Tarnished Dreams

by Jeanette Lukowski

  Fifteen minutes later, we were in the bathroom, next to each other by the sink. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you, Mom. I’ll be calling you all of the time, asking about this or that.”

  Taking her conversational lead, I tried asking a question that had been on my mind since Allison began texting and talking to Carl again in September. “Will Carl talk to me, or at least look at me, when I take you out there?”

  Allison laughed. “Of course, Mom. You’re invited to the wedding.”

  Wedding. Why did each conversation keep circling back to either babies or weddings, rather than formal (December 2nd), prom (May), graduation, and career plans?

  I couldn’t think about marriage and babies.

  Tommy walked into the bathroom as I brushed my teeth before bed. “Allison is planning on getting married,” he said.

  “Really,” was all I could manage to say.

  “Yeah, we were talking about it,” he continued. “She said, ‘If all goes well on December 12th, Carl and I are going to get married.’ I asked her what December 12th was about, and she said, ‘Carl goes back to court.’ I asked her for what, and she said, ‘Rape.’”

  My head started to spin. Carl was facing charges for rape? And Allison knew about it?

  Was Carl innocent of his crime like Allison had been of hers?

  Frank was never romantic. I was able to see the signs in hindsight, but I wasn’t able to when I met him at nineteen, or married him two days after my twenty-first birthday. I just focused on the details like how his mother had died when he was fourteen, and his father was blind.

  Frank never really proposed to me, so much as he made the proposal a game of liar’s poker. “What would you say if I asked you to marry me?” he said one night while I was trying to close out the cash register of the fabric store. I was one of the two assistant managers. I was the person in charge that night.

  “Ask me when you’re serious,” I said, without looking up from the cash drawer.

  “I am serious. What would you say?”

  The game went a couple more rounds like that, making me lose count of the cash each time, and forcing me to start over again.

  “What would you say?”

  “Fine,” I finally answered. “Now, can I focus so we can get out of here?”

  Frank never presented me with an engagement ring. I had to buy the wedding rings myself, with my own Sears credit card. I settled on a pretty ring set for myself—separate engagement ring with the tiniest diamond, and a wedding band the same width and design as the engagement ring—and a band of a different style and color for Frank. (I prefer yellow-gold, he wanted white-gold.)

  Frank could never commit to a date, and neither of us had money for a wedding. We eloped, to City Hall, two days after my best friend got married.

  Frank was three hours late picking me up that morning.

  The kids and I drove to the Metrodome in Minneapolis—home of the Minnesota Vikings—to watch our high school football team play in the state play-offs on November 18th. The team had been undefeated during regular season play, a first since the 1950s, I was told. Tommy, an avid fan all season, told me “they’ve made it to the quarter-finals like the last five years, but they’ve never made it past.”

  Although there were fan-bus opportunities for people who wanted to go to the game, the twenty-five dollars per person was too much for my household budget. Besides, this seemed like a great opportunity for some family bonding time: 1) The run-for-state would forever be a part of Allison’s senior year, and she knew boys who were on the football team, 2) Tommy was friends with a few of the boys on the team, and 3) one of the football players was enrolled in my college literature course (post-secondary enrollment option). I took the day off work, and the three of us drive down for the Friday, 12:45 p.m. game.

  After the game, Allison asked to be dropped off at the apartment where one of the boys she attended middle school with was living. Although she hadn’t seen him in six years, they’d reconnected via an Internet social networking site a few months earlier. I agreed to the stop, thinking it would be a visit of an hour or two like she’d had with her other friends. I dropped her off at 4:45 p.m., and Tommy and I drove over to the mall. An hour later, Allison sent me a text message. “I’ll get a ride.”

  I was surprised by the message. “Get a ride where?” I sent back.

  “To Grandma’s” Allison replied.

  On the surface, this seemed like a really nice offer. Even though Tommy and I had just stopped to buy concession-stand pretzels in the mall, we were both still very hungry—and bored in the mall, as we had no money to buy anything other than food. But Grandma’s house was an hour’s drive northwest. I wanted to ask Allison why this boy, who she hadn’t seen in six years, was willing to drive two hours, round trip, just for the opportunity to visit a bit longer, after Daniel, the boy she had been dating for seventeen months, hadn’t always been willing to do the same thing. I wanted to ask, but I also wanted to be released from the boredom of the mall. I wanted to trust my daughter. I wanted to let her feel more like the adult she was thirty-five days away from being.

  I sent back a text message saying “Okay,” and Tommy and I left the mall.

  By 10:34 p.m., I was exhausted. I wanted to go to sleep, but couldn’t relinquish the role of parent-waiting-up-for-teenage-child to my mother. So, I sent Allison a text. “Coming yet?”

  Two minutes later, I received Allison’s reply. “Not yet.”

  I was angry. Allison had set me up. She was sitting an hour’s drive away, and she knew I was too tired to want to drive back and get her.

  I dozed off, then, in an upright position, sitting on the couch. An hour later, I was awakened by a text message from Allison. “I have the flu coming out both ends.”

