Both Sides Now

by Shawn Inmon

  “Well, that was the plan, but the plan changed.”

  “What changed, exactly?”

  “I guess I got homesick and just decided to come home.”

  “What are you going to do now that you’re home?”

  Shawn cocked his head to the side, like he was trying to figure out where this onslaught of questions was coming from. For my part, I just stood there, hoping the three of us could get away and go have fun together.

  “I just touched down yesterday, so I don’t have a plan yet. I figure people will always need help on their farms, spraying for weeds and shoveling horse crap, plus haying season will be here soon and I know a lot of people will need help then. I’ll find something, I always do.”

  “That’s fine, but there are a couple of things I need to let you both know. We were very lenient with Dawn the last few months; letting her stay out late and letting you two spend all day, every day together. We chose to do that because we knew you were about to graduate, and head off to Alaska and then college. We wanted you two to be able to enjoy yourselves while you could. But, now that you’ve come back so early, things are going to be different.”

  Shawn glanced over at me, looking serious. His expression said: I have stepped in a mess that I didn’t even see coming.

  “For one, we will have rules and curfews and you will follow them to the letter. For another, you will not be spending all your time together this summer. It’s not healthy. If you aren’t able to keep to these rules, or if you miss curfew, or we think you are spending too much time together, then we won’t let you see each other at all.”

  Those last words just kind of hung there in the air. That seemed so unbelievable I didn’t even want to think about it.

  “I hope you both are hearing what I am saying, because if you aren’t, there will be consequences, and neither one of you will like what they are.”

  I could feel my face getting hot and I just wanted to get out of there.

  “Can we go?” I asked.

  “I already told you that you could go tonight, so yes, you can, but don’t plan on doing anything else together for a few days.”

  Shawn, Tommy and I walked out into the front yard, a little stunned. Shawn was the first to recover. “Hey, that was fun. I don’t think we can match that by going to Hollywood Hollywood, but let’s give it a try, OK?”

  He took my hand, led me over to the Vega and opened my door while Tommy climbed in the back. We did have fun that night, because we always did when we were together, but there was a feeling of dread hanging over everything.

  Mom never did finish the roll of jokes and she never mentioned it again.

  Every Time You Go Away

  When Shawn showed up so unexpectedly, I thought my blah summer was going to be great after all. And there were times when it was, but mostly, one thing after another went wrong.

  I still had my job at DeGoede’s Bulb Farm, so I was getting up early every day and was tired every night. Shawn was looking for work every day, but Mossyrock was a small town and he was a few weeks behind in the summer job hunt. He’d been working at a farm before graduation, but he’d quit when he went to Alaska and they had hired someone else. There were a lot of farms that would need help harvesting their hay come July and August, but that was weeks away. So most days, I was picking bulbs at DeGoede’s and he was just over at his house, reading.

  The weekends were good though, at least at first. Because I was working a lot, I didn’t really have to worry about Mom being on Shawn and me for spending too much time together, and she was fine with us going places on the weekends.

  I was saving my money to buy new school clothes, so I didn’t even cash my checks as I got them. I just gave them to Mom and she put them in a drawer for me to cash at the end of the summer. That meant, like Shawn, I didn’t have any money. Still, every once in a while he was able to find someone who needed an extra hand for the day building a fence, or clearing blackberry bushes off a hillside or something, and then he would have a few dollars. When that happened, we would escape Mossyrock and go to a movie in Centralia, or to Hollywood Hollywood, or just go for a drive.

  Shawn’s stepbrother Russell and stepsister Tylene had come to spend part of the summer in Mossyrock. Russell was a year older than me, and Ty was a year younger. Whenever I wasn’t working and we were all broke, we all hung out together. We probably played a thousand games of Yard Darts, badminton and Crazy Eights together that summer.

