass by yet?" I asked him.
He gave me a disappointed look. "The Tooth Fairy doesn't exist." He stated.
"What?! Since when?" I asked confused. When the heck did this happen?
"Since A.J. told me. I showed him my tooth yesterday and told him I was going to put it under my pillow and wait for the Tooth Fairy to give me my money. He said mom was the Tooth Fairy. Is that true?" He asked me with a concern look on his face.
I wasn't sure how to answer that.
"What did mom say?" I asked him.
"She said she was the Tooth Fairy in our family… and then dad got angry at A.J." He answered.
"Ah... Okay. Well let's go in." I said to him, hoping to dodge the next set of questions.
I got out of the car and grabbed my purse. We started to walk towards the front door when he asked, "Did you know?"
"Um..." I stalled. "Well..."
"What? Are you going to tell me that there is no Easter Bunny and no Santa Clause?" He asked me.
I stopped walking and looked at him. He looked really concerned, almost panicked and I was the last person on Earth who wanted to answer those questions.
"Why don't you ask mom or dad? I really have to pee or else I'll pee in my pants and I don't want that." I told him, lying through my teeth.
I quickly walked the rest of the way to the door and opened it. I left it open for Felix and walked towards the bathroom.
After I closed the door, I grabbed my cell phone from my purse and called the house. I didn't want to leave the bathroom if Felix was out there waiting for me to come out.
It rang a couple of times when someone finally answered the phone.
"Why are you calling from the bathroom?" Felix asked, answering the phone without saying hello.
Crap. My parents had caller ID and I knew they checked it every time someone called, but why did he have to answer?!
"Oh shoot. Sorry, I dialed the wrong number." I lied again.
"Why are you calling someone while you're sitting on the toilette? When I do that, Dad says it’s rude." He told me.
"Um... Thanks. I'll remember that." I told him and hung up.
Now this will be harder to explain, I thought to myself.
I got out of the bathroom and there was my little brother waiting for me on the other side.
"Where's mom?" I asked him but he didn't answer.
I rolled my eyes and started to look on my own.
"Mom?!" I yelled.
"In here!" I heard her yell from the back of the house. I walked toward my parents’ room with Felix following me on my heels.
I walked into my parents’ room and my mom was sitting on the floor with a bunch of pictures around her.
"What are you doing?" I asked her.
"Just going through pictures I haven't seen in a long time." She explained.
"Mom? Does the Easter Bunny and Santa exist or not?" Felix asked moving from behind me so he could see her.
"Um..." She started to say. I could tell she was trying to think fast and on her toes. I know she didn't want to 'kill' his dream of Santa and everything else but I knew the time to tell him the truth was coming fast.
"Come here... sit with me." She told him. Felix walked up to our mom and sat down beside her. "When I was little, I was exactly like you. I believed in everything... When you grow up it's harder to believe in the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and even Santa Clause. I'm not saying to stop believing because... When you grow older, it changes into something different. I still believe in the magic of Christmas, even to this day, because it's so special and you usually see the best in people." She told him while I just stood there and watched.
"But A.J. said..." He started but mom cut him off.
"Don't worry about what A.J. said... I'm telling you that one day you will feel differently about them as you grow up, but you should never give up on the magic you feel during those special moments. The way your stomach has butterflies as you wait for Christmas morning and things like that. I still have those butterflies because I love it and I get excited for those special moments. You should never give up on that magic and even though A.J. says he doesn't believe... I know he still believes in the magic of those... holidays." She told him.
"Even though he says he doesn't?" Felix asked.
"Yes, even though he says he doesn't believe. I know he does." She told him.
My baby brother smiled at my mom and she put her arm around him and kissed the side of his face. He smiled back at her but wiped her kiss off and she laughed.
When Felix left the room with a smile on his face my attention got back to my mom.
I sat down on the floor close to her and started to look at the pictures she had spread out. I had never seen these pictures before which surprised me because when I was growing up I loved to look at my mom's pictures.
"I've never seen these before. Where do they come from?" I asked her.
"Grandma gave them to me a couple days ago. They had forgotten about them. It's me when I was younger with my friends..." She explained.
There were many pictures that were torn so I just showed her one without saying a word and she understood what I meant.
"Jesse is in most of them... I tore it up so he wouldn't be there anymore. I wanted to keep the rest of the picture." She explained and I nodded. "Oh, did you want to stay for dinner? Grandma, grandpa, Justin, Nicole and the girls are coming over for dinner. I know they'd love to see you." She said.
