The Secret That Intervened

by Lisa Marie Stum

  I was a simple person, at least in my assessment of myself. Cody and Taylor would probably have disagreed with that. However, the clothes that I wore, the hobbies that I enjoyed, reflected it. All of my clothing came from the local thrift store. Out of necessity mostly, because it was all I could afford. That’s not to say I wished I could shop at expensive department stores. I doubt I’d do that even if I could. My appearance was important to me, but I didn’t care if what I wore had a designer label. Besides, I had a knack for finding gems among the junk and always managed to look presentable.

  I stood in the kitchen, in front of the sink, looking into the living room of my mother’s house. Everything about it was depressing and dreary. The same couch and armchair had been there ever since I could remember. Both were made of a rough brown plaid type of material and were not particularly comfortable to sit on.

  A black, orange, and green afghan hung over the back of the couch. My grandmother had crocheted it a long time ago. It was the only item my mother took after my grandmother died. The rest of the contents of her house were auctioned off. Or at least that’s what my mother told me.

  The windows were decorated with burnt-orange curtains. Underneath them were nicotine-stained sheers. There were spots on them toward the bottom from the moisture of the window. Had there been enough time before Cody arrived, I would have bleached them. They were pretty nasty looking.

  At least my mother didn’t smoke in the living room when Chloe was here. It was at my insistence; she wouldn’t have made that decision on her own. She’d smoked around me when I was younger. My clothes always reeked of it, and were a great source of embarrassment to me growing up, after my dad left. I kept my clothes sealed in trash bags, but it didn’t help much. That smell could penetrate anything.

  My eyes darted to the television set, which was just as old as the couch and armchair. Going over to Cody’s on Saturdays to watch TV was one of my favorite childhood traditions. At least the Altwaters’ house had cable, which was invariably better than the four or five stations that our crappy television set could receive.

  The items on top of the coffee table were scattered about. I placed the stack of coasters on the left, the large candle that had never been lit in the middle, and the remote on the right. I kept adjusting each item until they were equidistant from one another.

  Watermark spots covered the top of the coffee table and peeked through the doilies on it. In some spots the varnish had chipped off completely, and others spots were slightly puffy. I wished she would just use the coasters. It wasn’t really that hard to do. Maybe I could stain the table, sand it down and apply a new finish like I did to my coffee table that was in storage. I got it for ten dollars at the thrift shop. That’s where I’d got all my furniture for my first apartment. By the time I had sanded and varnished the table it looked brand new.

  Moving into my first apartment was one of the best memories I had. For the first time, I felt free, independent, and in control of my own circumstances. My mother’s house always felt like a prison, like a place that could slowly steal your soul of its own volition. That first night in my very own apartment, I was so happy. Despite the exhaustion that my then six-month-pregnant body felt from the move, I spent the entire evening washing every piece of clothing that I owned. No more smoke-filled rooms, and no more embarrassment because of the smell.

  My mother’s house only had three windows within its entire eight-hundred-square-foot diameter. There was one in each bedroom, and one in the living room that looked out into the front yard. They didn’t provide much sunlight, which was fitting since it was my mother’s house.

  The two windows that faced the backyard had been boarded up. I never understood why my mother did that.

  I moved toward the window to adjust the knickknacks on the windowsill. There were five of them and the two on the right were not spaced evenly.

  Cody liked to tease me about having obsessive compulsive disorder, but I didn’t have it. The knickknacks just didn’t look right the way they were. It wasn’t a compulsion or routine that I had. I just liked everything being in its proper place, it gave me a sense of comfort, however ridiculous it might have seemed.

  My mother’s bedroom door creaked open, and then the bathroom door shut. Hoping she would go back to bed, I said a silent prayer. Cody would surely be here soon and I wanted to spend time with him – mother free. When I heard the bedroom door shut after a few minutes I sighed in relief, and mouthed Amen.

  Chloe sat on the floor playing with her toys. I was lucky to have been blessed with such a content child. She rarely cried, took her naps at the same time every day, and almost always slept through the night.

  I looked at the wooden magazine stand next to the couch that contained the same magazines they had for the past twelve years. Time stood still in this depressing house. I adjusted the magazines so they were in a neat stack.

  I walked into the kitchen to get a drink of water. The green linoleum had lifted off in spots and the floor looked worn. The cabinets were dark brown and made of cheap particle board. The material that covered them had started to lift off in the corners. A while back, I had considered refinishing them, but my mother wouldn’t have noticed, so I decided not to spend the money.

  The refrigerator was the only item in the kitchen or quite possibly in the whole house that was not over a decade old. I had bought it for my mother a few years back after Cody noticed the smell of leaking Freon. He told me it wasn’t dangerous, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I didn’t really have the money to spend and hated dipping into Chloe’s savings, but I did it anyway. Anna let me have a few of her shifts and I was able to put back the money I took out. I’d only use half of what Jason sent me for child support and put the rest into an account for Chloe.

  I grabbed a glass out of the cabinet. “Chloe, baby, want more juice?” Chloe shook her head no, her ringlets bouncing around as she did it.

