Page 19 of Twice
“Well, it’s true. It’s ugly as sin.”
“Take that back. Take it back right now!”
“Fine,” I groused. “I take it back.”
I spent the next few hours in my bedroom, holding my mother’s photo. Everything I feared was coming to pass. I had finally gotten used to life alone with my father. Now came this second family upheaval. I thought about that final conversation with my mom, when she patted the bed and said, “Let me tell you all the things I love about you.” Somehow, I could never picture Adeline saying something like that.
So I made a decision. That night, during dinner, I expressed a sudden interest in how my dad and my new stepmother had met. My father mostly shrugged, saying, “Why does it matter?” But Adeline happily recounted the story: how she’dgone to a bowling alley on a date, but the man never showed due to car trouble. My dad, there with his league team, had gone to the bar for drinks and, noticing her alone, offered her a beer.
“One thing led to another,” she said, rubbing the back of his neck, “and here we are.”
I wanted to vomit.
But I pressed on until I learned the exact date of their meeting. Then I raced to my room and scurried through my notebooks. I read what I was doing earlier that day. It was a Wednesday. Typical routine. Breakfast. School. Lunch in the cafeteria. Things I could not specifically recall. But that afternoon, the notebook said, I’d gone skateboarding with Wesley at a local park. I remembered that. I closed my eyes and whisperedtwice.
Instantly, I was back at that park, steering my board up a ramp, then cruising back down. My body felt different. Smaller. Less solid. I didn’t realize how much I’d grown in ten months.
“What time is it?” I yelled to Wesley.
“Four forty-five!” he yelled back. “Why?”
My father’s bowling league started at six thirty. I had to think fast. I looked around for something dangerous. There was a small footbridge that covered a creek, with a three-foot ledge on each side.
I took a deep inhale, then revved my wheels and steered onto that ledge. Halfway along, I leapt into the air. I had zero confidence I could land back on my board—and I didn’t. Myfoot hit the ledge, then my shin, then my knee and elbow. I flipped into the creek.
“Alfie!” Wesley yelled.
I needed stitches in three places, which was more damage than I’d intended to inflict. It was the first time I’d truly injured myself and allowed the suffering to continue. I was surprised at how much it hurt. But, as I’d hoped, my father was called, and he stayed with me at the emergency room. It took a while because the hospital was busy.
When we finally left, he touched my shoulder.
“You all right, Alfie?”
“I’m OK, Dad.”
“I don’t understand something. Wesley said you jumped off your skateboard?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It was stupid.” I rubbed my sore knee as I stole a glance at his watch. It was after seven. “Dad? Can we eat at the diner tonight? I’m starving.”
“Yeah, all right.” He looked at me as if my very existence puzzled him. “What were youthinking, Alfie?”
“I guess I wasn’t,” I said.
But, of course, I was. Having tended to his son’s emergency, my father never went bowling. He never met Adeline. He remained single.
And a certain photo remained on our end table.
Perhaps this sounds cruel, denying my father a second marriage. If it makes a difference, he found another partnerfour years later, a lovely woman named Monica, and they enjoyed each other’s company for decades.
Can I say I regret what happened with Adeline? Honestly, I can’t. A boy may not do everything for his mother. But he’ll do anything for her memory.
?
Things my mother said she loved about me:
