Family Love

by Liz Crowe

  I was up by the time everyone got home from the weekly ritual—and by “everyone,” I mean her and my daddy, because all my brothers had flown the nest by then, and little AliceLynn, my brother’s kid who’d moved in with us a few years ago, was at her other grandparents’ house.

  Skulking in the kitchen, feeling mildly guilty, I’d made fresh iced tea out of sheer nervousness. Mama dropped her purse on the counter and poured herself a big glass, put it to her flushed forehead and sighed. Daddy gave me a one-armed hug and peck on the check.

  “Feeling better, Angel?”

  “Yeah,” I said, observing Mama to gauge her reaction. “Sorry. What was the message today?” I asked, not caring, but knowing it for a good move.

  “Honoring your parents,” Mama said with a chuckle. I frowned. “No, child, I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. It really was that, which seemed appropriate, considering.”

  “Linds,” Daddy said in a soft voice.

  Mama gave a dismissive wave of her fingers. I tensed up. “So,” she said, sitting down and fanning herself with the church bulletin. “We need to talk about this school.”

  “What’s to talk about?” I poured myself a glass of tea and stared out the kitchen window. “I got in. I got the necessary scholarships. I’m going.” It was a big deal. I had wanted into the New York Performing Arts College since I first learned about it. I’d made it, and I wasn’t about to let her spoil it for me.

  “I’m fully aware of those things, Angelique,” Mama said, her voice pinched in a way it seemed to get only with me. I glanced over at Daddy. He was busy pulling leftovers out of the refrigerator. “It’s—” She stopped. “Anton, if you would give me five minutes to collect myself I’ll put out dinner.”

  “I’m fine, honey.” He stuck a couple of plastic containers in the microwave. “I need to eat and get over to the garage. Antony’s having trouble with that old lift, and I told him I’d work on it with him today.” He kissed Mama’s head. She leaned into him. The guilt suffused me again, but I knew if I didn’t say it now I never would.

  “I’m not going to church again. Ever.”

  The two of them looked at me with identical expressions of horror. I slid into a chair, observing them. Mama with that deep auburn hair I so envied, lightly freckled nose, and high cheekbones. Her porcelain skin had plenty of lines, from worrying about kids, she claimed, and from too much time spent on horseback in the sun. She protected it now with huge hats while she rode her horses and gardening gloves while working outside. Daddy’s smoother olive skin, coal black hair, and deep brown eyes were closer to mine.

  I resisted the compulsion to run to him, to let him protect me from this silly, unnecessary declaration. But it was out there now, lying on the table between us like a steaming pile of dog shit.

  “Young lady, that is blasphemous and disrespectful. Not to mention ridiculous. As long as you live under this roof, you attend church. Your brothers did. Some of them still do. What makes you any different from them?”

  “I’m guessing it’s because they never had the guts to say this to you.” I pressed my sweaty palms on my knees under the table to stop them from shaking.

  Daddy took the food from the microwave and grabbed a fork from the drawer. Mama blew out a breath. Her lips compressed, nearly disappearing. The furrows between her eyebrows deepened.

  “It’s that boy, isn’t it?” She stood up and yanked the plastic bowls right out of Daddy’s hands, leaving him hanging, fork in the air halfway to his mouth.

  “We don’t eat like barbarians in this house, Anton. Sit.” She pointed to the chair she’d vacated at the wooden table that had, at one time or another, accommodated five babies, toddlers, adolescents and teenagers.

  Daddy only hesitated a second. I knew he and his sons let Mama rule her kitchen as she saw fit. They had other projects and chores, and their dreams were never interrupted for lack of a warm meal, lovingly prepared by Lindsay.

  “He’s trashy,” Mama muttered while she pulled out three plates, three sets of flatware, and three of her ironed fabric napkins, plunking them in front of me with a glare. I got up and set our places carefully, unwilling to get into a no-win argument over my boyfriend. It was a moot point now anyway.

  Daddy and I sat in awkward silence while Mama put our plates together and heated them up individually, all the while mumbling under her breath. But I steeled myself against it. I didn’t care what she thought of me anymore. I would be out of here soon enough. It would take all four apocalyptic horsemen plus a few extra to get me to return once I escaped this two-bit town.

