Dad wasn’t very tall either, maybe around five-nine, but he was stocky and had a good build from working hard, the backs of his neck and arms always tanned dark, his hands rough and his skin smelling like some kind of wood, cedar or fir, clean outdoor smells. Dad looked more like he should be a schoolteacher, though, with his kind face and glasses, than a guy who ran a construction company.
“Your mom’s upset you didn’t call.” He was peering at me over his glasses now, admonishing.
“I told her yesterday I’d probably go to Ryan’s after school.”
“I think she’d appreciate an apology.”
And I’d appreciate it if she got off my back once in a while, but that wasn’t going to happen. My parents fought about me a lot. My mom thought my dad was too easy on me and that’s why I got in trouble. The reason I got in trouble was because she was always so damn hard on me. When it starts feeling like you can’t do anything right, there doesn’t seem like there’s any point. And it’s not like I was really bad. I just didn’t do things around the house as fast as she thought I should and I didn’t spend hours doing homework, like my sister. I still got okay grades—I just didn’t see the point in acing every test. Mom also didn’t like how I dressed, with my rock band T-shirts, ripped jeans, and flannel shirts, or how I did my makeup, my eyes ringed in smoky shadow.
She’d say, “I know you’re just trying to express yourself, Toni, but you might not realize the message it sends to people. If you dress like a hoodlum, that’s how they’ll treat you—like you’re bad news. You used to dress so pretty.”
Sometimes when Amy was over I’d see Mom eying up her army boots and her black nail polish. Later, she’d ask if I’d talked to Shauna lately, her voice kind of sad and hopeful. “Shauna’s such a nice girl.” Mom really didn’t like me hanging out with Ryan, who she said was “heading for trouble.”
When I’d tried to speak to my dad about how Mom was always on my case, he said, “She worries about you.” No, she just hated that she couldn’t control me, like she could control him and Nicole.
Dad was easygoing, which was kind of cool sometimes, like I could tell him stuff and I knew he wouldn’t freak out, but he hated confrontation. If there was a fight between me and my mom, he left the room. Mom was scrappy and didn’t take shit from anyone, which was embarrassing as hell when she was going off on a sales guy or a supplier. We’d always knocked heads, but it wasn’t as bad when I was little. She could be a lot of fun and had this crazy imagination—she’d tell us stories for hours. And she came up with fun new things for us to do every weekend, maybe taking a day trip down to Victoria and checking out the undersea gardens, or hiking around one of the gulf islands. Sometimes the two of us would drive around and drop off flyers for Dad’s business, then we’d get lunch and talk about all the houses we saw and who might live in them. I liked how excited she’d get about new ideas, how she’d ask for my opinion. She was also smart, and good to talk to if you had any problems, like she’d give advice—Dad would just tell you everything would be okay. She just didn’t know when to stop.
She was so overprotective all the time, worried that something would go wrong and something bad would happen. She didn’t trust me to figure stuff out on my own. Dad said it was because of her childhood—her mom was this super-anxious person, who was practically agoraphobic, and her dad was an alcoholic who’d disappear for days—and because she loved us so much. I tried to understand, but I hated having to answer a million questions, about my day, school, and friends, like she had to know every single thing that was happening in our lives, hated how she was always trying to guide me to do things her way.
Now that I was older, it had gotten worse. The more she tried to control me, the more it felt like tight bands were wrapping around me, sucking all the air out, sucking me out, which just made me want to do the complete opposite. But what bugged me most was that I could tell she didn’t really like me anymore. It felt like she was always disappointed in me, and kind of embarrassed, but mostly angry, like it drove her nuts that she couldn’t get me to be what she wanted. Sometimes I wondered if she even loved me anymore.
*
When I went in, Mom was doing some paperwork in the office. Dad was good with people and an awesome builder but he had no head for numbers, so Mom ran the business side of the company. She had her hair up in a loose ponytail, some of it coming undone. Without any makeup, she looked tired too, the dim glow of her desk light accentuating the hollows of her cheeks. She was wearing one of my dad’s T-shirts and a pair of jeans. She could look pretty when we went out for dinner or something, but she also spent a lot of time wearing work boots and talking to the guys at the construction site. One of the reasons it bugged the hell out of me when she was riding my ass about my clothes.