It had been a little more than a week since my last visit with Justin. I wasn't sure if I wanted to see him or not. I was nervous to see Anne and what she would say to me about her 'friendship' with Jesse. One thing I knew, I did want to see my grandparents. They had this special way of calming everyone down and they could always make me smile and laugh. On the other side, they knew exactly how to irritate me or frustrate me.
When I was younger... When my mother and I finally got out of that room and I meet my mom's parents... they scared me. As I got to know them I grew to love them.
"I'll stay for dinner." I told my mom and she smiled.
"I'm glad. You don't need to worry about Justin. I know you are and I don't blame you for that... He spoke to your father and he does apologize for how he acted. He was angry, mostly at himself." She said and again I just nodded.
"Speaking of the last visit... Did you get any news about Jesse's mother?" I asked her and her eyes got big.
She looked at me and nodded. I felt my stomach get tighter with the anticipation of her answer.
"Your father and I went to see her." She stated.
I waited for her to continue but she didn't, she kept looking at the pictures.
"Jeez mom, you’re killing me here! What did she say?" I asked her.
"We found out where she lived... well that's incorrect. Justin found out where she and Jesse lived through Anne. Just to let you know, Anne knows the truth about us... or half of the truth." She told me.
I knew what that meant. Half the truth entitled being locked up in the room for five years and knowing what happened except leaving out the part where I shot and killed him.
I nodded for her to continue.
"We showed up at the house and rang the doorbell. When Francine opened the door she was in shock…she just froze. I guess her son didn't tell her anything because if he had, her reaction would have been different. She would have expected us to show up eventually. We stayed on the door step for awhile and just talked. I told her it was nice to see her, even though I was extremely angry. After five minutes she finally let us in. We sat down in the living room and talked."
"What did she say? What did you say? ...did she know?" I asked her. I had so many questions and she wasn't answering them fast enough for my liking.
"She didn't know about us... about what was going on. She knew something was ‘off’ but… he kept telling her that he loved her and that she was the only one he wanted. Also that he wanted to marry her... Everything most women want to hear except for him, they were all lies." She said.
"Are you sure she didn't know?" I asked her.
"Yes I'm sure. I remember when we were in this play in High School. She was a horrible actress and a worse liar. …she cried a lot when we were talking. We went during the day knowing that Jesse wouldn't be there, that he'd be in school." She answered. "She told me that they started dating not long after we got put in that room... After your father and I were suppose to get married. She always liked Jesse in High School but he never really pursued her. After we were out of the picture, he started to flirt with her and eventually they started dating." She explained.
Every time my mom talked about being in that room, she always used the word 'us', even though I didn't exist yet. She never said 'I'. I had asked her about that years ago and her answer was, ‘Maybe you weren't with me physically, beside me, but you were in my tummy. I was never alone, I always had you with me and I always had to think for both of us. When I didn't know I was pregnant, I was scared but the second I knew about you, I had something extremely important and I had to protect you and be brave for us.’
“It’s been a long time since you were in High School mom. People change.” I told her.
“True, that’s very true but you can’t change everything. Some things can’t be changed no matter how much you try.” She said.
"When she said something was ‘off’, what did she mean?" I asked.
"She told your father and me that he would leave for days at a time and wouldn't contact her. She'd try to call him but never could get a hold of him. She asked him many times if he was seeing someone else on the side...he said no. She told us that he always had the best answers for everything and eventually she stopped asking questions. She still had doubts but he always comforted her when he'd come back. She thought it was another woman and then after awhile she thought it could even be drugs. She told herself he loved her and I guess after saying that for so long, she believed it."
"Why didn't she come to see you when we left that... place?" I asked.
"When she learned the truth about what Jesse did to us, she panicked and even more so when weeks later she found out she was pregnant. She got scared to see me and what I'd say or what I'd do. She's right about that, I know I would have been... in rage. She told us as time went on she found that it was better to blend in. When the investigation was over she asked one of her friends who works’ there for a copy of the police report. That’s when she finally learned the truth, or the truth I told them. She cried the whole time we were there. She's very angry at him and at herself. Angry that she believed the lies he told her. She kept saying if she would have asked more questions maybe she could have helped us get out of there faster."
"You believe her?" I asked.
