The MakeUp Artist Internship

Our First Family Outing

I heard them last night. They were not quiet at all, but I had some headphones in but still I heard them.  They were animalistic.  I took it as my mom said yes.   I walk out of the suite.   I look at my mom,   She's lying next to him, covered up and his arm is around her.   He's looking at the ceiling.   "Did you have a cigarette, mom?"  She told me no.    I told her, "It's a gorgeous ring."  She asked me if I knew.  I told her yes.  Johnny said, "I should have done this years ago, but what matters is that I found you and you played the hugest role in all of this, Jade."   "I just wanted to know where I came from.  I got a lot more than I bargained for."  They discussed the "plan".   The bus had all of Johnny's gear and we were going to begin the drive to Nashville and then I was taking the car home on Thursday morning.  Mom was heading to Cincinnati, Kentucky, and Chicago, and he was coming home with her.  I was staying with Rosie until they got home. 

Mom grabs us some McDonald's and we eat breakfast on the way to the hotel.  I get my own room there.   I asked my mom when we were in the bathroom, "When you screamed 'Oh Johnny' and there was a thud, what was that?"  She said., "He was really teasing me."   When we got on the road, I read.  I was into late 2005 when my mom was trying to date that firefighter from across the state.   "He is from Monticello Indiana.  I could start over and the town is small, beautiful, idyllic..   Plus,  I don't think Rob will miss me.   Rob seems to smell like pussy when he comes home..." This was the beginning of the end.   There was an inmate who was in on drug charges, and as supplying a few of the officers as well as a few prisoners.   Lisa DelPlante.  It made big news and my dad, as he said, "was a stud" at the jail.  I guess when she met with her lawyer, he'd bring her down early and have his way with her.  He told my mom he did it because she was "cold and frigid".   Johnny laughed at that last night.   I heard him say, "He told me you were frigid."  I go back to reading.   "Somewhere.  I think of summer nights in Monticello and not in the old house, old neighborhood.  It's getting worse as the homes are getting older and more affordable for some.   I hate it here. Our new neighbors have trashed the yard with every tacky concrete thing possible."       Then in October he was put on leave for investigation.   I remember the day he was sent home.   We were eating dinner.  Mom made a really good pot roast.  All of a sudden, he starts crying.   He did that.   See, Rob was mentally unstable.   Mom asked what was the matter and he said, "I am under investigation for something really stupid.  It'll clear up."  Sadly, it didn't and mom had to work twice as hard as dad lost his job by November.  So, mom did makeup by day, worked the closing shift at Pizza Tyme on Saturdays and Sundays.   On Sundays she worked the lunch buffet AND went back to close.  I would hear them argue about how she "had to" do this.   "I am. not working and we have bills to pay.  We can't just skate by. I did that for years," he told her.   "I just want to be home with my girls. I was to go to the sports club and see Santa.  He'd go there, get drunk, and the girls would be upset.  He did just that.

"I am home.  Well until five.  I am fucking tired as I had these women come in five til close and ordered the salad bar.  Fucking rich bitches.  Oh, and I am peddling expensive things on eBay so we can be in the black, so I cam get groceries.   I guess what Rob did was pretty major and was going to come out in the press.  I am so scared, but they scheduled me an evening shift so I have to go serve some pizza.  God, I hate my job."  I watched Hannah as he drank.   Then he admitted what he did on a Thursday night.  "I came home at six.  I had fried chicken and I was hoping or some normalcy.   Then we went to bed.  We did it and then he said, 'I want you to know I love you'.  I told him I loved him as that was what was expected.  Then he said, 'Um, I got fired because I had sex with an inmate.   You know, you have just become so engrossed with the kids, your schooling, and your job.   I mean she was so pretty....   I mean, I don't mean it that way, but she was pretty and I was so tempted.   I am so sorry.'   Then I just sobbed and sobbed.  I threw this things in the basement and locked the door.   The girls are crying.   Well, Hannah is.   Jade is stoic.  Do I stay?   Who would date me now?"  I remember that night.   Mom was wailing and crying and at that moment I said to myself, "She deserved more."

    Mom stays, but she is miserable.   We got through Christmas.   "I guess my grandma told my mom I looked terrible.  It I have been working forty at the salon, twenty at the pizza place, and selling things on eBay.  I don't have much time.  I am beginning to hate  Wednesdays.  Veryle keeps them late and I am, so very grateful.   Tina is good to me, too,  she keeps them overnight on the weekends.  We are leading separate lives.  I know I need to leave but who wants a broke woman who is poor, had a boyfriend, and whose husband committed a horrible crime, whose husband uses drugs.  It is all going to come out and I am going to be so humiliated."   I did enjoy supper at Veryle's.  Goulash, sketty, hot dogs.  She loved us.   She didn't have a lot of money but she loved us.  She let us hold the newts and we read books until mom got home.   Then mom went to bed to get up again.  It was work all day, work at Pizza Tyme, or go to school.  This was when my mom began to gain weight. 

      "Well the girls weren't back to school and I tried to find a new winter coat.   NONE of them fit.  Someone told me it wa my boobs, but no.  It's my boobs, my face,  my body. I am a total undesirable. My
firefighter dates a lot of women, women that are tiny blonde and BEAUTIFUL. There's a guy who comes to the salon that is interested, but I am just not interested in him. I don't even like touching him, and I have to remind myself that I am helping him look better. Plus he's married.... I just don't want to dare anyone who is attracted to me and it seems the type I want is so far away and Johnny was just fluke. I was something that was a close second o him beating off, which I caught Rob doing. I was actually relieved he got off without me and wasting my time. Sometimes I think, had I married Johnny, would I be like this?"

I pause and look at her. She is sitting in the front seat of an suv crossover, holding hands with the Johnny Depp as she heads down the highway. I tell Sadie that my mom is engaged. She says, "see, I told you." I ask what she is doing. "I took the day off. Went to church and got a weird message." I asked if she was okay. She said, "Fine, just got a message I really did not want." She didn't ask how I was doing and that was becoming more and more commonplace. "She made love like a porn star," I quipped. She wrote back, "This will be a ,one ass weekend for her. She will be rubbed raw in a good way." I laugh.

"What's so funny?" Johnny asked.
"Sadie sent me something funny,"
"Yeah. You gals still together?" Mom asked

"We are working on things. I am worrying about not being desperate and asking for her space."
"You have to ask for that? That isn't love," my mom said.
"If she loved you, she would let you vent. She would care enough about that," Johnny added.

I think I am a trophy to her, as Sophie is kind of fat and looks sort of 1980s kid who gained weight after high school and I get double takes when I am downtown all of the time. I keep getting told thar Scott is for me and ironically as we are somewhere between Indy and Columbus, I find when my dad got arrested for his crime and I remember that night so well. Dad was home, as he never bothered to get a job after his firing. I was twelve. Hannah and I were playing cards in the living room and there was a deafening pounding on the door. I went to the door and the man asked for Rob Thompson. I got the door. They talked to him, put him in cuffs, asked where my mom was. I said at work until one. The officer told me I needed to call her and tell her, then go to the neighbors until she got home. Tina took us without hesitation. Hannah was crying and Scott and I talked about Anything and everything. That was the beginning of Scott's and my friendship. We went to commuter college together. We drank at O'Reilley's on the weekends and we became housemates. There was more on the horizon and I felt that on that night in 2006. He kept trying to cheer me up and we watched a funny video on YouTube.

Not as lot has changed.