Safe and Sound (6 page)

 
“Stop staring at me
.”

 
“I’ve never seen anyone look so surprised to be happy,” he said quietly.

 
Her eyes burned
and she swallowed
.
Lola grabbed her backpack she’d dropped at some point and raced home.
She forced herself not to look back, not once.

 
Why had he acted like she was supposed to know him, to remember him? Like they’d had some kind of interaction or shared some experience together. They never had. She would remember if they had.

 
He was probably on drugs as well as being an academic failure and troublemaker. They all usually went hand and hand.
Lola pushed the guilt she felt with that thought away and inwardly put a layer of armor on. She was home.

3

 
She crept past the partially
opened bedroom door
on the way to her
own
bedroom
, hoping against hope they were asleep
and wouldn’t know
she was home two hours late fro
m school
.
Supper would be late as well. Lola’s stomach churned at the thought of repercussions.

 
The floor creaked and gave her away.

 
“Lola
, is that you
?”

 
Lola closed her eyes. “Yes. I’m sorry for being noisy.”

 
“Open the door.”

 
She didn’t want to open the door, she didn’t want to see her mother and
Bob
in bed and think of the things they did there. It made her nauseous.
How could her mother st
and
the look of him, the smell of him,
his
touch?

 
“I have to get ready for work, Mom.”
A lie.
She didn’t have to work tonight.
Lola didn’t want to be home either.

 
“Please come here.” The weakness of her voice, the acute sorrow in it, pulled at Lola. She slowly pushed the door open.
It smelled musty and unclean in the room.
It smelled like
Bob
.

 
Her mother was huddled in the middle of the bed, looking small and child-like. A light blue blanket covered her, pillows propped her head up.
The curtain was drawn, casting the room in shadows.
With relief, she saw
Bob
wasn’t in the room.

 
The room was small and sparse of furnishings.
Though Lola’s room was small too, her mother had unselfishly given her the slightly larger one of the two.
The walls were painted a pale green.
T
here was a bed and a dresser in the room, some framed photographs.

 
“Mom?”
There was a catch to her voice, a waver in that one syllable word. Lola cleared her throat and made her way to the bed. She looked down at her mother, wondering at what precise moment their roles had reversed.
             

 
She kept hoping her mom would come back to her, that she’d suddenly wake up and be who Lola knew her to be. Maybe the strong woman Lola remembered hadn’t really ever been; maybe she was a figment of Lola’s imagination.

 
Why did she keep trying to catch a glimpse of that person? She supposed, on some level, she couldn’t give up on her mom.

 
Lana patted the bed. “Sit down. I want to talk to you.”

 
She silently shook her head. There was no way she would sit in the spot
Bob
slept,
no way
.

 
Lola pretended not to see her mother’s hurt look and instead focused on a framed photograph above the bed. It was a picture of her, taken when she was seven. Lola was missing her two front teeth and her eyes sparkled with happiness. Her skin had a healthy glow. She wore a
purple
dress and had a red headband in her auburn hair.

 
Had I ever been so innocent?

 
She
turned away.
“Where’s
Bob
?”

 
Her mother folded over an edge of the blanket, head down.
“Out with friends.”

 
‘Out with friends’ meant he was drinking at the bar. When he drank at the bar, he
came
home late and missed w
ork.
Bob
also went from
mean to really mean. All it took was a wrong look or word and he got scary real fast.
Lola’s stomach
turned
queasy and it was harder to take a breath.

 
“I thought…I thought maybe we could hang out t
onight
.” Eyes full of hope fixed on Lola, waiting.

 
Lola’s chest tightened.
She wanted to. She so wanted her mother back, if only for one evening.
Lola was
desperate
for her old mom.
This new mom she didn’t know and
didn’t like.

 
Her lips parted and she almost sa
id yes;
was on the verge of it, b
ut
t
he urge to confront her mom was strong
er
.
She had to try to get her mom to see reason.

 
“Mom,
please leave him. We can leave tonight, while he’s gone. We’ll be okay without him, I promise.
You’ll be okay.
Please.
”
Lola regretted the words as soon as
she saw her mother’s face
.

 
Lana’s
face closed up and she retreated into herself.

 
She backed away,
feeling sad even though she knew
better
than to
.
What was the point?

