Home Song (34 page)

“Drake, don't.”

“Bet you've been a good little girl, haven't you? Always done what your mommy and daddy told you to do. So tonight you decided to try what the bad girls do, and I bet you like it, don't you? You ever had anybody kiss you here before?” He moved so fast she couldn't combat him—up with her stretch top and down with his head, and his mouth fastened on her nipple.

She was starting to cry, trying to force his head up, and afraid she'd get sick because her stomach was starting to heave, and if she vomited on the car floor she'd just die!

He lifted his head himself and put his thumb where his tongue had been and made circles on her wet flesh.

“Bet you're gettin' hot, aren't you? Nothin' wrong with that; hell, everybody does it.”

“Drake, I think I'm going to be sick. Tell Church to stop the car.”

“Aw, Jesus,” he said in disgust. “Hey, Church, pull over. Chelsea's got to hurl.”

She hurled, all right. She would never as long as she lived forget how she retched into the frosty weeds beside some highway while the cars whooshed past and the couple in the backseat went right on humping as if this were the Garden of Eden and they were the only two in the universe.

When her mortification was complete, Chelsea climbed back in the car, where Drake at last kept his hands and legs and pelvis off her. In lieu of fornicating, he rolled and lit up a foul-smelling cigarette.

“Want a hit, little girl?” he asked when the car stank completely.

“No thank you.”

“Never tried that either, huh?”

She hugged herself harder and gazed out the dark window through tears that transformed the freeway lights into many-pointed stars. She thought about her real friends and tried to understand why she'd been seeing less of them, and why she'd hit on Drake Emerson, for it was true—she'd singled him out and done some flirting. It hadn't taken much before he'd asked her out. But he was such a major sleaze, and she missed Erin so much. All of a sudden all she wanted was to be in Erin's room eating popcorn and talking, sitting cross-legged on the bed or trying out new hairdos.

At home a kitchen light glowed, and Drake let her walk to the house alone. As she reached the door, he called, “Yo, goody-girl! You got to learn to loosen up some. Anytime you want to try again, just give me the high sign.”

The door opened and her mother stood above her.

“Get in here, young lady!”

In the harsh kitchen light, Chelsea could not escape Claire's scrutiny.

“Where in the world have you been? Do you know it's one-thirty in the morning?”

“So?”

“We have curfews in this house! And rules about where you go and with whom! Robby says you were with Drake Emerson. Were you?”

Chelsea refused to look at Claire. She stood with her jacket hanging open, mouth drawn into a tight, defiant bundle. Claire took Chelsea's chin and forced it up with a snap. “Dressed like that? And smelling like that? Chelsea, have you been drinking?”

“It's none of your business!” Chelsea pulled free and hit for her bedroom.

Claire stood in the empty kitchen with fear constricting her throat, the fetid smell of her daughter's breath lingering in the air around her. Dear God, not Chelsea. Not her sweet daughter who'd never given her a moment's worry, who'd picked nurturing friends and kept early hours and taken part in wholesome activities that had always made her a parents' dream. It didn't even seem like the same girl who had just come through the kitchen. This one was dressed like a whore, and had been in the company of a boy whose truancy, drug use, and pathetic scholastic record made him a subject of disdain whenever his name came up in faculty circles. Judging from Chelsea's attire, Claire guessed that there was at least the possibility that she had done something sexual with Drake Emerson.
AIDS, pregnancy
—the fears flashed past along with sordid stories about other girls from school, so many that she'd almost become accustomed to them. But
when the subject was your own daughter and the fault was your own, it was another matter.

Claire had one instinctive thought as she stood in the kitchen with a hand over her mouth and tears in her eyes:

Tom, I need you.

But Tom wasn't there. She had thrown him out because she could not forgive his deceptions of the past. Now those deceptions seemed to weigh less in light of Chelsea's defiance and the very real danger she seemed to have put herself in tonight. Oh, to have Tom here now, to be able to slip her hand into his and feel the quick pressure of his fingers. To turn and whisper, “Tom, what should we do?” After all, these things happened to other people's children, not their own! But it was twenty-five to two in the morning, and Tom had had as long a day as Claire. By the time she called him and he drove in from his dad's cabin, it would be after two, and both of them simply had to be at school tomorrow for the last day of conferences, had to be there early, as a matter of fact, to attend conferences for their own children.