  By the time she’d slammed our food down in front of us, consisting of warmed-over chicken, rice, and mushroom casserole, green beans, and fresh sliced tomatoes with plenty of salt, she’d apparently reached some kind of conclusion. I let her stew a bit longer, taking tiny bites of the tomatoes, trying to sort out how to avoid eating the creamy, fattening glop covering the chicken breast.

  “Anton,” Mama said, placing her napkin in her lap. “Blessing.” She shot me a look fit to kill. I dropped my fork onto the plate and took their hands.

  “Dear Lord,” Daddy said, “bless this food for the nourishment of our bodies. Thank you for this glorious day, thank you for family, health, and happiness. And bless the Cincinnati Reds. May they kick righteous tail in today’s game against the heathen Detroit Tigers. Amen.”

  “Oh, Lord,” Mama said, gripping me so I couldn’t let go. “Please bless our only daughter Angelique Brianna with the light of Your holy wisdom, so she may make the correct choices for herself as a young woman.”

  I opened one eye to peer at her, but she had hers tight shut. She kept going. “Give her father and me the strength to weather the storms of her rebelliousness, so we can all come out on the other end of her teenaged years intact. Give her the strength and courage of her convictions to be proud, strong, and virtuous when she moves to the wilds of New York City next year. Amen.”

  “Mama,” I croaked, ready to get up and run to her, to beg her to hug me longer than a few seconds, to hold me and croon soothing nonsense the way she did for my brothers. Daddy was the one I usually had to turn to, based on past experience—on all of my experience, I suppose.

  She let go of my hand and took a sip of her tea. “We’ll need to start making a list of things to buy for your dorm room,” she said, not looking at me. Daddy was staring at her, not touching his food, his mouth hanging open. “What?” She glared at him. “Don’t you put your uncertainties about our daughter moving to New York City off on me, Anton Love. I’m fine with it. That place will suit her.”

  She turned to face me, her expression flat. The creeping, crawling fear at leaving home for a city so large and impersonal almost suffocated me at that moment. “What? Eat. You’re getting too skinny again.” She put a green bean in her mouth, chewed and swallowed.

  I stared down at my plate, confused, irritated, and unhappy, my usual stew of emotions when confronted with my mother’s special brand of dismissive, take-control concern.

  “I’m pregnant,” I said, raising my eyes to her face and adding that truth to the table’s dog shit pile.

  Mama put her fork down, wiped her mouth with her napkin, got up and left the room. Daddy just sat, staring at me, his dark eyes filling with dismay. “Oh, Angel,” he said, hoarsely, getting to his feet.

  “Where are you going?” I got up, wobbly, sick, and wishing I’d been born a boy—yet another Love brother—for probably the zillionth time in my life.

  “I’m going to find Bobby Foster’s parents,” he said, dumping his untouched plate of food into the garbage can.

  “No, don’t,” I said gripping his arm. “They’ll make us get married. I am not doing that. I won’t. I’m not repeating your mistakes. You and Mama won’t make me, I know it.”

  I heard my voice getting screechy. I took a long breath. “I know where I can go. I need two hundred dollars and … and a ride there … and home again, after.”

  He jerked
out of my grasp. “I guess you might have thought about how much you didn’t want to marry that boy a little sooner.”

  He grabbed my shoulders, the expression on his face making me feel worse than anything my mother might ever say or do. I’d failed him. And I’d done it on purpose. I knew that much. “You are not having an abortion, Angelique. We don’t believe in that. It’s murder.”

  I stepped away from him, tears flowing down my face. “You’re such a hypocritical asshole! Do you have any idea how many girls your sons have knocked up? How many abortions they’ve paid for? Do you?”

  He sucked in a breath, then closed his eyes, and ran a shaking hand down his face. I moved in, knowing this was the moment, while also hating myself for knowing it.

