Tarnished Dreams

by Jeanette Lukowski

  I turned my phone on shortly after nine in the morning on April 28th, and read a text message Allison had sent at 7:45 a.m. “Charlene has to go work for her dad so I have to come home.”

  “Okay,” I sent at 9:21 a.m.

  “Too late now,” Allison replied at 9:23 a.m. “Went out there with her ’cause I went home and knocked on the door and rang the bell.”

  I didn’t find that believable at all. I heard the doorbell at 1:00 a.m., 2:00 a.m., 4:00 a.m.—why wouldn’t I hear it at 7:00 a.m.?

  I sent back a simple “?”

  “You didn’t wake up,” Allison replied.

  “So where exactly is ‘work’?”

  “Forty-five minutes out of town.”

  No town name, no direction indicated. Allison’s simple excuse of being a vague “forty-five minutes out of town” somewhere was a safe kind of lie.

  A minute later, another text message from Allison. “Why the ‘?’”

  I didn’t bother to reply to the question. She knew why.

  Allison finally came home at four-thirty. She got out of Ryan’s pickup truck rather than Charlene’s. She was also wearing the same clothes she had been wearing when I dropped her off the day before. Allison muttered something about how Ryan was annoying her as she headed off to the bathroom. I sat on the couch and waited for her to come back to the living room.

  “So, what happened?” I began.

  Allison provided some kind of explanation, but I honestly started to glaze over when I realized it was just another story.

  The end of her story was marked by a glance out the front window, before she walked back to the bathroom. When she returned to the living room, I noticed she was wearing a different low-cut tank-top.

  “Josh is here,” Allison announced as she made a bee-line for the front door. “Love you!”

  Three hours later, she returned home for the night.

  April 30th, Allison began alerting me to her plans for the afternoon just before two. “I’m going to play basketball with Kent after school. I’ll be home by 5:00.”

  “Okay.”

  By four-thirty, the plans changed. “Never mind,” Allison’s text message began. “I’m going to stop at home to drop off my art homework and pick something up, then go to Josh’s game.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. ’Cause there was a creepy van at the basketball court so Kent dropped me off.”

  I was totally confused by her message, so I tried calling Allison—but she wouldn’t answer her phone.

  Tommy tried from his cell phone, dialing something to prevent his number from displaying on Allison’s cell phone. Sure enough, she answered the mystery call but didn’t answer my call a minute earlier.

  “Didn’t realize you called,” was the text message Allison sent me after she and Tommy talked.

  Bullshit.

  Allison came home at 5:15 p.m. in Ryan’s pickup truck, and left five minutes later.

  18. May—the Countdown

  Allison came home shortly after eight on May 2nd, complaining about Josh’s mom. “She doesn’t want me seeing him, because she likes his old girlfriend better. In fact, they were sitting together tonight on the baseball bleachers, sending Ryan messages about what a whore I am, then laughing together about it.”

  I was tired of hearing this complaint. I’d heard it a hundred times over, only the names of the kids involved changed.

  “Why does it matter, though?” I began. “What’s so special about this boy that you have to chase after him? You do this every time. Boys should be working to get your attention, not the other way around.”

  “Mom, I’ve changed. I’m not chasing after him—I’m just pissed off to have this shit coming from a forty-year-old woman! And, I didn’t ask for your opinion!” Allison yelled before she slammed the back door shut. She was heading out the swing in the backyard—her time-tested stress-relieving activity.

  I had a hard time believing a forty-year-old woman would be involved in such a childish level of activity. In my head, I knew it happened; the news media reported on the older woman who bullied Phoebe Prince in Missouri through a social networking site in 2009. Cyber-bullying was blamed for Prince’s suicide (January 14, 2010), and the woman was charged with the crime. But Allison tells a lot of stories.

  By 8:49 p.m., the accusation of involvement still gnawed. Rather than make Allison stop swinging, I sent her a text message to ponder. “At the risk of getting yelled at some more, is it possible that someone is telling you stories? Cuz the mother could have been talking and laughing with the girl about any number of things rather than you,” you solipsistic little girl.

  “I was watching her show her the phone right as Ryan was texting her,” Allison replied.

  “You show me things all the time—while you ignore inbound things. Perhaps Ryan has a reason to lie?” Perhaps Ryan hopes to keep you and Josh apart, because Ryan is jealous?

  “I was looking at the texts, Mom . . .”

  “I’m not getting into this with you,” Allison’s next text message began. “It doesn’t matter. There’s a lot you don’t know . . .”

  True. But I do know you, Allison. I know you always want to be the center of attention, I know you stop talking to anyone who doesn’t agree with you at all times.

  “I was just sharing a forty-year-old Mom perspective,” I sent to Allison at 8:57 p.m.

  “And like I said—I didn’t ask for it.”

  My mother was the second person to warn me of Allison’s story-telling ability. “The things she told the Chicago police while she was in custody!” my mother exclaimed. “Allison was asked why she was running away from home, and she told them she was being abused. When pressed for an example of the abuse, all she could offer was how you were going to send her back to school after getting her frenectomy.”

