Lily looked around at the room that was once hers. It was like a time warp back to her teenage years. Not a thing had changed. The walls were still covered in the same pastel pink wallpaper with little lavender flowers, only it was faded now and starting to peel in some areas. There were two twin beds with wrought iron frames: one for her sister and one for her. The beds sat on either side of a window set in the middle of the room. Each bed had it's own bedside table filled with items which epitomized the people they had been at that time in their lives. On Lily's sat a Discman, some headphones and a journal. This had been her daily escape: listening to music and writing about her dreams for what she thought was going to be her fabulous future. At one point she started hiding the journal from her sister, but Violet always found it. So eventually she just gave up and left it on the table. She told herself that she didn't care what Violet thought about what was written in the journal, but she knew now that that wasn't true. She cared more about her sister's opinion than she wanted to admit. She shuddered to think of what was written in there, all types of things that her father should never know. She wondered if he had ever read it over the years. She ran her finger along the top of the book and a thick film of dust lifted off of the diary, answering her question. He didn't want to read the things in there any more than she wanted to relive them. If there was one thing he was good at, it was living in denial and pretending like everything was okay.
She searched through the other items on the small wicker table. There was a picture of her and her high school boyfriend at the homecoming dance. She couldn't help but chuckle aloud at the dress she wore. The light blue fabric barely made it to her mid-thigh region and it was paired with her favorite brown leather cowboy boots. Like most of the outfits she had worn back then, the dress was far too short, but bless her father's heart, he never told her what to wear. It may have been that he was too embarrassed to have yet another awkward conversation with his daughter, at least that's how it had always seemed to Lily. Her father's attempts at being the disciplinarian were comical. It was as if he had bought a book on parenting 101 written in the 1970's and was reading from a script on how to handle teenage girls. It could have also been that he feared her backlash. Lily had always been outspoken, at least that's what she thought, although she realized now that her outspokenness may have just been her flat out being a pain in the ass. But whatever the reason, and whether or not he felt the dress was appropriate, her father always told her she looked beautiful. Looking back, she realized that it was he who had instilled confidence in her without ever really trying, simply by letting her be herself and loving her for who she was, not who he wanted her to be. She wondered if they taught that in parenting 101 circa 1970. She doubted it.
Lily lifted the lid of her jewelry box and rummaged through the items. One item in particular caught her eye. She picked it up and slid it on her wrist. It was a charm bracelet with just two charms. The rest of the bracelet was meant to be filled with charms of things that she and the gift giver could experience together, but she left it behind in this town, just like she did so many things, including the boy who gave her the bracelet. She gently rubbed one of the charms and felt tears starting to fill her eyes. Lily had tried for so long to forget it had happened. She quickly removed the bracelet and stuffed it back in the jewelry box, closing the lid on that dark time in her life and stuffing the emotions deep down inside like she always did.
Her sister's table told a different story. A large stack of books sat on one side. She picked one up and flipped through it. There were words and sentences that were highlighted and underlined. She rolled her eyes at the mess on the page. It was so Violet. She would read the same novels over and over again trying to find some sort of deep meaning in their words that could apply to her life. Lily realized now that it was Violet's escape from this place, just as music had been for her, but her sister's pretentiousness had annoyed her at the time. Violet was brilliant and she knew it. She could have been a brain surgeon or a scientist if she had desired. She received a full ride scholarship to Yale, but for some reason, unbeknownst to Lily, she decided to stay in this Podunk town. In some ways, Lily lost a small amount of respect for her sister when she stayed. It made her realize that maybe Violet wasn't as smart as Lily had always thought she was.
Lily reached for the small teddy bear resting against the lamp. It was old and raggedy. Lily had told Violet many times to throw it away but it had sentimental value. Lily never understood why Violet wanted to keep it after what happened. It had been the source of one of their many screaming matches over the years. Other than the bear and a couple books, her sister's table was clear. She was always the organized one. Clutter drove Violet almost as crazy as Lily did.
Lily made her way back to her side of the room and sat down on the bed. She gently bounced up and down. The mattress squeaked just as it used to. She blushed thinking of how she used to sneak her boyfriend through the window into her room. The bed squeaked as they kissed under the sheets and she was terrified that her father might hear them. Like most people in Oakley, her father kept many guns in the house. "Just common country sense." But to her father's dismay, it did little to scare the boys away. There was nothing rational about the hormones of teenage boys. They were willing to risk an encounter with her angry gun-wielding father if it meant the possibility of getting some.
