Chapter 7
Heather was in her car, speeding East on Highway 80, heading for what used to be her home.
She had to see her mother. Heather’s phone had remained turned off for two days now. It was the longest they’d ever gone without speaking. Earlier that morning, she’d dared to turn it back on, expecting a flurry of increasingly-concerned messages from Crystal. But when the screen of her Blackberry illuminated, only one voicemail was waiting for her.
“I know you’re upset, Heather,” it said. “I won’t leave a flurry of increasingly-concerned messages because I’ve been around long enough to know when a person needs their time to think things through. I trust you’ll call me when you’re ready to talk. I love you and I wanna talk to you.”
It was all happening too quickly: She’d moved from El Sobrante to Alameda just a few weeks ago. It was only a thirty minute drive in normal traffic, but, being away from her mother for the first time in her life, Alameda might as well have been halfway across the world. Her new job was just starting; the first day of school was on Monday. And now - apparently - her mother had rekindled some kind of relationship with…
Heather didn’t even like to call him her biological father. She hated him. Wanted nothing to do with him. And couldn’t bring herself to even begin to think about a potential reconnection between him and her mother.
It felt like a bad dream…and at the worst possible time, too. It had taken her this long to finally move out of her mother’s house and start her own life. As if she hadn’t been preoccupied enough with formulating lesson plans, meeting new people, getting invited to parties…
Heather cringed, smacking one of her hands against her forehead.
Last night’s party. The cursed moment in which some unexpected but extremely powerful force had gripped Heather and gotten her to make an absolute fool of herself in front of all her new coworkers.
Heather never risked making an ass of herself. Her mother had always done enough of that for the both of them. Crystal Fellaway’s motto in life seemed to be: “It’s all fun and games until somebody gets hurt…then it’s freaking hysterical!” She’d done so many things to get the whole town talking about her, to humiliate her daughter by association over the years. Like the time she showed up high on meth to Heather’s middle school graduation and tried to fight the nice, elderly attendance lady. Or the time someone dared her to do donuts in the parking lot of the bar she worked at and Crystal had crashed her car into the wall of the veterinary practice next door.
There were so many terrible stories involving her mother - too many to count. And Heather felt the embarrassment of every single one down to the marrow of her bones. Crystal, on the other hand, seemed to find them hilarious. Every single one. She’d never apologized for the way she’d acted all the years she’d been on meth…only laughed them off as wacky tales from her wild past that shouldn’t have bothered anyone but herself.
Heather had experienced too much secondhand and vicarious embarrassment early in life to willingly take on any of her own. So why had she acted so out-of-character last night? How had she allowed the vice grip on her public image to slip?
She passed the University Avenue exit in Berkeley. It was Saturday and traffic was light. Heather glanced at the speedometer and saw she was flying at eighty miles per hour. As cautious as she always tried to be in life, she sometimes found herself flying in the car, desperate to get to her intended destination.
“That’s you in a nutshell, Heather,” Crystal used to say. “Always charging forward as fast as you can. God got sick of you always looking ahead - that’s why He made you nearsighted!” Heather had gotten glasses her first year of college and her mother loved to tease her about it. It wasn’t a particularly funny joke, but it held just the right amount of truth…and just the right amount of sadness.
Heather’s phone rang. She jumped and the car jerked a bit to the right, though she quickly recovered her grip on the steering wheel. Heather prayed it was her mother, telling her everything was okay, that she was sorry for making Heather worry - yet again - about her.
But it was an unknown number calling. She didn’t like answering the phone while driving, but decided to go ahead in case it was someone calling to say that her mother died.
“Hello?”
“Heather?” It was a man’s voice. Heather hoped it wasn’t the man she thought it was…
“It’s Tom. Tom Beckett from Alameda High. How’s it going?”
The relief at it being Tom was short-lived as she remembered he’d been a front-row witness to her ill-advised Shakira karaoke performance last night.
“Tom,” she said, trying to sound serious and composed. “How are you?”
“Great!” Tom replied. “The party last night was fun, wasn’t it?”
Heather swallowed.
“Oh yeah,” she squeaked. “The food was delicious.”
Maybe if she talked about the food (the brownies had been a hit according to Mr. Gladstone), it would divert attention from her karaoke debacle.