"Yes. She’s still the girl I went to school with and she's still very nice. She just got stuck with a bad guy who played her. She wished it would have been very different but she has her son who is the light of her eye."
"But if she's angry and if her son is so special to her then why in God's name did she give him his name? That makes no sense at all." I said to her.
"I asked her exactly that. Her answer was when her son, Jesse, was born she still wanted to believe the lies he had told her. She says that now she wishes he had a much better name but it's too late. She told him when he's older he should change it to what ever name he likes. She'd do it herself but now that he's older and almost legal, he can do it on his own in a couple of years."
"What was her response when you informed her about what her son was up to?" I asked.
"She was angry, disappointed... She never wanted him to find out but she also knows that wasn't realistic. She didn't like how he approached the situation and also she was angry at herself because he did ask her questions but she tried her best to push them aside. She hoped that he would do the same. She was terrified about what would happen to her son if and when he'd find out the truth about his father. About what that would mean to him and how he would look at himself. She didn't want him to associate himself to his father or think that they were the same. The meaning ‘father like son’… She was scared of that. When your father told her what her son had been doing, I know it worried her very much. She didn't raise him to use people, gather information or to hurt others. At the same time she understands, by not answering his questions she didn't give him much of a choice. She used poor judgment on that." My mom told me.
"Well at least she knows now." I stated.
"She kept apologizing... Her tears going down her face, wishing things would have turned out differently. She told your father and me that she would talk to her son and make sure that he’d get the answers he was looking for but to stop using people. She told us she'd get on top of that, also to be honest with her son and with herself, to stop pushing the past to the side and finally facing it."
"Did you get the answer you were looking for?" I asked my mom.
"Yes I did. Now I know for sure she didn't have anything to do with what happened to us, that she had been used…just like us. I don't blame her for anything now. I didn't before but I was uncertain, now I am." She said.
As I listen to her talk about her old friend and as she hoped one day they could be rekindle their friendship, I could see a different side of my mother. She seemed more relaxed and smiled more than the last few times I had seen her. Her worries were fading away and I was relieved to see that.
We both looked at the pictures that were on the floor and she explained where the pictures had been taken. Many of them were of my mother, Francine and Jesse but now that Jesse was cut from the picture it was just the two of them. Some of them were from the school yard or the mall while they were still in High School. When she'd find a picture with Jesse, she'd grab the scissors and cut him out. If he was in the middle she'd did the same but taped the photo back together without him in it. When I'd see a picture of him I showed it to my mom and she'd pass me the scissors to do the same.
She stayed in her room for awhile going through the pictures. We laughed, smiled and for once we didn't cry.
"What time is everyone coming over?" I asked her about dinner.
"They should start arriving in about an hour." She said.
"I'm surprised you’re not in the kitchen." I said chuckling.
"Well... I'm not in the mood to cook a big meal. I was thinking more pizza or... take-out." She confessed.
I was surprised, my mom rarely ordered take-out. She always did the meals, even when we were a lot of people.
"Okay." I simply said. "Oh, thanks for telling Felix that. The second I got here he ran to my car... my door wasn’t completely open yet when he started asking me all these questions. I didn't want to answer any of them but most of all I didn't know what to say." I told her.
"Don't worry, you did great. I learned to be truthful when the time is right. I was being honest the fantasies of them existing should never be taken away from them, from a child. In due time, things change and turn into something different. The magic of Christmas is the main one I always believed in, maybe not Santa but the spirit of Christmas is very important to me, doesn't matter the age."
"That I believe. You and dad always made Christmas very special here. I'm not just talking about the gifts, but mostly the atmosphere. That's something I'll always remember." I told her.
She smiled at me. "I'm so happy you feel that way baby. That means a lot to me."
I smiled back. I couldn't understand why I got so lucky to have a mom like that. She could drive me nuts but deep down, she was pretty amazing.
I helped her put the pictures away. The stories she told me of when she was younger, when she was in High School and when she met dad, fascinated me. Just looking at her talking about my dad with a big smile on her face I could tell she didn't have to think hard to remember those days. She even remembered what she was wearing on their first date and how she hated her hair because it was raining. She kept saying her hair looked like the hair of a poodle, which made me laugh.
Walking back towards the front of the house the doorbell rang.
"Wow, who ever that is... they're early." My mom stated.
"Want me to get it?" I asked her, she smiled and nodded.
