Love Is Relative

by Francis, Haven

  “Are you doing any better?” I ask her. This is something I can comprehend- Emily is hurting badly and I need to help her. I can deal with that, I want to deal with that.

  Her eyes darken and she shuts them tightly. “You shouldn’t care how I’m doing,” she says.

  I run my thumb over her closed eyelids. “Emily, look at me please.” She doesn’t open her eyes. “What she did is terrible. But you’re not her; you’re a victim in this just like the rest of us. It’s not your fault.”

  “How can I ever look at you or your family, or think about your mother, knowing what she did to all of you. I should have made her tell me the truth. I should have made her talk to me. I could have prevented all of this. Mike never did anything wrong. All of you paid a horrible price for her selfish lie. I’m her daughter. She’s part of me. How can you ever look at me again knowing that?” She finally opens her eyes.

  Her words are painfully true. It’s devastating to think of what we have lost because of Charlie’s lie. But Emily is nothing like Charlie. “Em, you are the most honest person I know. You are caring to a fault. You never think of yourself, you are the least selfish person I know. It’s not your fault that your mom is so terrible. You had no reason not believe her. We all believed her, it wasn’t just you. This is not your fault.”

  “I will never believe that. I will never deserve your love.”

  “You deserve better than me but I want you. More than anything I want you. Don’t take everything away from me because of her.”

  Emily shakes her head at me. She is crying now and I brush away her tears. “You think that now but eventually you will resent me. You’ll end up hating me. You need to get away from us, from anything that will remind you of her. You need to live your life far away from this fucked up past that my mom has given you. You need to find someone you can love completely.”

  It’s me who is shaking my head now, at her. “No Emily. I will only love you. Do you think there is anyone in this world who can love me more than you do?”

  She stares at me. I know she wants to tell me that yes, there is someone who can love me like she does, but she knows it’s a lie. “I don’t think that,” she eventually admits. “But I know you can love someone more than you love me.”

  “I can’t Emily, and if you leave me I will never love again. Do you understand that?” She shakes her head, not wanting to believe me. “Emily, I think Cliff was right. I think the best thing that you and I can do right now is to take a break from all of this – from my dad and your mom. We’ve been through a lot this past week and I think we need to take a few days off to heal together. Will you do that for me? I’ll throw my camping gear in the truck and we’ll drive until we’re far enough away. Just for a couple of days, just to clear our heads. Just so we can remember who we are without all this other shit getting in the way. Give us one last chance Emily. Don’t just throw it all away without trying one last time.”

  She stares at me through her tears. She’s thinking about it. I need her to hold onto us so I lean into her and kiss her. I kiss her softly but desperately, I beg her with my mouth to come to me. She responds and her lips grasp mine with just as much desperation. She eventually pulls away, looking at me one more time. “Okay,” she whispers and my heart starts beating again.

  “Okay,” I respond. “Let’s go then. Let’s go now.” I get out of bed, taking her with me. Wordlessly I pull a bag out of the closet and start throwing clothes in it.

  I’m afraid to leave her so I have her come to the shed with me while I dig out my camping gear. She’s quiet but she’s helping me find the necessities and get them into the truck. I know I told her we would just go for a few days but I feel like we’re escaping and, as shitty as it is, I think I’d be okay with that – I think I could leave it all behind if it meant I could keep her.

  Reluctantly I tell her to go home and get her clothes together while I go into the house to talk to my family. She nods her head and I give her one last kiss before going to say goodbye to my family.

  #

  Everyone is up and at the breakfast table when I enter the house. They look happy, even my dad, and it’s a relief. If Sue agrees to take care of them for me, I think they will be fine without me. I join them at the table. “Listen, I know that this isn’t the best time but Charlie is not something Emily can handle right now and I’d like to get her out of here for a little while if you guys are okay with that.” I feel bad just laying it on them like this but I don’t have time for small talk. I don’t have time for Emily to change her mind.

  “How long are you going for?” Jason asks with worried eyes.

  “Hopefully we’ll only be gone for a couple of days. That’s the plan anyway but I don’t know how long it’s going to take for her to recover. Her mom’s not very nice and she needs some time away from her.” I say, not sure how to explain what an awful woman Charlie is.

  “Her mommy isn’t nice?” Maddie asks confused and hurt.

  “No, Maddie, she’s not. Not everyone gets to have a nice mommy like we did.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Sue says, reaching out to place her hand on my arm. “You do whatever you can to help Emily. We all want both of you to be happy. You two deserve a little break. I’ll be here until you come back.”

  I smile at her before turning to my father. “Dad, are you okay with this?”

  “Of course I am, Son. More than anything I want you and Emily to be happy. You do whatever you need to do to make that happen. I appreciate everything you’re doing to help me. I feel okay right now, I’ll be just fine.”

  “I need to talk to you about something before I leave,” I tell him. “Jason, would you mind brining Maddie to the living room, just for a minute?”

  “Sure,” he says reluctantly. “Come on Maddie.”

