She swung a pale flabby arm violently through the air at a persistent fly, as she recalled her mother’s perennial attempt to ‘fix’ her problems: a string of suggestions of family friends she might have asked as dates to her own Prom that she didn’t attend, while her father observed wordlessly. Everything was smooth for her popular older brother, girls flocked to him. Such was the fitting close to her ineffectual high school years- she didn’t belong, she wasn’t a part of things.
A hint of a breeze made her wish to feel the sun’s rays, and she stood to flip the wall switch to retract the awning. Not being a part of her own high school prom was ancient history, yet the feelings of inadequacy hounded her- struggles to fit in after moving back with James to the area where she grew up, the disaster with the cruel moms at Ella’s school at the end of middle school, the fallout with her friend Kate- the list kept growing.
She stood at the cedar deck railing and peered out to the already greening woods as resident birds flitted about stridently. A darting bluejay caught her eye, intensely hued and joyously swooping up and down the height of entire maples and hemlocks, enjoying a private celebration. She trudged back to sit on the couch, and sighed long and deep, a sigh that encompassed the growing string of failures.
Anneliese was gripped in reverie as the minutes slipped by. The surge of memories stiffened her muscles, eventually the hand holding the book cramped its way into waking her conscience. Her addled thoughts about the last couple of months mingled with the novel’s main character- a boor- no one cared about him, nor did he care about anyone. The recognition of his irrelevance to the people in his life chafed like a rough pant leg on a newly forming scab.
As the last bit of light faded, the lingering lavender hues carried a cool wind that made Anneliese shiver. Ella’s material needs, meals, clothing, being driven to places, might have been met, yet she knew that her daughter’s intangible needs had not been answered. Her hips and knees complained as she stood up stiffly to enter the house. She resolved to explain to Ella, and to apologize. She hoped there was a way she could make it up to her before she left for her summer research position, some way to make her understand that the things she did or didn’t do, or the things that she did or didn’t say, weren’t intended to hurt her. She just got jumbled.
* * *
The big night arrived. Anneliese milled about upstairs between her and Ella’s room for twenty minutes, waiting for an opportunity to connect with her, even briefly. She had been practicing what she wanted to say, using a small journal she kept under her side of the bed. She hoped to do this before Laila, Brittany and other girls came over to get ready together. James stayed busy with something in his study on the first floor, giving her the space she needed.
