How to Fall Apart

Chapter Two

I would have had to have still been drunk to think that Mom would not be addressing the fact that I came home drunk and not at an appropriate time. Not that I was even sure what time I came home. I expected her to talk to me as soon as she got home from work but instead she showered and started watching TV with Clark. I sulked around waiting for her to say something, still feeling the effects of the hangover. Eventually I decided that waiting for her to talk to me was worse than the actual talk was going to be so when she started to make dinner I offered to help.

"So..." I started, ready for a full on lecture.

"So..." she replied, looking at me pointedly. Despite her composure I could see that she was pissed. Pissing Mom off was not easily done.

"Are you mad?" I asked, biting my lip and turning away.

"No, Veda, not at all. I think it's perfectly appropriate for my 17 year old daughter to come home, no, be BROUGHT home so drunk you couldn't even walk by some 20 something year old boy and another drunk high school girl at four o'clock in the morning," she kept her voice low so that Clark would not hear us, even though he very likely knew I was receiving a verbal lashing.

"He's only 19," I replied weakly, as though it made any of it better.

"So you drink now? And smoke? And have older boys in your room at 4:30 in the morning?" She whisper yelled.

"Oh my God, Mom! It was one party and it's not like I was hooking up with him," I whisper yelled back. Mom had never hidden the fact that she spent a significant amount of time partying in high school. She tried more to use it as a teaching point than as a free pass for me to spend my high school years doing the same.

"That's all it takes, Veda! Just one party," I was the result of just one party.

"Seriously Mom! Just because you got knocked up in high school doesn't mean I will," I lashed out at her, more forcefully than I intended. I had never spoken to my mom like that before, ever. This was a point of contention between the two of us, though. "You made sure of that, didn't you?" I tapped my arm where, the year before, I'd had a little rod surgically implanted at her relentless insistence. I was a virgin and had full intentions of remaining that way, but she eventually wore me down and talked me into getting the implant for birth control. 'Just in case.' Her biggest fear was that I would repeat her mistakes, a constant reminder that I was her mistake.

Mom just stared at me, not saying a word. Then she picked everything up that she had gotten out to make dinner, shoving it all into the fridge, even the things that didn't belong in the fridge. "Come on Clark, we're going out to dinner. Your sister needs some time alone to think about her life choices," she slipped on her her shoes and glared at me, "maybe we'll see a movie too."

Mom had met Dad at a party her senior year of high school. He was older, a good looking bad boy and Mom fell for him instantly. Before you go thinking this sounds familiar I would like to clarify that I have not fallen for Kenny. Anyway, Mom was already not doing too well in school, add an unplanned pregnancy to that and she dropped out, just months before graduation, and followed Dad from Montana to North Dakota. Dad was a roughneck, working on the oil rigs and the last thing he wanted was a pregnant teenage girlfriend. He set Mom up in a pay by the week motel and mostly ignored her. It took her over a year of being ignored and Dad messing around on her for her to get sick of it. I was five months old when she left him. He told her that she wouldn't amount to anything without him so she went back to Montana, finished high school and went to nursing school while raising me mostly by herself. He must have loved her a little bit though because he kept coming back. And she must have loved him a lot because she kept letting him.