We sat in silence for a bit. I was starting to get the feeling that everybody had something to say but really didn’t want to go first. I decided to let them talk to each other and I was going to bed. The kids get up early anyway. I kissed Cindy and said goodnight to Laura before heading down the hallway. Cindy came in a few minutes later as I heard Laura’s bedroom door close.
I had already gotten undressed and into bed, leaving her bedside lamp and bathroom light on for her. She looked lost in thought as she got undressed. I knew she was lost in thought about something because she started to get into bed, said “Shit”, and got back up to do her nightly routine in the bathroom.
After she finished and turned out the light, she crawled into bed and spooned into me. I put my hand on her hip and she pulled down across her abdomen and let out a deep sigh.
“What’s wrong, Cin?” Something was eating at her, that was obvious.
Another sigh. “I’ll let you know when I figure it out. G’night, baby.” She wasn’t in the mood, either.
I kissed the back of her head, “G’night, baby.”
Sunday went by quietly. I went in to work the closing shift, as usual. When I got home, all four girls were on the couch, watching some sappy movie. Well, Cindy and Laura were watching the movie, my daughters were asleep between the two women. There was also a half bottle of wine on the coffee table with two wine glasses. I guess things weren’t that bad between them. For now. Both women were wearing just a t-shirt and panties.
At some point, they had gotten the girls dressed in their pajamas. I was surprised that Cindy let them stay up this late on a Sunday night but it wasn’t the first time she’d done that.
I tucked the girls in. Bobbi asked me as I bent over to kiss her forehead, “Are you going to make Aunt Laura leave, Daddy?”
“No, Queen Bee, I’m not. She needs someplace to stay and she’s better off here than someplace else.”
“I think she’s scared you and Mommy are going to make her leave.”
“She’s going to be here for a while yet, kid. You just go to sleep now and let us worry about that, okay?” She’s pretty sharp for a five year old but “it’s complicated” is beyond her level of comprehension right now. Hell, I wasn’t sure how I felt about all this. I was still trying to figure some of that out as I kissed a sleeping Ronnie on the forehead, made sure Bobbi was actually closing her eyes, and turned out the light before partially closing the door. I made sure the little red light on the baby monitor was lit before I left, since Ronnie would sometimes freak out a little if she woke up someplace different than where she went to sleep.
When I got back to the living room, I could tell something was off. They were still sitting in the same places but I could tell Cindy’s posture was stiffer than it had been. Laura stood up when she saw me.
“I think I’m going to go to bed now. I’m still pretty tired and the wine isn’t helping,” She stretched a little awkwardly. As I averted my eyes, I caught Cindy’s. She glanced at her sister and then back at me, but her face was expressionless. Laura’s hand gently grazed my upper arm as she passed, “G’night, Stevie. G’night, Cindy.”
Cindy’s “Goodnight,” was oddly formal. I was about to find out why.
“G’night, Laura.” I sat down next to Cindy, who waited until Laura had gone into her room and closed the door.
“She’s awfully interested in you.” She was facing the TV but I could see her glance at me out of the corner of her eye. That’s what had been bothering her.
“What? How?”
“She keeps looking at you, especially when she knows you aren’t looking. I don’t like it.”
“I’ll figure out a way to bring it up. She hasn’t seen us in eleven years and you gotta admit, I look a lot different now than I did back then.”
“Yeah, maybe. Maybe not. I can’t do that again, Stevie. I can’t. We have the girls now. If we lost them, I’d –” Her voice broke. I couldn’t imagine the pain I would be in if we lost our daughters, let alone try to imagine hers.
We had tried to keep our voices down but we both jumped when we heard Laura’s voice behind us. “We need to talk, all three of us. Right now.”
Laura walked around to the recliner and sat down, facing us. She had tears running down her cheeks, so I guess she heard enough of the conversation to know it was about her. She kept her hands in her lap, twisting them together nervously. She seemed scared.
I could feel Cindy tremble a little beside me. She was scared, too. I poured some wine into each glass and handed them to each of the girls. Laura took a sizeable sip before speaking.
“I need to tell you both something and I’d like for you to let me finish before you say anything, please?” We both nodded. I’d try, anyway.
“I know ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t enough, it won’t ever be enough, but I am sorry. I never meant for Daddy to kick you out like that. I just wanted him to make you stop — to stop being with each other.