  I heard a car pull up outside and knew it must be Cody. No one else ever visited besides the delivery man.

  The screen door let off the squeal it always did, he knocked once, and then the front door opened. His face lit up and he said, “Hey, Princess,” to Chloe. He walked further into the living room and scooped her up into his arms. Chloe gripped him around his neck as he squeezed her tightly. After giving her a kiss on the cheek, he swung her around so she was resting against his hip. He bent down and picked up the stuffed teddy bear she had been playing with and handed it to her. “I missed you, Princess,” he said as he gave her another hug.

  I had always loved that he acknowledged Chloe’s presence first. Always. No matter who was in the room or what was going on around him.

  “You’re here earlier than I thought you would be,” I said, wishing I had checked my appearance after I finished cleaning. “I was hoping to have everything tidied up a bit more before you got here.”

  “You know you don’t have to have everything in its perfect place for me,” he said teasingly, and then winked at me.

  I winked back to mock him. It was amazing how natural the interaction felt between us. There was no tension or apprehension, just two friends talking as if they had never been apart.

  “Want something to drink?” I asked him, raising my eyebrows.

  He looked at me like he didn’t know what to say. And I understood why.

  “I went grocery shopping after Frankie’s yesterday,” I said.

  I pulled an orange Fanta out of the fridge and held it in the air, knowing it was his favorite.

  “Good call,” he said with a smile.

  I grabbed my glass of water and the soda and headed toward the couch. He placed Chloe on her blanket with the toys she had been playing with, and then took a seat next to me.

  I snatched two coasters from the middle of the coffee table and placed a drink on each. The condition it was already in didn’t really require coasters, but I was a creature of habit.

  He turned to me and looked me up and down.

&n
bsp; “Still beautiful as ever,” he said.

  I looked up to the left and shook my head. “Stop that already,” I said with a nervous smile on my face. That familiar butterfly feeling was back.

  “I was talking about Chloe.”

  “Thanks for making me feel stupid,” I joked, knowing he was just teasing me.

  He elevated my chin with the side of his index finger and said, “You know I’m just kidding with you, you’re both my gorgeous girls.” I took in a deep breath. It wasn’t weird being around him, but definitely different. The energy between us had changed, not in a bad way, just different.

  My mother’s footsteps moved toward us as she walked down the hall. I looked at Cody and then down with a clenched jaw. She walked into the living room. I hoped she was out there just to get something and didn’t plan on staying.

  “Hey there, Ms. Reed,” Cody said to her.

  “Good to see you, Cody,” my mother, Grace Reed, said.

  She walked into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, and pulled out a bottle. Standing at the entryway of the kitchen, she looked at us and complained that she had a cold. With the bottle of vodka in her hand my mother said, “This will knock it right out of me.” And then she headed back toward her bedroom.

  Her bedroom door shut, and the smell of cigarette smoke came billowing toward us. I could tell from my mother’s speech that this wasn’t her first drink of the day, just a continuation. Quite honestly, I didn’t even need her to speak for me to know. It would be abnormal if she hadn’t had quite a few drinks by this time in the day.

  I had never felt embarrassed about my mother around Cody. But the frustration over her condition still lingered. I had made numerous attempts to help her get sober. Some treatments took for a few days, and one time she was even sober for an entire week. She always managed to relapse though.

  When I was younger I had a deep sense of embarrassment and shame about it with everyone but Cody and his parents. In some ways, I guess I thought my mother’s behavior defined me, like I was a bad person because I had a bad mother. So I did my best to hide what I could from others. Not that it mattered, because all the adults in town knew about her problem.

  Cody was the only friend I would allow around my mother. At the age of thirteen I made the mistake of letting Erin Maddox into my house. All the kids at school found out my secret. I was so ashamed, embarrassed, and destroyed that something I closely guarded was let loose for everyone to judge.

  The drinking started the day my father left and became an everyday event shortly thereafter. At first, it was just in the evenings after supper. Then two months after my father left it became an all day, every day event. My mother eventually stopped leaving the house altogether when she started paying the town bum to deliver the vodka to her. That was where she would get her food from too while I was away. Her weekly delivery had consisted of seven bottles of vodka and seven bags of chips over the past three months. That was her diet when I’d first moved out on my own too. I wasn’t one to forget about details, usually. Somehow I’d never thought through my mother’s meals in the excitement of being free and having a place of my own. She went two weeks eating junk until I visited and realized I would need to help her out.

  I spent Sunday afternoons at my place cooking fourteen meals for my mother. She would never eat more than twice a day and anything more than that was just wasted food. I always made her meals from scratch, nothing elaborate because my budget just didn’t allow for it.

  “This place was a disaster zone yesterday when I arrived,” I said, with a look of disappointment on my face. “Ashtrays were overflowing, trash and dust was all over the place. It didn’t look like she’d cleaned the toilet the entire time I was gone.”

  “I know. I’ve been checking up on her and dropping off dinner once a week. I thought about picking things up but I didn’t want to insult her,” he said.

