Learning to Cry

by Christopher C. Payne

  They had enough money to pool together on an extra-large sausage and cheese pizza. Melissa didn’t have the heart to remind everyone she did not eat pork, so she picked off what she could and ate the rest. Her ferocious appetite was not going to hold her back from taking her share, no matter what was on this cheesy pie. Damn, was it possible to feel this hungry? They were laughing and screaming, and it was the most relaxed she had felt in months. Coming to Twain Harte might not be the intended good time her dad anticipated, but it was a good time.

  As the pizza quickly vanished, the conversation got around to looking for something to drink. Since Sarah and Melissa were so fond of wine coolers, the girls decided to head back to Melissa’s house and swipe some from the refrigerator. Her dad should now be at the lake with her two little sisters, so they could grab several. He would never know the difference. She wondered if all parents were as stupid as hers, or if she just got lucky. Her mom left alcohol around the house all the time. Her dad was a little more vigilant, but he seemed to still trust her, and that was where he was losing the battle. Drugs, pizza, and some fruity drinks on a hot summer day -- how the hell could life get any better than that?

  They headed back, and as they grabbed drinks from the refrigerator, Melissa thought it was funny they were all reaching for the exact same flavor. She couldn’t help but wonder why pink lemonade sounded so good, but she could attest to being in good company. They headed down to the kids’ bedroom just as they heard the car pulling up. She might not mind stealing a drink, but she didn’t feel up to facing her dad at the moment. She needed to let a couple more hours pass so the drugs could taper off some. She was getting tired, as well. A nap sounded perfect about this time.

  Father

  I arrived home from the lake feeling refreshed. The water was freezing, but on a hot day there was nothing more perfect. The kids had gotten along, as well as could be expected, and it was easy sitting them down in front of the TV. I anticipated spending an hour or so relaxing. It sounded like the older ones were home since I could hear them in the back bedroom. I opened the refrigerator door, and as I was reaching for a cooler, I noticed there were only two pink lemonades left. It is interesting the little things in life that catch your eye. A door ajar that had been locked, a pair of shoes sitting on the front porch in the morning that were in the closet the night before, and now two coolers in the refrigerator when you came from the grocery store three hours ago, having purchased two packs of four.

  I grabbed one of the fruity drinks and headed down to the girls bedroom. I entered the door, and the shuffling began the second my presence was heard approaching. It is almost too easy to catch teenagers in a lie, if you are paying attention to their lives at all. The sad thing is knowing they are lying and listening to them go on and on anyway. You just want to grab them and hold them as you explain how stupid they are being. But none of them listen. They are all so wrapped up in their little papier mache boxes, they can’t focus on reality.

  I walked into the room, and there was dead silence. Not one of the girls spoke. I looked at each one of them, and I could tell they were not 100 percent coherent. Luckily, at the time, I had no idea they were smoking pot. I assumed their haze was from the flavored malt beverages they were drinking. I think it is funny that wine coolers are even called wine coolers. Most people don’t bother to read the label on the drinks and, therefore, don’t know they are actually flavored beer. Being anal has some advantages, and I guess catching your teenage daughters and her friends slurping alcohol is one of them.

  I gazed around the room and asked a simple question, “How many drinks are there in a four pack?”

  It was straightforward and to the point. A simple question. Nobody answered.

  I asked it again, “How many drinks are in a four pack?”

  I emphasized the second to last word and added on, “somebody better answer me.”

  Sarah was the only one who volunteered, and she actually raised her hand. Is raising your hand a sign of respect or is it nothing more than feigning submission in the hopes of avoiding punishment? I pointed at her, and she said, “Four.”

  I nodded my head and agreed.

  I, then, proposed another question.

  “Let’s say that I just went to the store and purchased eight pink lemonade wine coolers. I, then, brought them home no less than three hours ago and placed them in the refrigerator. I, then, went to the lake, came home, and as I was grabbing one, noticed there were only two left. Now I know I didn’t drink them, so where do you think they might have gone?”

  Melissa was gearing up to say something, and I cut her off, short.

  “For the record, if one person lies to me about this, the trouble will magnify times 10.” I muttered. “I will not tolerate lying on any level, and I must also state, I already know the answer. I just want to hear you say it.”

  Melissa sat back down and looked around sheepishly as she tried in vain to muster some support. When you are caught dead to rights and you have no options, shouldn’t you just ‘fess up and take your lumps? Are teenagers just stupid or is it possible they have no ability to differentiate between fantasy and reality?

  Sarah raised her hand again. I growled at her slightly and nodded my head.

  “We drank them, sir,” she stammered. “We each had one.”

  Holy shit, I almost wet myself. Finally, somebody who could admit the truth and come clean. I stared at Melissa and thanked Sarah for admitting what I had already known. I gave them all a lecture on stealing and left it at that. Kids would sneak a drink now and then. Life could be much worse. They could all be on drugs sitting in their bedroom, right? Ha!

