The John Hughes Club

Chapter Ten

As I'm trying to figure out what to do next, I'm pacing my bedroom floor. From one side to the other, I'm crying with my confusion, my disgust, my disappointment. I came home early to spend some quality time with my mother, only to find her screwing someone in her shower. Well, she can stick the whole trying harder thing up her motherly backside! I'm done with this woman. I'm done with being her daughter. I need to get out of here. I need to be anywhere else but here.

Tap! Tap! "Mindy?" The gentle taps on my bedroom door are quickly followed by my mum's gentle voice. "Can I come in?"

"Go away! I have nothing to say to you!" I yell from where I'm standing, wiping my angry tears with the back of my hand, wanting to run away and for my mum to just leave me the hell alone.

"I know you're angry, but we need to talk about this." Without permission, mum's opening my door, forcing her unwelcome presence upon me. Although she's now in her dressing gown, she's standing there with the sheen of her pleasure still on her face; emanating sex from her motherly pores.  

Not able to look at my mum, I turn my back on her. "I don't want to talk to you, go back and finish whatever you were disgustingly just doing."

"He's gone and we need to talk." Mum's voice is sounding closer behind of me, meaning that she's getting too close for my comfort.

"I have nothing to say to you. Now if you don't mind, I've got some homework to finish." With anger, I start finding my school books.

"I'm sorry you came back to what you did. I wasn't expecting you back until later, you weren't supposed to know about any of this." Mum's guiltily giving me her explanation, but it's an explanation I'm just not interested in. Finding my French and English books, I'm now unzipping my pencil case, making myself comfortable on my bed, completely ignoring my mum. She's watching me. I can feel her guilty stare drilling into the top of my skull. Yet still, I go on ignoring her. "Mindy? Look at me?" She can ask all she damn well likes, I'm not going to look at her. Knowing what she's done is making me sick to my stomach, to look at her while knowing what she's done, will only make me sicker. "I really am sorry. I know it's a shock, but I think it's something that we really should address now, Mindy?" Mum's determined to hash this out with me, but I wont...I can't.

"I said, get out!" My answer is pushed out between my clenched teeth. I'm angry. I feel sick and repulsed. Now is not the time to hash out her having sex in the shower with another man. This conversation is one that I'm refusing to be a part of.

At the end of my bed, mum is still staring at me, sighing loudly with her exasperation. "You're fifteen, Mindy. You're not some young child. You know how things happen. I'm entitled to a life. I'm entitled to a sex life." Still, I refuse to engage with her. "I know that you've always hoped that your dad and I would work things out, but it's never going to happen. That's why we're getting divorced, why you and I are now living here." I'm listening, but I'm not responding. Knowing this, mum decides to carry on. "I tried to love your father again, I really did. However, somewhere along the line, I'd quietly fell out of love with him. After we lost your sister, something broke between us. Some things can never be fixed, Mindy. Your dad and I, were one of those things." From where I'm sat on my bed, my eyes reluctantly wander to my mother's. Reluctantly, she now has my attention. "Losing Anais, caused many ripples of loss. Things would never be the same again. Overnight, things changed. I changed. Your dad changed. You changed. I wanted things to be just like they'd always been, but the death of your sister made that impossible." Mum's brown eyes are fixed on mine, her head slightly tilted with sadness. With our eyes now locked, they're locked in a silent battle. Mother against daughter, daughter against mother; fighting over who deserves to be the most saddest about how our lives have turned out. "I know you've always thought that I don't love you like I loved Anais, that isn't true. I think her death put up walls between us all, but it's time to start taking down those walls, it's time to find some kind of happiness for ourselves. What you came home to, was me taking those first steps towards finding some of that happiness." Her eyes are beginning to drown in their remorse, while mine are welling up with so many overwhelming emotions.

"Is this man your boyfriend?" Is mumbled from between my pouting lips, the question dragging down on my heart. I don't think I'll ever accept another man. Divorced or not. Dad is my dad. He's the only father figure I'll ever need in my life. The only person deserving to be up there on my parental pedestal.

Smiling weakly, mum replies. "It's early days, Mindy. We've known each other since we were about the same age as you, even went to school together, but it's still early days." More of her smile soon reaches her brown eyes as she's running one hand through the lengths of her wet brunette hair. "I do like him, though." Happily, she leaves me with that all-important little snippet of her feelings for this man.

Mum seems happier, lighter. Good for her. Only, her happiness doesn't make me feel lighter. I feel heavy; heavy with the dread of what's to come—my parents finalising their divorce, my mother and I drifting more and more apart, missing my dad more than I'll actually be able to ever bear, one more year in a school that I think I no longer want to be at, in a place I definitely don't want to be living in, and the possibility of putting up with a new man in my mum's life—yeah, life's just got a whole lot heavier.

Peeling my stare away from my mum's, I honestly don't think I have anything else left to say to her. "Are we done?" I bluntly ask, adopting an disinterested tone and expression.

Pressing her lips tightly together, mum seems disappointed. "It would appear so." Bringing the gap of her dressing gown closer together up by her chest, her shoulders now slump with the same disappointment. "I'll leave you to it, then."

Not wanting to gain anymore eye contact with her, I'm now staring down at my textbook, chewing on the end of my pen. "Yup!"

Lingering where she's standing for just a couple of seconds, mum appears to be waiting for something more from me—only, there's nothing more to give. I've not long heard her having sex in her shower. She's just told me that her feelings for my dad are as dead as my sister is. She's wanting to find her own happiness, while stripping me of what's left of mine. Nope, I have nothing left to say to her.