  A frenectomy is the surgical detachment of the flap of skin connecting the upper lip to the gum line. In cases like Allison’s, the flap descends too low, creating a gap between the front teeth. Removing a small triangle of skin before the age of sixteen releases the tension, and allows the teeth to move back together without the aid of braces. Once the dental assistant explained the procedure, and the suggested follow-up care of ice-packs and rest for the four to six hours following the procedure, I altered my work schedule to allow for Allison’s convalescence at home. But would my pre-procedure intent to send her back to school be considered abuse?

  More importantly, perhaps, why would Allison make those kinds of accusations about me?

  Surprisingly, Allison came upstairs, talking on the house phone the evening of May 4th. “Josh’s mom blocked my phone number on Josh’s phone. Can I get my cell phone number changed, Mom? I mean, my number has somehow gotten around to too many people I don’t even know—and there are guys sending me all kinds of messages about wanting to have sex with me.”

  Changing a cell phone number comes with a fee. I’d changed Allison’s cell phone number several times over the years, for various reasons, but told her the last time would be the last time.

  I was brushing my teeth for bed when Allison approached me with another question. “Can Josh stop over tonight when he gets home from his game?”

  “When?”

  “He’s getting back about midnight.”

  “No. You can see him tomorrow.”

  “But, we’ll just sit in the driveway, Mom.”

  Heading to a family memorial service the morning of May 5th, Allison asked if she could use my phone. “I just want to text Josh during the drive,” she explained, “not during the service or anything.”

  I didn’t want to be a party to Allison’s act of defiance with Josh’s mom. Allison had already dragged me through some muddy places over the years.

  “I don’t think so, Allison. You’ll be fine.
You can wait to talk to him when we’re back home.”

  “When will that be?”

  “I don’t know. The service is at eleven, then there might be a little lunch thing. Then we’ll stop at the bookstore in town, and drive back home.”

  While we were in the bookstore, Allison told me Matt wanted to hang out when Allison got home. I liked Matt more than I liked Josh. Matt was a year older than Allison, whereas Josh was two years younger than Allison, and a classmate of Tommy’s. (Tommy didn’t like Josh. I trusted Tommy’s opinion.)

  Matt came over about ten minutes after we pulled into the driveway. He and Allison sat out on the front stoop talking for about twenty minutes before Allison came in to the house.

  “Matt’s going to come back in like ten minutes,” Allison explained.

  “Where’s he going?”

  “He’s just driving around while Josh and Ryan stop over.”

  “What?”

  “Josh and Ryan are stopping over for a minute, then Matt will come back.”

  My driveway suddenly felt like a revolving door. Matt left. Josh and Ryan stopped. Five minutes later, Josh and Ryan left. Matt returned. Allison got in to Matt’s car. Matt drove off.

  Before she left, though, Allison gave me instructions: “I will be home by nine-thirty, but Josh might call the house phone before he comes over at nine-forty-five. Don’t tell him I’m with Matt, though. Just tell him I can’t come to the phone.”

  Allison was home shortly after seven-thirty.

  The house phone never rang.

  April 2010. Allison was in trouble at the high school again. Her phone got taken away—again—and I had to go to the principal’s office to get it back. Two girls were involved in the altercation resulting in Allison’s phone being taken away, but the other girl was excused. According to Allison, the girl’s mom and the assistant principal, Gail, were friends.

  “Allison always has so many excuses why she was using her phone during class, and I’m frankly getting tired of it,” Gail began. “This time, it was because she was waiting for news from the hospital. She said that her grandmother is waiting for a kidney donation, and she is the liaison between you and the hospital.”

  I couldn’t help but briefly smile about how creative the story was, but could tell Gail wasn’t impressed with Allison’s creativity one iota.

  Before I could say much more than, “Wow, she re—” Gail continued.

  “In the last year and a half that she’s been attending school here, I’ve heard about how Allison has a sugar-Daddy, who buys her whatever she wants, that Allison has a baby at home, who she gave birth to before you moved here, and how Allison’s father died in an automobile accident when she was very young.”

  I noticed Gail wouldn’t look up at me as she relayed this information. Instead, she straightened the stack of papers, the pile of pencils, and the cup of paper clips on her desk top as she spoke.

  Was Gail avoiding eye-contact with me because she felt I was Allison’s role model? Perhaps she thought I condoned Allison’s story-telling tendencies in some way. Or, was she simply ashamed to admit to me, Allison’s mother, that she no longer knew what to do with a student like Allison?

  Gail retired at the end of the school year. Perhaps Allison and I were just cluttering up her last few weeks of a thirty-year career.

  May 6th, Tommy shared a conversation he and Allison had about Josh during the memorial lunch the day before. “She showed me a text message Jeremy sent her, asking if he could stop over for sex.”

  “What? Gross. She showed you the text message?”

  “Yep. Then she said she was sending him a reply about how she doesn’t do that anymore—she’s ‘saving herself.’”

