creepy as I would have expected. He wasn’t my type, because he shaved his head and he had tattoos everywhere on his arms and neck (and who knows where else), but he was very nice. And he had great breath. He must have lived on peppermint gum.
The biggest difference between Tina’s and mine is that I wanted my tattoo where people could see it. I wanted to flaunt it. So I got mine on my shoulder. My left shoulder. August still had a couple days left, and I knew even in Vermont there was at least a month when I could wear shirts with spaghetti straps. Mine is a big, blooming pink rose, and I had the artist add a stem that ran a few inches down my back and a couple of green leaves. He combined two patterns.
I picked a flower because my mom loved roses. We even had some wild rosebushes at our house. The flowers really didn’t last all that long, but they were pretty. The petals were just starting to fall off when my mom died.
Anyway, my tattoo was sort of a test, I think. Just how much slack were people really cutting me? Answer? A ton. I could have gotten a tattoo of people doing it like dogs (they do have tattoos like that), and all the adults in my life would have hugged me and told me it was very elegant or I had very good taste.
MY MOM’S FUNERAL was completely different from Dad’s. My mom’s was packed. There were people overflowing into the choir loft and downstairs into the community room, where one of the trustees had set up a video feed. I’d had no idea how many people had cared about my mom or me-there were a ton of kids there, some of whom I thought viewed me as a total dork-and I was really touched. Dad’s funeral, which we held a few days later in Buffalo, was just me and my grandparents and my aunts and uncles on his side. Not even my cousins were there for some reason. It was so lightly attended that we used this dark chapel off the main sanctuary and still everything the minister said echoed like we were in a cave. It was very creepy. As I recall, the minister talked about forgiveness and understanding, but I think most of us there were just too ashamed to pay much attention. And we
I must admit, there were times that spring and summer, after he and my mom had stopped seeing each other on the sly, when I was seriously pissed at him. At first I told people I didn’t know about their affair. But I did. Even now I’m not exactly sure who ended it. I mean, my mom never acknowledged to me that they’d even had one, and Stephen only did in a vague sort of way when I confronted him about it after my parents were dead. But I knew what had been going on. And I knew how happy my mom was with him. It was really easy to go into fantasy land, because Dad was living at the lake then and my mom was happy. I could imagine my parents getting divorced and my mom and Stephen getting married and no one using her as a punching bag anymore. I didn’t think too hard about the specifics of Stephen Drew as my stepfather, because I was in tenth grade and way too old to get watery-eyed about a new family. By then I was counting the days until I could leave Haverill once and for all. But I wanted Mom to be happy. Still, I wasn’t surprised when I realized that Stephen was going to get out now, too. I knew right away he was going to feel the loss of my mom a lot more than he might have expected in those months between when they broke up and when my dad killed her.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Usually I told the police whatever I could, but sometimes I told them what they wanted to hear. It was just easier that way. And sometimes I volunteered whatever Stephen suggested I say. I wasn’t nervous about that until I realized that they thought Stephen had killed Dad (maybe even Mom and Dad), and then I found myself thinking long and hard every time I opened my mouth and-what was even more disturbing for me-every time I said something Stephen had advised me to say. Tina said she was surprised I hadn’t been more freaked out around the state troopers. She said after she spoke to them that one time that she didn’t think she could have handled talking to them as much as I did. But I reminded her that everyone, including the police, was really, really worried about me. I was, like, the Vermont Poster Child for Domestic Abuse. I could pretty much do or say whatever I wanted. It wasn’t just the tattoo. I stayed out as late as I felt like, and the Cousinos just smiled and asked if I was okay or needed anything. I cut classes, and the teachers asked me if there was anything they could do. I could have been dealing crack cocaine to five-year-olds and people would have said, “Oh, think of what happened to her parents. Poor kid.” I could have been carving up kittens in the Cousinos’ basement and people would have patted me on the head and asked me if I wanted a different therapist or social worker. Membership in Club Orphan has its privileges, too.
Still, I don’t recommend it. I probably wasn’t nearly as cool a customer as I sound now. One day I had this totally uncontrollable crying jag in the girls’ bathroom at school, and, unfortunately, a teacher found me. And then some days it just felt easier not to talk at all.
Josie Morrison asked me all the time how much I missed my mom, but only once if I missed my dad. I was pretty clear about the fact that I didn’t miss him at all, and that was that.
But my mom was another story. Suddenly I had all these pretend moms in my life, all these women who wanted to mother me like crazy. There was Carole Cousino and Ginny O’Brien for starters, and then there was Josie, who sometimes was the hip young mom and sometimes the badass big sister. She was better in the big- sister role, because not a lot of moms in Vermont have dreads and tats. And there were the female teachers at school and my guidance counselor, Mrs. Degraff. I got some of the best grades of my life that autumn, even though my work was pretty half-assed and my attendance was basically whenever I felt like going to class. But none of those women could even begin to fill the void. I loved my mom. I loved her so much. We had grown incredibly close in the winter when Dad had been gone. She changed. The vibe of the whole house changed. Sometimes Tina would come over and we actually baked with Mom: We made things like coconut cupcakes and pineapple upside-down cake and your basic brownies out of a box. Suddenly Mom and I weren’t walking around the house like scared, silent cats, waiting for Dad to get nasty about something ridiculous. I didn’t spend so much time with my earbuds in, listening to my iPod. She bought me a dock and speakers for the device, and we blared the music as loud as we wanted. She was, like, totally liberated.
Things were so peaceful that I allowed a boy who was interested in me to pick me up one Saturday night and hang around for a couple of hours before we went to a party in the village. He was a senior. He drove. Dad would never have allowed me to date a senior. He would never have allowed me to even go to a party with him. But Alan was fine, totally harmless. He was already into college by then, and we were just having a good time-which, looking back, is exactly why Dad would never have let me near him and why it wouldn’t have crossed my mind to invite Alan to within a hundred yards of our house if Dad had been there.
And Mom and I could talk about Alan. We could talk about Brendan, another boy who I liked a bit, although we