 
Lola stopped near
the door
, pretending she hadn’t just
said that
. “I can’t
hang
out tonight
. I have to work. Remember?”

 
Her eyes dropped, another little sliver of life seemed to slip from her, dimming her. “Oh. That’s right. I thought you had Thursdays off usually.”

 
I do.
Lola closed her eyes, torn
.
I want you back, Mom, I want you back. But you’re not her anymore. I don’t know you.

 
She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
I’m sorry our lives are the way they are. I’m sorry you’re not strong enough. I’m sorry you don’t love me enough. I’m sorry
I’m
not enough.

 
Lola
walked out the door
, wanting to escape her mother’s pain and sadness, wanting to escape the house,
Bob
, her life.
Her mother’s disappointment was
like a heavy weight in the air and it was
stifling
.

 
She
couldn’t stay there, she couldn’t be there. Part
of her wanted
to leave, to run
away
and never return. Some fledgling sense of loyalty wouldn’t allow her to leave her mother, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be around her either.
It hurt too much.
And she was so angry with her.
She hated what she had become almost as much as she hated
Bob
.

*
**

 
The
outside
air was refreshing after the
stale
interior of the house.
The sun was lowering in the sky, turning the horizon into pretty shades of pink and orange.

 
Images of her mother haunted Lola as she walked down the streets of Morgan Creek.
The tinkle of her laughter, the sparkle in her blue eyes.
The way she used to hold Lola close
and whisper
she loved her.

 
She almost turned back. Lola yearned to rush into her mother’s arms and be held.
To hold her mother like she used to.
She couldn’t. Her mother was tainted by
Bob
’s
touch and scent.
It wasn’t
her
anymore.
Lola had to keep reminding herself of that
.

 
Tears flowed down her cheeks, warm against her cool flesh.

 
Not for the first time she ached for her father. Benjamin Murphy had died of a brain aneurism when he wa
s twenty-eight and she was four
. All he was to her was a photograph of a young man whose chin and nose she’d inherited; someone whose memory her mother’s eyes and voice softened over.
A distant memory almost completely faded from her mind.
Someone, who if he still lived, would have made Lola’s life so very different from the way it
was
.

 
From what her mother had told her, he’d been a good man. Lola didn’t trust her mother’s definition of what a good man was. But she liked to believe he had been. She liked to believe he would have loved her and never hurt her.
What few pictures she’d seen of him and
Lola together
told her he had.
Lola could take
some comfort from that.

 
There was a longing
within her
for a father she would never know.
Bob
being his replacement made it all that much more unbearable.

 
Lola found herself at the creek the town was named after. It ran through the middle of town and met up with the Mississippi River at some point.
C
hildren liked to fish in it. There was a cemented path on the side of it
people walked
or rode bikes on.

  She
stared into the gray water and listened
to the sound of it lapping
. It soothed her.
Her eyes closed and she held herself still.
A sense of p
eace slowly encompassed her and Lola exhaled.

 
Just another year.
She had one more year to get through and then she could leave. Maybe Lola could leave as soon as she turned eighteen in
September
. Where would she go? She had no othe
r relatives. At least none
her mother talked to.

 
Lola vaguely remembered an
aunt; her father’s sister. She
didn’t
know
anything about
her and her mother never brought her up. Lola sensed something had happened be
tween the two of them and that wa
s why she
was
just a faceless
being Lola didn’t know.

 
A familiar, cruel giggled sounded behind her. Lola stiffened, but didn’t move, hoping
she would just pass by. Of course that was wishful thinking.

 
“Well, well, well,
looky
here. It’
s the detention queen,” a singsong voice called.

 
Lola slowly faced
Roxanne. “What do you want?”

 
It was all so childish and tiresome
and petty
. Lola wished Roxanne would leave her alone and stop picking
on her for whatever reason
. It
seemed s
o trite compared to what she faced every day at home.

 
Roxanne
tossed her head and placed a hand on a hip. A green hooded sweatshirt emphasized her eyes, dark skinny jeans molded to her legs.

 
“What do I want? Let’s see.” She tapped her cheek and cocked her head.
Almost i
mmediately
Roxanne
straightened and her eyes narrowed.
“I want you to stay away from my boyfriend.”

 
Lola took a step back at the look
of loathing on Roxanne’s face. Even h
er cold beauty was blocked out by it, leaving something ugly in its place.