They
painted up your secrets with the lies they told to you.
And the
least they ever gave you was the most you ever knew.
And I
wonder where these dreams go when the world gets in your way.
What’s the
point in all this screaming, no ones listening anyway.
Your voice
is small and fading and you hide in here unknown
And your
mother loves your father cause she’s got no where to go
And she
wonders where these dreams go ‘cause the world got in her way
What’s the
point in ever trying, nothings changing anyway.
After she found out her mother
was in the hospital, Jen Lindley made a hasty retreat back to New York. She
kissed her Grams goodbye, let a couple of her close friends know, and she was
on her way, on a train back home…her original home.
Jen’s heart dropped when she saw
her mother; black and blue, her eye-swollen shut, her lip split, and a couple
of her ribs broken.
“Oh mom,” Jen said through tears.
“I’m fine, Jen. Really, I’m
fine.”
They released her mother that
day, with no pending visits from social services.
Helen Lindley had lied. Instead
of admitting that it was her loving husband, wealthy and highly respected wall
street legend Brice Lindley, who had done this to her, she said that she was
attacked in a parking lot at knifepoint. Jen didn’t have to listen to her lies
to know what had really gone on.
In the limo ride home, Jen sat
biting her lip hard. Her mother, astonishingly, without regard to her injuries
and without regard to her daughter’s presence, was feverishly applying make-up
from her compact to cover her bruises.
Jen painfully watched her mother;
pitiful, pathetic, weak, and trapped in a prison that perhaps only Jen could
understand; without a word.
Helen Lindley did not want the
help to see her this way. She didn’t want anyone to see her this way, not a
high society matron such as herself.
By the time the limo pulled into
the circular driveway, Mrs. Lindley was completely made up. She slipped on her
dark glasses, and waited for the driver to open the door.
She got out with Jen following
her, and waltzed into the ornate house as if she didn’t have a care in the
world.
“Is that you, Helen?” A gruff
masculine voice came from somewhere upstairs.
“Yes, dear.” She answered dryly,
slipping off her gloves.
Jen’s father came down the steps,
buttoning his suit jacket and smoothing his sleeves as if he were not welcoming
home his adoring wife, but prepping for a business meeting or presentation.
“Jenny?” He said suddenly when he
saw his daughter there. He floundered on that step for a moment, obviously
speechless, but then recovered himself and went down to greet them.
“Hello, Daddy.” Jen said, her
voice cracking like ice.
He started to kiss her cheek but
the look she gave him made him recoil. He didn’t bother to kiss Helen.
“Are we feeling better after our rest?”
He asked condescendingly. Helen nodded somewhat obediently, even as she avoided
his gaze. Jen felt her fists clenching.
“Daddy…” She whispered. “How
could you do that?”
“What?” He asked, acting
completely taken aback.
“Don’t fucking lie to me!” She warned, her emotions getting the best of her.
“Jennifer,” He said coldly. “Do not
speak to me like that.”
“Is that what Mom did? Is that
why you beat her?”
“Jennifer, really.”
“Jennifer!” Her mother snapped,
immediately silencing her. Helen glanced around at the blank expressions on
some of the help. They hadn’t been able to overhear, but the room was thick
with obvious tension.
“Come now, Jenny…” Her mother
said with a sudden softening of her voice, walking past Brice to the stairs.
“Let’s get your things unpacked and settled. I have a lot of catching up to do
with my little girl while she’s visiting.”
Jen hated when her mother
addressed her in the third person when she was standing right there. But what
she hated more was the look of contempt on her bastard father’s face as he
stared after her mother.
Her mother… Her mommy.
“I swear to god,” Jen whispered,
tears springing into her eyes. “If you ever…” She couldn’t finish her sentence.
The man was just too cold. She looked away, unable to stare into his frosty
eyes any longer.
“Just how long are you going to
be staying, Jenny dear?”
“As long as it takes to protect
her from you!” She shoved past him, and went up the stairs.
The tears were burning her eyes, and she let one slip, just one. Just enough, so that she wouldn’t cry again. She wiped it away self consciously as she followed her mother’s perfume through the hallway to her old bedroom.
