“Are you rejoicing, Auggie?” I shouted. “You’ve been waiting for your moment, and now you have it! You’ve caught me when I had so much on my mind that I missed one detail, and you were waiting like a cat to pounce! Well, how does it feel, Caren?” I hurled at her, calling her by her mother’s name — a comparison intended to inflame her further.
She was smarter than me, however. “Feel better, Worth?” she asked in that calm, level voice. “You’ve been saving that little comparison for a long time, haven’t you? Now, rather than accept that you exercised poor judgement in your perpetual motion of self-aggrandizement, you behave just like you always have. You try to deflect it by attacking. Only it won’t work with me, Worth. I’ve been waiting for it. Yes, you’re right about that. I knew it would come eventually, but it wasn’t my trap. It was your own.”
Auggie turned her back to me and went upstairs. She didn’t slam the bedroom door. That would have invited argument and been childish. It would have positioned the argument between herself and me. This wasn’t about us. It was about me and my shortcomings, or so she saw them. She was quietly, completely shutting me out of her life.
A few minutes later, I quietly climbed the stairs and tapped on Marga’s door. When she didn’t answer, I opened it. She was on her bed, asleep, dressed in her clothes from the night before. Her arms and legs were splayed wide like she’d simply fallen face down and passed out. It felt all too familiar.
I closed her door, still angry and headed to the guest room where I slept the night before and sat on the edge of the bed. I needed a shower, a nap, and to think. Before I stood up, there was a knock at the door, and I assumed it would be Marga. “Come in,” I said sternly. It was Mark.
“Dad?”
I knew this was about to be another problem. “What is it?”
“Can I talk to you?” He could obviously tell I wasn’t in a great mood and surely had heard the shouting from downstairs.
“What is it, Mark?” I repeated impatiently.
He stepped through the doorway and nervously closed the door behind him. “Dad, I’m not sure how to say this, but I don’t like Hawk.”
I looked up, surprised at the turn of events. “You’ve made that abundantly clear. Where’s this coming from?”
“There’s something about him, Dad. He acts like he’s trying to bully me. Like he hates me, but he doesn’t even know me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve only known him a total of five seconds.”
“I’m not being ridiculous. It’s there. It’s a look in his eye. It’s like he thinks he is a hawk, just watching for the right moment to pounce.”
“Mark, it’s your imagination. Listen to yourself! You sound like a little girl. Be a man, son. He’s got problems — he always has. Just ignore it and leave me alone. I’m tired and need some space.”
Mark’s face fell and I felt momentary guilt at my callous words. But not enough to change them or say anything different. He was being ridiculous. The end.
He looked down as though he was thinking of something more to say, but changed his mind and nodded. He turned slowly, opened the door, and closed it as he left.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Auggie
I was living the curse.
The one all mothers wished on their errant daughters and went something like, “I hope when you grow up, your kids give you everything you’re giving me, twice over!”
I lived in constant terror every time the phone buzzed. Both of the twins had gotten their driver’s licenses. Worth and I had not resolved our argument the morning Marga came in late. He was brooding, and I was stubborn. To best me, he took the twins out and bought them each a brand new car of their choice.
Marga had, of course, chosen a snow white Mercedes convertible. Where we lived, most of the kids in high school had expensive automobiles in the school parking lot. It was symbolic to the affluence of the parent, not the child, and anyone who came from middle class homes looked impoverished by comparison.
Mark, the more reasonable of the two, chose a red pickup, and I knew he was a boy after my own heart. He was being practical, and I knew he would take over the farm for me when the time came. He never was one to care about status.
I sat Marga down for a conversation.
“We’re going to have a talk, young lady,” I began, and she was already rolling her eyes. That was the moment I realized the curse had come true. “Don’t look at me like that, Marga. I’ll take the car away.”
“You can’t. Dad put it in my name and paid the insurance for the next five years. Like it or not, Mom, you can’t do anything about it.”
“Don’t be so sure, young lady. Until you’re eighteen, I’m responsible for you, and if that means that you sit in the bedroom, and I feed you with a tray slid under the door, then that’s what I’ll do. Don’t push me on this, Marga. There isn’t anything you can think of that I haven’t already tried. Believe me.”
“Are you trying to impress me, Mom?”
I ignored her jibe. “Starting with that.”
She rolled her eyes again and threw herself down on the sofa with her shoes on to irritate me. I ignored that too. “You know, Marga, we can play this little game.”
“What game is that, Mom?”
“The one where you spend all your time trying to irritate me so I’ll give up and let you have your way. The only problem with that scheme is that you’ll soon discover you’re spending more time trying to aggravate me and getting punished than you are out with your friends having fun. It defeats the purpose. So, if you’re smart, and I think you are, you’ll hear me out on the rules, follow them, and we can live in peace in this household.”
She rolled her eyes again. “Okay, Mom, have it your way. What are the rules?”
“You ride in your car alone for the first year. No one rides with you who isn’t your parent or an adult who is in our employ. Second, you will never be gone for more than three hours without checking in with me here at the house first. Not your dad; we both know you have him twisted around your finger. Third, you don’t leave this county, and I have an app on your phone and mine to track you.”
“Jesus, why don’t you just put me in a nunnery?” she wailed dramatically.
“Those are the rules and if you keep it up, the list grows longer. It’s up to you, Marga. If you behave responsibly, the rules are removed. If you don’t — well, you get the gist, and I can be pretty creative when I want to.”
“Allllll right! Have it your way, Mom!” She leapt off the sofa and headed toward her room.
“Oh, and Marga?”
She spun around on the stairs and gave me that now what look.
“Just so you know. You might own the car, but I own the keys to the wheel boot.”
Her eyebrows arched in question, and I pointed out the window as I leafed through a magazine. She jogged to the door and opened it. “What’s that?” she shrieked, referring to the hideous orange wheel boot I’d attached to her front wheel.
“That, my dear girl, is why I get to be the mom for at least two more years.”
***