Grasping at Eternity (The Kindrily) (23 page)

The next morning at school, River stood outside our English class chatting with two screaming-for-attention brunettes. His faux-hawk looked more defined than usual.

“How were the Rockies?” he asked, turning his back on the devastated groupie duo.

“Nice. We had a white Christmas.”

“Cool.”

I scanned the classroom and hallway. “Where’s April?”

“I’m guessing she’s not coming today. We broke up.”

“What? When?”

“New Year’s Eve.”

I gasped. “Why?”

“I wasn’t feeling it anymore.”

“Why didn’t anyone call or text me?”

He shrugged. “Didn’t want to bother you while you were on vacation. So did you see Nathan while you were there?”

 
“What?” I glanced at April’s empty seat. She was probably crushed.

“Nathan. You know, the loner reject you don’t get along with.”

“Oh. No. He wasn’t there. So tell me what happened. Was April upset?”

He turned to go inside. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

And he meant it. I passed him several notes during class, but River wouldn’t say another word about it.

April wasn’t in history class either. I thought about calling her after lunch, but I didn’t need to. She was standing outside the cafeteria doors, so I made my way through the crowd to make sure she was okay.

“How could you do this to me?” she shouted.

I looked around. She couldn’t be yelling at me.

“What?” I asked baffled.

“You pretend to be my friend then you steal my boyfriend!” A few people glanced in our direction.

“What are you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t play all sweet and innocent!”

“April, I—”

“There I was feeling all sorry for you about your parents and your brother, spilling my guts to you about my mom, listening while you rambled about all your stupid psychotic dreams, and the whole time you were being two-faced and trying to dig your claws into River.”

“April, I don’t—”

“Save it, Maryah! I’m not falling for any more of your lies.”

A large circle of students formed around us. I’d never experienced so many people staring at me. My heart raced. Why was April screaming at
me
about River? I had nothing to do with their breakup.

She ripped Mikey’s hat from my head then put her face close to mine, practically spitting on me as she talked. “Tell me,” she hissed, “do your precious dead parents know what a lying, backstabbing whore they raised?”

I honestly don’t remember what happened next. It was a blur of rage.

 
The next thing I knew, Faith had me tight in her grasp, and Harmony held April. We were both flailing and swinging our arms at each other.

Faith’s voice rang out through the chaos. “Maryah, control yourself! It’s over!”

My eyes frantically scanned the area. The sleeve of my gray thermal shirt had been torn halfway off. The vice principal walked toward us, and Mikey’s hat was nowhere to be found. The audience around us scattered.

“What in the world is going on here?” Vice Principal Shupe asked.

“She attacked me!” April shouted.

I couldn’t think straight. My body was trembling. My breaths came too fast.

“Is this true, Miss Woodsen?” he asked.

I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t remember attacking April, but I couldn’t remember anything. April’s lip was bleeding, and her hair was a mess. Did I really fight my friend? I’d never been in a fight!

“In my office—now,” Shupe said.

An hour later, Louise arrived at the office to meet with the vice principal. I’d been suspended for two days.

We walked to the car in silence. I held an icepack against my face where a black eye was forming, but mainly I wanted to hide the disgrace I felt.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, two minutes into our car ride.

“What are you sorry about?” Louise asked calmly.

“That I got suspended.”

She stayed silent.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” My guilt grew thicker by the second.

“What would you like me to say?”

“I don’t know. Yell at me. Punish me.”

Louise sighed. “Would that help you find peace?”

“Huh?”

“If I punished you, would that help you be at peace with your actions?”

“No, probably not.”

“I didn’t think so, but if you thought it would help, I would try my best to appease you.”

This wasn’t going anything like I’d expected. I’d been bracing myself for a long lecture. “My parents would kill me if they were here.”

“I highly doubt that.” Louise chuckled.

“Trust me, my mother would crucify me for fighting.”

“Your mother understood no one is perfect.”