"Supper's almost ready," she heard her father yell from down the hall. It startled her just as it used to when she was a teen. He had a habit a staying a certain distance away from his daughters' bedroom door. It was almost as if he didn't want to know what was going on in there when they were growing up and apparently old habits die hard. If he had known what was happening he'd have had to address it which was his least favorite thing to do. He always felt he had no business raising two girls, but he wasn't left with much of a choice. What did he know about being an adolescent girl? There were just some things that girls needed a mother for, but without one around, he developed his own style of parenting in which he turned a blind eye and hoped for the best. He tried in little ways to address issues that he knew every teen faced. On the kitchen table, he would lay out articles from the newspaper about drug abuse or bullying for the girls to read during breakfast. There was never any discussion, which suited Lily just fine. She had as little desire to discuss the topics as her father did to educate her about them. Lily couldn't help but shake her head and laugh when she remembered her father's attempt at sex ed. He had stumbled upon a condom wrapper under her bed on the very rare occasion that he had entered her room. He was looking for a stack of old clothes the girls said they had gathered to give to the neighbors' kids. The husband had been struggling since he lost his job and Oakley was the kind of small town community where neighbors helped one another in their time of need. After he discovered the wrapper, he took Lily down to the river behind their house. They sat next to one another just staring out at the water. She had no idea what her father was going to say, but that was nothing new. Lily was used to his long silences, but even this moment shocked her. She looked down at the wrapper that he sat on the grass in between them. Her face immediately turned flush. Never in a million years could she imagine a more awkward scenario.
"We're putting you on birth control," he said without even looking at her. His steely stare never left the water except for when he turned and spit the juice from his chewing tobacco into his spittoon. Lily was embarrassed, but relieved. At least he hadn't tried to push the abstinence route like many of her friends' parents. Her father might not know anything about raising girls, but he knew enough about teens to know that telling them they can't do something is a sure fire way to get them to want to do it. The next day he had the neighbor drive Lily to the city and take her to Planned Parenthood. He gave his neighbor a pile full of used clothes in exchange for her dealing with Lily's "lady issue." Lily hadn't thought about that day in years. It was just one of many memories she had tried to forget.
Lily's father cleared his throat.
"Have you got everything you need?" He said from the other side of the doorway.
"Yes, I'm fine. I'll be out in a minute."
She changed into some jeans and a tank top and met her father at the small wood kitchen table which sat in the center of the room. She ran her fingers over the claw marks in the wood from when Duke was a puppy and was learning not to jump.
Her father placed a black plastic container in front of her and removed the plastic covering. Lily couldn't remember the last time she had eaten a microwavable meal.
"Jesus daddy, is this what you eat every night?" She asked more in concern than disgust, although she felt both. This meal definitely wouldn't fit with any sort of OC diet plan.
"Not every night," he said sensing her judgement. "Your sister still makes me dinner quite often. She usually stops by on Tuesday mornings and drops off the groceries or meals for the week.
"So we'll be seeing her tomorrow then?" Lily pushed the macaroni and congealed cheese around with her fork, trying to pretend like she didn't care, but in truth, she was unsure of how she would feel about the answer to that question. She wasn't quite ready to see Violet just yet.
"Well I'd like to hope she'd take a week off, what with everything she's been through of late, but knowing your sister, she won't. Taking care of others is what keeps her going. I don't think she'd know what to do with herself otherwise."
Lily continued to push the macaroni and cheese around the black plastic container with her fork and poked the peas one by one trying to put off eating the meal for as long as possible. Her father pushed a basket filled with a few slices of Wonder bread toward her.
"Here. They're called carbs," he said jokingly.
She smiled. For all her father's faults and stern demeanor, he had a way of teasing her and making her smile that no other man could do. Well, that wasn't true. There was one other man who had been able to do that, but she was pretty sure he never wanted to see her again.
"I know what carbs are daddy," she said with attitude. He raised his eyebrow in disbelief, so Lily grabbed a slice and took a big bite trying to prove her point. She hadn't had Wonder bread, or carbs for that matter, in years, but she figured, why not? When in hell...er...Rome. It tasted incredible and her father's smirk was the only thing that stopped her from devouring the entire basketful.
"Wouldn't have guessed it by how thin you look these days."
"It's the divorce diet," Lily quipped. She was always good at using humor to deflect her pain. "Stress is sliming. Didn't you hear? It's the new black." Lily missed their sarcasm and back and forth banter. Richard never understood her humor. But her father frowned at her comments and she immediately felt bad for bringing up the divorce. She got the feeling he was disappointed in her in some way. So she took another slice of bread hoping to cheer him up. A small smile grazed his lips.
"Well if you're gonna do it, do it right." He pushed a large tub of margarine towards her side of the table.
"Bottoms up!" She joked as she raised her knife into the air and then dipped it into the margarine, spreading on a nice thick layer just like he used to do for her when she was a little girl.