Heather glanced up. Her mother’s exit was coming up in just two and a half miles.
“I’m calling because I wanted to ask you something,” Tom said. Heather’s stomach dropped. She hoped he wasn’t calling to ask her out. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Tom, but she didn’t need more on her personal plate at the moment. Whenever there was some issue with her mother, Heather somehow found herself unable to invest her attention or emotions in anything else.
“How would you like to join a band?” Tom asked.
Heather paused. “A…band? You mean like a rock band?”
“Exactly!”
“Why would you want me to join a band?” she asked, confused. Her neck was beginning to stiffen. It did that occasionally when she was stressed and driving at the same time. She held the phone between her cheek and her shoulder, and whipped her head a little bit in order to try to dislodge the crick, but this only made the phone slip from her tenuous grip, and she had to take one hand off the wheel and readjust it. Her mother’s exit was fast approaching. Heather turned on her blinker and prepared to switch into the right lane.
“You have an amazing stage presence,” Tom declared.
Heather swerved into the exit lane, nearly sideswiping a blue BMW. Heather gasped.
“Tom,” she said, attempting to catch her breath. “I don’t want to sound weird or anything, but I would prefer it if we never spoke about what happened at last night’s party ever again.”
Tom laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re embarrassed.”
“Embarrassed!” Heather scoffed. “Embarrassed doesn’t even begin to describe it. I’m mortified.”
“But you’re supposed to be our lead singer!” Tom exclaimed. “And play guitar. Do you play?”
“Guitar? No.”
“That’s okay, we’ll teach you. I don’t know how to play either, but we’ll do it together”
“Who?”
“Me and Matthew. He’s in the band, too. It’s gonna be the three of us.”
Heather drew in a sharp breath. She’d exited the freeway and was now stopped at a red light several blocks from her mother’s house. Though it was completely clear and sunny that day, Heather swore there was always a mist of something hanging in the air of El Sobrante. Or maybe it was all in her head.
“Look, I’m sure there are plenty of people who can sing and play guitar a hundred times better than I can. People who actually want to be in a band.”
“But it has to be you, Heather.”
“Why?”
“Because…because…”
She could tell he was struggling to come up with a convincing answer.
“Because…it is fate!” Tom declared finally. “Why strive? Why struggle?”
Heather paused. “Is that a quote from The Wind in the Willows?”
A small, incredulous silence ensued on Tom’s end.
“How did you know that?” he asked.
“It’s my all-time favorite book.”
“It’s my all-time favorite book!” Tom exclaimed. “Such a different experience if you read it as a kid versus-”
“-as an adult,” Heather completed the thought out loud. “A completely different meaning behind the story.”
“You see? It’s a sign! A sign you’re meant to be in the band!”
“Except for the fact that striving and struggling happen to be deeply woven into my DNA,” Heather countered. “I know I gave off a different impression last night, but the truth is I don’t like to sing in front of people.”
“Just let me talk to you about the idea first,” Tom insisted. “In person.”
“I can’t, I’m in El Sobrante,” Heather lamented. Pulling up in front of her mother’s house, Heather suddenly felt she was about to burst into tears. “I can’t join a band, Tom. I can’t sing. I can’t do anything. I’m sorry.”
Her eyes fell on her mother’s Ford Flex in the driveway. Crystal had gotten the car during Obama’s Cash for Clunkers program earlier that year. It was the ugliest car Heather had ever laid eyes on. She almost preferred the beat up, brown ’84 Thunderbird her mother had owned and driven into the ground before. To her greater dismay, next to the Ford Flex sat a brand new Volkswagen Passat. Bright white with Georgia plates.
“I have to go,” Heather said into the phone. “I’ll call you back when I’m finished.”
“I’ll be waiting for your ca–”
Heather hung up and heaved a giant sigh, her heart pounding like a drum. The next few minutes were going to hurt.
“Hello, Heather,” he said as though he’d been expecting her. Heather didn’t know how long her father had been back in the picture, but apparently it was long enough for him to be answering the front door.
Heather peered past him into the house. The rooms were dark, the shades drawn. None of the lights were on.
“Where is she?” Heather demanded. Her voice was controlled and didn’t shake, which surprised her a little bit.
“In her bedroom, sleeping it off.”