~O~
The weekend passed without
incident, and as much as here mother insisted, Jen refused to fly home Sunday
evening for school. She called her Grams and let her know everything was okay,
but that she was probably going to stick around for another week or so, and to
please call the school and let then know.
Her grandmother, having no idea
of the real tragedies that actually led to this visit, quickly obliged,
offering her love to her granddaughter, and her daughter, Helen…and to her
son-in-law, Brice.
“Sure Grams, I’ll tell him.” She
said cordially. She smiled at her grandmother’s loving and gentle voice. She
longed to be home, in Capeside, with her, but as she heard a slight argument
ensue somewhere upstairs, she remembered the urgency of her departure. “Grams,
I gotta go! Please tell Jack and the others that I’ll be home soon! I love you,
bye.”
She clicked down the phone, and
rushed up the staircase. She heard the screaming and a crash as something hit a
wall, and her steps quickened.
Jen bound into the study and saw
her mother on her knees, tears sliding down her cheeks, as she picked up the
pieces of a broken vase. Jen’s eyes flew to her father who was standing across
the room, his face red from his temper and a stern expression on his lips. When
he saw the look on Jen’s face, he held up his hands in defense.
“Your mother started it,”
“Yeah, I bet she did!” She bit
back. She rushed to her mother, who shrugged her away, and her father stepped
out of the room.
“Mom, let me help you…” She said,
again reaching for the glass.
“I can do it myself!” Helen
snapped angrily. Jen shrank back. “Honestly, Jen! Can’t you just stay out of
other people’s business! This doesn’t concern you…”
“Mom! How can you say that!”
“Jen…I mean it.” Her voice was
definite as she stared coldly at her daughter. Jen stood back, biting her lip
to keep from crying as she let her mother finish cleaning up the mess.
Her mother threw the glass away,
and went on about with the evening as if nothing had happened.
A week later, Jen looked frazzled
and nervous as she sat in the waiting chair at Bloomingdale’s. They were in the
personal shopper’s lounge, and she watched as her mother went through dress
after dress after dress. Marty, her saleswoman, also looked frazzled, but she
was patient. After all, she was paid to be patient.
Jen sighed.
“What about this one, Jenny dear?”
Helen asked, turning around and smiling almost ferociously. Her mother was a
good actress, probably the best in the biz, Jen thought. If she did movies,
she’d have won over a thousand awards by now…
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“Fine.”
“Fine is not a
description,” She bit, going back to her reflection in the mirror.
“Sophisticated, feminine, pretty…you have heard of ‘pretty’, haven’t you? Those
are descriptions, not ‘fine’.”
“Okay, it’s ‘pretty’.” Jen said
through clenched teeth.
“I’ll take this one, Marty.”
Helen said politely. The saleswoman nodded.
Later in the limo, Helen turned on her daughter.
“Don’t you regard me that way,
Jennifer! Do you understand! I do not want you treating me that way in public!”
“Public?” Jen gasped helplessly.
Her mother was taking this entirely too far.
“Yes, public!” She screeched.
“Especially in front of a-a saleswoman! You start treating me like this,
and I wont send you back to Capeside, I’ll send you off to boarding school!”
“Mom, I’m almost eighteen,”
“Shut your mouth!”
“But Mom—”
Then Helen slapped her. It was
abrupt, and it wasn’t hard, but Jen was stunned.
“I do everything for you,
Jennifer! Everything! And this is how you treat me! You have no respect for me!
You don’t appreciate me!”
“I…I appreciate you, mommy-”
“I swear! Sometimes I wonder what
I ever did to deserve a child like you! Sometimes I wish I’d never gotten
pregnant!”
Jen sat stupefied, her hand still
on her cheek. The words hurt more than anything, and she couldn’t believe they
had been said to her.
After a few moments, Helen looked
over at Jen.
“Jen…”
Jen looked up at her with wide,
saucer eyes.
“Jen…honey, I’m sorry. I didn’t
mean that. Do you forgive me?”
Jen stared at her mother, who
sat, smiling fondly at her as the limo sailed down the avenue.
“Do you? Please say you do…”
“Y-yeah, mom. Of course.” Jen
said, confused.
“Oh, Jen.” She reached over and
brushed Jen’s hair away from her eyes. “I love you so much.”
~O~
One week turned into two, and two
nearly three.