  I didn’t punish the girls that day for their transgression. It just seemed like a natural thing for them to be hurdling boundaries. I am unsure of what punishment I could have handed out anyway. Do teenagers even accept punishment? Do they even care? If they are hell-bent on doing something, they don’t seem to give a shit what we as parents have to say or not. They will find a way to do what they want, and a little grounding won’t stop them. My daughter was lost, that was easy to see. It took a friend of hers to stand up and accept responsibility. Melissa couldn’t even face the truth when it was spoon-fed to her on a silver platter.

  She told me something later that night, when we had a couple of minutes alone, for the first time. She would later mention the exact same thing to me during several conversations, so she must believe it deep down inside.

  She said, “Dad, the only thing that will keep me from temptation is when I’m put into a position of extreme consequences. Until I face the day where something drastic happens, which is threateningly severe, I’ll keep doing what I’m doing. I don’t know any other way of changing course at this point.”

  I didn’t know what this meant. I knew she wouldn’t listen to anyone, had no self-control and, sadly, was the instigator of most rule bending and or breaking. My daughter, the ring leader. How long would it be before other parents began to voice their dissatisfaction with my daughter? How long before other parents didn’t even allow their kids to hang out with Melissa? She didn’t get it, and who knows what it would take to enlighten her.

  I sat upstairs, watching some cartoon movie, drinking my Kool-Aid flavored alcohol, wondering where in the world she got this stuff from. How had she learned this behavior? What would this drastic step be that would push her back on track, and, would she survive it? I now know the answer to these questions, and find myself yet again starting to cry. Jesus, what happened to my life? I mean it. I really want to know. What did I do to deserve this?

  High school, adult decisions by adolescents

  Father

  With school starting up again, the discussion arose about where to live. I had to vacate my little one bedroom apartment and head out to something more kid friendly. I just didn’t have any idea how to make my decision. In the mix of the dilemma, Melissa and I also began the discussion about school. She had struggled during her middle school years, and high s
chool would only get that much more difficult. She was running out of time to screw up and still have hopes of attending a decent college. Jesus, was I turning into one of those parents who did nothing more than prep kids for academic achievement?

  The option of Burlingame surfaced, and with the high school being one of the best in the Peninsula, we decided to give it a try. Her mother was adamantly opposed to switching districts, but her reasoning was more self-centered than out of any love for Melissa. Cheryl just had no desire to drive her 20 miles back and forth to school on the weeks Melissa was in her care. Probably the case with most parents, I would guess. I think in the grand scheme of things parental decisions are more self-serving than most people would like to believe.

  So I rented a house in Burlingame, and we made the switch. Summer had been relatively uneventful. It was relaxing, and we were all ready to get back on track. It was nice having a house where the girls could hang out. I felt like I was actually settling down in my new life as a part-time, single parent and newly middle-aged, dating man.

  The family living next to us was an added bonus. Melvin, Sandra, Marcia and Rachel. It was actually Sandra’s parents’ house but they shared it with Melvin and Sandra. Marcia and Rachel were two of the cutest little Hispanic girls I might have ever seen in my life. Damn, they were actually two of the cutest girls for any nationality. Every day Cassandra stayed at my house she asked to go and play with them. They were the perfect neighbors.

  Love, hate, how close are these two emotions intertwined? Love thy neighbor, hate thy neighbor, does it really even matter? I might have loved those two little girls, I might have enjoyed all of the evenings they were over at our house playing, but I can guarantee that Melvin and Sandra grew to a point of hating me. I wonder how easy it is to hate another human being. At this point the only person in life I can truly say I hate is myself. How healthy is that self-perspective?

  Have you ever stared at the ocean? Just sat and stared with nobody around you? Looking out at the horizon and the never-ending, vast expanse that somehow miraculously connects you to the rest of the world? The ocean does not extend forever. There is a time and place where you reach the other side, but it seems impossibly far. Even the sand as it pushes between your toes, sticking to everything it touches, seems endless. How many grains of sand are there on any one beach? Billions? Trillions? Is it too many to count? I guess you could count them, if it were relevant, but what is the significance of any one grain? Would you or the next guy really miss a single grain of sand if it were removed from the beach never to return?

  Melissa

  Melissa was starting her freshman year of high school. She was going to Burlingame after many fights with her mother and several discussions with her father. Burlingame was a good school. By all standards, it was better than Half Moon Bay High School academically, but she didn’t know anyone, and that scared her. To be all alone, not knowing a single person in the chasms of teenage hell was almost more than she could comprehend. She loved her dad, and he thought this was best. He didn’t try so much to talk her into switching schools as he did to influence her by merely suggesting.

  She had always wanted to please him. She also enjoyed being with him, and since he lived in Burlingame, she felt it would bring the two of them closer together if she made the change. She missed him so much. He had always been there for her, and now he just wasn’t. Parents don’t get divorced, families do. Sadly she knew that once she became an adult she would lose her adolescent perspective but still……she missed her dad.

