Faking Perfect (26 page)

Shelby was expecting me and answered the door herself. When I saw her, I almost gasped. She looked exhausted and disheveled, but she was
thin
again. Or at least, the giant bump had turned into a smaller, softer one.

“What?” she said, peering down at her oversized T-shirt, which had several wet stains down the front. “Come on, now. Did you expect me to just bounce back? I carried a seven pound human in there.”

“No,” I said, stepping inside. “You look great.”

“Right.” She rolled her eyes, then laughed and pulled me in for a tight hug. “It’s good to see you. It’s good to see
anyone
who’s not my mother or a sadistic breastfeeding consultant.”

I laughed and handed her the gift bag I’d brought. A present for Piper.

“Thanks. Come on in. She’s sleeping in her car seat in the living room. Excuse the mess.”

I followed her through the house, which was nowhere near messy. Shelby’s mother was one of those obsessive, neat-freak types who ironed towels and alphabetized the food in the pantry. Even though Shelby’s parents had eventually gotten used to the idea of a granddaughter, it must have killed her mom to suddenly have a baby around, sullying her pristine house with dirty diapers and spit-up.

“Here she is,” Shelby said when we reached the living room, where Piper’s car seat—with her in it—rested on the floor beside the couch. I knelt down to admire her while Shelby opened the gift. “Oh!” she said, holding up the tiny denim jacket I’d picked out at the mall yesterday. “This is adorable. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” My eyes were on Piper, sound asleep in a pink onesie with a pacifier affixed to her mouth like a plug. She looked just like her picture, except maybe a little plumper, and her skin had a yellowish tinge.

“She has a touch of jaundice,” Shelby explained before I could ask. “It’ll go away.”

Joining her on the couch, I asked, “So how was your labor?”

“Long,” she replied, grimacing as she folded the jacket and put it back in the bag. “But not too bad. I was numb for most of it, and I didn’t need a C-section so that was a plus. Pushing her out took forever, though.”

Hearing this, my legs crossed automatically. “Was Evan there through the whole thing?”

“Yeah. He was awesome. Counted through the pushes and even cut the cord when she came out.” She glanced down at Piper, who was beginning to stir. “He’s been good all week, actually. He comes over every evening after work to help me with her, and he buys diapers and wipes and stuff. I told you about his new lifeguard job, right? He started right after graduation.”

I nodded. “That’s great.”

Piper was full-on fussing. Shelby bent down and scooped her up, settling her against her shoulder. The baby looked impossibly small, like one of those lifelike dolls in the see-through plastic boxes in the toy section at Wal-Mart.

“You want to hold her?” Shelby asked.

“I . . . she’s probably . . . isn’t she hungry?”

She laughed at my panicked stammering. “I just fed her and changed her diaper like a half hour ago. She just wants to be in someone’s arms. Here.” She cradled the baby, one hand under her head, and placed her in my arms. “See? She stopped fussing.”

Piper may have looked like a doll, but she didn’t feel like one. She was warm and solid and smelled like baby powder and something indefinable, a sweet, new-baby smell. Her eyes opened for a second and then closed again, the pacifier popping out as she drifted into a deeper sleep.

While the baby napped in my arms, Shelby and I talked about my trip and her first few days as a mom and our plans for the rest of the summer. But of course, all this talk was just perfunctory, a necessary hurdle to cross before we could move on to what she
really
wanted to discuss.

She grinned wickedly at me. “So. You and Tyler Flynn, huh?”

Stifling a smile, I dropped my gaze to Piper’s tiny face. “Shocking, I know.”

“Not really. I always thought Ben was too stuffy for you.”

“Emily thinks it’s shocking,” I reminded her.

“Emily thinks most things are shocking. She lives on a safe little island of conformity and expects all her friends to do the same. Then, the minute you step off your designated spot, she freaks out. She didn’t speak to me for two months after Ben dumped me, remember? She’s not exactly open-minded, but unlike Ben, she does forgive.”

Piper started to squirm and grunt, so I handed her back to Shelby. “I don’t know. She thinks Tyler’s a loser. And I lied to you guys.”