  I recognized it as an excuse, but still expected Allison to return that evening. I took my contact lenses out, but wouldn’t change into pajamas or open up the sofa sleeper because it would block access to the front door. Instead, I grabbed my pillow, turned off the television, and spread an afghan over my outstretched legs on the couch.

  The next time I woke up, the house was dark and quiet. I reached for my cell phone, rather than getting up from the couch, and discovered it was 3:30 a.m. No word from Allison since her flu excuse at 11:30 p.m. I got up, walked into the bathroom, and fired off an angry text message to Allison: “Real nice of you—thanks.”

  She didn’t respond.

  Since changing into pajamas after sleeping through half of the night in my clothes seemed silly, and opening up the sofa sleeper would make too much noise (Tommy was in his sleeping bag on the living room floor), I resumed my place on the couch with the afghan.

  At 7:19 a.m. the next morning, I sent Allison one last angry text: “By the way, my vehicle heads north after my haircut—hope you make it here before then.”

  Allison’s reply didn’t come until 9:03 a.m. “When’s your haircut?”

  I never received an apology, just another excuse. “Everyone fell asleep around 1:00 a.m.”

  At some point during our quiet three-hour drive home, Allison said, “He started drinking right after I got there, which is why I couldn’t get a ride last night.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t take the risk of drinking and driving,” I began, “but then why did you say you would get a ride to Grandma’s? Your brother and I were waiting, purposely, just fifteen minutes away. I was going to come back and pick you up, dear.”

  Perhaps there is still hope for you, Allison, if I can just figure out the right things to say to get through to you.

  I didn’t like the idea of Allison connecting with a boy from middle school if she had plans to move to Wyoming in six or seven months, but I didn’t like the idea of her moving back to Wyoming either.

  As much as I hated to acknowledge them, I was
starting to see similarities between Allison and her father. Allison wasn’t taking responsibility for her actions (lying) any more than Frank. Frank was supposedly engaged to a girl when I met him—and never broke it off with her until we were married.

  I remember Frank’s dad telling him the girl had stopped by the house a week or two after we eloped. Frank called her, made plans to meet with her somewhere nearby and didn’t want me going with him.

  Four days later, I received what I hoped was a ray of sunshine in the thunderous life Allison had been presenting me. We were driving to school together, alone—I had dropped Tommy off an hour earlier for a before-school activity.

  “I’m really excited about the future, but kind of scared, too,” Allison said out of the blue.

  “Everybody feels that way, dear. We’re excited by the possibilities, but fear the unknown. It’s okay to feel that way. There are so many possibilities in front of you when you graduate high school.”

  Or is it already too late?

  Thanksgiving. The kids and I were home, alone. We slept in, I cooked everyone’s favorite foods, we ate, and were enjoying a quiet afternoon of television movies together when I happened to glance over at Allison’s cell phone while she was texting someone. I saw the name “Mark,” and an area code I didn’t recognize. The message seemed innocent enough, a simple “Happy Thanksgiving” greeting, but who was Mark, and where was that area code from?

  Several hours later, I got the answer. Mark’s number was an Akron, Ohio, area code.

  Allison was twenty-nine days away from her eighteenth birthday. There wasn’t much I could say, or do about Mark from Ohio.

  I had no concrete evidence, either. Mark was just a name I had seen on Allison’s cell phone while sitting next to her on the couch Thanksgiving afternoon.

  I was seventeen before I had my first serious boyfriend. We met on my seventeenth birthday, as a matter of fact. His name was Ben.

  Ben was two years older than I was and had his own car. He lived with his family in a house about five miles from the apartment building my family lived in. He had graduated high school the year before and was doing small contract jobs with a construction company when we met.

  Ben and I dated, exclusively, for a year and a half. We broke up after I went to college in Minnesota. I actually broke up with Ben, because I didn’t see us wanting the same kind of future. He wanted a stay-at-home wife, who would cook, clean, and take care of the kids like his mother did. I wanted a career.

  Frank was my next boyfriend.

  The high school football team won their semi-final game in the state play-offs. We returned to the Metrodome for the championship game on Saturday, November 26th. Tommy’s friend joined us for the trip, and got permission to spend the night with us at my mother’s house since the game started at 3:00 p.m.

  Allison and I chatted during the drive down, sat together at the game, and made jokes all the way back to the parking lot. Never a hint of the plans Allison made with the boy again, until I was driving the downtown streets back to the highway.

  “You’re not pulling the same number you did last week,” I quickly told her. “We have Tommy’s friend.”

  We dropped Allison off at 6:45 p.m., and I told her we would be back for her at 9:00—which would get us back to my mother’s house by ten. Then Tommy, his friend, and I head to a favorite fast-food place near the mall to eat, followed by a short drive to the mall to kill some time.

  Once again, the mall was boring. In spite of its being Black Friday, none of us had money, so we headed back to the apartment for Allison. At 8:45 p.m., I sent Allison a text from the apartment parking lot.

  “Thirty more minutes, please,” Allison sent back.