  Things started to go bad about three weeks after Shawn got back. I was in my bedroom listening to music and Shawn, Russ and Ty were in their yard throwing a Frisbee around. I opened my window and turned my music up a little louder so they could hear it. Eventually they quit tossing the Frisbee and came over to my window to talk to me.

  It was about as innocent as it could be. We were just talking about whether Shawn had enough gas in the Vega to get us all down to Ike Kinswa State Park so we could go swimming, when my bedroom door flew open and Mom walked in, looking royally ticked off. Even though it was almost lunch time, she had apparently been trying to sleep in her bedroom, which was right next to mine. The combination of my music and us talking woke her up.

  “This is too much. Dawn, come with me. I want to talk to you.”

  I didn’t feel like we had done much wrong, so I shrugged, waved goodbye and followed her into the living room. She sat down in her chair and fixed me with the look that told me I was in some kind of trouble.

  “We tried to talk to you about this, but you don’t seem to be getting the message. You are still spending entirely too much time with Shawn.”

  “But…”

  “No, no ‘buts.’ The fact that you didn’t bother to think about whether or not I might be laying down because I’m not feeling well is just a symptom of all the rest of this. So, for three days, you are not allowed to see Shawn at all. Not in person, not on the phone, nothing. No contact at all for three days.”

  “What? Why?” I knew my voice was louder than it should be and a little shrill, but this punishment seemed so out of proportion to the crime of playing my music too loud.

  “I already told you and I won’t explain myself again. If you want to argue more about it, we can make it a week.”

  “Ugh! Fine. Whatever. Can I go tell Shawn that?”

  “That’s fine. Be back in the house in two minutes.”

  I ran outside and found the three of them still standing around the yard, talking and laughing. Shawn reached out his hand for mine and grinned at me when he saw me coming. “Well, did you get in trouble?”

  “Yes, actually, I did.”

  “What, seriously? For what?”

  “For waking Mom up, I guess. I can’t see you or talk to you for three days now. I’ve got to go back in so she doesn’t make it a week. I’m sorry. I’ll miss you.”

  I turned back toward the house and took a few steps when Shawn caught up to me. “It’ll be OK,” he said. “It sucks, and I don’t get it, but it will be OK. I love you.”

  He hugged me and I felt good again for a minute, but I knew I had to get inside, so I broke away and ran home. I felt awful that he had flown home from Alaska just to see me, and now we couldn’t. I was mad at Mom for being so unreasonable, and I felt a little guilty. When Shawn and I were together, he always treated me as his equal, but being punished like this reminded me that we weren’t equal in the eyes of other people. He was eighteen. He had graduated and was getting ready to go off to college. I was fourteen and hadn’t even started my sophomore year of high school. We might act like we were in the same place, but I knew we weren’t.

  The three days passed, and life went on just like it had before. Mom still let me see Shawn and go places when we could manage it, but it felt like she was always watching us. One Saturday afternoon, we went down to the lake to swim and lost track of the time. I was supposed to be home at 5:00, but it was closer to 5:30 when we got there. Mom was standing in the front window looking out when we pulled in the yard.
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br />   “I think it’ll be better if I just go in alone,” I said.

  “No, I’ll go too. Whatever’s up, I’d rather be there with you,” Shawn said.

  When we walked in, Mom said “Shawn, I’m glad you came in, because this involves you too. Dawn’s father and I have tried to be very clear with both of you, but you don’t seem to be getting the message.”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure what message we’re supposed to be getting,” Shawn said. “I’m sorry I brought Dawn home late today, and that’s my fault. But, we were just down at the lake with our friends. None of us had a watch, which is no excuse, I know, but we weren’t doing anything wrong.”

  “The message that you should be getting and are not is that we think you two are seeing too much of each other. You’re too serious. Dawn is only fourteen and still has three years of school left. You’ll be gone to Seattle soon…”

  “…and that’s why we’re hoping to spend as much time together as we can this summer,” interrupted Shawn. “We both know I’m going to be gone for months at a time soon.”