“Ha. My mother must have changed a lot since you knew her. She wanted me and Mikey to be flawless. Not that I blame her, considering how perfect she was.”

“Would you like to hear a story about your mother?”

I adjusted my icepack and pain bolted down my cheek. “Sure.”

“When we were kids, your mother made up some dramatic stories.” Louise shot me a reluctant glance.

“What do you mean?”

“Your mother had a vivid imagination, and she thrived on attention. She wanted life to be exciting. When it became too dull, she created her own drama. At times, not realizing that her stories or elaborations could hurt people she cared about.”

“My mother was a liar?”

“Quite often, yes.” Louise laughed. “But eventually she grew out of it, and I’m pretty sure everyone lies a few times in their life.”

“I guess that’s true.” I studied my bruise in the visor mirror. April packed one hell of a punch. The whole left side of my face was swollen. “Still, a few lies when you’re a kid doesn’t compare to getting in a fight and being suspended.”

“Well then, how about another story?”

“I don’t know. Are you going to tell me more bad stuff about my mom?”

“Good and bad is a matter of perception.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay, go ahead.”

“Many years before you and Mikey were born—before she met your father—your mother was a dancer.”

“Yeah, she and my father loved to dance.”

“Not the kind you’re thinking of.” She looked at me over her hippie shades. “Exotic.”

“WHAT?” I gasped. “No way. My mother would never do that kind of thing.”

Louise swerved her head to one side. “Maybe not now, or for the past twenty years, but I assure you, she did that kind of thing many years ago.”

“Oh. My. God,” I stammered.

“In her defense, she never danced nude, and she didn’t give into the temptation of drugs or obsessive drinking. It was simply a job to her, a means to an end. She didn’t let it corrupt her or define her as a person.”

I couldn’t believe Louise just used nude and drugs in a statement about my mom. “She should have told me.”

“She wasn’t proud of it, and it’s certainly not the kind of thing you want your children to know about you.”

“Yeah, but she preached to me about self-respect and preserving my innocence. She said I should wait to have sex until I’m married. What a hypocrite!”

“That’s what parents do. We think if our kids know how imperfect we were, or how many bad decisions we’ve made, they’ll think it’s okay to do the same. We don’t want our children to learn the hard way.”

“Just because she made stupid choices doesn’t mean I will!”

Louise turned the radio off. “Before any of us are parents, we are first and foremost humans. All humans make mistakes and bad decisions. As we get older, we hope to make fewer, but when we’re younger, we live in the moment without worrying about the consequences.”

“Still, an exotic dancer! What was she thinking?”

“She needed to pay for college. The job paid well, and left her time to study.”

“She didn’t even graduate college!”

“Yes well, sometimes life happens, and we end up traveling a different path than we planned. It may not have been the most virtuous time in her life, but if she hadn’t made the choices she did—including the supposedly bad ones—she may have never met your father.”

I paused, not making the connection between my mother’s undignified career choice and her meeting my charming father. “What do you mean?”

“That’s how they met. Your father was here on a business trip, and he and some co-workers visited your mother’s bar outside of town. It was love at first sight.”

“My parents met while my mother was stripping!” All these years I’d been hoodwinked into thinking my parents had exceptional morals and manners. Now it made total sense that my mother was a liar.

“Oh, she disliked the term stripping.”

“Well if the stripper shoe fits.” I was shocked by my own catty, River-like comment, but I should’ve suspected something like this. I mean, how many mothers own a lingerie store? “So my father, what’s his real story? Was he in prison or something?”

“No, nothing like that. His only issue was smoking pot.”

My eyes bulged. “My father was a drug addict?”

“I wouldn’t label him an addict. He simply strayed down a meaningless path for a short time.” Louise smiled. “See, this suspension thing doesn’t seem so bad now, does it?”

“I don’t want to hear anymore.”

“Do you think less of them now that you have this knowledge?”

I thought about it. My parents’ past shocked me, but I didn’t think less of them. They were the same loving people who gave me a good life.

