Fateful Encounters

Chapter 41

The day had been a nightmare.  Finally, the discharge papers had been signed and Lisa was in the car on her way home.  Home.  What an odd world.  Normally, the word implied safety, comfort, peace.  Too bad, her whole universe had been tilted on its axes and those concepts had become elusive.  After finally getting her blood pressure to cooperate, they had given her a light sedative last night.  She had succumbed to a deep, dreamless, and what now seemed restless sleep.  Waking up, her hand immediately found her stomach.  Soon there would be a noticeable swell.  She still remembered the sensation of first little butterfly wings, then the tickling of a caterpillar, and finally animated kicks and punches filling her during her previous pregnancies.  Movements, attesting to the life growing inside her would soon join the changes in her body.  A new life; a new source of the most incredible love and the most gripping pain.  There was no human emotion comparable to that a parent experiences for his or her offspring.  No responsibility weighed heavier, no joy was more uplifting. 

Funny enough, her mother seemed to have forgotten that parenthood entailed love and support.  While Priscilla had stopped her angry tirades after Doctor Lockhard had asked her to please stop stressing her daughter or be asked to leave, she still continued to make it more than clear that she once gain wondered if her daughter was suffering from terminal lunacy. 

Terminal. Yes, her love for Michael was terminal.  She had been kidding herself when she had thought she was able to shut off her feelings and keep their relationship casual.  Casual was not her thing, after all.  All or nothing was more her style.  Love without compromise: go after what or who you want and don’t let go until you feel like it.  It all had worked out really well- until Michael. 

Getting him to be committed to her the first time around had been easy as pie.  Actually, she had been surprised that he had soon become the driving force for her to leave her marriage to be with him.  Maybe, she should have let things go slower- but slow and deliberate were not words that existed for her or Michael.  She had been so sure that she had wanted to be his wife.  What she had not counted on where her feelings of guilt about having hung Danny out to dry.  Of course, her mother had been sheering those fires, incessantly reminding her that she had ripped her family apart.  And so it the course to destruction had been charted with termites destroying the palace from both the inside and the outside.

“Have you told Danny?” Priscilla finally broke her icy silence from the other side of the car.

“Not that I owe him an explanation, but yeah, I have.  Funny, enough, it seemed he already knew.”

“Maybe Michael told him.  I am sure he could not keep his mouth shut about finally having reached his ultimate goal.”

“You’re so full of shit.   I know you told him.  You had no right.”

“I am your mother.  I have every right.”

“To what?  And when does your license to fuck up everything expire?  I mean, don’t you have to trade your broom in soon?  Or better yet?  How about you focus on your life?  Or do you only live if you can fuck with me?”

“Lisa-Marie! How dare you?  All I have ever done was for your benefit.”

Lisa turned her back on her mother and chose to stare out the window before this senseless conversation continued.  There was no solution.  Her mother would not stop to meddle.  It was up to her to stop throwing fuel into the engine of their senseless tug of war.