Skeletons

Chapter 5

I open the door to my house and immediately am greeted by the sounds of my mother vigorously scrubbing at the dishes in the sink. There is no music, there is nothing but the sounds of my mother scrubbing away rigorously at a plate with flowers painted around the edges of it. 

"Hey Mom..." She looks at me and smiles but I can sense some anger in her face. "Go do your homework, Lydia." She says in a demanding tone. "Uh, sure...you ok you seem a little...tense," I say trying to be nonchalant and hide the worry from my face. "No Lydia I am fine...just some stress at work...deadlines and what have you."

'Okay?..." I start walking over to my room. "Actually- We need to talk." She says in a tone sharp enough to cut someone. "Oh fuck what did I do." I think to myself "Uh sure...about?" She sighs. "Sit down." I can tell she is trying to be calm and soothing but the stress and anger in her voice are obvious. I sit on the gray chair next to the couch and my Mother sits down on our blue sofa. She taps her fingers on her knee methodically one by one.

"Lydia baby..." She closes her eyes at takes a deep breath "You know how you've been curious about your father recently?..." I nod. "You mean my dead  father?.." She takes a few moments to respond. She closes her eyes and faces her head to the ceiling almost as if she is trying to hold back tears.

 "About that..."

 I realize what she was implying. "What are you saying?!" I feel my stomach sink. "He's alive-" She doesn't even look me in the eyes when she speaks. "WHAT?!" I knew this was what she was going to say the second she mentioned my father. I just hoped it wouldn't be true.

It's funny how that changed so quickly, if you'd have told me he was alive even a year ago I would have been ecstatic. I don't want that anymore. I am content most of the time and my "daddy issues" have subsided. I don't need nor do I want it. 

If he couldn't bother to be in my life for the first almost 15 years he doesn't  deserve to be my father. To be in my life. Then another thought crosses my mind. How long has she known? What if he had been trying to find me all these years and my Mother had some sort of vendetta against him or something, and he finally found me so my Mother had to fess up.

That's ridicules.

"LYDIA."

The sound of her voice and the feeling of her shaking me by one of my shoulders lightly take me from my trance of what ifs. 

"How long have you known?"

"Only since this morning..."

"Who is he?"

"I told you his name is Jason."

"Jason what?"

"Dean...Jason Dean."

"Wait...I know that name..."

"Mom I saw that name on the construction truck from when they destroyed that building...Big Bud Dean Construction..."

"That's the name I saw on that poster back at the gas station in Connecticut..."

"Lydia-"

"You LIAR."

I shove myself off from the chair and storm into my room slamming and locking the door. "We don't slam doors in this house!!" She hollers from the other room. "You also said we don't lie in this house but HERE WE ARE." She doesn't respond but I can hear a slight sigh coming from outside the door. 

_

I have tried.

I DO try.

Still here I sit on the couch of my micro apartment at age 32. I've made nothing of myself.My child hates me. My ex-boyfriend is alive and won't leave me alone. 

This wasn't supposed to happen I was supposed to go to Harvard, Duke or Brown. I was supposed to marry some lawyer. Instead at age 17 I found out I was carrying my "dead" sociopathic ex boyfriends child.

Now he is back from the dead. In a way he reminds me of the hallucinations of guilt I had after Heather died. Except at least Heather was a seventeen year old girl a dead seventeen year old girl at that. Jason was nothing like that he was very much alive and he wanted something. He wanted me.

No.

He wanted her.

Jason claims to want to be a part of her life. Jason is not the one who had to give up football games because of morning sickness and prom because there were no dresses that fit the new proportions caused by my pregnancy (most prom dress companies don't account for knocked up teens) and graduation because he was healing from a traumatic birth and there was a newborn at home that WOULDN'T STOP SCREAMING.

JASON didn't have to deal with glances and stares and rumors and lies. Jason was never labeled as a slut or easy or a bad parent because JASON was too busy running away from the mess he left for me to clean up. 

He NEVER had the guilt I did when I looked at my newborn child and felt no motherly instincts or having to pull over on the side of the road having an anxiety attack because my three year old started talking about dinosaurs FUCKING DINOSAURS.

JASON DEAN was off living his best life while I tried to keep my head above water while another human was sitting on top of me pushing me down without a clue. 

Fucking Christ.

Lydia doesn't understand and with luck she never will, but now she sees me as a liar, as a snake who kept her from her Father all these years even when I had no idea until he reared his ugly head at a 7/11 of all places. I shake my head and scoff to myself. "How ironic is that." I say to myself. But I would rather her see me as a liar than as a killer.

I decide to be productive and make something for dinner spaghetti...lots of oregano. It seems like the only thing me and Lydia agree on now. 

While I wait for the pasta to boil I remember that I impulse bought some chocolate cookie dough at the supermarket and decide that maybe that would help as a peace offering.

_

I sit on my desk chair tapping on my mouse trying to think of something deep to post on myspace to make my friends worry about my wellbeing. As I am about to finish typing my rant about my Mother and secretly undead father when I hear a knock at my door. 

"What?"

"I made you dinner..."

"Ok? Leave it outside my door."

She doesn't respond but I hear the sound of the plate clanking against the hardwood floor. I get up and open the door once I am sure she is gone.

I see a plate of spaghetti with splotches of oregano laced across it. Next to the spaghetti is a cookie with the bottom wrapped in a paper towel a glass of water is set next to the plate. 

I go back to my desk and eat. My eyes eventually fall back on my computer once I am finished eating. I see the paragraphs of text I wrote about how angry my Mother made me about how much I wished I could have been born in a normal nuclear family. 

I still sort of wish that.

But I that doesn't mean I don't love my Mom.

I click the backspace button and hold it down until the entire text is wiped.

I shut my computer.