Ink & Interruptions

            The next few months were largely spent explaining to my mother how I had never been it for Kyle and desperately trying to convince her that he had never been it for me either. That our love for Aunt Jules and my mom had been the chain holding our futures together. Without one of them, we were untethered.

            My mom’s tears flowed through my memory as I remembered every moment between Kyle’s leaving and mine. I tried to stay, tried to burrow back into the comfort of being home, but every day felt like a battle waged between who I was and the ghost of Aunt Julia’s dreams. Before her death, my mom had clung to Kyle and me because she liked the idea of our families becoming legally intertwined and finally securing what she and Aunt Jules had worked for their entire lives. Now, she worshiped those ideas as if, by paying reverence to them, she could call Aunt Jules back from the grave. After a month of near-daily conversations and even a few attempted phone calls to Kyle, I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t keep being the glimmer of hope my mom reached for on the dark days. So, I left and found myself in a small, one-bedroom house on the corner of Fredrick’s St. and Alpine Ave., nestled in the furthest corner of Holloway Heights.

            After I had quietly announced my decision to leave—waiting until my mom had her hands full with dinner—things between us became tumultuous at best. But she and Dad still came with me to sign the lease and help me move in. My dad kept commenting that it was strange the owner lived on the other side of the city. It made him nervous; some part of him needed to believe that I was being watched out for. I had been out of the house for college and when I lived with Kyle, but that had been different. In his mind, this was the start of me being truly alone. His fear creeped up and out of his mouth again when we arrived at the landlord’s office.

            “Dad, it’s fine, really,” I said, reaching out to grab his hand. “This is how all rent agreements look. Honest.”

            “I don’t know Evie. I don’t like it.”

            “I know, but I need you to trust me.”

            “It’s not you I have a trust issue with,” he said as his eyes darted past me to the large, wooden door that sat at the top of a short staircase. “Evelyn, please just try to work things out with your mom.”

            “Dad, I have tried. Trust me I’ve tried.” I sighed and dropped his hand. “This is my choice and what I want to do. Please be with me on this.” A moment passed, and then he sighed and gave a slight bob of his head. I knew I had won.

After that, the signing went quickly, and in less than ten minutes, I had traded 1,000 dollars and my signature for two flimsy pieces of silver and the rising promise of freedom. The keys jostled between my fingers as I jogged back to my car. I gave my dad a thumbs up as I slid into the front seat of my green VW bug. My eyes trailed behind my dad as I watched him from my rearview mirror get into his black pickup. I saw my mom’s arm reach across the center console. Her distaste was etched into every line on her face. Dad flashed his headlights twice, I kicked the gear shift into drive, and we pulled out of the parking lot.

            The drive wasn’t bad; we spent most of it on the highway that wrapped around the city. A few years ago, cutting out the traffic lights that riddled every street intersection through the city hadn’t been a thing. However, one of our mayors had gotten it in his head that we needed to modernize and “catch up with the times.” He made some big speech, my dad had been real bent out of shape about it, but I couldn’t remember why, and then, boom—two years of construction signs, detours, and reshaping later, our little city had its first big metropolitan element—the ability to press skip whenever you wanted. I toggled my blinker on as we approached the last exit off the highway before the entire city shifted into the rearview. I watched as my dad’s blinker followed suit, and we both slowed as the exit ramp took us off the highway and back into the city.

            When we pulled into the driveway of the single-story house, my body froze, my hands stuck to the steering wheel as my foot pushed the brake pedal further into the floor. This was it, my brain whispered, the feeling slid down my body like fingers caressing flower petals to open. The house was simple. A single steepled roof reached into the sky, its peak grazing the tree that exploded from the backyard. A wooden, red door was offset by a stone porch that stretched before it. The white windowsills and gray siding all showed signs of time as the paint peeled, pulling away from the surface that it had been bound to once upon a time. I knew the tilted windows should have sent my nerves careening and the mailbox half-mounted beside the door should have caused my nose to turn up with disdain—I knew my mother’s would—but to me, every imperfect, aged surface was a sign of life. A sign that I had finally made it.

            I jumped when my dad tapped on the window. I quickly placed my car in park, pulled the keys from the ignition switch, and opened the door. I ducked my head as I slid out of the car and took the moment, hidden behind the black hair that fell out from behind my ear, to steel my smile. When I looked up and met my parents’ eyes, I didn’t need them to say anything. It was all there, swimming in the green and blue that stared back at me. Not today, I thought. I straightened to my full 5’6”, gave them my most dazzling smile, making sure to push it to the edges of my eyes, and spun on my toes to face the house.

            “Isn’t she just perfect?” I said.

            I didn’t wait for the words to land. If I could help it, I would never hear the response that was brewing between my parents. A laugh crawled its way up and out of my throat, my own relief bubbling over. I am here. This is mine. I flashed my parents another face-stretching grin over my shoulder before stuffing my car keys into my pocket and striding toward the front door.

            I heard one set of feet behind me. The soft, delicate patter of feet that never caused so much as a ripple. Mom. My dad’s groan sounded from further away; he must have been unloading my bedroom suit from the bed of his truck. Great, Mom has me all to herself.

            I reached the door and extended the key towards the lock. Her sigh hit the back of my head, heavy enough to make me dizzy.

            “No,” I whispered, the memory of Kyle’s voice steadying my hand and urging me forward.

I placed the key fully inside the lock, but when I went to turn it, the key wouldn’t budge; the lock stuck in the middle. I closed my eyes as my mother shuffled behind me, each movement punctuated with a little puff of disapproval. I stepped closer to the door, remembering what the landlord had done last week when he showed me the house. I pressed my body against the wood and lifted up on the doorknob. With my other hand, I jiggled the key, and after three or four good shakes, the lock came open.