“I just think they had a lot of nerve,” I huffed. “Acting like they were so perfect.”

“All parents want to give their children the best life possible. Right now you don’t understand how tough it is to be a parent, but maybe someday you will. Let me ask you, do you live each day for your future children? Before every decision or action, do you stop and ask yourself, ‘how will this affect my son or daughter?’”

“I don’t even know if I’ll have children.”

“Exactly, because you’re living your life for
you
right now. You aren’t worrying that what you do today will be judged by your children. A time of consequence for every action we take is inevitable, yet we don’t give it much thought because it seems so far away in the present moment. No one is perfect. I’m not sure how the theory came to fruition that parents should be an exception to that rule. All souls have some light and dark in them. Think of how freeing it would be if you could turn to the people you love and say, ‘I’m not perfect. I never will be. I’ve made mistakes and some of them I’m very sorry for, but every choice, every experience, is a lesson. It makes me who I am. I’m a work in progress and I’m doing the best I can.’”

Louise was right. My parents had been teenagers. They had peer pressure and lessons to learn just like I did. I took a deep breath—somehow feeling lighter. “I’m glad you told me. It’s nice to know they weren’t perfect.”

Louise squeezed my hand. “That’s what stories are for—to learn something.”

“I guess every story can’t be rainbows and happy endings.”

“Definitely not all rainbows, but happy endings are a matter of perception.” She looked at me over her glasses again. “Who knows if there is ever an end to our story?”

∞

Being stuck at home on suspension meant I had plenty of time to do my schoolwork. Ms. Barby gave us an assignment on the meaning and history behind our name. My non-existent access to my family tree left me with limited information.

I was in the kitchen, searching the Internet when Louise came home with groceries.
 

“Louise, by any chance, do you know anything about my name?”

“Sure I do. What would you like to know?”

I helped her unpack bags. “Well, most websites say it means ‘star of the sea’, but that doesn’t fit me, so I was wondering if it had personal meaning behind it.”

 
“Actually, I played a part in the selection of your name. Your mother came to me when she found out she was pregnant. She suspected she was having a boy.” Louise had a faraway grin on her face like she was picturing that moment in time. “She decided on Michael, but a few weeks later, the doctors informed her she was having twins.” She winked at me. “And one was a girl.”

I was thrilled Louise knew this stuff. In some small way I felt reconnected to my family.

“I asked if I could choose your name. We already had Dylan and Nathaniel by then, and Anthony and I weren’t planning on having more children. Your mother knew I had always wanted a girl, so she agreed to let me name you.”

“You didn’t plan on having Carson?”

“No. Carson was an unexpected surprise. But a pleasant one,” she added. “I chose the name Mary for you, and your mother liked it. However, on the day of your birth, she looked at you for the first time, and said you didn’t look like a Mary. She didn’t think it fit who you were. So she called you Maryah, but spelled it so my selection of Mary was within your name.”

“Wow. I was almost a Mary. Why did you choose that name?”

“Mary means beloved or wished for child, and that’s exactly what you were.”

I held up a can of tuna before putting it in the pantry. “And now I’m a star of the sea. I sound like a brand of tuna fish.”

Louise patted my back as she passed by me. “I think you have the best of both worlds. You are a beloved and wished for star of the sea.”

“I am a Pisces. At least the water reference works.”

Her faraway look returned. “Indeed, you are a water sign.”

“Do you know what your name means?”

She imitated a manly voice. “Louise means famous warrior or renowned fighter.”

I giggled. “Boy, your parents sure got that one wrong, huh?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way. It’s just you’re so sweet and loving. I couldn’t imagine you fighting with anyone.”

She raised an eyebrow and tossed me a pack of paper towels. “I fought for you, didn’t I?”

I tried to hide my sappy grin. She did fight for me, and I was glad she did.

“Well, I have to call some clients,” she said. “I’ll leave you to your homework.”

“Thank you for telling me that story.”

“I have plenty more. All in due time.”