Surviving Valencia

I turned away.

“How long do you want to go for?” he asked.

“Just one night. I can’t handle more than one day of Roger and Patricia.”

“We don’t have to stay with them,” he said.

“I think they will expect me to.”

“We could get a hotel.”

“Honey, you don’t have to go,” I tried one more time. Being in Hudson, visiting the twins, took me to a place inside myself where Adrian did not belong. “Let me go by myself. Then you can work on your paintings.”

“No. I hate for you to deal with all that on your own. I’m not getting anything done here anyhow. I never do. It’s just an escape, coming here. I didn’t count on getting work done.”

It would have gone on and on like this, so I decided not to fight it. “Let me call my parents and see if they’re around.”

They were, and they sounded excited to hear from us. I told them we had just arrived in Madison a couple days earlier. If they knew how often we stayed at Alexa’s they would expect to see us every time.

“Listen to your Southern accent!” said my mother. Around the time I had acquired what she considered a “Southern accent” I had noticed for the first time what a strong Minnesota accent she had. Now when I spoke with her, it was like listening to Rose Nylund or the cast of Fargo.

“We’ll be on our way tomorrow, late morning or early afternoon,” I told her.

“Can’t you narrow it down more than that?”

“Noon. We will leave here at noon.”

“I’ll make some pork chops for dinner,” she said before we hung up. Pork chops were the favorite of the twins, not me.

“Oh. Sure thing,” I said.

“Let me talk to her, Patricia. Hello? You there? Is it just the two of you coming up here?” asked my dad, taking over for my mom. I had no idea what he meant by that. Did he think we’d had a baby and never mentioned it? Did he think Alexa was in Madison and coming with us?

“Um, yeah. Just us two.”

“Alright then.” There was the clatter of the phone being set down. I waited for my mother to pick it back up. A minute went by and I could hear their muffled voices in the background. I heard my mother complaining that now she would have to clean the guest room. I hesitated, waiting for her to realize I was still waiting. Finally I heard footsteps approaching. The phone was picked back up and placed on its old fashioned cradle, and the line went dead.

I stood there holding the receiver. No matter how much time passed, they always made me feel the same.

Chapter 12

Valencia and Van were going to college in La Crosse. They and our parents had decided this as a family. Mom and Dad were happy it was somewhat close, and the twins were happy it wasn’t so close that we would drop in unexpectedly.

“It’s better than one of those liberal California schools you were looking at,” Dad told Valencia. By better he meant cheaper.

“She was never serious about California,” said Van.

“I’m just glad you two will be together,” said our mother.

What Mom and Dad did not know was that Rob McCray was also going to La Crosse. He was Valencia’s secret boyfriend, who she was supposed to have broken up with. Van must have known that Rob and Valencia were still together; I don’t really see how Valencia could have kept something like that from him. I like to think, though, that he was kept in the dark about it as much as the rest of us.

When Valencia was a freshman in high school, she and Rob had been inseparable. Somehow, Mom and Dad didn’t know this meant they were having sex. Even I knew they were having sex, and I was just a little kid.

One afternoon at the beginning of their sophomore year, they skipped school and went to Rob’s house. Since he was an only child and his father had taken off years earlier, they probably thought they were safe. Unfortunately, his mom, sick from her chemo treatments, came home early from work, heard them, and burst into his room.

The three of them were waiting in our driveway that afternoon when the school bus dropped me off. I guess I must have been about nine years old. I recall waving at them as they sat in silence in Mrs. McCray’s pale blue Buick, not understanding what they were doing or why they wouldn’t wave back at me. I was startled by Mrs. McCray’s appearance: She was bald and bloated from the chemo, without so much as an eyelash. She did not bother with wigs or fancy scarves.

My father drove in right as the school bus pulled away, and then my mother, who had been grocery shopping. Perfect timing. I was sent to my room while the sordid details were broadcast in our living room. I lay there on the floor by the vent, listening. The afternoon sunlight bathed my wall in soft pink light. We didn’t usually have this much excitement happening in our house and I was enjoying every second of it.