everchanging

3

The fights began when Mom returned a day later. She had gone down to visit a friend. I already had an idea of who that friend could be and Dad was starting to clue in on it, too. But I knew he couldn't picture who it was. 

The fights began in the morning. They were fighting when I left the house. When I came back from the beach, my pockets full of broken, misshapen shells, they were still going at it, screaming horrible curses in each other faces. 

When I passed the neighbors, they stared at me with sympathetic faces. I saw myself in their eyes, some poor girl with broken parents.

It never ended, the stream of curses and immature insults.

I hated it. I spent my time wasting away in my room, a pillow clamped over my head while I was trying to listen to a CD. I hated that Dad drank. I hated how mad he got, how emotional he got. He would scream at Mom, call her a bitch, stomp around the house like a tyrant.  Then he cry at her, blame her endlessly. He was always tired now. He never wrote, just stared at the computer screen as if he was typing words in his head. I hated how Mom snuck away, dancing around all our problems instead of addressing them head on. She ignored the laundry, ignored the dirtiness. She left when Dad was asleep and came back minutes before he woke up, as if she knew his body clock.

Mom cried at night, soft sobs that I could hear through the wall. She only cried when he was asleep. 

One night, I got tired of the crying. It made my heart ache. I left my room and climbed into my mother's bed, putting my arms around her. I could feel the bones under her shirt. She had lost weight. I wondered what was really going on. "Oh, Caroline, you're growing up," she said into her pillow. "I'm sorry. We just aren't good together."

"Why?" I whispered into her back. "Why is it falling apart so fast?"

"Because," she said softly. "Because I have found a path of my own." 

I didn't know what it meant. I didn't know the root of their issues, what they were truly angry about. I thought about things under the surface, tectonic plates crashing into each other. 

What did I know about relationships? I knew that some people could get tired of each other. Did break ups always end in screaming and yelling? What about marriage? I knew Mom and Dad were married. What would happen to the rings? 

I felt under the blanket for Mom's hand. She wasn't wearing it. 

"Will it be fine?" I tried my best to keep my voice from shaking. 

"Yes, it will be fine," Mom said, her voice sleepy. "I need you, Caroline." 

"I need you too," I said, but she had already fallen asleep. 

Minutes later I fell asleep holding my mother, inhaling in her sweet perfume that never seemed to leave.

-

I heard the worst arguments at night, when I was supposed to be asleep. "You're just going to get up and leave like this?" Dad was furious. "We aren't going to figure this out?"

"There isn't anything to figure out," Mom said softly. "I've already made my decision."

There was quiet back and forth mumbling for a while until his voice started to rise. "And go where? You won't last a day there. God only knows the relationship you have with your mother." The bedroom door slammed so hard I thought it was going to break into little pieces. The rest of the night was quiet.

I lay there, staring at the ceiling, wishing a asteroid would shoot out of the sky and distract us all.