If then. All the news reports are still up in the air about whether many colleges and universities will be able to re-open in the fall.
“I found a room to sublet in Pittsburgh. This girl whose roommate bailed on the lease without warning her. She says I can have the room for $600 a month.”
“Where are you going to get $600?” I ask.
“I called my dad. He said he’d pay it.”
“Is this the same dad that’s been promising to visit you for three years straight and hasn’t shown up once?” I ask.
E abruptly stops throwing clothes into her suitcase. “You don’t know him?” Her voice is indignant. “He’s had a lot of time to think now that he’s not touring. And he said he was sorry for not being a better dad to me before.”
I’m sure he’s had a lot of time to think. Tucked away wherever he is right now because it’s definitely not here in Missouri taking care of his kids.
Don’t touch your mouth, nose, or eyes, all the COVID experts say. But it’s really hard not to scrub a weary hand over my face as I ask, “How long is he going to pay this rent? What happens when the world opens back up and he goes back on tour?”
“I don’t know. I’ll figure it out. I’ll get a job.”
“A job where?”
“Somewhere! Anywhere!” E grabs her favorite pillow. “I don’t know why you’re asking me all these stupid questions.”
“I’m asking you all these logical questions because I’m responsible for you.” I snatch the pillow with the silk case out of her hands before she can throw that in the suitcase, too. “I don’t know what this is really about, but if you’d just wait until the fall, I’ll have enough money from rent and the sale of the house to buy us all an apartment.”
“You’re not responsible for us,” E yells, tugging frantically on the pillow. “And fact check, we don’t want to live with you!”
I let go of the pillow and E goes stumbling back a few steps. She obviously hadn’t expected me to give up the fight.
“What? What do you mean?” I ask E. “That’s the plan. That was the plan all along.”
I don’t remember A’s still in the room with us until he says, “E, don’t…C’mon.”
E’s eyes dart from her brother back to me, and it seems like she’s making a decision when she says, “No, that was your plan all along. We never wanted to keep on living with you after college. That’s why we both applied to go to C.M.U.—you know a school all the way across the country.”
Her words don’t just shock me. They cut me, like a knife slicing into my stomach. “No… no…that’s not true.”
I look to A. “That’s not true, right?”
He drops his head and looks to the side. “We didn’t want to hurt your feelings. But we’re eighteen. We just want to start doing stuff for ourselves.”
“You want to start doing stuff for yourselves?” I repeat, my voice caustic. “Well, how about paying me rent then? How about giving me back the last three years I—”
I stop. The “wasted on you brats” fading with the memory of how their mom left.
When the twins and I had staged an intervention about her drinking, she’d turned on us like a caged tiger.
“You ruined my body! My prospects! You want me to go to rehab, talk to somebody about my problems! The only problems I have is all the years I wasted on you brats!”
Her temper tantrum had reduced her twins to tears and apologies she didn’t deserve. And then the next morning she was gone. And the twins had cried like her leaving was all their fault.
And I’d vowed never to hurt them like that. To be there for them, no matter what.
But there’s a difference between that vow and what I was planning to do by moving to Pittsburgh with them.
That new realization hits me like a tornado-level wind. Rhys…he’d been right. At least about this.
I sink on to the bed. “I’m sorry,” I tell them. “I’m sorry I clung to you like that. I should have spent this year figuring out how to let you go. Not smothering you.”
Teenagers, they act so tough.
But hearing my apology melts E out of her defensive stance.
“No, I’m sorry!” She sits down on the bed and throws her arms around my neck. “You’re the only one who’s ever cared enough to smother us. I love you. I love you so much. I just need to get out of here.”
I shake my head at her. “But why? Am I really that terrible to live with?”
E shakes her head. “No, it’s not you. It’s not…”
Her face collapses, and that’s when it all comes out in a torrent of tears.
As it turns out, E not being able to see and talk face-to-face with her non-related classmates did not dial down her high school drama one bit.