Page 8 of Old Fashioned
She was only nine years old, and still, I knew I’d be in trouble once she started dating.
Another flare of anxiety over her having her heart broken seared through my chest, but I subdued it, draining the pasta noodles in the colander in the sink. “Well, if you believe it, then I do, too.”
Ialsoknew that all mothers thought their child was the smartest kid to ever exist, and once again, I was no different. Of course, with Paige, it was only pertaining to one subject: football. She watched games and listened to podcasts and studied football terms like it was her full-time job. She learned words that most kids her age couldn’t pronounce, let alone understand, all in the name of being an expert in the sport she loved.
“You’ll see, we’re going all the way this season,” she said, turning her attention back to the television. Then, a long sigh left her chest, and she whispered so low I almost didn’t hear. “I can’twaitto play football.”
I furrowed my brows, torn as always with how I would explain to her that the likelihood of that happening was slim to none. She’d been watching football with her father every Saturday, every Sunday, and every Monday night since she was born. Somewhere around four years old, she started saying she wanted to play football. At the time, I thought it was cute, something she’d grow out of, but it turned out football would be one of the staples my daughter was built on.
She was hell-bent on playing football someday, and as a mother, that terrified me.
Again — normal.
Before I could decide if I wanted to respond encouragingly or realistically, my cell phone rang.
“Hello, sister,” I answered, putting her on speakerphone as I mixed the fake, processed, powdered “cheese” with the noodles and hamburger meat. “Paigey, come sit at the table for dinner.”
“But, Mom! Can’t I just eat it in here? Coach is still talking!”
“Yeah, Mom,” my older sister teased. “Coach is talking.”
“Hush,” I told her on a laugh, but when Paige hopped up and clasped her hands together, begging me with her signature pouty lip and big eyes, I was helpless.
I sighed.
“Fine,” I said, scooping a good helping into a bowl for her. Paige hopped up and down in victory. “Set up the TV tray though, and use your napkin, Paige Marie,notyour jeans.” I gave herthe mom lookwhen she bopped into the kitchen, making sure she knew I was serious before I handed her the bowl. Once she was set up in the living room, I took my sister off speakerphone, pressing the device to my ear, instead. “Gray hairs, Gabby. I swear I’ll have them before the year is up.”
My sister chuckled. “Oh, come on. So your daughter is obsessed with football. It could be worse. She could be obsessed with boys like we were.”
“Don’t jinx it,” I said, smiling when Paige tossed the football up in her hands between bites, her eyes fixed on the press conference. “How are you?”
“Oh, same old same here. It was a long night at the hospital, we had a three-car accident that was pretty nasty. I was dead on my feet by the time I got home this morning.”
My sister, Gabriela, was older than me by five years. It was just a wide-enough gap to keep us from ever being in the same school together, but not too wide to where we couldn’t share clothes. She was my best friend — thanks to our life traveling around with a mom in the military. Where the few friends wedidmake were left in the dust each time we were re-stationed, our bond never died. It only got stronger throughout the years, and Gabby was the only person I ever felt comfortable talking to about anything deeper than the weather.
Besides Randall, but I’d learned my lesson the hard way that not even he could be trusted.
“If you still lived here, I’d make you a glass of my famous sangria.”
“Ugh,” she dragged out the groan. “Don’t tease me like that. It’s not fair.”
“What’s not fair is that I can’t walk two doors down and plop on my sister’s couch anymore.”
“You could,” she argued. “If you moved here with the rest of us.”
I grew silent at that, casting a glance toward my daughter before I made myself a bowl of Hamburger Helper and stepped out onto the back lanai. I still kept an eye on her through the sliding glass doors.
“You know it’s not that simple,” I said once I was outside.
Gabby sighed. “I know, I know. I wish it were, though.”
I didn’t have to elaborate, because Gabriela was the only one I’d ever opened up to abouteverythingthat had happened between me and Randy. Mom and Dad knew we were divorced, but they thought it was just because the love had faded over time and we’d been fighting a lot.
Gabby knew the truth — the bruises, internally and externally, that prompted my final decision.
The only reason Randy had even granted me the divorce I’d asked for was because he didn’t think it would last, and because it happened onhisterms. I’d threatened to hire a lawyer, to get my parents involved, to show people the photos I’d taken with the marks he’d left on me. So, to keep his reputation safe, he agreed to the divorce.
On the condition that I would never leave Stratford, so that Paige would be close to him.