  “I’m not going to just sit here and waste gas, dear,” I replied. If it were warm enough outside to unroll the windows, perhaps I could have waited patiently. But I also didn’t feel like having Allison dictate the schedule for the family.

  “Go to the mall,” Allison suggested.

  “That’s where we just came from,” I sent back.

  “The grocery store?” Allison continued. “I’m hungry.”

  And I’m tired of this, Allison. I don’t want to play this game.

  A cloyingly-sweet odor followed Allison into the car. “What is that smell?” I asked her.

  “Smoke,” Allison quickly replied. “Everyone was smoking.”

  “Uhm, that’s not smoke, dear,” I said as I pulled out of the parking lot. My dad smoked unfiltered Camel cigarettes my whole life. I used to sneak cigarettes from his packs when I started. Frank smoked menthols when I met him, but switched over to my brand when we began dating. I smoked cigarettes for about ten years; I know the smell of cigarette smoke.

  The smell also didn’t dissipate an iota during the hour-long drive back to my mother’s house. In fact, it got so nauseating by the end, I was afraid I would have to open the car windows in spite of the twenty-degree temperature outside.

  Allison wouldn’t acknowledge her inebriated behavior that night. She didn’t complain about the television set two feet from her head while we watched Saturday Night Live. She didn’t explain why she got up at 1:30 the next morning to make herself a glass of chocolate milk—the same hangover remedy my mother told me Allison drank the morning she came home with the “flu” weeks earlier.

  I never took Allison to see that boy again. While I know a large number of teens drink before reaching their twenty-first birthday, I was especially angry with Allison because of her total disregard of me, my values, and how it would reflect back on me if/when Tommy’s sixteen-year-old friend were to talk about the trip at home.

  I had my bout with alcohol when I was Allison’s age, but I was basically living alone at the time. After the incident with my dad and the hammer, he was moved to a nursing home. My sister was away at college in South Dakota, my mom had three jobs and would visit Dad in the nursing home every weekend. If she worked too late in the day on Saturday, or was too tired to visit him after work, she would drive to the nursing home on Sunday after church.

  I drank socially, but I drank because I was home, alone, probably ninety percent of the time.

  I don’t think my mom ever noticed my drinking. Was it because I never went home drunk, like Allison? Or was it because my mom was too tired to notice me after a week of working and taking care of my dad?

  I stopped the heavy drinking six months after I started. I still can’t remember the night Ben said he picked me up from a party, drove me to his friend’s house to hang out, and stopped on the way back to my house so I could throw up at the curb (even pointing out the spot the next day—complete with the napkins he’d given me to wipe my face).

  November 30th. Allison and I were on our way home from school when she announced, “Katie and I are planning on taking a road trip sometime in spring, but before graduation. We’re obviously going to wait until January . . .” the unstated implication being “after I turn eighteen.” “Then, of course, we need to wait until after the snow . . . but sometime before May.”

  You mean sometime between when you no longer need my permission, but before you move to Wyoming, get married, and need your husband’s permission?

  Having released the smarmy thought, I tried for a calmer approach two blocks later. “I really wish you wouldn’t focus so heavily on this marriage plan. You were dating Daniel for over a year, and you couldn’t predict how ugly he would get over your break-up. How do you think you know Carl well enough to go out there and marry him when you haven’t even seen each other in over three years?”

  Allison muttered, “I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore.”

  I let it go, and drove the rest of the way home in silence. Perhaps the plan with Carl was fading all on its own? I chided myself to be more patient—and quiet. Perhaps I could still gently guide Allison in the right d
irection, as long as I didn’t push.

  12. December—Wedding Plans

  On December 5th, Allison climbed into the car after school, shut the car door, and said, “Susie and I would like to go to Grand Rapids sometime this week. When would be a good day?”

  “I don’t know, dear,” was all I could muster. I wanted to support her interest in a new friendship, especially with a girl, but couldn’t imagine what interest the town an hour away would hold for the girls. Instead, I focused on pulling away from the curb and exiting the chaos known as the high school’s parking lot at the end of the day.

  “It’s just that Susie and I want to go to the dress shop. They have such pretty dresses there,” Allison continued in her cheery chirp.

  “They’re not going to just let you girls try dresses on, you know. It’s not like when you and your friends go to the mall, dear.”

  “Mom,” Allison began, then paused. “Carl and I are getting married.”

  Just like that.

  “He told me to pick a date,” Allison continued, plunging into the silence enveloping our car’s interior.

  I drove home, on auto-pilot, and focused my energy on staying calm.

  Although I wanted to take Allison by the shoulders, and shake some sense into her when we got home, the constant fear she would simply walk out the door on her eighteenth birthday kept my arms tethered to my sides. I wasn’t going to give her an excuse to leave. Instead, I took off my shoes, hung my coat in the hall closet, and made myself a salad before sitting down at the dining room table to face Allison.

  “Carl said I could have a small ring and a big wedding, or an expensive ring and a small wedding. I’m going with the big ring and a small wedding because then I can have the ring all the time. He’s letting me make all of the decisions for our wedding. He doesn’t care about any of it. He just wants me to be happy,” Allison gushed, almost all in one breath.