Jake X Jane Homestuck Fanfiction

Imploded Marriage and Food

Chapter Four : Imploded Marriage and Food

When your dad is a chef, people always assume that at home he does all the cooking. This was not the case in our family. In fact, after spending hours in a restaurant kitchen either preparing food or overseeing others as they did so, the last thing my dad wanted to do so when he finally got to leave was to turn on the stove.

Because of this, my mom was always left to her own devices, which were decidely not gourmet. If my dad could make a perfect white sauce, my mom preached the gospel of Cream Of : Chicken of Chicken soup over chicken breasts, cream of broccoli soup over baked potatoes, cream of mushroom over, well, anything.

If she was feeling really fancy, she'd thrown together and and call it garnish. We ate canned vegetables, Parmesan from a shaker, and frozen chicken breasts, thawed in the microwave.

And it was fine.

On rare nights my dad was home and could be coerced to cook, it was always on the grill. There, he'd flip salmon steaks or thick T-bones between layups on our battered basketball goal, on the backyard of which was prepared with Homestuck stickers so completely you could hardly see anything white at all. Inside, my mom would open a bagged salad, toss on some boxed croutons, and top it off with bottled dressing. The contrast may have seemed weird. But somehow, it worked.

When my parents' marriage first imploded, I was in total state of shock. Maybe it was naive, but I'd always thought they had the Great American Love Story. She was from a wealthy southern family that bred beauty queens, he the late, only child of an autoworker and a third-grade teacher. They couldn't have been more different.

My mom was a debutante who literally went to charm school; my dad wiped his mouth with his sleeve and did not own a suit. It worked well until my mom decided she didn't want it anymore. And just like that, everything changed.

When she left my dad for Pete, I honestly could not believe it was happening, even as I witnessed the debris-snickers in the hallways at school, her moving out, the sudden, heavy fatigue in my father's features-all around me. I was in such a daze that I didn't even think to object when it was decided for me that I'd spend the weekdays with my mom at Skaia Pines, the only subdivision in Skaia that stood many mansions, over the weekends or at my dad's old place during the weekdays. I just sleepwalked along it, just like everything else.

Pete Milton lived in The Range, an exclusive gated community by the lake. You had to pass through a guardhouse to get in, and there was a seperate entrance for landscapers and repairmen, so the residents could be protected from the sight of lower classes. All the houses were enormous. The foyer of Pete's place was so big that whatever you said there rose up, up, up and toward the high ceiling overhead, leaving you speechless.

There was also a game room with a Homestuck pinball machine ( a welcome gift from the booster club ) and a pool with the Homestuck insignia painted on the bottom of the deep end ( compliments of a contractor, a huge HS fan ). It always struck me, without fail, that the person who would have truly appreciated all of these things was the only one who would never get to : my dad, I couldn't even tell him about it, as doing so seemed like another insult.

As far as cooking went, Peter Milton didn't. Neither did my mom. Instead, they had a housekeeper. Miss Suzy , who was pretty much always on hand to prepare whatever you wanted, and even what you didn't. There was a healthy, pretty snack waiting for me every day after school, a balanced dinner-meat, vegetable, starch, bread-on the table promptly at six on nongame days. But I missed the Cream Ofs and the potato chips, the same way I missed everything about my old life. I just wanted it back. It wasn't until my mom told me she was pregnant with the twins, though, that I understood that this was never going to happen. Like a bucket of water over the head, the news of their impending arrival snapped me out of my daze.

My mother didn't tell me about this when she split with my dad, but if I did the math-and, oh, how I hate having to do the math-it became clear that she not only knew about it, but it was the reason that she finally became clean. All I knew was that there was so much news coming at me at such a fast clip ( such as : we're separating, you'll be moving to another house for half the week, oh, and the restaurant's closing ) that I didn't think anything else could shock me. I was wrong. Suddenly, I had not only a new stepfather and a new house, but a new family, as well. It wasn't enough to wipe out the one I loved : she was replacing it, too.

My parents have separated in April. That summer, when I knew I had half siblings on the way, my dad decided he would sell Lil' Seb and take a consulting job. The owner of EAT INC, an old teammate of his from college, had been trying to hire him forever, and now what they were offering seemed like just what he needed. A change of direction, a change of place. A change, period. So he said yes, planned to start in fall, and promisee me that he'd come back whenever he could to visit me, and fly me out during the summers and vacations. It didn't occur to him for a second that I'd want to come along, just as it didn't occur to my mom that I wouldn't move in full-time with her and Pete. But I was tired of them-of her-making my decisions for me. She could have her bright and shiny new life, with a new husband and new kids, but she didn't get to have me, too. So, I decided that I was going away with my dad.

It was not all about drama, Lawyers were called, meetings were held. My dad's departure was held up first weeks, then months, as I spent hours sitting on a conference table in one office or another while my mom, red-eyed and pregnant, shot me looks of betrayal that were so ironic they were almost funny. My dad was quiet, as her lawyer and his dad had me clarify again that this was my choice, not his urging. The court secretary, flushed, acted like she didn't spend the entire time looking at Pete Milton who sat next to my mom, holding her hand with a grave expression I recognized from double overtimes with only seconds left to play and no timeouts left. After four months of wrangling, it was decided tha-surprise!-I could actually make this decision for myself. My mother was livid, because of course she knew nothing about what you wanted, and only what you wanted, other people's feelings be damned.

Our relationship since I'd left been tepid at best. Under the custody arrangement, I was required to visit in summers and for holidays, both of which I did something about at much enthusiasm as anyone would do something court ordered. Each time, the same thing immediately became clear : my mom just wanted a clean, fresh start. She had no interest in discussing our previous lives or the part she may or may not have played in the fact that they no longer existed. No, I was supposed to just fold myself in seamlessly with her new life, and never look back. It was one thing to reinvent myself by choice. When forced, though, I resisted.

In the two years or so we'd been on the road, I did miss my mom. When I was really homesick in those first lonely, bumpy days at a new place, I wasn't lonely for my old house or friends, or anything else specific, as much as just the comfort she represented. It was the little things, like her smell, the way she always hugged too tight, how she looked just enough like me to make me feel safe with a single glance. Then, though, I'd remember it wasn't her that I was really yearning for as much as a mirage, who I'd thought she was. The person who cared enough about our family to never wanto to split up us all into pieces. Who loved the beach so much that she thought of nothing of packing up a spur-of-the-moment road trip east, regardless of the weather, season, or if we could really even afford to stay at the Poseidon, the dumpy ocean-view motel we preffered. Who sat at the end of the bar at Mariposa, sunglasses perched on her nose, reviewing receipts in the lazy hours between lunch and dinner service, who sewed together cloth squares in front of the fire, using all the bits and pieces of our old clothes to make quilts that were like sleeping under memories. It wasn't just me that was gone. She was, too.

When I thought of my mom most, though, was not on the first day of school, or a holiday we weren't together for, or even when I caught a glimpse of her-fleeting-when the TV cameras flashed to her at a Homestuck game before I could change the channel. Instead, weirdly enough, it was when I was cooking dinner. Standing in a strange kitchen, browning meat in a pan. Adding a chopped green pepper to a jar of store-bought sauce. Opening a can of soup, some chicken, and a bag of potato chips at dusk, hoping to make something out of nothing.

Talk about awkward

Well, that's a Chapter Four for you

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