Tiebreaker (It Takes Two 2)

I watch my sister mouth the words in synch with my mother. “Don’t sass me, young lady. Cancer runs in this family.”

I fight the grin prying my lips apart.

“Is your young man coming to visit?” my dad interjects without looking up from the chicken breast he’s cutting into perfectly proportioned pieces. Nobody can figure out how he does it without a ruler. It’s a gift.

I decide to keep the news about Oliver to myself. I wouldn’t want them to pop the champagne and start celebrating quite yet.

“He’s almost forty, Dad. Not exactly a young man.”

“Is he?” he muses absently. My father’s head is a black hole he frequently gets lost in. That’s actually how my parents met. Mom was a freshman at OU and Dad was a senior when he mowed her down on his way to class. He was walking with his face buried in a book and didn’t watch where he was going. That’s my father. If their story had started any other way, I wouldn’t have believed it.

The absentminded-professor thing isn’t sitting well with me right now. Never mind that the young man and I broke up, his lack of genuine interest lights a spark of resentment. Because it’s the same lack of interest I’ve been getting from them for the last ten plus years.

“Yes, he is. And you would know that if you’d bothered to pay the slightest bit of attention to any of our phone calls.”

“Maren,” my mother scolds.

Meanwhile my father looks up, expression stricken. He really is a sensitive soul––and self-absorbed at the same time. Somebody explain that one to me.

“Sorry, Dad.”

“It’s fine, and you’re right.” For once I have his undivided attention. “I apologize. What is it that he does again? Coaches you?”

“He’s a trainer, Dad,” Bebe adds, sensing that this train is headed for a catastrophic derailment any minute now.

“That’s right,” my father rejoins.

“It’s not like we know him, Maren,” my mother supplies. Maryanne has decided to throw her hat in the ring. Welcome, Maryanne. “You hardly ever come home.”

And there it is, her dirty shot, the same line she always uses when she wants to stick it to me. Which is enough to push me from manageable irritation to table-flipping angry.

I have no right to complain. I’m blessed––the lucky Murphy sister. I’ve been telling myself a version of this for the last dozen or so years. Sometimes I mix it up, rearrange the words. But the message stays the same.

The thing is, that pain is pain. There’s no lesser or greater. There are no comparisons to be made, no rankings––no weight class. Having been shut out, cast aside, for so long got to be so painful it was easier to avoid my family altogether rather than to address the elephant in the room. So I stayed away. For years.

Should I have said something? Maybe. But it always felt petty in the face of what Bebe had endured. And yet, no matter how many different ways I tried to rationalize that I had no right to be upset, the hurt remained.

“How come you guys didn’t come to the Open? I sent you airfare. I sent you tickets––what’s the deal?”

My mother’s blonde eyebrows do a very quick ascent of her forehead. I think the last time I spoke to her this way I was sent to my room and grounded for a week.

“Well, your dad had to work and Bebe had work and I had to work.”

“Yeah, I get it! Everybody has to work. It’s not like I asked you to fly to the moon, or God forbid, to visit me in London. It’s a short plane ride to New York.”

Three sets of semi-startled wide eyes stare back at me. I hadn’t realized I was shouting, or standing for that matter, until this very minute.

“Are you on your period, honey?” My mother’s green gaze probes me. “Is that what this is about?”

My meltdown goes thermonuclear. Every word after period is a loud screeching sound. A needle scraping against a vinyl record.

“No, that is not what this is about––”

“You’re a strong-minded girl,” she says talking over me. “You’ve always wanted to do things on your own. I don’t see why you’d get so irrationally upset about us not coming to watch you play now.”

“This is not new, Mother! It’s been bothering me for aaages. But I kept hoping things would change. That you guys would wake up one day and figure out that Bebe’s going to be fine, and that you have another daughter that needs you from time to time.”

“Now, Maren––”

“No, Dad. I’m not done. You guys think because I’m strong my feelings can’t get hurt? Surprise, I’m hurt. You think because I can handle anything I don’t need your support? Newsflash, I need it just like everybody else. Just like Bebe does. It would’ve been nice for once to have y’all there without having to beg you to come. Without feeling like you were being inconvenienced and had better things to do!”