A Penny in Time Chapter 4: I Do, Again (Part 2)

I didn’t bother answering, for I’m sure he wouldn’t have heard me anyway. He carried one box into the house, all the way to my bedroom where I sat down at my desk and studiously began to ignore him. He finally left, but I don’t know how long he stayed in the living room talking with my Mom.
Mom came to my door and stood until I looked over at her. “What happened, Dusty?”

“He let Sylvia paint my bed, dresser and replace all my stuff with cute pictures of kittens and calendars of kids with big eyes.” I took a pair of scissors and cut geometric shapes out of some construction paper. “He doesn’t listen to me, anymore. It’s like he’s got this image of me and when I don’t fit into his scenario, he gets mad at me, because I won’t change. He knows I don’t like him calling me Princess or Elizabeth, but he does it anyway; so does Sylvia. It’s like when he met her, his brain went to mush and he forgot who I am, or got me confused with someone else I haven’t met. I don’t want to be around him anymore, not at all. He’s not my father,” I threw down the scissors and crumpled the paper into a big ball. “He’s an alien creature using my father’s body. He’s not making any sense to me anymore. I don’t ever want to see him again!”

I was too mad to cry, too mad to do anything but sit and stare at the wall with my Star Trek™ calendar on it. I was grateful my Mom left me alone for the rest of the evening, because I didn’t want talk about it anymore. What could she possibly understand about me and Dad? She hadn’t lost her father like I had my Dad. She’d had the “perfect” childhood, according to Nana and Grandpa. She and Nana took cooking classes together, and she and Grandpa went fishing, every opening day since Mom was five. I know she still missed her Dad, she talks a lot about the fun times she had with him and how much she loved him and he loved her, sometimes choking on tears, but she lost Grandpa when he was old. What did she know about not having a real, full-time Dad? I listened to some tapes, and read for quite awhile before I fell asleep with all my clothes on. I even forgot to brush my teeth.

The next day, Dad came over to the house. “Dusty, can we talk about this?” He sat down on the couch and waited for me to answer him.

“I talk but you don’t hear me.” I twisted the hem of my shirt into a wad. “Why did you let Sylvia paint my bedroom set, when we were going to do that together? That’s not my style, that fluffy stuff, and you know it. Don’t you?”

There was a long, long moment of silence. I thought maybe he wasn’t going to say anything.

“I, I….” he stammered, “I thought you’d outgrown all that other stuff, that you were more interested in being a young lady than a tomboy. After all, you’re fifteen, not eleven.”

“That’s what I mean, Dad. You haven’t heard me at all. I’m me, the way I am. You’re not the same father that I had a year ago. Have you forgotten I don’t, and have never, liked pink?”
“Oh, honey, can’t you see that Sylvia is trying to please you? She worked so hard and you hurt her feelings when you left like that, not even a thank you.”

“Dad!” I shouted, “I don’t like pink! And I want everyone to call me Dusty, until I’m ninety-nine and a half!” My hands were shaking. “And you had no right to lie to me about Victoria! Why don’t you just live your life and let me live mine, okay?”

“No, I’m not going to go away. And you can’t wish me away. I admit I was a total jerk about Victoria, but I didn’t know how to say I was. Or to tell you I was sorry I disappointed you.” He came over to me and hugged me. “Come on, spend the night with us. Sylvia has a great dinner planned for us and we can get a DVD for later.”

It was his way of apologizing, and he’s the guy that’s never wrong. I felt bullied by two different feelings. I didn’t want to give in, but I didn’t like being mad at him, either. “Okay, but I’ll bring my sleeping bag and sleep on the floor.” I threw my sleeping bag into the trunk and watched it mushroom open as the bungee cord popped off.

He was irritated, but conceded. “Maybe you’ll like your room once you get used to it.” He pulled into his parking slot, got out of the car and slammed the door.

I hugged the billowing sleeping bag close to my chest as I trailed behind him into the condo. Get used to it? I thought looking in the room. Never.