  I wanted to laugh. Although we never talked about it anymore, I had a feeling Allison’s number of sexual partners exceeded mine. The idea of “saving” herself this late in the game seemed ludicrous.

  I wanted to cry. My dreams for my daughter never included so much sexual content—especially at such a young age.

  I wanted to climb into bed, and hide under the blankets. Like the monster in the closet, or hiding under the bed, I’ve always been afraid of what people think of me. How many people in town were already judging me for my daughter’s behavior?

  But, how much different would their opinions about sexual promiscuity be if Allison were a boy?

  I heard Tommy continue. “She got this funny look on her face when she said it, too, so I asked her who she was ‘saving herself’ for. ‘Is it Josh?’ and she just nodded.”

  Allison was “saving herself” for a sixteen-year-old boy? Pride be damned, that seemed dangerous.

  Without divulging the conversation Tommy and I had, I brought up the topic of sex with Allison in the afternoon. We were driving to the store so she could design some graduation party announcements at the photo kiosk. “You know,” I began, “I don’t care one way or the other about any of this, because you’re over eighteen, but based on the way Josh’s mom is blocking your phone number and stuff, I bet she would have you up for statutory rape charges if she were to find out you and Josh were having sex.”

  “Mom!” Allison yelled in protest.

  Protest because I figured out her actual relationship with Josh? Or, protest because a child doesn’t want to discuss their sex life with a parent any more than a parent wants to hear about (or imagine) their child having sex?

  “The age of consent is sixteen, Mom, not that we’re even having sex.”

  “I’m just saying . . .”

  “Mom, I know the law. It’s only a problem if there is a four-year difference, as in, one person under the age of sixteen and the other over twenty-one.”

  Sometimes I wish Allison would listen to herself. What she had described was an age difference of six years, not four! Allison likes to think of herself as a legal expert, but she only ever gets half of the information correct.

  Rather than extend the argument, I let Allison have the last word—again.

  I began noticing the stories in Wyoming. When I questioned Allison about her sexual activities at the age of thirteen, she diverted the subject by giving me a note. In the note, she wrote that her father had sexually molested her in the bathtub when she was a child, and that I could never ask her any follow up questions—nor could I confront her father, a conveniently absent parent who had moved out of our home (and lives) when Allison was three.

  I honored her requests. I never asked her any follow-up questions, or made any effort to contact Frank about the matter, choosing to support Allison’s need to be believed rather than satisfying my desire to have details proving her accusation to be false. I know Frank well enough to doubt his ability to perpetrate such a heinous act with his own daughter. In all honesty, I actually think he’s a closeted homosexual.

  But how do you tell the difference between stories and state­ments on a day-to-day basis?

  Me: “Do you have any homework?”

  Allison: “No, I did it in school.”

  She was in high school. I refused to be a helicopter parent, contacting the teacher every day to check if Allison was keeping up with the school work. I waited until parent-teacher conferences for a report.

  Me: “Are there going to be parents chaperoning this party tonight?”

  Allison: “Yep. They’ll be upstairs the entire night.”

  She didn’t share the fact that the parents were hosting their own party upstairs, where all of the guests would be drinking, and the adults would lose track of what was going on downstairs almost before I’d pulled out of the driveway.

  Me: “Well, you girls enjoy the sleepover, and I’ll be back to pick you up tomorrow afternoon.”

  Allison: “Okay, mom. Love you.”

  Five o’clock the next morning: “Mom, can you come pick me up? I’m reall
y mad, cuz Macy lied. She said we were just going to stay at her house last night, but she made me come with her to meet up with her new boyfriend. I’ve been listening to them having sex off and on ever since we got here last night!”

  After a while, the stories started to remind me of the stories Frank used to tell. “I didn’t mean to smoke it! Some asshole thought it would be funny to tell me it was just marijuana.”

  Or, “I didn’t mean to do it! You just got me so mad saying all of that stuff about not loving you. The next thing I knew, my hand was going through the drywall next to your head—I just blanked out. But you know I love you, babe! I would never mean to hurt you. I’ll stop smoking pot, if that will make you happy.”

  Allison came upstairs the morning of May 8th, and made a glass of chocolate milk before she did anything else—her normal hangover routine.

  After I dropped the kids off at school, I went back home to do some laundry. Putting her clean clothes away, I found another empty bag of candy—a bag that had been hidden in the bottom of my bedroom closet—next to a resealable cup full of a mystery liquid.

  I wanted to ignore Allison’s continual illegal and self-destructive behaviors, but I worried about Tommy. Was he being negatively influenced by Allison?

  By eleven, I couldn’t stand the debate going on in my head any longer. With no one around to talk to about my concerns, I sent a text message to Sara and Lindsey: “Do you cut the one child loose in order to save the other child?”

  An hour and a half later, Lindsey replied with a simple, “Yes.”

  Sara asked me if I really thought Tommy wouldn’t be experimenting with alcohol if Allison wasn’t around. Part of me acknowledged that he probably would, but the other part was angry because of how easy Allison made it for Tommy—and perhaps how she glamorized it for him as well.