Fault

Part 18

I'm not sure when it happens for most people. When the mindset of childhood is replaced with the realization that life is, most often, work. That the choices you make have consequences and the world is never solid beneath your feet for long.

Cal asked me once why I'd never told the truth to any of the counselors who suspected my home life wasn't idyllic. Why I'd warn my mom about a home visit so she could put on a show worthy of an Oscar. We were sitting on the front steps of my apartment building when he asked, swatting mosquitoes as the sun set on my fourteenth birthday. He was comforting me.

Earlier in the day my mom had seemed remarkably clear-eyed and even had a present for me. It was a small bracelet, one of those ones you find on a stand at the local convenience store, with a capital F printed on a disc connecting the chain into a circle. It was so cheap it turned my skin green after an hour, but I didn't care because in the end, it's not the objects themselves we love, it's the memories we attach to them.

She told me to be ready and waiting on the front steps of our apartment building by six that night. She wanted to take me to dinner. It's amazing how the pain I felt after years of her being as cold as the water in the faucet went away the moment she showed any sign of warmth. I got ready, proudly displaying my new bracelet on my wrist, and was already waiting on the steps by five-thirty. That's where Cal found me at eight.

"If you don't want to tell someone, I could," he said, trying to be helpful.

"No," I said, a little too sharply.

"Fallon, you shouldn't have to go through stuff like this," he said as he scooted closer to me on the step.

"She needs me."

"She uses you."

"You don't know what you're talking about, Cal." I felt a swell of anger in my stomach like an inflating balloon.

"Maybe not, but I can see what this does to you."

I wiped a tear away quickly and stood up, leaning my hip against the guard rail. I didn't want him seeing what this was doing to me. I didn't want him questioning the unbalanced life I had with my mom, because I questioned it myself every day.

"You should probably just go," I told him.

"No," he said softly. I heard the slide of fabric against cement as he stood.

"What?" I turned to look at him, crossing my arms.

"Not until I know you're okay. I'm not leaving you here alone." His face was so determined. Despite the situation, I smiled.

"And that's your answer," I said.

"What?" It was his turn to be confused.

"You asked me why I won't tell anyone about my mom and you just answered the why."

Cal was taken aback. The determination in his face slipped into an expression of realization. He came and leaned against the guard rail with me, one step below so we'd be the same height.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Nothing to be sorry for," I told him, but I had a sneaking suspicion he wasn't apologizing for trying to force me to turn my mom in. I think he was giving the apology he thought was due to me from the universe.

He stayed until ten, which was a half hour past the curfew his parents strictly enforced. I made him go, telling him that if he got grounded then I wouldn't have anyone to sit on the porch with in near silence for hours tomorrow. He smiled at that and I watched him go up the block and turn the corner before I finally headed inside.

My mom came home at two thirty in the morning. She woke me up by knocking over the coat rack, which caused a racket I would hear about from the neighbors in the morning. I sighed, rolled out of bed and took care of her as I had always done. Later, when I returned to bed, I cried.

They were the last tears I ever shed over my mother.