  “Here’s the thing I think you’re missing, Shawn. This isn’t a debate. We are not going to argue with you. You two are forbidden from seeing each other for a week. After that, if you can be together a reasonable amount of time and be home when you are supposed to, you can see each other again. If you can’t do that, you will not be allowed to see each other at all.”

  I couldn’t keep silent any longer. “At all? That makes no sense. We haven’t done anything wrong, and you’re going to stop us from seeing each other?”

  “That’s exactly what we’re going to do. You might keep that in mind from now on. Shawn, it’s time for you to go to your own home.”

  I saw his shoulders sag. He knew he wasn’t going to win this argument. He looked at me and I saw the pain in his eyes. “Bye, baby. I’ll see you in a week. We’ll just be more careful from now on.”

  And we were careful. Once the week passed, we were on our best behavior. Sometimes a day would go by when I was working and Shawn was haying and we wouldn’t see each other at all. One Saturday night, things came together so that we could go to Hollywood Hollywood in Longview again. We hadn’t seen each other much over that week, so we were just glad to be together, lost in the sea of dancing couples. When we left the disco, we checked the time. We had stayed a little longer than we had meant to, but that just meant that we wouldn’t be able to go up to Doss Cemetery and park. We still had plenty of time to get home.

  Whenever we were in the car, my favorite thing to do was to lean over and put my head against Shawn and wrap my arms around his. With the music on and feeling him so near me, I would close my eyes and drift away. It felt like nothing could ever go wrong.

  After we’d been in the car for twenty minutes or so, I heard Shawn say “Oh, crap.”

  I was instantly wide awake and sat up straight in my seat. Everything looked perfectly normal. “What’s wrong?”

  “When we got on the freeway, I must have got on going south instead of north. All this time, we’ve been going toward Portland instead of home. We’re gonna be late.”

  We took the next off-ramp and immediately got back on going the right direction. Shawn pushed the Vega over eighty all the way home, but it didn’t matter. We both knew we were going to be late. My stomach was in knots, but my curfew passed when we were just getting off I-5 and still twenty minutes away from home.

  “When we get home, I’ll go in and explain what happened. I think it’s better if they hear it from both of us,” Shawn said.

  I said “OK,” but when we pulled into the parking spot, my house was completely dark. There was no use in Shawn coming in. He walked me to my door and I gave him a kiss goodbye. I didn’t know when or if I would be seeing him after that. I let myself in, half expecting Mom to be sitting there in the dark waiting for me, but she wasn’t. The whole house was quiet, so I got undressed and went to bed. It took me a long time to fall asleep, but I finally did.

  I had been asleep a few hours when Dad threw my door open, turned my light on and started yelling. He was shouting so loudly that I really couldn’t tell what he was saying. I could hear Mom yelling in the living room too, though, so I knew something was really wrong. I thought that the house was on fire. I jumped out of bed and into some jeans so I could go outside.

  When I ran into the living room, Mom yelled, “What time did you get home?”

  I couldn’t believe it. I looked at the clock on the wall and saw that it was a little after three in the morning. They had waited until I had gone completely to sleep so they could wake me up and yell at me. I wanted to yell right back, but I was tired and disoriented and guilty because I knew we had been late. Instead of yelling, I said quietly, “We got home at 11:20.” I was hoping that if I spoke quietly, she would too. It didn’t work.

  “And, what time were you supposed to be home?”

  “11:00.”

  Her voice became completely calm. “What did I tell you would happen if you were late coming home again?”

  I didn’t answer. I was through playing this game. The sick feeling in my stomach told me I already knew how this was going to turn out. Mom raised her eyebrows at me like she was waiting for me to say something.

  “If it’s all right, I’m going back to bed.”

  “That’s fine.” She looked meaningfully at Dad, and he nodded at her. “You go back to sleep. But, I want you to know you won’t be seeing Shawn any more, at all.”

