Page 44 of The Wrong Track
“I don’t think she’s a bad girl, not in particular,” she explained, but then sighed. “Here I am asking for your honesty, and I’m not being truthful with you or myself. Of course, the real reason that I don’t like Lulu is my daughter. Because Hazel used to believe that she had feelings for Tobin, feelings beyond friendship, and I thought her heart would break sometimes when she would watch Lulu licking his ear or rubbing herself on him like a cat in heat…that really wasn’t fair to say. Not to Lulu or to cats. I’m not going to speak poorly of her,” she announced decidedly.
“Hazel has Hatch now,” I said.
“She does, and they’re so happy together. In any case, it wasn’t right for me to dislike Lulu because she was dating Tobin. But she also did this thing of speaking in baby talk and I swear that it was enough to make the Pope…it’s certainly her choice to speak in any voice she likes,” Monica interrupted herself again. “If she wants to pretend to be weak and helpless in order to draw attention from men, she’s welcome to do so, although I believe that it sets back the cause of feminism and makes me personally furious.”
“Lulu doesn’t talk like that anymore,” I said. “She used a normal voice when I heard her speak.”
“That’s good,” Monica said. She didn’t sound like she was thrilled, though. “It wasn’t only the voice. I also didn’t think that she was great for Tobin. She was always faking tears, starting drama. She was exciting, I think, but also exhausting for him. Eventually, he realized that he didn’t enjoy her tantrums and manipulation,” she told me, and then frowned. “None of us liked Lulu.”
That made me feel sorry for her. What chance did she have with Tobin now, even if she had grown up and stopped with the voice and the tricks? “Nobody likes her? Does Tobin’s mom feel the same way?”
“It’s different with Charlene.” Now Monica nodded understandingly. “She’s been after him to settle down for a while now. I would always tell her that he was young, he needed to go out and have fun and he was always such a good kid. He never needed someone to help stabilize his life or calm him. But Charlene and her husband, Tobin’s dad, weren’t very good together. They didn’t have a very happy household. I think she has an idea that she can fix things for her son, now. She wants him to find a wife who will be perfect so that he can have a better life than she did. As if any of us are perfect.” Monica rolled her eyes.
Some of us less than others, though. “Charlene doesn’t like me, either.” She had good reason, in my case.
And suddenly, Monica looked guilty. She reached with one hand, took a tube of lipstick from her purse, and swiped on some color. “I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t like you.”
There were many obvious reasons, so I named a big one. “She thought I was a bad person because I didn’t prepare for the baby. I was. She was correct.”
“No, that’s not correct,” Monica quickly answered. “Charlene doesn’t have a lot of what I’d call forgiveness. Empathy. She’s very sure of herself, and she doesn’t understand when people behave in ways that aren’t what she would think of as normal or right.” She reached and took my hand. “She doesn’t understand, for example, that you were terrified both of the future with a baby, alone, and of the past you’d had with that man. You’ve been through a lot, I know you have, even though you won’t talk about it with me or Hazel. You don’t have to, but we are here if you need us.”
I nodded, looking down at our hands. “Thank you.”
She let go to shift the baby in her arms. “And, you know, Charlene has ideas.” She reached for her lipstick, again, and smeared on more. “She had an idea about Tobin and Hazel. I’m thinking…ok, I know I encouraged it.”
“She wanted your daughter and her son to get together?”
“So did I,” Monica admitted. She toyed with the lipstick, but before she put on even more, she frowned at it and returned it to her purse. “I feel guilty about it now but for years, the two of us used to plot about them getting married and having our grandkids right in this house. I gave it up,” she promised me. “I knew a long time ago that Tobin was not going to feel any more than friendship for Hazel and I also knew that they wouldn’t be a good couple, not romantically.”
But he’d thought that he felt more than friendship and maybe he actually loved her, maybe that was why he’d broken up with Lulu. Monica wasn’t a mind reader, after all. She couldn’t tell what was in Tobin’s heart.
“I also realized that I wasn’t going to do Hazel or Tobin any favors by making my own plans for their future, so I cut it out,” she went on. “But Charlene was more than a little ticked off that what she wanted isn’t coming to fruition. You may be caught up in the tail end of that, since you moved in just as Hazel moved on.”
Maybe. Maybe Charlene knew my real last name, though, and she’d researched me like I did to my sister. Except the stuff online about me wasn’t anything like complimentary. I thought of what Lily could have read if she’d bothered to look me up like I did to her.
“I feel bad about it, for everyone. Here’s one good thing for you to learn right now: this little peanut will probably not do what you want. But that’s ok.” She smiled at Ella, who smiled back. “You’ll do all kinds of new and different things, wonderful things!” Monica told her.
Christ, I hoped so.
“But we were talking about you,” Monica said to me, and reluctantly put the baby back into her bouncy seat. Then she woke up her laptop. “If you really want to move away, let’s make a plan. A long-term plan, including education. You dropped out of high school, correct?” she asked. “Did you have a hard time with your classes?”
“No. Not at all.”
“Socially, it was fine?”
“Socially, it was fine, and I got great grades,” I said. I thought about how much I’d loved Sidsworth Hall Preparatory Academy, how happy and proud I’d been to go there. “My freshman year was really hard because the middle school I went to wasn’t so good. I didn’t even realize it until I got into ninth grade at a new place. I didn’t know how far behind I was, but I got there. By sophomore year, I was doing really well.” I had to tell her something to explain myself because now she looked very confused. “I didn’t quit school because of the classes. It was for personal reasons. Family reasons.”
“Oh. Ok, well, I think that while you’re here with us, you should get your high school diploma. It would really help when you look for a different job. You could even take college classes, too.”
“No, I can’t,” I said. My voice had an edge. That part of my life was over. “I have to make money and I also have a baby, and that means I don’t have time for going backwards. I’m done with that stuff.”
Monica stayed for a while, arguing, cajoling, and eventually typing a few things into the master life plan that she was creating for me. It didn’t really seem like a great strategy was developing, not like how she’d figured out that she could become a real estate agent and get on the track for a good future for her and Hazel. Mine was still vague and full of holes. I didn’t have a set place that I wanted to go, but she dutifully typed that it had to be “somewhere warm/unpopulated.” I didn’t have an idea of the job I wanted, but I knew that it had to be something that allowed for “bonding time w/ Ella.” I didn’t know how much money I’d need to make at that job, but it had to be enough for “allowance for sister.”
“How much are you sending home right now?” Monica had asked, and I felt swamped by guilt.
“Not enough. There are just so many things that Ella needs. Diapers and formula, and then, I have to think about her future, too. Lily and I were lucky to get scholarships to our high school but who knows about Ella? Then we’ll have to pay for college, and she’ll probably need a car. I need a car. I can’t keep driving Hatch’s.”
Miss Monica—just Monica—had squeezed my hand. “Let’s focus on the immediate future and not worry about all those things quite yet.”