  I clear my throat, I have no idea how my dad is going to take this. “We talked to Charlie about what she did before she left town. She told us that she was joking when she said you were Emily’s father. She said you should have known she was lying because the two of you hadn’t slept together for years.”

  Sue gasps but my father just stares at me blankly.

  “I’m sorry, Dad.”

  “God damn it,” he mutters. “I let that woman take everything from us. No more, I’m done letting her lies ruin our lives. You go, Danny, I’m done being a pathetic piece of crap. You help Emily and I’ll help myself and the kids. Come back when you’re ready and we’ll try to start over… together.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, Danny, go.” He tells me, standing up and coming to my side. I stand and he embraces me for the first time in a long time. “I’m sorry that I didn’t know. I shouldn’t have ever been so drunk that I would be in that position. I’m done. I’m not throwing away one more second of my life. I promise you.” I hold him for a moment before letting go.

  Sue gives me a tight hug and then I go to say good bye to Jason and Maddie. “I’ll be home soon, you guys be good for Dad and Sue okay?”

  “I’ll take care of him,” Jason says and for some reason it hurts. He shouldn’t have to take care of his Dad. I don’t want him to become the man I was before Emily came back into my life.

  “Don’t worry about him. You worry about yourself and Maddie a little bit too, okay?’ He nods at me and I give him a hug.

  I pick Maddie up and hold her tight. “I love you,” I tell her.

  “I love you too. Make Emily happy.”

  “I’ll try my best,” I say before setting her down and heading out the door.

  As I make my way past my cabin and up the trail to Emily’s I’m feeling better than I have in days. My dad seems okay and he took the news about Charlie better than I would have ever guessed. Maybe Emily and I can stay gone a little longer than I assumed. Maybe Charlie will be gone by the time we get back.

  I’m practically sprinting up to her house but I stop dead in my tracks when I hear Charlie’s angry voice coming from the porch. “I just can’t beli
eve you guys would do that to me. That they would try and take you from me… that you would let them.” She sounds like she’s crying and I can’t get myself to move forward.

  “Mom, it wasn’t like that. We just needed to know if Mike was my father. If you would have just told me the truth at some point over these last three years, we wouldn’t have had to make them my legal guardians.”

  “Emily, I never thought that things would go this far. Truthfully, I never even gave the whole situation a second thought. I don’t know why Mike didn’t deny it; it had been at least twenty years since we had slept together.”

  “He said there was a night that he had blacked out and woke up next to you. He assumed, after your accusation, that he had slept with you. Did you forget about that? It seems strange that that happened within the time that you would have gotten pregnant. I have a hard time believing you didn’t realize that as you shouted, across a crowded park, that he was my father. How could you have done that? Why the hell would you do that?”

  Charlie’s cries have become progressively louder as Emily speaks. I doubt they’re real, they don’t sound real. “I don’t know why I did that. I was high and I had been drinking. I saw him and Cora, I saw the way he looked at her and I saw his perfect family and I just wanted to hurt him.”

  “What?” Emily asks. “Why would that upset you? Why would you want to hurt Mike?”

  “There are things that you don’t know, that I’ve been ashamed to admit to you or anyone else,” she pauses and I can’t help but think it’s for drama’s sake.

  “Whatever, Mom. I don’t even want to know,” Emily says, shutting her down, and I’m proud of her.

  “Mike and I used to date in high school,” Charlie says quickly before losing her audience. I can actually hear Emily’s exasperated sigh from where I’m standing. “I’d known him forever and I’d been in love with him for just as long. When he finally asked me out I was the happiest girl alive. This is silly but I thought I was going to marry him. I loved him. I gave him my virginity. I gave him everything he asked for. But a year after we started dating I caught him having sex with my best friend. I was devastated and later found out that there had been plenty of other girls. I never got over him. I started drinking and smoking pot. I would run away from home with the idea that I would never have to see him again. I started sleeping around trying to find anyone that I could love as much as I loved him.

  “Then he married Cora. It was the absolute end of any kind of hope I had that he might love me again. When he decided to buy the old barn next door and renovate it I felt like he was just trying to torture me. Why would he do that to me? He knew I would have to see him and his perfect wife and his perfect life every day.

  “And here I sat, still living with my parents, my life a mess because I couldn’t find anything I cared about as much as him. But then I got pregnant with you and I felt hope. I knew that you would be the one that I could love more than I ever loved some boy. And I was right; when you were born I knew that nothing else mattered. I had you and that was all I needed.

  “I know I’ve never been a good mom. The habits that I picked up after Mike shattered me were habits that I couldn’t drop. But I’ve always loved you more than anything. There will never be anyone I love as much as you.

  “It hurt me to see you become so close to all of them. Mike charmed you just like he charmed me. Cora was the perfect mother in your eyes because she was the one that got to do fun things with you. The kids were like the brothers and sister you never had. Sometimes I felt like you loved them more than me. It felt like they were taking you from me.”