  “Daddy, please don’t make me marry Bobby. He’s he’s a dumb jock. He’ll never amount to anything. You’ve said that yourself. I made a mistake, and it was my fault as much as his. He didn’t force himself on me, either, so don’t get all high and mighty about that.” I picked up his hand and held it between mine. The familiar, callused palms and work-worn knuckles comforted and soothed me as they always had. “I only need some money, and a ride to Lexington. But I should do it pretty soon.”

  “I’m going to the garage,” he said, shouldering past me toward the door. “I’d leave your mama alone for a while, if I were you.” He jerked his chin to the doorway between the kitchen and the rest of the house. “I need to help your brother right now. I’ll figure something out, Angel. But you—” He stopped, clenching and unclenching his fists and his jaw. I watched, fascinated all over again by his quiet, compact strength and the power of my love for him.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy,” I whispered.

  He glared at me then stomped out without saying anything else.

  Chapter Two

  “I’ve gotta hand it to you, little sister,” my oldest brother Antony said on the phone the next day. “You sure know how to cause more than your fair share of trouble.”

  I’d come in from school, anxious, mildly sick, and hungry, since I’d been avoiding food for over a week, terrified I’d get fat and lose my place at the school I’d worked so hard for. “Don’t tell anyone else,” I said, sliding down the kitchen wall.

  “I haven’t. You know, that kid should—”

  “I haven’t told him, and I’m not going to. His mama would make us get married. You know how that family is.”

  He heaved a huge sigh, sounding so much like our father it was eerie. “Why in the hell did you make it a dinner table announcement? You know that’s not gonna help.”

  I swiped my fingers under my streaming eyes. “I need to get it taken care of and soon. I don’t care what she thinks of me anymore. She’s never liked me. Nothing I do or say—”

  “Stop whining. Jesus,” he said. “You two are worse than a pair of squabbling sisters.”

  “I wish. If she was my sister maybe she wouldn’t be such a bi—”

  “Don’t. Just don’t. That attitude doesn’t help.”

  I got to my feet, my mind floundering over where to turn, what to do next, what the hell I would do if my father and my oldest, most trusted brother wouldn’t help me out of this mess. “You’re in no position to talk to me about my attitude, Antony Ian Love. You won’t even look at your poor little girl. Mama and Daddy are raising her like she was their own, and that’s not even close to right.”

  “Don’t lecture me, Angelique. Not if you want my fuckin’ help with this mess.”

  Tears poured down my cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Make the appointment. I’ll get you there and pay for it, but so help me, if you don’t at least try to get along with her …”

  “Why?” I leaned against the counter, taking in the familiar contours of the shabby but scrupulously clean kitchen. “I’m leaving soon. And once I get out of this hellhole I am never, ever coming back.”

  “Whatever. Make the appointment.” He hung up, leaving me glaring into space, my chest pounding with frustration.

  “Angel,” a small voice said from the doorway, startling me out of a temper tantrum. “Was that my daddy on the phone?”

  I got up, put the receiver in the cradle and sat in the nearest chair, patting the chair next to me. My niece AliceLynn was tall for her age, a lanky, redheaded girl with her grandma’s fine features, all the way down to the spray of freckles across her high cheekbones and the bridge of her nose. She slid into the seat, putting her notebook on the table in front of her. I got up and fixed her a peanut butter and honey sandwich and glass of milk in silence.

  Antony had married the girl’s pregnant mother, Crystal, his feisty high school girlfriend, then dropped out of the college he was failing anyway and moved into a small house on a few acres her parents gave them. When AliceLynn was almost three, Crystal was on her way home from a college reunion in Knoxville when she was killed in a terrible head-on collision on the interstate. Antony lost his shit completely, and had been incapable of taking care of his toddler daughter. The “few weeks” she was to spend living in Antony’s old room at my parents’ house had turned into years.

  “Yeah, that was your daddy,” I said, untying one of her messy braids and redoing it while she ate.

  “Oh, okay. Is he all right?”

  I kissed the top of her head. “He’s fine, sugar. He’ll be ready for you to move into your house real soon.”