“You didn’t lie, exactly, you just hid stuff from us. To be honest, I think Emily’s more hurt that you didn’t tell us about your father.
I
get it, but unlike her I’m not a black-and-white kind of person.” Shelby grabbed the pacifier from the couch cushion, examined it for lint, then nudged it into the baby’s mouth. “As for Tyler . . . he’s changed, right? Since he’s with you, I’m assuming he’s over his man-whoring phase, and you said he stopped selling drugs, too. That’s progress, at least.”

I had to agree. Not only had he stopped selling, he’d recently gotten a one-hundred-percent legal, legitimate job. A friend of his parents owned a house painting company and had hired him on full-time for the summer. In fact, it was his first day. It may not have paid as well as his last job, but he probably wouldn’t get arrested for this one.

“All those rumors about him,” I said, “most of them were either exaggerated or made up. He’s not as bad as everyone thinks.”

She shrugged. “Hey, it’s not like I have room to judge. Look at who
I
chose for a boyfriend. Sure, he’s on his best behavior right now, but you know what Evan’s like . . . here one minute and gone the next. And I’ll be dealing with him for the rest of my
life
.” She let out a loud yawn, as if the mere prospect of it exhausted her, and then gazed down at her sleeping daughter. “I really hope he sticks around this time. If not for me, then for her. She needs her dad.”

“True,” I said, looking down at Piper. She was quiet and content again, her little fist clutching Shelby’s finger as if to assure her that yes, she needed her dad, but she needed her mother just as much.

When I got back from visiting Shelby and Piper, I headed over to my empty house to clean Trevor’s tank and feed him the mouse I’d defrosted earlier (I would have taken him over to the Bruces’, but I was afraid Gus would mistake him for a chew toy and eat him). With that done, I returned to the kitchen to check my stock of rodent coffins and sort through the mail, which I’d noticed was piling up on the kitchen table. For once, there were no overdue bills or collection agency threats. My mom had actually paid them all this month, even without my reminders.

As I stood there staring at a zero-balance credit card statement and contemplating this sudden display of responsibility, a car door shut out front, followed by footsteps. I froze. My mother already? Usually she worked late on Saturdays, so I thought I’d be safe at five.
Apparently not
, I thought as a key slid into a lock that was already open and she entered the house, oblivious. There was nothing I could do but stay where I was and face her, head-on. It had to happen eventually, and it was as good a time as any.

She reached the threshold to the kitchen and paused, her eyes locking onto mine as I stood by the table, credit card statement still in my hand. Her features vacillated between surprise and dread and anger before finally settling into her most familiar expression—contempt.

“Oh, so you finally decided to come over and talk to me?” she said, dropping her purse on the counter. “You’ve only been back, what, three days?” She glanced at the table, taking in the stack of ripped-open mail, then spotted the paper in my hand. “Yes, I did pay the bills last month. Every one of them. Believe it or not, I
can
manage without you and your constant nagging.”

I looked away, tears stinging my eyes. Maybe it wasn’t the time. Obviously she hadn’t changed her mind about blaming me for the Jesse thing, and in her eyes, my running away to Alton only confirmed my culpability. Not that we’d ever lived in peace, but I wondered if my mother and I would be able to co-exist in this house—or anywhere—ever again.

“I just came over to feed Trevor.” I tossed the statement on the table on top of the other mail. “I’ll leave.”

“No, no, wait,” she said, leaning against the counter toward me like a friend eager for gossip. But her flat, cold eyes told a different story. “I want to hear all about your wonderful trip to Alton.”

She was playing with me, circling and jabbing like Trevor did with his motionless prey. Only I wasn’t doomed like those mice or unable to fight back. I was alive and capable, and the decision to run or stay was on me. I was through running. “It was great,” I said, looking straight at her. “I learned a lot.”

She scoffed. “Oh, I’m sure. I bet you heard hundreds of stories about what a cold, irrational bitch I was, taking a child away from the father she adored. That’s why you’ve been avoiding me, right? Because he filled your head with lies about me?”

“No, he didn’t fill my head with lies. In fact, the only time he ever talked about you was when I brought it up, and most of his stories were good ones. He’s not the same guy he was back then, you know. People grow up. They mature.” I raised my eyebrows at her as if to say
present company excluded.