But we all tried hard to be cheerful and I did have a good time, somewhat. Sylvia didn’t feel well, so we had take-out pizza. She held my Dad’s hand the whole time we watched “Star Trek V” and broke out in tears all the way through it, which annoyed me to no end. It was only a movie, and why get so worked up when you know the good guys are going to make everything all right in the end? Sylvia was just too sentimental to be real.

Which maybe explained why she was sick in bed with the flu the next weekend. I called Slinky up and asked her to a movie, but she had a date with a new guy. Dean and Fran, and even Annie were doing volunteer community cleanup. Mom offered to take me bowling, but that didn’t appeal to me.
“How about,” Mom sat on my bed, while I sat at my desk, sketching a drawing of the ‘Enterprise’, “doing a ‘Star Trek’ mural on this wall?” She pointed to the wall which had some faded posters I had meant to take down anyway. She got up and looked over my shoulder. “You could draw the ‘Enterprise’ and I’ll superimpose faces of the crew, with a background of the galaxy. What do you say?”

“All right!” I could see it so clearly, almost as if the wall were all ready done. I pointed to the spot where the galaxy would go. “The Sombrero galaxy is classified as “Sa”, which means it’s a galaxy with a large, central bulge, with spiral arms winding around its outside. That’s how it got the name. It’s really does look like a gigantic hat!” Mom nodded, looking excited, too. I grabbed her and gave her a big hug. “You sure you have the time?” I asked, but prayed that I hadn’t reminded her of something else she should be doing instead.

“I have the time, Dusty. Let’s get to work.”

She and I worked all day Saturday afternoon, until six that night. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, as I had to keep redrawing the starship to proportion on the wall. It seemed Mom looked at a picture from the ‘Star Trek’ calendar, and reproduced the faces of Captain Picard’s, Riker’s, Data’s and Counselor Troi’s faces without any effort.

“I can’t get it right!” I wailed, throwing down the sketching pencil I had been using. “It’s so easy for you!”

Mom stopped a moment and grinned. “I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you have. And you’ll get it,” she stood back and examined the wall. “I’d say you almost have it. We’ll finish tomorrow.”
Which we did after our pancake brunch. The mural was the neatest thing I’d ever seen, and to think I did a fair share of the work! Sitting in my room made it seem like I was in the center of the starship, and I could imagine voyaging across the Sombrero galaxy to unknown worlds of adventure.

At three o’clock on Sunday, Dad called.

“Hi, babe! I have to tell you something, something real important.”

He had that nervous pitch to his voice, which meant I wasn’t going to like what he had to say. “I’m listening.”

He took a big breath, then plunged in. “We’ve wanted to tell you for a couple of weeks, but the right time never seemed to come up. I’ll just say it straight. Sylvia’s going to have a little baby girl.”

The puzzle pieces fell into place! Sylvia’s “flu”–and that’s why she had fixed up my room the way she wanted it to look–for her kid! “I hope the three of you are happy!” I snarled.

“Don’t get nasty, young lady. We’re all going to have a major adjustment and I’m counting on you to be mature about this.”

The pocket full of lies and hurt burst, and I was through with stuffing it all in. “You’ve got your new life, why don’t you just leave me alone?” I shouted, dropping the phone.

I stormed out of the house. I jogged up the street, then fast-walked until I could breathe without hiccupping. Two hours and ten minutes later, I came home. When I opened the front door, Mom looked up from her book.

“How are you?” She closed the book on her finger, and waited for my reply.

“I’m okay, I guess.”

“Your father dropped by and left you a note. I put it on your desk.”

“I saw his car.”

“We had a long talk. About you.” She slipped a book marker in between pages and set the book on the coffee table. “Come sit a moment and hear me out.”

Geez, this was strange, like I was her guest invited for afternoon tea. She didn’t say a thing about me flying out of the house and staying gone, although I had sat across the street in the park for the last forty-five minutes. I suppose she could have seen me if she’d looked out the window.

I expected a lecture, and I guess I should have felt gratified that I was going to get one.