Grams had called her several
times; concerned that she was missing too much school.
By the end of the third week, Jen
called Grams and spilt the news that she wasn’t coming back. Grams had been
heartbroken.
“I’m sorry, Grams. I’ll miss you
so much, I’ll miss everyone,” She said, trying to hold back her tears. “But mom
needs me here.”
“You’ve really bonded that much?”
Grams said, pleased but also sad.
“Y-Yeah…”
“Well, then…I guess there’s
nothing more to worry about. I can pack your things for you, and ship them back
if you like. I’m sure a few of your friends would like to hear from you though.
You should call Jack and Andie, and Pacey. They’ve all been asking about you.
The Leery’s miss you too. And I saw Josephine and her sister at the market the
other day…”
Grams went on, and Jen did start
to cry, though she covered the receiver with her hand so that Grams wouldn’t
hear.
She was giving up everything she
had earned there, everything she loved. But she loved her mother, and she
couldn’t trust her to be alone anymore.
“Yes, Grams, that would be
excellent.” She sighed. “Yes…Uh, uh…uh. Yes, I love you too… Okay…good bye.”
She set the phone back down, and
shrank back against the wall. She slid to the floor and held her face in her
hands, but then she heard something crashing up stairs, and she rushed up.
Brice Lindley boarded a plane to
London on a Wednesday afternoon. No one was there to see him off, and he really
didn’t care. Jen had watched as the limo pulled out of the driveway to take him
there, and she’d left the window when the Limo drove out of sight. He’d be gone
for at least a month, if not more, and when he came back, it would only be for
a week, before jetting off to the orient on business.
Everything with Brice Lindley was
business. Jen couldn’t remember if it had ever been another way. Had he ever
loved her? Had he ever nurtured her? He must have because her early childhood
memories were good ones. It didn’t seem to get bad until she turned about
twelve.
“Jennifer?”
Jen spun around and went up the
stairs to her mother’s room.
“Yes?”
“Honey…can you take a couple of
my pills out of my purse for me? Its over there on the table.”
Jen turned to her mothers Gucci
handbag and removed the little silver pillbox she had remembered her having
since childhood. She popped open the lid, and took two white slabs from it
before placing it back in the bag. She took them over to her mother, who lay in
her bed, propped against her pillows, with her hair pinned up and wearing her
silk robe.
Her mother had been in bed all
day.
Jen looked at the bottle of
scotch on the nightstand and understood why.
“Jenny, baby…I’m so glad you
decided to stay home. Now that your father’s gone, the house will be lonely and
I’m glad I’ve got you around.”
“I’m glad I’m here,”
“The house is always so empty
when your father leaves…”
“You mean the house is so safe.”
Jen mumbled.
Helen’s jaw dropped.
“What?”
“I said the house is safe without
daddy here,”
Jen watched her mother’s
expression turn from serene to heated in a matter of seconds, and she almost
flinched at the difference.
“You stupid little brat! How dare
you!” Helen was fuming. She jumped out of bed, grabbing Jen by the arm and
dragging her out into the hallway. “I will NOT tolerate your attitude! Is that
clear? I wont put up with it! I wont!”
“Yes!” Jen screamed, struggling
to get free of her mother’s tight grasp. Her mother pushed her to the floor and
turned around and went back in her room. She slammed the door and Jen heard the
lock click, and her mother’s angry footsteps walking away.
“You can stay out there alone!”
Was screamed through the door.
Jen shrank back; her mother’s
words were harsh even coming through the wall.
She gulped, and rose, dusting
herself off, and headed back to her room, where she lay on her bed for hours,
finally sleeping for a little while, until nearly midnight. Then, she rose
groggily, and went to the kitchen for a snack.
She made as little noise as
possible, and chewed her sandwich in silence. She was careful to clean
everything up, and she tiptoed back upstairs to her mother’s room.
Jen jiggled the handle; it was
still locked. She went to the other end of the hall, into her fathers desk, and
took a paperclip from it’s holder, then went back to her mother’s room, and
picked the lock.
The light was still on.
And there was her mother, passed
out on the bed.
Jen went to her and covered her
up. She leaned down, kissed her forehead, then turned off the light,
remembering to lock the door again as she left.
~O~
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