  “Thanks for doing that. I was worried about her chip and vodka diet while I was away. I checked into a real food delivery service but it was just too expensive. I stocked her cabinets with canned goods before I left for New York, but from the looks of it she hasn’t touched a single one. The frozen meals are gone, but the freezer can only hold a few weeks’ worth of meals. I’ll never understand her aversion to anything that requires a little effort, or to life in general for that matter.”

  He looked at me and was intently listening. His eyes showed no judgment. They never did. He didn’t speak, just listened, because he knew I wasn’t finished. He’d learned how to be a good listener from Mama Mary. He’d picked up a lot of good habits from her. I often wondered what it would have been like if she was my mom. One who cared about me, one that took care of me, instead of the other way around. Mama Mary did care about me, I knew that, but I wished my own mother did too.

  “I feel guilty for leaving her, knowing she doesn’t have anyone else in town. It took me a solid two minutes and a whole lot of deep breaths before I was able to walk into this shack last night. I wasn’t sure what kind of condition the place would be in, but it’s better than I thought it would be.”

  I leaned forward and grabbed my glass of water, then adjusted myself on the couch so I was sitting with my legs crossed.

  “How long do you plan on staying here?” Cody asked.

  “Mr. Gritley has a place on Third and Altoona available. I talked to him earlier this morning and he said I could move in on Saturday.” I couldn’t have been more thankful I only had four more nights to stay at my mother’s house.

  “Is it furnished?”

  “No. I never had the storage center auction off my things. It wouldn’t have brought much money in anyway and my intuition wouldn’t let me, I suppose. I guess I kind of knew I would be back in town again.” I stood up and peered over the coffee table to check on Chloe.

  He took a sip of his soda as I sat back down.

  “I’d be happy to help you move in to the new spot,” he said.

  “Thanks, but Taylor and I have it covered.”

  He looked at me with furrowed brows and then chuckled. “There’s a few things wrong with that. But most importantly, her ditzy ass will probably move your furniture into the wrong place altogether.”

  I laughed and smacked his shoulder lightly with the back of my hand. “She’s not that bad.”

  “Are we talking about the same girl?” He laughed, flashing me a look that let me know that he thought I was absurd.

  I shook my head and a grin crossed my face. He was right, Taylor could be a bit flaky at times, but she was a loyal friend.

  “I’ll get one of the guys to help. We don’t have to go onstage until nine.”

  “No, really. Me and Taylor can handle it,” I said.

  “Maybe the lighter stuff, but wait until you try to bring in that couch and dresser.” He brushed his hand up and down my thigh. “Stop arguing with me and do the polite thing and accept my help.”

  That sent a small shock all through my body. He was being touchier, more flirty than usual. “Okay,” I said, smiling at him. In all honesty, we girls could have handled the move, but I wanted to see Cody. After all, what if he’d got used to us being apart while I was in New York? I didn’t want that to become his new “normal.” I’d be the first to admit that my thought process was selfish.

  Chloe came over to Cody and climbed into his lap. She stood up on his legs, placing a foot on each of his thighs as he held her hands. She was getting too big to do that, but I didn’t correct it. There was something about it that I really liked.

  “My Princess,” he said to Chloe. He quickly had her in his lap, tickling her, and she was giggling in delight. She wiggled free and went back to playing with her toys.

  Their interaction with each other was always easy and natural. It had always been like that between them. When I thought about how clumsy and awkward Jason was with Chloe my stomach went sour. Every once in a while there was a sweet interaction between Chloe and her father, like the time that he made Play-Doh
animals with her, however, those moments were few and far between.

  Cody looked at me with his lips parted, like he wanted to say something. I knew he had to be curious about the circumstances that brought me back to Milbourny, but I wasn’t eager to talk about them.

  He grabbed my hand and placed it between both of his. The questions were coming. He did that when he wanted me to open up about something. He wasn’t like Mama Mary with her open-ended statements. He would always ask questions directly, at least with me. We never had secrets between us, except our real feelings for each other. And his feelings were already out in the open.

  “Can I ask you something?” he asked.

  My heart raced and I blurted out, “It was good for the first two months and then ended just the way you said it would. Jason was more concerned with his career, his friends, and his own life. There just wasn’t any room for us to fit into it. He would come home late, sometimes not at all, and most of the time this last month I could tell that he just didn’t want us there. It just…” I trailed off, because my voice was cracking.

  He looked me in the eyes, searching for the full truth. He shook his head. “You’re not telling me something,” he said softly, almost in a whisper, as he searched my eyes, trying to read me.

  He cupped my other hand between his so they were both resting in his. I looked down and then looked at him, struggling to fight back tears.

  “Just tell me, Hail, you know you can tell me anything.”

  I hesitated for a moment, carefully reflecting on how he would react. I searched for a way to speak the words, but I just couldn’t say it without falling completely apart.

  Turning my back to him, I said, “Lift up my shirt.” Tears welled up in my eyes when the shame took over.

  Chapter 9 - Cody

  I pinched the sides of her pink shirt and slid it up.