“It must seem like your father only considers his viewpoint, that the changes our divorce put you through didn’t hurt. Am I right?”

I shrugged, but the words had hit a sore spot right in the middle of my heart. “Yeah.”

I didn’t want to change things anymore, not for the better or back to the way they were. I just wanted my life free of my Dad and Sylvia. “I don’t care if I ever see Dad again. I don’t like him.” I took a tissue and shredded it, then balled it up. “He doesn’t care what I want, and how many times do I have say I don’t like the color pink? I doubt he thought about me at all, because pink is for babies, right? Besides, he’ll get along fine with another kid, won’t he? And I’m not going to babysit for them. Ever.”

Mom chuckled! “I don’t know that I blame you.” I focused on her moving lips. “He wants you to like Sylvia, so he wants you to be like him, or at least agree with him.” She left a pause, working her tongue across her lower lip. “Loving your father is not the same as liking him; and liking him is not the same as getting along with him, is it?”

“No,” I blurted, willing to talk things out with her.

“Dusty, there’s something I’m going to tell you about my father that made me face some of the very feelings you’re having now.” She stopped for a moment and I could see by the frown lines between her eyes that she was having a hard time choosing the right words. “Like loving your father and thinking he would always be there for you, then he isn’t. Saying he’ll do something special with you, then leaving you high and dry, making excuses for all the many broken promises.” She laughed, like you do when you feel like crying.

“Daddy had a gambling problem.” Mom looked at me and I saw her lip tremble. “He lost a lot of money at the race track. A lot of money.” She swept the air with her hands, as if erasing everything in front of her. “There was no money for my senior prom dress, no promised car, no college tuition.” She looked off into the distance, maybe seeing something beyond the window that no one else could.
“I hated him so much for taking everything away from me, for his selfishness and weakness. I had to work two jobs to finish college and even though my mother went back to nursing, I helped pay some of the bills. I couldn’t understand why she stayed with him. But she stayed with him through the bad years and the good years after he recovered in therapy.”

Her voice was soft but urgent. “It took me a long time, Dusty, a long time to forgive him.”

Mom folded her legs beneath her and sat back. “It also took me a long time to understand my mother’s advice: you have to accept the one you love, in spite of the bad, because of the good. It wasn’t until after you were born that my father and I talked things out. Nothing happened overnight, either. Things got better day by day, in little ways.” She leaned forward and although I sat too far away, I felt like she had hugged me.

It would have been nice if I could have gone over and comforted her with a hug, but I felt cast in lead on the outside, and a bag of pieces inside, trying to sort out everything. Boy, Grandpa really must have changed. He always had some little surprise, or something that made us laugh when he came to visit.

Maybe Mom did understand how I felt, but I still didn’t see how I could work it out with my Dad. “Dad and I are not like we used to be, you know? What am I supposed to do if I can’t like the color pink?”

“I don’t know, Dusty,” Mom whispered. “What color is love?”

I stood up, choking back my tears, grateful she understood so much, but feeling lost that she didn’t have any answers either. “I don’t know and I don’t think you or Dad know, either.”

She picked up her book and settled back into her easy chair. “Maybe you’ll find the answer and tell us.” She began reading as I went back to my room and sat down at my desk, staring at my newly painted mural.

I wish I could be like Data, logical without emotions making everything so confusing.

I cuddled my raggedy stuffed bear, Sparky as I looked at the envelope my Dad had propped against an old notebook. I batted the envelope, upsetting the notebook which burped papers all over. I got a paper cut across my thumb that bled and bled, until I put a bandage on it. After awhile, I fished out the envelope from the mess of papers and opened it.

Out fell five pennies with his note: “Dusty, let’s talk. I’ll try to make sense out of things.”

It was just like my Dad to use a stupid pun. I scooped up the pennies and Sparky, pressing my face into his soft belly. A fierce and terrible pain sucked the breath from me. There was a huge, black hole inside of me. I was falling, falling into an abyss. Away, away, down down, down.