Drumbeats into My Heart

51. Seth Gets a Talk

The music isn't helping. I crank up the volume of my old MP3 player, swaddling my brain in the thumping beats of Tiësto, trying to drown out the last three terrible hours.

In an act of utter stupidity, I'd lost Jordi and subsequently relapsed back into a pathetic seven-year-old version of myself.

I shove the pillow off my bed and press my head back against the wall, drawing my knees up.

I should have said no to the birthday party. It was a stupid idea. I hate parties, and I don't have many people to invite anyway. But no, my mother had insisted. I don't know if she's trying to make up for something or what, but I ultimately caved to her ideas like I always do. It's just easier than arguing with her.

My eyes pop open when I feel the bed shift with the weight of another person.

It's Dad. He says something I can't hear.

I pause the music and remove the earbuds. "Sorry Dad, what?"

"I said I knocked, but I guess you didn't hear me."

I shake my head.

Receiving no other reply, he presses on. "I've gotta say, I was pretty surprised when Chuck and I came inside to find the house empty."

I fiddle with the earbuds in my hands.

He exhales. "Look, I spoke to your mother."

I sniff and glance away, wondering what gems of infinite wisdom she's bestowed this time.

"She was crying."

My head jerks up in surprise. Mom is never weak. She's, like, allergic to it.

"I know you find it hard to believe, but your mother..." Dad scoots back so he's no longer perched on the edge of the bed. "She regrets what she did."

My forehead wrinkles. "You're right. That is hard to believe."

"It's true."

I toss my earbuds aside and lean forward. "What exactly does she regret? For forcing this stupid birthday party on me? Or for controlling every aspect of my life since birth?"

He sucks in a slow breath through his nose, pressing his lips together. He looks tired. "Look, I know life with your mom can be... difficult."

I snort at the understatement and look away again.

"But ever since that day..."

My gaze snaps back to him, because I immediately understand which day he's talking about.

Dad licks his lips and glances at the closed door. "After that incident, she knew she had to change. She took anger management classes."

"She did?" My brows shoot up. "She never said anything."

"She's a proud woman. There's a lot you don't know." He traces a pattern on the blanket, taking his time, as if weighing his words. "I've seen the way you look at me after your mom and I argue." He halts his pattern-tracing. "You wonder why we're still together."

I'm quick to lie. "No, Dad, I never—"

He stops me with a wave of his hand. "I have to admit, once in a while—a long, far-in-between while—I've wondered the same thing." When I don't comment, he continues, retracing the pattern on the blanket. "We've been through a lot, your mother and I. Neither of us are great at talking, but we've learned to talk to each other." He pauses to make sure I'm still listening and licks his lips again. "When we're alone, when there's no chance of the world seeing us, she opens up, and something in me just responds to that, y'know? We connect."

I stare at him, hardly believing my father is talking to me so candidly, much less about this.

"We get each other," he continues. "Even when we're mad, we get it. Unfortunately, we never learned how to connect this way with you."

I clear my throat and retrieve the earbuds to fiddle with them.

"I mean it." Dad scoots closer and places a hand on my foot. "I kept thinking we had time to get it right, to talk to you the way we talk to each other, but..." He shakes his head, eyes scanning the room until they fall upon the rumpled wall calendar. "Time got away from us."

Time got away from them. "For seventeen years?"

He emits a world-weary sigh, dragging a hand over his face. "I started working extra shifts, and I thought your mom would—well, let's just say it's harder for her to open up than it is for me. It takes a certain... approach, to get past your mom's defenses. That's what the therapist says, anyway."

"You saw a therapist, too?"

"Marriage counselor, before you were born."

It takes me a minute to digest this information. Is Mom so unapproachable because she's defensive? I recall what my aunt had told me at the party about her. "Aunt Stacy said something about Mom taking the brunt of the way their mother treated them." I recall hazy memories of a cold grandmother who lectured me on manners and gave me perfunctory pecks on the cheek. "Was grandma the same way? Was she, you know, tough to get along with? She never visited much."

Dad strokes his mustache. "I suspect so. She never did like me. I wasn't good enough for her daughter. Sound familiar?"

I wrap a hand around my beat-up MP3 player, which has suffered through years of being dropped, misplaced, found, and then dropped again. I can't picture my mother as a victim. She's so strong-willed and aggressive. She couldn't possibly have been persecuted by anyone. She was the persecutor.

Right?

"I don't know," I mumble, tightening my fist around the player.

"It's a lot to think about, I know," Dad says as he stands. "I'll give you some space." He approaches the door and pauses, hand on the knob. "I hope you'll give us a chance to make it up to you."

Make it up to me? What does that even mean? Is Mom going to be nicer to me? Or is there another disastrous, unwanted party on the horizon?

The door clicks shut behind my father's exit, leaving me alone with my ponderings. More questions rise up, and I have no idea how to answer any of them. I don't want to feel sympathy for my mom, but I kind of do. And if Mom is perpetuating a cycle that she endured when she was a kid, does that mean I'm going to do the same?

The thought sends dread up my spine in the form of a shiver. I don't want to be that person.

I shake off the feeling and stuff the earbuds back into place. I scroll through the player until I reach "Perception (Vocal Mix)" by Cass and Slide and start the song with a determined poke. It's a song that bolsters me when I'm feeling lost.

A couple minutes into the rhythmic beats, my eyes drift shut, and I float away with the music.

Away from the confused feelings.

It's hard to fairly judge someone when you don't have all the information. You can still vote though.