Loretta of the Lamp

Offspring of regret

In the last couple of years my father's hair had started to go grey. It wasn't a regular dirty grey, just grey behind his ears and in a shock from both temples. He still looked young though, so young. He almost looked exactly the same has he had looked in my parent's wedding photos. They had been very young to get married, but the delicate bump beneath my mother's white lacy gown in the photos told a telling tale as to why. I had arrived less that two months after their shotgun wedding. "So much for a honeymoon," was a line my mother would give me whenever I'd been in trouble as a child.

She'd forgive me begrudgingly, cupping a hand to my cheek and shaking her head as she said those five words that shaped my childhood, over and over again.

So much for a honeymoon.

I think this is why, deep down, I don't get along with my mum, she doesn't forgive me for turning up to ruin her life, and I don't forgive her for never letting me forget it, even if she thinks she says it jokingly.

When my dad combs his hair back, I think he looks like the Wolverine with his startling grey streaks. He also takes on this appearance when he is mad, running his fingers through his hair in frustration.

He was pretty mad at the moment.

"Loretta, you make me tired," he said, sighing between his clenched teeth.

"I am sorry." I mumbled.

"I don't even think you know what you are sorry for," he ran his fingers through his hair again.

"I'm sorry for being rude to Mum," I said.

My mum wasn't even in the house. She'd stormed out with Claudia in the pushchair after we fought. My mother and I always fought, but this time had been particularly bad. I had said some things that were really not nice. I told her the truth about how little she cared for me. I'd never done it before, but she pushed me too far this time. It was my birthday. My fourteenth birthday, and I'd had friends over. My mother can't just let me be, she'd gotten into a fight with me in front of my friends, and she'd finished it with her favourite line.

I lost it.

It was my birthday, my fourteenth birthday.

And yet here she was, telling me that I was the offspring of regret, and destroyer of her life, in front of the small group of friends I had. I told her exactly what I thought of her, and it felt good. It felt good to see her cry for once, knowing just how she made me feel. Did she care that she let me know every other day just how much of a mistake I was? And what did she really have going for her without my father anyway? Getting knocked up by him was probably the luckiest thing that had happened to her, ever. She would have just ended up working in a bar otherwise, with no money and no education.

However, I had been unlucky enough to spout this particular line of opinion just as my father slunk in the door from work behind me.

It didn't end well.

He had wordlessly escorted me upstairs. My mother had left. My two friends had probably walked home. They probably weren't my friends anymore anyway. My whole school would know all about my doomed birthday party on Monday morning. It would make for good lunch-time conversation.

"How could you say something like that?" he asked me. "You're a child, Loretta. How can you even have these thoughts?"

"I'm not a child."

"But you are. You really are," he shook his head at me.

"She started it." Not a good come-back, but it was what came to my lips, because it was true.

"How can you say things so horrible?" he asked me.

It was only his disgust that finally made me feel bad, like I was the antagonist and my mother the hapless victim.

"You broke your promise never to be mad at me," I pointed out.

"You're hurting your mother. I can't let you keep doing that."

"She hurts me every day!" I screamed at him, and stormed out. I ran out of the house. I stayed out for five hours, and when I came home the house was locked, and they were all asleep. I sat on the doorstep and shivered until my father opened the door to leave for work at 6am. He hugged me, and he cried. My mother did the same.

The following night I googled how to pick a lock for the first time.