“Sleeping what off?”
“It’s just an expression. She worked late last night. Needs her beauty rest.”
Heather rolled her eyes.
“Come in, I wanna speak with you.”
Heather hesitated. The last thing in the world she wanted was to speak with her father. She had anticipated this day for years, though had never been certain it would actually come. A part of her had hoped it never would. Now that she was standing before him, Heather realized she wasn’t prepared for this moment at all. She had nothing. No words. Stranded in her frozenness without a way out.
“Come inside for a minute,” he repeated. “Or maybe we could sit out on the lanai and talk.”
The lanai at the back of the house had been trashed throughout Heather’s childhood. Crystal used it to throw anything she didn’t have a place for in the house - a cross between storage space and an exposed garbage chute. For Heather, it was a reminder of another embarrassment: whenever anyone visited - which wasn’t often - the first thing they’d see when they walked into the living room was a huge pile of trash at the back of the house. It wasn’t until Crystal finally got clean that she’d been focused enough to clean it up. Now it held lawn chairs, potted flowers and end tables. Just like a normal person’s lanai.
He’d been absent for all the trash years, and now here he was: enjoying a home and a reconstructed lanai he didn’t deserve.
Heather felt rage creep like a painful infection up her neck, exploding in a rash of redness across her face.
“I would rather drink bleach than go sit on the lanai with you,” she found herself saying. “I would rather stick my face in a beehive…or have a month-long enema than spend another second in your disgusting presence.”
The words were coming out of her mouth so fast that she could swear she almost felt the physical sensation of them slipping through her lips, like a bar of wet soap slips out of one’s hands.
He blinked at her. It had been over fifteen years since she’d seen him last but her father’s perpetually blank face was forever burned in Heather’s memory. The fact that his stupid, blank face was staring back at her right now pushed her further over the edge.
“You disgust me more than the Ford Flex!” Heather continued, letting any words that popped into her brain come out of her mouth. It felt good. Almost too good.
“Heather,” he interjected. “I know this is hard for you to understand, but your mother and I don’t hate each other anymore. We’ve reconciled.”
“Reconciled!” she spat, disgusted. “You don’t even know what that means. You weren’t here for all the bad times and now that things are finally better you think you can waltz back in? You can’t even begin to understand how bad things got…and it was your fault!”
“I know I wasn’t here,” he said. “But I’m here now. To make amends.”
“It’s too late,” Heather retorted. “Go back to your real family in Georgia.”
“The current situation with my other family is complicated right now,” he replied. “Which is why I’m here. I’d like for us to have an honest conversation with one another.”
Heather shook her head.
“Tell Mom to call me when she finishes ‘sleeping it off.’”
She turned and left her father standing in the doorway. Heather couldn’t get back to her car fast enough, afraid that if she stayed a minute longer, she’d start to cry…and Alexander Fellaway was the last person in the world who deserved to see her tears.
“Heather!” he called after her.
She refused to turn back. Reached the car door and rooted through her purse for the keys.
“Heather!” he called again. “Look, I want you to hear this from me. Your mother and I have reconciled. We’re going to try to get back together.”
Fury shot through every cell in Heather’s body. She wanted to spin around, charge right back up to him and slap him across the face. But she couldn’t do that because the tears were already overflowing. Her blonde hair fell over her eyes as she finally located the keys and held them up in her trembling fingers.
“Heather…” his voice had grown softer and therefore more insufferable. “This is happening. You can’t run away from reality.”
Heather didn’t remember how she managed to put the key in the car door, open it, start the car, and drive away, but she had evidently succeeded.
She found herself back on Highway 80, heading west back to Alameda.
Then she found herself screaming at the top of her lungs. Screaming so loud her own voice hurt her ears.
“You are the one who runs away!” she howled at the top of her lungs. “I’m the one who never ran away, even though I wanted to. You weren’t there! You left! Don’t try to tell me about running away from things!”
Heather looked at the speedometer again. Eighty miles per hour and gaining. She took her foot off the gas and slowed down, trying to collect her breath.
Finally, Heather found herself pulling her phone out of her bag and dialing Tom’s number.
“I was beginning to worry I’d never hear back from you!” Tom laughed as he answered the phone.
“I thought about it,” Heather said. “And I wanna be in your band.”