Perhaps (Book 1) | ✔

ACT I - Scene 6

Gloria's home — the kitchen

    I headed straight home that afternoon after Professor Lee's class, and waited eagerly for my parents to return home from work. I was excited to tell them about the results of the auditions, and I was still on Cloud Nine from Professor Lee's remark to me. I didn't walk home so much as I skipped. Maybe I even floated.

    "Professor Baron was blown away by your enthusiasm and passion—and so was I."

    When I got home, I began to pull pots and pans from the cabinets, deciding that I would take it upon myself to fix dinner that night. After checking the "meal schedule" my mother pinned on the refrigerator every Monday of the week (she was obsessed with planning out the entire family's meals), I set to work. The entire time, I hummed "To Go Away With You" to myself.

    My mother came home about thirty minutes after I had gotten started. I greeted her happily, bursting to tell her the good news, but she was talking irritably on her cell phone. She began to prepare the salad to go along with our meal, all the while continuing to grumble to whoever was on the other line. Eventually, she hung up; I opened my mouth to speak now that her attention was free, but she cut across me with an irritated comment about how my father was going to be home late from work again.

    Well, that explained why she was so grumbly. In addition to wanting to control and manage what we ate, my mother also liked to control and monitor our individual schedules. We were to come home when she expected us to, and any time before or after was unacceptable (yes, she got irritated when we came home too early, too). Both she and Dad worked day jobs, and Dad was usually home before she was. Any time she arrived home before him, her mood seemed to tank pretty fast because "now, we weren't on schedule". This wasn't the first time this week that Dad had come home late, either: lately, his boss had been keeping him at work after hours.

    Needless to say, she was a ticking time bomb of anger right now.

    "Gloria! You are adding way too much spice to that salmon!" I bit my tongue as she snatched the spice away from me and began to scrape off the excess from the uncooked fish.

    Sometimes, I thought it was incredibly unbearable being my mother's daughter; but I really couldn't complain about it. It was thanks to her that I had a lot of the things I had now, including my new role that I was so proud of. Without her money, I would have never been able to take the vocal training classes I took last summer. Even more, without her, I would have never became a ballet dancer; and, without ballet, I would have never seen the inside of Accent Academy's campus.

    As I watched her cook the salmon, I decided that I would wait to share my good news until Dad got home. Perhaps her mood would improve by then. I really didn't want her souring my achievement by complaining during the announcement of it.

    Dad walked in the door at five minutes after five (which was already really late by Mom's standards, but she made sure to point out the extra five minutes to him in the snippy tone she used when angry).

    "There you are!" she screeched as she set a plate down on the table for him. "We've been waiting for you! It's 5:05pm!"

    "I know, I know," he sighed, dropping his briefcase on the counter, "I'm home late again. I'm sorry, honey, but Tom had me stay late to file some unexpected paperwork. There had been an extremely dissatisfied client, and apparently said client's dissatisfaction led to an employee injury. We had to call the police to escort them off the premises, and then deal with that paperwork. You know how long that sort of thing can take to sort out."

    "Well, why couldn't Tom find another employee to take care of all this paperwork?!" Mom hissed the name of my dad's boss as if it were the foulest word she had ever encountered. Dad just laughed and leaned forward to kiss her cheek. She huffed and pursed her lips, but accepted it. He approached me.