The John Hughes Club

Chapter Fourteen

"I saw Ash yesterday. I was just driving through town when he spotted me...thought he was going to break his scrawny little neck by coming off his skateboard, he was that excited." Chuckling, it's obviously amused dad. Just like me, all my friends think my dad is cooler than cool. "The fact that you've not called me to moan about your mum, I'm thinking all must be going well with that new start?" He lightly asks, sinking his teeth into an apple.

Being on his way to Yorkshire for work, he thought he'd FaceTime while taking a quick break from the road. "Yeah, we're getting on better." I lie, knowing that we aren't getting on better at all. I've been avoiding her, while she's just being plain awkward around me. I need more time. More time to get my head around stuff. More time to get the sound of her sensual moans from out of my ears.

"I'm glad to hear that, I really am." The smile from dad is now lighting up the screen of my mobile phone. With him, and now Chas, I have so much lighting up my life at the moment, then I come back here...and it feels oppressively dark. "So, what have you been up to since I last saw you?" Dad brightly asks me.

My lips purse with his cheery question. "Not much. School. Homework. Seeing Chas." Is so casually dropped in the conversation by me.

"You're seeing quite a bit of this Chas boy, then?" Like he always does when he's teasing me, dad's dark eyebrows comedically start rising up and down, over and over.

"Yeah, he's great." Coolly slips from between my lips that daren't smile in front of him, for if I smile, the teasing will only increase.

"As long as that boy is behaving himself with you, then it's okay my end." Although dad's teasing me, there's now a protective lilt to the tone of his fatherly voice.

"He is. He's got old fashioned values...I think you'll like him."

"He's putting a smile on your face, Mindy, I think I already like him."

Allowing my suppressed smile to fully form, a warm missing of my dad starts pumping around my veins. "I miss you." I quietly say, wanting him to know that I am.

"You know I'm always missing you, Mindy." Is lovingly told back to me.

When I'm looking at my dad, hearing his voice, appreciating his smile, feeling grateful for the gentle man that he is; the resentment for my mum starts waking from its dormant sleep inside of me.
Why can't she see what I do?
Why is she not missing this man?
Knowing that my tears are waiting for an opportunity to sit themselves upon my lower lashes, it's time to wrap up my chat with dad. "I'd better get on with my English homework, I'm finishing a piece of writing about understanding the significance of exploration."

"Okay. I'll call you on Friday. Glad everything's going well your end. I love you."

"Love you." Waving at him, I end our screen time, just as a lonesome tear tumbles its way down my cheek. Inhaling a fractured breath, I'm feeling inwardly fractured after speaking with dad; just as I'm always fractured after seeing him. Is it always going to be like this? How many times am I going to fall apart, then have to put myself back together again? Is this now the endless pattern of my life? I hate feeling so far away from him. I hate not having him close enough, so I can see him whenever I damn well want. The ironic thing about all of this, is that my mother is here, yet I feel more distance with her than I ever do with my dad. I wish it wasn't that way. I wish I'd never heard her in that shower!

Tap! Tap!

"Mindy, it it okay to come in?"

As if the universe had just heard me, it's now forcing us together. "Yeah." I answer with a raised voice from the comfy place on my bed, wondering whether me and my resentful mouth are going to behave themselves.

Stepping deeper into my bedroom, mum's looking around it with wide-eyed interest. "You've put all your lights up? It looks lovely."

Here, is where I want to say. 'I have, bringing light to the darkness I often feel when I'm here with you'...only, I don't. "Thought it would feel more like home with them up." Is instead, subduedly explained to her.

Sitting herself down on my bed, Mum's now smiling at me. "I know you're still upset about what happened on Sunday, Mindy. I've tried giving you some space, but I really want to make things better between us. I just heard you talking with your dad...I'd really like things to be like that for us." Her brown eyes are looking honest, almost sorrowful. "Losing your sister, made me the mother I thought I'd never become. I know it's my fault, but I really feel like I lost two daughters on the day that Anais died. I pushed you away. I..."

"You blamed me." Flees from the confines of my throat.

More of her brown-eyed sorrow glassily starts veiling her motherly spheres. "I blamed us all." She ashamedly admits, needing to look down while fiddling with her fingers that are nervously resting within the crevice of her lap. "For so long, I've done things wrong. For so long, I've not been the woman I need to be and the mother you deserve for me to be, I want that to change. For those changes to happen, I need you to try and meet me halfway, Mindy...do you think you can do that?" I've never seen vulnerability sitting in my mother's eyes before, but I'm seeing it now. That vulnerability, her grief; they've aged her, but in a beautifully kind way. I've never seen my mum as being a beautiful woman, for my resentment and my detachment from her, have only ever made her appear ugly to me. But in her honesty, in the clutches of her sorrow—I now see her underrated beauty. Knowing this, feeling this, all I can do is weakly nod my answer to her question. I have no daughterly words at the moment, they're lost within the confusion of what's passing between my mum and I. Acknowledging my weak agreement to meeting her halfway, more of mum's smile can be seen on her face. "This weekend, I thought we could do something together, a mother/daughter day?" Her eyes have brightened, her shoulders lifting with their hope. "Anything you want to do, we'll do." Warily, I'm looking at her. Wary, because for six years, physically and emotionally, she's kept me at arms length. So, I can be forgiven for now eyeing her so suspiciously. Seeing my suspicion, sensing my wariness, mum reaches for my hand. "I know we should've had this conversation many years ago, but I wasn't ready then, Mindy. I'm ready now. I'm ready to make things right. I want to be your mum. It's time for us all to move on from the death of your sister. It's devoured us, then spat us back out to pick up the pieces...moving here, is me picking up those pieces, hoping to create something new for us."

I hear what mum is saying. I understand all that she's saying, too. If mum is willing to let go of the blame she's carried all these years, maybe I can as well? Maybe this is where our healing really begins? I'm young, I don't want the rest of my life being shackled to what happened to my sister. My body is too small to keep all this pain inside of me. Too small to contain it. Anais isn't a ghost, but her death always has been. That ghost, has always been there, haunting all of my waking and sleeping moments—maybe together, mum and I can make that ghost disappear? However, I'm needing to be realistic about this, or at least, as realistic as an fifteen year old can be. We've a long way to go. I've a long way to go. There's so much I need to forgive my mum for. So much bitterness still wrapped around every one of my organs...but, she's my mother. Once upon a time, she was a good mother to me, a loving one. Which is why something surprisingly rolls quietly off my tongue. "Okay." Me and my resentful mouth are being mature, trying to do the right thing...because my mum is.