I Always Will

Lullaby

Rowan

"Why do I feel like my parents are splitting up?" I whisper to Riley as I sip the wine and offer it to him. I'm still sitting calmly on his lap, but very still, so as not to cause him any need to move unexpectedly.

He watches me sipping the wine with heavy lidded eyes. He takes the wine from me and swallows heavily. "There's nothing wrong with your reaction. I think it's perfectly natural. This is quite a shock."

"I keep thinking about how they were, when I was growing up. I realize I wasn't seeing them through the right lens," I murmur, taking back the glass from him. There's only one sip left.

He makes that indistinct noise of intimate agreement that I love, and splashes more wine into the glass for me.

I'm thinking of the family stories my parents have told us over and over. The one about how my mom wouldn'tmarry my dad before Street was born, and my dad crawling into the hospital bed with my mom and newborn Street and refusing to get out until she put the ring on and they were married right away, when Street was still tiny. 

Another one. My dad tells the story about how miserable my mom was when she was pregnant with us twins. She stayed in the pool because it was the only place she didn't feel like a two-ton elephant, he says. He laughingly jokes that he was trying hard to stay sober and placate her horrible mood. He says that  pool was her palace and his prison. He teases that he would plan jailbreaks gigs with the Skid Marcs guys just to get out of the pool and away from the house.

They make it seem cute, but it wasn't. They leave out the bad part of the story. They leave out the divorce part of the story.

Suddenly I realize with a start that there is an entire second story that the note doesn't allude to. My mom says they reconciled when we were just babies. But she left him again, when Bridge and I were about nine. He'd had a bad drug relapse. Not just booze, but pills too, I think. I think he resisted getting help for a long, long time, even after she kicked him out—maybe half our school year. Finally went to rehab and he was gone another six months before he moved back in.

I guess there were a years' worth of days when she wouldn't let him stay the day. And didn't ask him spend the night. I make a squeaky noise, remembering that I used to ask her if they were going to get divorced. She would never answer the question straight. She would only say that she was not worried about divorcing daddy, she was only working to help daddy get well for us kids and we would see him again soon.

Damn right she wasn't worried about divorcing him. She'd already done that.

"Fuck," I whisper slightly. "I think I'm more...pissed, than shattered, or something. Not pissed...but...I dunno. I just keep thinking how she kicked him out again, you know? When Bridge and I were nine. And she kept telling us to not to worry about them getting divorced. But they were already divorced! I thought our family was safe, that they were definitely getting back together when he got out of rehab, because no one was saying the big D word to us, but now..."

"Now you see the odds of that reconciliation were much different that you believed as a child...and it feels...retroactively scary?" he murmurs.

"Yes, exactly! Retroactively scary." I put my hand up in recognition of his description. I love Riley can help me find the exactly words. "Yes, that's exactly how I feel. Angry and scared at the same time. And it hurts, because I don't want to feel that way. I want to..."

"You want to love them no matter what they've done?" he whispers.

"Yes, but I'm still very very pissed. And scared, for some reason." I whisper. I'm trying to feel around the edges of my emotions, but they are like a fire in the wind, blowing this way and that. "Scared of losing them, even though logically I know they still want to be together, more than ever. I feel..."