            I felt my heart pick up speed as I twisted the knob and pushed the door back, revealing scuffed wood floors surrounded by deep green walls marked with the remnants of photos hung, removed, and rehung. My mom let out a gasp as the stale air, thick with the weight of enclosed spaces, wrapped around us. As my mother’s body worked to reject the smell, I inhaled deeply, letting my body relax into it.

            “I’m gonna go grab my first load; feel free to look around,” I said as I scooted past my mom and made my way back towards my bug. Circling around the front of my car, I reached into my pocket and held the button, releasing the trunk to reveal all three boxes I had managed to cram into the confined space. Kyle had begged me to give it up after our senior year of high school, to accept that I had one of the most impractical cars known to mankind after we had been unable to fit the gifts we had received from our joint graduation dinner into the trunk.

            “It’s just all this wrapping,” I had huffed, beginning a game of Tetris comprised of the items, the bags, and my car.

            “Where will the babies go?” Aunt Jules had asked the summer we came back from our freshman year at college. My skin went clammy, remembering the way Kyle’s eyes had dimmed, struck by the idea of creating life among all of the words left unsaid and feelings tucked away, festering between the cracks Aunt Jules and Mom had given us to carve out our identities in.

            “It is very tiny,” my mom had said after Aunt Jules and Kyle left that evening.

            “Sally, it’s fine.” Dad’s voice warmed my mind as his words fought back the fear and nerves that had begun to seep in.

            I blew out a breath as I reached into my trunk. I stacked the boxes, balancing them on the frame of my car, then bent my legs, lowering my body far enough that I could scoop up the bottom of the box tower. I paused as the first box wobbled.

            “Can you do all that at once, Evie?” my dad asked, his voice coming to me from somewhere on the other side of the box tower.

            “Yep. I’ve seen Gus do it on Cinderella a hundred times; how hard can it be?” I jostled the boxes and stretched my arms to their full extent, reaching toward the ground until I could just barely tuck my chin on top of the tower. “See,” I muffled out as the top of my dad’s head became visible. “I’ve totally got this.” The next few minutes were comprised of unsteady steps, each preceded by a recon mission—my foot actively seeking out pitfalls before gingerly placing itself down. This combined with my overly stretched body, hunched to hold the boxes under my chin, created a slow, dragging pace that after several minutes finally brought me into the living area again.

            Grunting, I squatted the rest of the way down and placed the Eiffel Tower of my life gently on the floor inside the entryway. I brushed my already clean hands down the length of my pants, nerves bubbling up as I heard footsteps approach from behind me.

            “Evie, please.” Her voice was soft, searching.

            “Mom, don’t.” I kept my voice low, willing her to drop whatever last-ditch speech she had prepared on the way over here.

            “Hun, you can’t really mean to live here.”

            I sighed and turned to face her. “Well, Mom, this would be a really odd place to keep my stuff if I wasn’t.” I had meant for the words to be light, a joke to break the rising tension, but instead, they came out clipped, broken against the shards of what my life had become.

            “Evelyn, look at it.”

            “I have, Mom. Twice.”

            Her huff was a rough, brutal breath of judgment as she placed her hands on her hips. “It’s just… Well, it’s just not you.”

            “And how in the world would you know that?” I threw the words at her, my face steely as I watched her reel back.

            “Evelyn Rose Mercer. I am your mother. I raised you. Of course, I know who you are.”

            “I don’t see how. I don’t even know who I am.”

            “Oh, please. You don’t mean that.”

            “Yeah, I do, Mom. I have never been anyone but who you and Aunt Jules wanted me to be.”

            “Don’t you dare. Your Aunt Jules and I only wanted the best for you. This,” her eyes drifted around the room, “this is not that.”

            “No, Mom. You both wanted what was best for you. You never once thought about me or Kyle or what we wanted. Do you honestly think that I wanted my mother running my life? Deciding who my first boyfriend would be when I was seven. Picking out my extracurriculars based solely on what another grown woman thought I should do because ‘Oh, just think, Sally, of how well this will pair with Kyle,’” my voice rose an octave as I mirrored Aunt Jules’ higher tone. “Or what color I should wear to prom based on the color of Kyle’s eyes because, God forbid, I wear my favorite color. Do you think I have enjoyed rejecting every offer to explore anything or anyone else for the last twenty-four years? I have never, not once, had a moment in which I have been myself, and that is because you have never allowed me to be anything but a pawn in your plan.” I should have stopped. I should have held my breath, pinched the bridge of my nose, dug my nails into the bed of my hands—anything to keep the words from falling into the crack between my mom and me. The space that had been growing wider with each passing breath. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t keep the words from spilling out, pushing it further and further apart, hoping it would fracture open and swallow up the lingering hope my mother was still desperately clinging to. I just didn’t think it would swallow her too.

            “Well. I guess if that’s how you see it,” her words were ghosts, apparitions of feelings. She ran her hands the length of her shirt, tightening her grip as she snapped the hem straight. “I just hope that this”—the word landed, the final fissure in the rift between us—“brings you the joy that I so cruelly deprived you of.” She turned and headed for the door just as my dad walked in carrying the last of my boxes. His eyes drifted between the two of us, lingering on the distance as if he too could see the rip I had torn.

            “Well, ladies,” he said as he placed the final boxes next to the others, “do we want to do dinner before we head back to the house?”

            “No, I don’t think so,” Mom’s voice was stiff.

            “Mom,” I said, trying to extend the bridge my dad was scrambling to build. “Stop.” She raised a hand, sucking the air from my lungs. “You have made your wishes quite clear.” She patted my dad’s arm. “James, I will be in the truck,” she said, and then she pulled the door shut behind her as she crossed the threshold. My body tensed, waiting for the impact of the door against the frame, but all that came was a soft click.