  “No, he won’t,” she said without a trace of emotion. “I want to stay here with Grammie and Granddaddy anyway.”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure you’ll be moving—”

  “Of course she wants to stay here,” my mother interrupted, coming into the kitchen with a pile of folded dish towels and ironed napkins. The smell of starch-infused cotton trailed her like smoke. “There’s no need to set up false expectations, Angelique. Put these away please.” She handed me the still-warm stack.

  “Hi, Grammie,” AliceLynn said. “I finished my math.”

  “Let me see it,” Mama said, touching the girl’s re-structured braids. She leaned over AliceLynn’s shoulder and pointed out a few things she needed to correct. “Go work at the big desk in the living room, sugar. I need to talk with your auntie.”

  AliceLynn glanced at me. I waved her off, pissed all over again that even a kid could sense the dysfunction in the room. I rinsed out the empty glass and stuck it in the dishwasher. “Mama, you need to get a new upper dish rack. That hard water has really eaten through this—”

  “Come over here please,” she said, her voice flat. I closed my eyes for a split second, then opened them when I caught myself praying for strength. Old habit, I mused, taking a seat across my steely-eyed mother.

  She slid an envelope across the table. “I’ve made the necessary appointment and called in an excuse to school for tomorrow. Here’s the money. Put it out of sight. We’ll have to leave early in the morning. You shouldn’t eat anything after ten tonight, the nurse said.”

  I stared at the envelope, then up at her. “Mama, you don’t have to do this. Antony’s gonna …” I stopped when the sum total of her words sank in. “You’re taking me,” I blurted this astonishing fact.

  “Of course I am. I’m not about to let my daughter undergo minor surgery without a parent present. And your poor daddy … well, let’s just say he didn’t sleep a wink last night, and he needs his rest. The brewery expansion demands all his attention right now, and since it pays the bills around here …”

  She tapped the envelope with a fingertip by way of reminding me that two hundred dollars was not an easy thing to conjure up, especially not for this particular reason.

  “Okay,” I said, taking it and holding it in my lap, willing myself not to cry and failing. “I’m sorry, Mama.”

  The chair made a loud screech as she stood, tenting her fingers on the table in front of her. I pondered them—nails utilitarian short, skin rough from years outdoors, and yet more years tending her houseful of babies and toddlers one right after another—and tried to r
ecall the last time she’d touched me when it wasn’t in anger or punishment.

  Daddy doled out the whippings for all my brothers but Aiden, the youngest and biggest suck-up. Mama had bestowed her fair share of smacks to my behind. Never with anything but her palm, though. It wasn’t intended to cause real pain, but be a correction … like a bark collar, I’d overheard her say to her friends once while they were playing cards on the lower patio.

  A surge of pure hatred filled my chest, travelling up my throat and forcing words out of my mouth I wished I could take back the second I uttered them. “I guess you don’t want me to make the same mistakes you did, huh?”

  She raised a single eyebrow, her lips turning down at the same time. “I don’t consider much of anything I did to be a mistake, Angelique. But when I did make one, I paid for it plenty.”

  I glared at her, not understanding, and not really wanting to. To dig too deeply would be painful, similar to gouging out a scabbed-over, nasty wound that would never stop bleeding. She glared back. Our usual routine. But she blinked first, a rare occurrence.

  Her face seemed so old then, and I wished I could rush over and hug her. But that was not our usual routine and never had been. I stood, holding onto the abortion money, relieved and yet oddly sad. Mostly disappointed in myself for giving her yet another excuse to hate me.

  “I would advise you strongly to get out of my sight right now, young lady. Just because I took cash from my savings and am going to drive you to the clinic tomorrow does not mean I approve of why I have to do any of it.” I nodded and headed for the hallway. “Oh, and Angelique, I told Bobby’s mama. We agreed this is best for you both.”

  I whirled, pulse racing. “You had no right to do that.”

  “Oh, honey, I have every right in the world. I am not in the business of making a decision about another woman’s grandbaby without consulting with her.” She made a point to stare at my midsection then up at my face. “You’re such a selfish girl. Your Daddy and brothers spoiled you rotten. But someday, I hope, you’ll understand that the universe doesn’t revolve around you. Now go on, git. I have work to do.”