So Claire had to handle this alone.

She snapped out the kitchen light and headed upstairs. Robby was asleep behind his closed bedroom door and Chelsea was in the bathroom. Claire knocked softly and waited, listening to the sink faucet running and being shut off, the squeal of the plastic soap dish on the marble vanity top. She knocked again—“Chelsea?”—and opened the door, letting it swing back on its own while remaining where she was with her arms crossed and her weight against the door frame. Chelsea was scrubbing her face, bent over the sink.

“Chelsea?” Claire said quietly, terrified because she didn't know what to say, ask, do: no parenting manuals had prepared her for a moment like this. “Why?”

Chelsea pushed the plunger, releasing the water, and
buried her face in a towel. Claire waited until Chelsea's eyes reappeared, staring straight into the mirror as if she were alone in the room.

“Is it because of Dad and me?”

Chelsea's hands dropped, still holding the towel. She stood lifelessly for some time before whispering, “I don't know.” The water dripped from the faucet, which would have been fixed days ago if Tom had been living at home. Otherwise the room was silent.

Tom, Tom, I don't know what to say.

“Were you drinking tonight?”

Chelsea's mouth and chin quivered. Her head hung. She nodded, her eyes filling.

“Did you take any drugs?”

Chelsea wagged her head no.

“Did you do anything sexual with him?”

“No, Mom, I didn't.” Chelsea's pleading eyes swung to Claire. Her face was back to girlish, though framed by a wiry, streetwalker's hairdo. “Honest, Mom.”

“I believe you.”

“Are you going to tell Dad?”

“Yes, I am, Chelsea. I have to. I don't know how to deal with this alone. You're not allowed at places like that. You broke curfew and you used alcohol. He has to know.”

“Will he come back home then?”

If there was a moment when Claire's heart broke completely, this was it. As she stood in the bathroom watching tears spring from the eyes of her sad, pitiful, misguided daughter, Claire felt her own eyes sting. “Is that why you did it?” she asked gently. “So Daddy would come back home?”

A sob broke forth from Chelsea as she whirled and flung herself into her mother's arms, clinging frantically, pleading
in broken phrases. “I don't know, Mom, maybe I d . . . did, but it's so awful here w . . . without him. Won't you please tell him he can come b . . . back and live with us? Please, Mom? Nothing's the s . . . same without him, and I hate it in this house, and you're not the s . . . same anymore, and I just don't know why you're doing this to us!”

Guilt, fear, and love. All exerted an awesome force on Claire. She hurt in ways she had never experienced hurt before. Holding Chelsea, realizing what desperate measures her daughter was willing to risk to bring about her family's reconciliation, Claire realized they were on the brink of so much more than the dissolution of a marriage. She petted Chelsea's hair in hard, desperate strokes while reassuring her.

“Dad and I have agreed to go to a marriage counselor. We're going to start working on it.”

“R . . . really?” Chelsea drew back, sniffing.

“Yes, the first appointment is already set up for next week.”

“Then does that mean Dad will move back home now?”

“No, darling, not right now.”

“But . . . but why?” Chelsea sniffed again. “If you want to get back together with him, why are you putting it off?”

Claire reached for some tissues and handed them to Chelsea, who began mopping her face and blowing her nose. “Because there are things we have to work out first.”

“What things?”

“Kent Arens, for one.”

“And Mr. Handelman?”

“Mr. Handelman?”

“Some of the kids are saying that you and Mr. Handelman are dating.”

“Oh, that's ridiculous! We are
not
dating!”

“But you spend a lot of time with him at play practice, and he's got a crush on you, hasn't he?”

Claire grew flustered and felt herself blushing.

Chelsea wailed, “Oh, Mom, don't tell me it's true! There
is
something going on between you two, isn't there? Gol, Mom, how could you?”