  She agreed with the pros of going to Burlingame. A fresh start, a new school, no baggage, no distractions. She had made some mistakes at Cunha, and now was her chance to open a new chapter in her life. Begin things again. Still, wasn’t she just a small part of a world that churned forward in relentless perpetual motion? Would anyone even miss her if she were not here? Her parents maybe, but for how long? If we look around at all the people surrounding us, are we not all alone. Adrift in the ocean of millions, not ever really connecting with anyone. Did anyone even care?

  Her summer had been a mixture of ups and downs. She had lost control on several occasions and knew that things were close to getting out of hand. The parties she was attending and the drugs she had started using were all contributing factors to giving a new school a shot. Nobody had any preconceived notion of who she was. She was, indeed, alone in the middle of hundreds of kids who cared little to nothing about what she might be thinking or feeling. Jesus, is this really the best time of your life? Who came up with high school as being so damn great? It must be an adult, no kid her age would ever agree.

  While both her mom and dad had sworn the decision was hers alone, it was easy to tell what they both really desired. Her dad wanting her closer to him had made Melissa feel good about herself. This was something she hadn’t even known she missed to this great of an extent, until it was no longer there. She really didn’t like who she was becoming but didn’t understand how to change who she was. Maybe a new school would do that for her. Her dad would help guide her. Hopefully her mother would just leave her alone long enough for her to feel good again about who she was and what she might become.

  She entered the first day excited. Her dad packed her lunch, a peanut butter and banana sandwich with some chips and a Capri Sun. She was sure that he had thrown some cookies in there, as well. He always gave her a treat to snack on after her sandwich was finished. Melissa had been eating the cookies first thing since she was in grade school, but she never really told him this. Amelia, she was sure, always ate the sandwich first. It freaked her out sometimes how different she was from her sister. She wondered how in the world they were even related.

  The first couple hours of school were orientation for all the new kids. She was thrown in with a bunch of foreign students since she was one of the kids just entering the system. Not that she minded, but it would have been nice if they mixed it up a little more. She met a few girls, but none of them were really anyone she would be friends with. God, it seemed like she would feel more alone here than she could have imagined. Her classes were rather routine. Spanish was going to be impossibly hard. She hated her Spanish teacher from the very second she walked into the classroom. Spanish teachers are a little crazy to begin with, but this one was flat-out freaky.

  She yelled at them to be quiet, then yelled at them to speak up. She yelled at them to answer questions. Two boys got kicked out of class on the first day for not having pencils. Sometimes teachers can be more impossible to deal with than parents.

  Melissa noticed from the start that the students were a little different at Burlingame. The teachers in general had expectations from the beginning that she hadn’t felt in the coastal schools. The kids were more attentive, the classes a little more structured, the books a little more in depth. She wasn’t sure since she hadn’t attended the high school in her last district if the transition was from the jump in grades or from a more formalized agenda. Maybe it was her father having brainwashed her that Burlingame was such a better school pushing her preconceived notion. Who knows?

  The only pleasant part of her first day was her dad picking her up from school. She was staying with him the first couple of days by herself. She rarely had any alone time with her dad anymore. Her sisters were always around or the three of them were at their mother’s, and he was alone. She remembered all the days when her mom would take her two little sisters shopping while she and her dad stayed home or ran some errands. She couldn’t figure out what it was about her dad that kept her so connected. She felt safe when she was with him. She felt like he truly cared about her, and there was no hidden agenda.

  She realized it was her choice to be separated from him for so many months, but in a way it was meant to punish him. He left her when he left her mother. She was as much abandoned as anyone. Maybe more so. It used to be him and her against the world, and when he left it made her realize how alone she really was. Everyone in life was alone. Nobody was ever there for you, no
matter what. Even if her dad had always told her he would be, she now knew that was not the case.

  She remembered when she was a little girl going to San Francisco for the night. Her dad was taking the family to see a musical and out to dinner. He loved doing that kind of shit, and if she allowed herself to admit it, she actually loved going. She might complain about it, but spending time with him was something she cherished.

  They had been driving, and she noticed all the lights in the background as the city grew closer with every passing mile. It is so strange driving into a city. You see the buildings in the horizon, and before you know it you are suddenly swallowed up inside the very thing you were observing. At what point do you cease viewing the city and become engulfed in the streets being viewed by somebody else, who is then approaching you?

  As she gazed on, looking at the beautiful skyline and the millions of flickering lights, she couldn’t help but wonder how many of those lights represented a person who was sitting alone. Somebody sitting in their office, working late, nobody else around. Staring at their computer screen, entering numbers into some meaningless spreadsheet. Maybe it was a light from an apartment building. So many people shared apartments in San Francisco with rent being so high. How many of those people even knew each other.

  Was an apartment a place where you walked in, said hello and headed to your bedroom, closing yourself off from the rest of the world? How many people spend the evening eating in their bedroom, watching TV by themselves while their roommates are only a few feet away doing the same thing. Is it too much to interact? Are we all preprogrammed for solitude? Is it some societal mandate that we socialize, or that we don’t? Would we all choose the isolation behind four closed walls if we were given a choice? Maybe prisons were not so bad after all. Maybe being locked in a cell, shut off from the rest of the world was a reward.