  I really couldn’t believe it, but I also knew nothing was going to change her mind. I turned around and went to bed. Lying there in the dark, I thought I might cry, but I didn’t. I could understand grounding me if I did something wrong, but telling me that I could never see Shawn again? That seemed too impossible to be true. It took me a long time to fall asleep again.

  When I woke up the next morning, it was like the blowup in the middle of the night had never happened. Everything was calm and quiet. Mom and Dad said, “Good morning,” as if they hadn’t just been yelling at me a few hours before. I figured that the best strategy would be to lay low, so I got dressed, made my breakfast, and tried to stay out of the way.

  A little before lunch, there was a knock on the door. I could see Shawn through the window. I shot a questioning look at Mom.

  “You might as well let him in,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  I opened the door. It didn’t look like Shawn had slept very well either. His hair was even messier than usual and his eyes looked tired.

  As soon as he was inside, Mom said, “Sit down,” pointing to the couch. I sat down beside him, because I knew what was coming and that it might be a long time until I saw him again.

  “Shawn, we’ve already told Dawn this, but now we want to tell you. We have given you opportunity after opportunity to follow our rules, but you have not been able to do so. We feel that we do not have any choice now. You will not be allowed to see Dawn anymore.”

  “Ever?” Shawn’s voice rose.

  “Ever. We warned you about this and now it is here. We wish we hadn’t been forced to do this, but we feel that we have.”

  He looked so hurt and stunned that I wanted to take him in my arms and hold him, but I knew that wouldn’t make the situation any better. Instead, I just reached out and took his hand. The pain in his voice was wrenching: “I don’t know what to say. I just can’t believe you are doing this.”

  He stood up and I saw tears in his eyes, threatening to spill over. He shook his head at Mom and Dad, reached out and touched my cheek and walked out.

  I didn’t say a word. I went to my room, shut the door, and didn’t come out for the rest of the day.

  Living Inside Myself

  My first plan was to stay in my room forever. I couldn’t believe Mom and Dad really wouldn’t let me see Shawn again. If I didn’t have a chance to see him over the next month or two, he would be gone to Seattle and UW. That was a good two hours from Mossyrock. I knew there were a lot of
pretty girls there, and it hurt so badly to think about Shawn being with them instead of me. Mostly, though, it just hurt to be without Shawn. He was my best friend, and without him, I didn’t even know who to talk to about missing him.

  Like all teenagers do, I eventually figured out that I couldn’t live on my anger and hurt feelings. I had to come out of my room and face my parents. When I did, things felt different. Ever since Shawn had come back from Alaska, our home had been tense. Today, Mom and Dad were laughing and talking and acting relaxed, like some horrible event was finally behind them. If they noticed my gloomy attitude, they didn’t let on.

  With Shawn off limits, it felt like there was nothing ahead except work, sleep and boredom. I went to the cabinet where Mom had been keeping my summer paychecks and added them all up. I realized there was already more than enough there to get all the school clothes I would need, with money left over. As soon as I figured out that I didn’t need any more money, I was ready to quit, but Mom and Dad wouldn’t hear of it.

  Later that week, I came up with a way to stop working at DeGoede’s without actually quitting. We were getting to the end of the season, when temporary summer workers started to get laid off and the competition for jobs got fiercer. Instead of working harder, my friend Devi and I took it easy one morning, goofing around and spending more time talking than actually working. Before lunch time, Mr. DeGoede found us in the field and told us that he was sorry, but they were making more cuts and he was going to have to let us go. Since it was the middle of the day, I didn’t have a ride home, but I didn’t mind walking the few miles home.

  A few days later, Dad drove us to Olympia to the M&N Outlet store to do my school shopping. I was excited because I was able to get the Hash jeans I had been wanting. I even had enough money to buy a rabbit fur coat. I really don’t know why I bought that coat, other than I thought it was so beautiful at the time. I don’t know how many rabbits gave their fur for that coat, and I would never think of buying something like that again, but I loved it at the time.