I walked to the front door and opened it. There stood my uncle looking right at me but I could tell he was sad. With the way things were left last time I wasn't surprised because I felt the same way.
"I'm glad you're here." He told me. I was a bit confused so he continued. "I'd look weird bringing these to anyone else." He said bringing a box of 40 Timbits behind his back.
I laughed. "Question is, are they the right kind?" I asked him.
"Honey Dip and Chocolate Glazed." He answered.
"Good job." I told him.
"Forgive me?" He asked. I knew that was a hard question to ask, he was only thinking the best for his family and I knew I'd do the same thing in his position.
"You don't need to ask. I understand why you acted the way you did, even though you were a jerk to me." I told him. "Do you forgive me?" I asked him.
"You don't need to ask." He repeated right back to me. "I'm just happy it ended the good way instead of..." He said but he didn't have to continue his sentence for me to understand.
I moved away from the door to let him in. Once he entered the house, I looked outside but he was alone.
"Where the rest?" I asked, talking about the rest of his family.
"I left before them so I could pick-up the... 'balls'." He said with a big smile and I laughed.
"You need to let that one go." I told him.
"If it was reversed, would you?" He asked me.
I thought for a moment then shook my head while I closed the front door.
"I didn't think so." He said.
I knew I'd live for a long time with that story in his mind. It was funny but an embarrassing story.
"How's Anne?" I asked him.
"All over the map... She was angry at first, then started to understand, then went back to being angry. She asked a lot of questions about Jesse." He said.
"Which one?" I asked a bit confused.
He laughed a bit, "Both."
"Well, I'm sure she's going to have a lot more questions when she gets here." I said.
He nodded his head, "Probably."
"I'll answer all of them if she asks me and if it's okay with you." I told him.
I could hear someone coming down the hall and I knew it was my dad by the sound of his footsteps.
"That would be great. I know she has a lot of them for you and for your mom but she'll probably only ask you." He said, I smiled a bit and nodded my head.
"Hey! You're early." My dad said from behind me. "And you, I didn't know you were here." He said to me.
"I've been here for awhile." I told him.
"I didn't know, sorry honey." He said smiling at me. "How's it going, where's the rest of them?" He asked Justin.
"Give them an hour or two. It always takes them forever to get ready. I don't understand what the big deal is all about. Its shower, clothes, put your shoes on and leaves." My uncle said and my dad laughed.
"I never really had that problem. Angela is pretty quick and so is she. The boys well…doesn’t take them long either." My dad told him.
"It... their shower takes them a long time, picking out clothes is even longer, then hair and make-up. Deciding which shoes they’re going to wear takes even longer than the clothes." Justin said.
"You could put a timer for the shower. They'd be a lot quicker." My dad suggested.
"That's horrible!" I said to him.
"Nicole would kill me if I did that." Justin stated.
"I wouldn't blame her. That would be really mean." I told both of them, shaking my head in disapproval.
I would be so angry if someone did that to me. I could only imagine with shampoo in my hair or while shaving my legs that the water would just stop. That's the best way to piss a woman off.
My dad looked at my box of Timbits and laughed.
"Which one do you have in there?" My dad asked.
I opened the box and showed him. He brought his hand forward to grab one but I pulled the box back with a big smile on my face.
"Hey, share." He stated and I laughed again.
"You’re missing a few words in there." I told him, like he used to tell me when I was little.
He gave me this look of annoyance but I stood my ground until he rolled his eyes.
"May I have one, no two…please?" He asked not even looking at me while I giggled.
"Yes you may and because I love you, you can have more than two." I told him.
He gabbed one of each flavor and smiled at me. "Thank you."
I looked at my uncle and silently asked if he wanted some but he shook his head which wasn't like him.
I gave him a confused look. "I got hungry on my way over. You're missing a few in there." He said with half a smile.
My mouth dropped open, "You ate my ‘sorry’ Timbits even before apologizing?" I asked him.
"I knew you would accept it. You're a sucker for Timbits." He said to me with a smile still on his face.
I shook my head in disapproval, grabbed a Honey Glazed Timbit, shoved it in my mouth and closed the box.
"I'll go see what mom’s doing." I told both of them and left in the direction of her room bringing the box with me.
I smiled knowing that my uncle and I were back to being friends again. He knew me well. It was true I was a sucker for Timbits.
I thought about Blake. If there were any 'little doughnuts' leftover and that I was going back there tonight, I'd bring him some. Just the thought of him made me smile.
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