“We used to hang out all the time before you went to college and it was hard being by myself after you,” waving her glass at Cindy, “left to be with Stevie at school. When you both came back, you were different. You spent time by yourselves, without me, and I felt left out. It hurt. We couldn’t have our own friends and you were all I had, and then I didn’t even have you any more. The day I saw you sneak back into the house, I lost it. I followed you in and when I saw what you were doing, I got so — so mad. You had a secret that I didn’t know anything about. I wasn’t thinking, I went and found Daddy and told him what I saw. He got so mad, saying shit like you were an ‘abomination unto God’, you couldn’t be his children, spawn of Satan, all that hate shit he preaches on Sunday.
“That’s no excuse for what I did. I didn’t expect him to throw you out like that, but I probably should have. All of a sudden, I really was alone. I made the one thing I didn’t want to happen actually happen. I’ve hated myself for it ever since.” The tears were running down her face and Cindy’s. I was M-A-D. Pissed off, put my fist through somebody’s face, kick them in the nuts so hard they became earrings mad.
I started to wind myself up and Laura put up her hand, “Please, Stevie, let me finish. Then you can say whatever you have to say and I’ll listen to every word of it. I promise.
“I need to tell you both why I did it. I don’t expect you to understand or forgive me, but I need you to know why.
“The real reason I didn’t want you together? I was — am in love with both of you. I wanted both of you to myself. I couldn’t stand the way you looked at each other after you came back. The looks, the smiles, the whispers when you walked past each other, I –” she choked back tears for a few seconds, “hated what you had because I wanted it all for me.”
“I felt bad for so long. I got married to Lewis, let him hit me, because I thought I deserved it. The day I went to the hospital, the nurse in the ER told me “Nobody should put up with this kind of treatment, honey. It doesn’t matter what you think you’ve done, you don’t deserve this. This ain’t right’. It’s kind of stupid, but they were playing this Nickelback song on the radio, “If Today Was Your Last Day” or something like that, and I realized that I needed to tell you I’m sorry.”
She looked at the two of us on the couch and sort of shrugged, as if to say that was all she had. Cindy reached over to grab my hand and I pulled it away. Both of them flinched.
I kept my voice low so that I didn’t wake Bobbi and Ronnie. “You’re sorry? You’re fucking sorry?”
“Stevie, please –” Cindy tried to grab my hand again and I moved it.
“Fuck this ‘Stevie, please’ bullshit, Cindy. You have no fucking idea what happened after that, do you, Laura? None. No. Fucking. Idea. Well, let me fill you in on our lives since then.
“Your sister cried herself to sleep every single fucking night for months. We slept in places that I can still smell, almost eleven years later. We would split one package of dollar store ramen every two days and drank water from taps no living thing should drink water from, because that’s all we had. No matter what I did, I couldn’t make Cindy feel better.
“When we got here to Des Moines, we had thirty dollars left. We hadn’t eaten in two days. Some guy paid me forty dollars to clean his yards for him. We had exactly enough money to get a decent room for one night so we could take a shower and wash some clothes so I could try to find a job. This was the end of the road.
“I interviewed at the store I work at now. That manager, Theo, he hired me. When he found out we were living in a shelter downtown, he felt sorry for us so he and his wife took us in, fed us, and gave us a safe place to sleep until we could save enough to rent a small apartment. Cindy got work at a restaurant, clearing tables and shit. Almost every night, she cried herself to sleep. Not because we got kicked out. Because you — you fucking betrayed us, betrayed her. The thought that you felt ‘left out’ never occurred to us and you never said or did anything to make us think otherwise. Is that partially our fault? Yes. Absolutely yes. We were in love and had our heads up our asses. Did we deserve what you did? No. You could have, should have, said something. We loved you and never meant to cut you out. For what it’s worth, my problem with you isn’t about me, it’s about the shit you did to your sister. I’m having a really fucking hard time with that.”
“E-NOUGH.” Cindy’s grip on my forearm, digging her nails into my skin, got my attention. Laura was sitting, head down, with her face in her hands. Her shoulders were shaking and heaving. “That’s enough, Steven. Enough.”
“We didn’t know, Laurie. I swear it. We would have made time for you –” Cindy stopped as Laura stood up.
“You both still don’t understand. I am in love with both of you. In love. I was in love with you, Cindy, before you ever left for college. We shared everything and I thought, no I hoped, that maybe you were in love with me, too. When Stevie came back that first summer, he was so different. Not like the boys from church, pretending to be all pious and shit while trying to grab my tit or my ass. He acted like a man and I couldn’t help falling in love with him, too. The last year you came back, watching you together, all I could think was ‘I want that too, I want what Cindy has with Stevie’. It was thought of you two together, without me, that made me crazy.”
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