“I told you, there's nothing! And how did this conversation get turned around and centered on me? We were talking about you, and the flagrant breaking of rules tonight. There's got to be some punishment, you know that, Chelsea, don't you?”

“Yes, I know.”

“But I . . .” Claire put a hand to her forehead and rubbed it with four fingertips. “I'm just . . . I'm not prepared to handle this alone. I'll have to talk to your father about it. Meanwhile, you're not to leave the house tomorrow, and the car is off limits. I want you to give me your keys.”

Chelsea answered docilely, “All right, Mother,” and went to her room to get them. Left behind, Claire dried her eyes and felt her love for Chelsea welling up and closing her aching throat even as her disappointment brought panic edging closer. She felt lonely and forsaken, uncertain of tens of things that seemed to be directing her life right now: Tom, the children, Kent, Monica, the class play and her mis-moves with John Handelman, Chelsea's accusations and disappointment in her mother.

A great parental guilt pressed down heavily as Claire cowered in the hall wishing for Tom, regretting the past two months. Finally she dashed the tears from her eyes and went to Chelsea's bedroom door to collect the keys. As Chelsea put them in her hand, the girl's sudden tractability seemed the saddest of postscripts to this disastrous day, and Claire
recognized there was one vitally important thing left to say, one thing that she needed to hear as badly as Chelsea did.

“Chelsea, you know that I love you, don't you?”

“I guess I do.” Chelsea could not look at her mother. “But sometimes lately I've been wondering.”

“I do . . . very much. But parents aren't infallible. Sometimes we do the wrong thing, even though we think what we're doing is right. Sometimes it's the same with kids, isn't it?”

Chelsea nodded glumly, refusing to lift her head. She and Claire stood in the doorway, dusted by ocher light from one small bedside lamp, surrounded by the girlish belongings from Chelsea's childhood days, which in the past two years mingled with the trappings of a young woman: roller-skate pom-poms and lip gloss on the same dresser top, dolls and nylon stockings on the same rocking chair, an elf-shaped jewelry box below a poster of Rod Stewart. Standing in the wee-hour shadows, they both felt the sadness that growing up sometimes exerts upon a mother and daughter.

It was late; they were both exhausted. Claire drew her wandering gaze back to Chelsea and sighed, as if punctuating both their thoughts.

“Well . . . could I have a hug?”

Chelsea bestowed one gingerly.

“I love you,” Claire said.

“I love you too.”

“Clean your room and catch up on your ironing tomorrow, and I'll see you when I get home around six-fifteen. We'll talk about everything then.”

Chelsea nodded without looking up.

 

The following morning a block of conference time had been set aside for those teachers whose children attended HHH.
Tom and Claire were scheduled to see Robby's and Chelsea's teachers between 8:00 and 8:30.

Claire went in with fifteen minutes to spare. Tom's office lights were on though the reception area was empty and unlit. He was working at his desk when she stopped in the doorway. Unaware of her presence, he worked on, dressed in a slate-blue suit she'd always loved and an attractive tie she had bought him at Dayton's for Father's Day last summer. He had a trim body made for well-tailored clothes. Observing him across the room, neatly dressed and groomed, still had the power to stir her. Yesterday when she had watched him across the gym with Monica Arens she had been blindsided by a powerful shot of jealousy.

What had they laughed about? How many other times had they talked and laughed? Had they gotten together with Kent sometimes so Tom could get to know the boy? In the midst of those meetings, had he gotten to know Monica as well? The picture of the three of them together brought Claire a sharp visceral ache and the realization that she had never stopped loving him.

“Tom?” she said, and he looked up. Absent were the smile and look of yearning she'd come to expect since asking him to move out.

“You're fifteen minutes early.”

“Yes, I know. May I come in anyway?”

“I'm working on some budgeting stuff that's on a deadline.”

“It's important.”

He dropped his pencil in annoyance and said, “All right.”

She closed the door and took a guest chair. “Why do I feel like one of your students who's been sent in here with a pink slip?”