“Unlike me, right?” she said wryly. “Well, look in the mirror, honey. You may have gotten his pretty blue eyes, but the rest is all me.”

Not if I can help it,
I thought, shifting my gaze to the wall by the door. It wasn’t noticeable, but if you stood really close or ran your hand along the paint, you could make out a slight, circular indentation, the result of a head slamming against the wall at full force. A memento of the night that had pushed Tyler over the edge and me along with him. The tipping point that had sent me running to Alton and my father and then, ultimately, to this moment.

“This avoidance thing goes both ways,” I told her, getting back to the subject at hand. “And it has nothing to do with anything my father said to me. It has to do with Jesse.”

Her cheeks turned red and she straightened up, crossing her arms over her chest. “
What
, Lexi?” she barked. “He left. He’s never coming back. What else do you want from me?”

As usual, her delusion simply astounded me. “Well, just for starters, how about an apology for blaming me for something I didn’t do? How about a mother who takes her daughter’s word over her creepy asshole boyfriend’s? How about that?”

She turned her head to the side, her jaw twitching as she struggled to contain her emotions.

Which emotions, I had no clue.

“I was drunk that night,” she said. “I didn’t know what was happening.”

“You knew
exactly
what was happening,” I yelled at her. “That excuse doesn’t work on me anymore, Mom. I’m not five years old. You knew what he did and you didn’t care. You told me it was my fault. Mothers are supposed to protect their kids from being hurt, not blame them for it.”

“Yeah, well, clearly I’m a horrible mother,” she said, flinging her arms out. “You think so, and I know for damn sure Teresa thinks so. She’s always made that abundantly clear.”

“How would you know? You haven’t spoken to her in over five years, all because she was brave enough to tell you what you needed to hear. Who do you think took care of me when you were passed out on the bathroom floor or couldn’t get out of bed in the morning?”

“Right, she’s mother of the year. Believe me, I’m well aware. When you were little and you got hurt or felt sad, who did you run to? Not me. You went right to Teresa, every time. Jesus, you even called her Mommy for a while. And she did nothing to stop it. ‘Just let her adjust,’ she’d say. Right. She taught you to believe she was the only one who could comfort you and take care of you. Me? I was worthless.”

“She took care of me because you didn’t,” I said. My body was shaking with pure frustration. How could she not see what kind of mother she’d been to me? “Teresa didn’t have a choice. You can’t resent her for stepping in any more than you can resent me for getting attached to her.”

“And I knew it, too,” she continued as if I hadn’t even spoken. “I knew I was worthless as a mother. Why else would I have kept you in Alton for so long?” She glanced at me, her face tired and slack. “Let me guess. He didn’t tell you all
those
stories, right? About how bad he’d gotten before we left?”

“He told me the truth.” To prove it, I listed off every appalling offense he’d confessed to, from doing drugs in front of me right down to his lack of resistance when she took me away.

With each word, my mother drifted further into her own memories and sins.

“He thinks you were right to take me away,” I finished. “And you were. I get that. I wasn’t safe there. Who knows what would have happened if we’d stayed. I probably would have been taken away and put into foster care, or worse. What I
don’t
get is why you refused to take his calls after we moved, and why you kept all his birthday and Christmas cards from me.”

Her head jerked up and she stared at me, surprised. I hadn’t included this little tidbit in my index of Eric’s confessions.

“He told me everything,” I emphasized. “You think Teresa turned me against you? Well, that’s nothing compared to how you turned me against him. You told me he was probably dead when you knew very well he wasn’t. You told me he didn’t give a shit about us. About me. It was Teresa who told me he was living in Alton again. She was the one who gave me his information in case I wanted to contact him. Want to resent her for that, too? Go right ahead. Unlike you, she thought I deserved the truth.”

In all my years of fighting with my mother and telling her off and avoiding her bad moods and verbal blows, I’d never seen her look like she did at that moment. Like my words had totally gutted her, striking against something deep inside. Like what I’d said, and the feelings behind it, actually mattered. While I watched, wary and amazed, she shuffled over to the table and sank down into a chair, burying her face in her hands. She mumbled something, but with the heels of her hands over her mouth all I could make out was “I wanted.”