"There ya go, beanpole," he said, giving her a wink.
Beanpole was his nickname for Lily when she was growing up, well, one of many nicknames. It seemed like it didn't matter what she ate, she still somehow remained a size 2. It was one of the many things in her youth that she took for granted. She wasn't sure of the exact day that her metabolism changed, but she knew it happened sometime when she entered her thirties. She noticed it first in her pants which she had initially blown off as being shrunk in the wash. But she realized that didn't make sense when every single pair seemed to fit more snuggly. Her husband suggested liposuction, but even through her unrealistic Orange-County-induced-self-obsession, she knew that lipo was idiotic for someone who was a size six. A line had to be drawn somewhere.
"So do you spend a lot of dinners alone," Lily pried.
He knew what she was doing. She wanted to know if he was dating. The topic always made him uncomfortable and he always had the same answer.
"You know your mom was the only girl for me," he said, almost offended that she had inquired. Lily felt bad immediatey, as she always did. Most parents sought out the approval of their children to date, but not her father. He was content in his home doing the same routine that he had for years. That was part of the reason he had lost her mother to begin with.
"Well daddy, that was delicious," she said rising from the table and trying to change the subject.
He gave her a disbelieving stare.
"I'm pretty exhausted. I think I might take a shower and unwind. It's been a long day."
He nodded and didn't try to push for her to hang out with him. Lily offered to help her father with the dishes but she realized there wasn't really anything to wash, pretty much everything could be thrown away. So she excused herself and headed to her room. It wasn't a shower though that she was craving but something else she remembered she had hidden in her dresser. She rummaged through the bottom drawer until she heard the sound of crinkling plastic. "Jackpot!" She said aloud. It was an old pack of Virginia Slims. She ran a finger down the top of the box collecting the dust on the tip of her finger. They were old, ancient really, but it was worth a shot. She found the lighter right where she had left it, hidden in a shoe box under her bed. She opened the window and flung her legs out over the edge. This was the spot where she would often smoke after her father had gone to bed. She was almost positive he knew, especially after one morning, her junior year, when the breakfast reading topic involved the dangers of smoking cigarettes, but he never said anything. Violet threatened several times to tell their father, but she never did. She just huffed and puffed and put her pillow over her head in annoyance over her sister's dirty habit. It wasn't like it was a regular thing. Just something she did every now and then to take the edge off and if there was ever an edge that needed taking off, it was now.
She breathed in the cool crisp mountain air and felt bad for just one minute at the thought of polluting it with her cigarette. But that thought was quickly silenced by the sweet tang of nicotine of her lips. She hadn't smoked in years, not because of the health risk, but because of the wrinkle risk, yet as she inhaled the sweet tasting smoke she wondered why she'd ever stopped. She watched her legs dangle in the air and remembered how grown up she felt when she had done this in her younger years. There was a thrill about doing something under the legal age that made young people feel like they knew it all, like they were somehow more mature than any young person who had come before them. She remembered how she thought she knew everything about life, which made her another cliché: the thirty-something divorcée who wanted to tell her teenage self that she had no idea what real life was like.
Lily blew rings of smoke which wafted up above her and dissipated into the air. It was the summer of '99 when she learned how to turn the smoke into curly cues and donut shaped rings. For whatever reason, when she first started smoking, she had never had been able to blow it properly out of her mouth. It somehow always blasted through her nostrils, which most people thought she did on purpose. She didn't mind. It made her look more experienced than the girls that were choking and coughing from the smoke.
The stars were beginning to peak out from beneath the blanket of darkness. She forgot how dark it got in these parts without the city lights and pollution to light up the sky. It had made Oakley feel so remote and made her feel so alone in her younger years. But in this moment, she began to appreciate the stillness. The only problem with the stillness though was that it left her alone with her thoughts which she was desperately trying to avoid these days. She took one last long drag and then snubbed the cigarette out on the side of the house. Instinctively, she reached for her pocket and the plastic bag she used to collect the butts in to throw away later but then realized that she no longer had to hide her habit. Instead, she flicked the butt onto the ground. A part of her felt that she was disrespecting her father's home but a part of her felt a huge sense of relief in the fact that she could do whatever she wanted and not get in trouble for it now. This might be her father's home, but she was an adult, and she no longer had to abide by his rules, not that he had done much to enforce them in the first place. It often seemed she was obeying her sister more than her father. It was one of the reasons she had resented Violet so much; she was always the voice of reason, trying to put a stop to Lily's foolish ways.
Lily climbed back inside and left the window open a crack for fresh air. She crawled into the creaky old bed and pulled the comforter up around her neck. It was surprising how quickly she fell asleep in this place that may have been called home, but felt so far from it.