  “Mom don’t…” Emily says with concern and I curse Charlie. She’s fucking with Emily’s already fragile emotions. I’ve seen this happen too many times.

  “It’s true, Emily. I know you loved Cora more than you loved me. I know they were the family you wished you had.”

  “That’s not true. I love you Mom.”

  “But even now, you love Danny more.”

  Emily doesn’t respond and I don’t expect her to. Charlie’s filled her with guilt.

  “That day when I saw him at that stupid festival he gave me a look like I was pathetic as he stood with his wife and his family. I was jealous. I no longer wanted him but I wanted you. I wanted you to love me more than you loved them. I don’t know what I was thinking, I was out of it. I didn’t even realize I said the words I was thinking out loud. I was thinking, that could have been me, that could have been you, the three of us could have been a family. I didn’t think he would take it literally. Dad pulled me out of there and I wasn’t even sure he had heard me.”

  My hands turn into fists at my sides. The woman is such a damn good liar, I almost believe her myself. But I was there. I remember her words…I’m so glad that you’re such a great dad to the three kids that you call your own. She yelled it out of nowhere. I was looking at Emily and we broke our stare to both look at her. Charlie was staring at my dad, I didn’t understand. My mom and dad stared at her with confusion. What? she yelled. You never told your precious family about your bastard daughter? You never told them that you were the father of my child. Cliff did yank her away then. I took one more look at Emily, trying to find the truth in her eyes. She looked scared and horrified. She looked broken. Her grandma pulled her away then and that was the last time I saw her.

  Charlie is laying the sobs on hard now. I wait for Emily to react but she’s silent. “I’m so sorry, Emily, if I had only known…” She breaks off into a deep moan.

  “It’s okay, Mom. Everything will be okay.” I hear Emily say. I hope to God she’s just appeasing her mother but this is how things always work with the two of them.

  “I thought if I could just take you away, if it could be just the two of us for a little while, that maybe you could learn to love me more than them. I thought I could create a life for us that you would love more than this one, but I messed up. And after all of that nothing has changed. You still love them more than you love me. You are fighting for them and not for me. You will choose Danny over me.”

  My heart stops because I know that Charlie’s wrong. Emily will choose her. She won’t go with me, she won’t choose me. She will stay here and fight for the one love that she will never have. She will fight for her mother’s love, not for me. I know this and yet her words hurt.

  “No, Mom. I never loved them more than I loved you. You are all I have ever needed. It will always be the two of us.”

  It hurts like hell but I know she’s telling her mom the truth. I can’t handle the thought of Emily telling me goodbye. I can’t handle facing the fact that Charlie has taken her from me again. I can’t handle the fact that she has forgiven her mom for everything that she’s done to all of us. I can’t handle looking at Emily as she leaves me again. I turn and leave. Emily is no longer mine.

  Emily

  I bide my time with my mom. She’s pretending like she’s a mess, she’s pretending like she cares; that she loves me. I want to laugh at how stupid I’ve been in the past, but the old me is too pathetic and I can’t laugh at her. Charlie’s words sound so fake now; I can’t believe I ever fell for this crap.

  I sit there and listen to her spin her never ending tale. I don’t know if any of it is true, I doubt it is. I know which parts are false – every time she says she loves me or needs me or that I’m all she’s ever needed- those are all lies.

  I stay and listen though because she won’t go if she feels like she doesn’t have me back in her possession. If I tell her that things are okay, if I say it’s just the two of us, if I reassure her that I love her more than anyone else in the world, maybe that will be enough for her. Maybe it will be enough to make her leave again. God knows if I tell her how much I hate her she will stay here and wait for me, she will cry to me until I tell her what she wants to hear.

  When I feel like I’ve said all I can say I stand. “I have to go get ready now, Mom. I tried out for the cheer leading squad and I made it. We have practic
e today,” I smile at her.

  She reacts exactly like I thought she would; squealing and clapping, telling me to hurry and go get ready. She always wanted me to be her – the popular homecoming queen. She always told me nothing would make me happier than having people want to be me. The fact that she believes my lie just proves how little she knows me.

  I run up to my room and grab a bag. I shove as much clothes as I can into the small duffle and barely have enough room for my toothbrush and comb. I was hoping to say goodbye to Grandpa face-to-face but I know he’ll understand. We’ll only be gone a few days and I’ll call him as soon as I’m safely with Danny again.

  As I walk down the stairs and see that my mom has come back inside. She sits at the kitchen table, tear free, completely recovered from her little breakdown. She’s such a damn good actress. She looks up from the paper she’s reading and smiles at me. I give her one last cheery wave. When I’m finally out the door I feel a huge rush of relief. I let myself feel excited for the first time. I’m leaving here... with Danny. We will be alone and we will definitely not be brother and sister.

  I run down the driveway, not taking a chance that my mom could see me on the path to Danny’s. I slow as I start to head down the Donovan’s driveway. Sue is standing in the middle of it looking perplexed. “Sue? What’s wrong?” I ask.