“Can you please tell her I’m waiting for her at home?”
“Look, Stephie, you know I can’t tell your mom what to do.”
“I’m not asking you to throw her out,” I said. “Just tell her, okay?”
We hung up. I had homework to do, but it hardly mattered at this point because my grades had pretty much been decided already, and that didn’t make it any easier to focus. I wanted to call Luc for some reassurance but then I’d have to tell him everything, tell him I was worried and why. I did what I could to keep busy right up until bedtime but still no Laura. I didn’t bother calling the bar again. I just went to bed.
It took forever to fall asleep because the empty house felt strange, filled with creaks and noises I otherwise wouldn’t have noticed. I tossed and turned on my uncomfortable bed, my mind darting chaotically all over the place until exhaustion won over. I barely noticed how my eyes became gritty and my eyelids heavy. I assume I must have dropped off because when I snapped awake, I realized at once that it was the front door that woke me. Laura was home.
Home, and presumably drunk as a skunk. If she really had emptied those beer cans, which seemed more and more unlikely, she sure had forgotten all about her good intentions. The door slammed. Then there was a thud of something falling. The light in the main room came on—a fat orange stripe appeared under my door. I listened to the scuffles and rustles for a minute or two before realizing, with a pang of alarm and displeasure, that she wasn’t alone.
The new boyfriend, without a doubt. There was some whispering and some more shuffling steps. Laura’s were heavy, as they tended to be after a few too many drinks, but the other set was heavier—definitely a man, probably just as drunk as her.
I lay perfectly still. A previously unknown discomfort and a hint of fear made my body go stiff. I somehow knew, instinctively, that it was in my best interest to stay quiet, to let them both keep thinking I was fast asleep.
There were more whispers. I strained my hearing but couldn’t make anything out. I did distinguish with annoying clarity one of Laura’s too-loud drunken giggles. I think the other voice may have shushed her, which made her giggle harder.
And then came a sound that normally would have sent me flying out of bed and into the living room. But in that moment, I couldn’t move so much as a muscle. My breath caught, and I feared I’d forgotten how to draw another one. The sound was a slap—not too loud but definitive, distinctive, and followed by a soft, stifled gasp from Laura.
I lay still, sweating under my thin blanket. What on earth was going on? I heard Laura apologizing in a whiny whisper.
That’s when—I could hardly believe it—the TV came on. It was some kind of late-night show I’d heard her watch a million times. At first, the volume was loud but then it quickly lowered as Laura must have found the remote. Still, it remained loud enough to drown out the conversation, or at least the exact words. From the tonalities, they were having some sort of lovers’ quarrel. The whispering became low and furious. I heard Laura’s voice, then that of the man, accusing, angry, and then her replying just as angrily. In spite of myself, I began to relax. If the guy had been someone dangerous, a threat, I would know by now. It was just another loser Laura picked up who didn’t take her to his place for whatever reason. Probably a fat, snoring wife—or elderly mother.
Before I knew it, the front door opened and then slammed shut a little harder than it had to, but at least, after a few more tense seconds of listening to the sudden quiet, I could be sure he had left. I guess the wild night of lovemaking didn’t pan out. Oops. Too bad for Laura.
Through the door of my room, I heard her sigh. She watched TV for a little longer, or maybe just didn’t think to turn it off. Consideration had never been her strong suit, after all. Nor did she decide to check in on me, see if I was awake, if I’d heard. Finally, the TV cut off midsentence, and then I heard Laura amble to her room, adjacent to mine. The wall was basically just a sheet of plywood with some paint slapped on it for respectability. I heard everything and felt the vibrations through the floor as she collapsed into bed, tossing and turning and finally snoring.
I was left lying in bed trying to calm down my racing heart. I’d just been paranoid. She didn’t know or suspect anything.
Still, it took me a hell of a long time to go back to sleep.
The next day, Laura was still passed out when I left for school, and by the time I got home, she was her usual self, if maybe grumpier and more belligerent—which I chalked up to what must have been a raging hangover. I did hear her retching in the bathroom a couple of times. I thought nothing of it because it was hardly the first time.
It wasn’t until the day after that things blew up. The graduation dance was that weekend, two days away. After the incident, I stayed hyperaware, unable to fully shake my paranoia and, as it turned out, for good reason.
That whole week, I found myself dreading the moment I came home. Not that I was ever all that thrilled to be under the same roof as Laura, but this was a new kind of dread, more visceral, with more at stake. Luc would drop me off at home most days but that week I refused his offers for a ride, despite his obvious confusion. As I came close to the little mobile home where I grew up, the dread would knot my stomach. I’d crane my neck to make sure the car was in the driveway. The one time it wasn’t, I felt a rush of panic that lessened only when I realized the door had been left unlocked as usual. Maybe ten, fifteen minutes later, when I was already in my room, pretending to study (and not even fooling myself), I heard the tires out front, and then the door banged open. Laura was back.
Normally, if she saw my door was closed, she took it as her cue to leave me alone. One thing about Laura no one could complain about: She let you have your privacy. Not that anyone’s privacy mattered to her—she simply didn’t care enough. Which was all the same to me.
But that day, I heard her heavy steps through the living room. “Stephanie!” her voice bellowed. It had that gravelly note in it. God, had she been driving drunk? She often took the wheel after a beer but usually not when she was so wasted she slurred her words. I got up from my desk chair. Before she made it to my door, I was out of my room and shutting the door behind me.
Laura paced the living room. Even from where I stood I could smell the reek of whiskey.
“You didn’t get behind the wheel like that, did you?” I asked.
She glowered at me. “It’s just to the store.”
“What if you get pulled over?”
She laughed. A mean, raucous sound that sent shivers down my spine for some reason.
“I’m not gonna get pulled over. Have I ever, for as long as you can remember, gotten pulled over before?”
I tried to remember. She might not have told me, but I would have heard about it anyway. That’s life in a small town, especially when you go to high school and your mom is the town drunk. Of all the stuff I’d heard about Laura, of varying levels of nastiness, I indeed couldn’t remember her being pulled over for DWI.
The laughter died as suddenly as it had sprung from her, which seemed ominous.
“And anyway, I’m not on trial here.”
“What do you want?” I asked flatly. But even though I did my best to keep my exterior hard and cold, my heart leaped into a frenzy, as if trying to escape from my rib cage.
“A little bird told me you had big plans after graduation,” Laura said.
I felt cold inside. I knew this moment was coming, this discussion was inevitable, but now, right this second, I couldn’t possibly do it. I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t psyched myself up. I hadn’t gotten my arguments in order. I couldn’t face Laura. No way.
That’s when she reached into the pocket of the shapeless cardigan she had on, and things got truly surreal. Her hand emerged clutching a piece of paper that looked painfully familiar. The creamy paper, the blue logo at the top of the page. My acceptance letter!
She brandished it like an accusation.
“Where did you get this?” I snarled.
“Doesn’t matter where I got it. You’re not leaving! You’re not going anywhere!”
Under my stunned gaze, she viciously shredded the letter. The pieces of paper fluttered to the floor in slow motion. “There,” said Laura with satisfaction.
“You know I don’t need the actual letter, right?” I said. The viciousness in my tone surprised me. I realized I’d never been half as angry with anyone in my life as I was with Laura right now. “I’m already registered, they’re waiting for me.”
I’ll never forget Laura’s face, how it contorted into an expression that was hard to describe. Spite, malice—these words don’t quite do it justice. “Nobody is waiting for you anywhere,” she spat. “Just who the hell do you think you are, Stephanie O’Malley? Nobody needs you. Not even in this place, let alone in Montreal. You’d do well to keep it in mind.”
