Runaway Mother chapter 6

In anticipation of the school week beginning, I decide to set my clock for 6:30 the next morning. I’m sure that will give me enough time to get Ethan up and give him some cereal rather than him eating a protein bar on the saddle of the bike.

I toss and turn in bed. All I can think of is the impending trigonometry test tomorrow. I was only able to study for the hour and a half Zach took Ethan to the park today. I only had time to write out the theorem’s that would be on the test, but I didn’t have time to practice any of them. When they came home because of the weather, Zach gave me an apologetic look that I didn’t have longer to study. I tried going up to my room to get an hour in but Ethan was stuck to me like glue and I had no choice but to put the books away. My plan was to take out the theorems and study them between classes.

Before mom left, I saw school to be the only way forward, but now I see that family is the only thing that matters. Yes, MIT is my dream school, but Ethan has to come first right now. I look at the clock and its 2:27. I wonder if I’ll sleep at all tonight. I begin to hear an incessant beeping in the distance that gets louder and louder until I open my eyes and turn to see its 6:30. I want to hit the snooze button so badly, but instead I get out of the bed, feeling as though I haven’t slept at all. I stretch my young bones and can hear them creek before I go into Ethan’s room and wake him up gently.

With Ethan and ducky listening to the pops of the Rice Krispies, Ethan giggling every time, I look on him, cradling my coffee, and smile. It’s not a sad smile, or a pity one, it has more feeling than that. I can’t help but love the boy. Of course, I loved him before when he was just my little brother, but now that me and Zach are his world, I feel as though I love him not more, but differently. My watch pings bringing me back to reality, its 7am. I take Ethan up to wake Zach while I get his clothes ready. I can hear his laughter from the other room and my heart soars. That’s what I want for the little guy, giggles and laughter.

He runs into the bedroom like a hurricane and says ‘Zach is racing me to get dressed!’

With his pj’s off in seconds I help him put on his clothes. When we are down to socks, Zach runs into the room snarling like a dinosaur and pretends to eat his toes. I can’t stop laughing at Ethan’s reaction. He’s in his element rolling around the bed with a dinosaur at his feet.

Eventually we’re all out the door, toes and all, Zach to preschool with Ethan and I’m walking the long way to school not wanting to squelch with each step.

All day I’m preempting the trigonometry test, taking out my notes whenever possible. When lunchtime comes around, I sit at the usual table with my three best friends. They’re all munching on lettuce from a bowl sitting on red plastic trays in front of them and wonder, ‘do I miss that?’

Anna is the first to see me approach. She looks from my face the chair beside her and back again.

‘Look Anna I’m sorry about last week, my life is jus….’

She puts her hand up and stops me there. ‘Mare, you have been one of my best friends since kindergarten, and yes, what you said was out of order but we are fine!’

I smile at her and she puts a hand on my shoulder after I sit down beside her, one of the posse again. I feel like an outcast when I take out the brown bag Zach lovingly prepared. The girls giggle but I’m not bothered as Zach’s P B & J is better than lettuce any day of the week. I try to make light of the situation by letting some jelly congeal on my bottom lip and lick it slowly off making ‘Mmmm,’ noises as I do so. I can tell that they are all jealous deep down as Chelsea crunches on a bit of cucumber.

I have a flashback from when we were all in kindergarten eating sandwiches together. Now there’s no carbs this and gluten free that. It was exhausting trying to live off leaves. I’m secretly glad Zach brought me back down to earth. I remember paying $10 a day for the privilege whereas now we get upwards of 10 sandwiches out of that. Its liberating to say the least.

Anna brings up the party I missed on Friday night with the girls.

‘It was a blast, wasn’t it girls?’ Anna asks the others, who all agree.

‘I was still drunk the next day!’ Chelsea confesses.

‘And I had Consuela clean up so daddy was none the wiser when he arrived home last night!’

I looked at her in amazement. After I put Ethan to bed last night I went into my mother’s room and matched the receipts up to the bills. We owed upwards of $3,000, money which would almost obliterate our cushion and here Anna is talking about her maid! Seriously!

‘You are coming to mall later, right Mare!’ Anna tells me more than asks.

I shake my head and take out the string cheese, watching the other girls salivate. ‘I have to babysit!’ I say with as much remorse that I can muster.

‘You never hang out with us anymore!’ Anna says with the same kind of look Ethan gave me yesterday when I put peas on his plate at dinnertime. Even though I had to google how to cook them, I decided the little man needed some greens in his diet.

‘I can’t help having to look after my little brother!’ I say with more gusto than I meant.

Anna gets pissed at me and thankfully the bell goes off before she said anything that would rile me up further.

As I walk to social studies, my nose is in the theorems. I’m just one class away from the test and begin to panic. 

‘Calm down Mare, you’ve got this!’ I tell myself, but don’t believe it. I would have loved to have been able to do at least one question on each theorem, but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.

I leave the school to pick up Ethan feeling deflated. I know for sure that the 100% streak has officially ended. It was a hard test, one which I could have spent hours preparing for but still found it to be hard.

I didn’t know how I got there, but I find myself outside Ethan’s school. He comes out his bubbly self and we jump over the cracks as usual, but today, instead of him eating his sandwich at the table, I ask him if he wants to watch a movie while he eats. What kid would turn that down?

As he lays on his stomach, his legs high in the air and his sandwich in front of him, I get some peace and take out Romeo and Juliet for English class. It’s something I would normally know off by heart at this stage as it was assigned to us last week, but what can a girl do?

 

Just as I finish the prologue, the land line rings. I answer with trepidation.

‘Is this the residence of Carolyn Fisher?’ I hesitate for a second before answering.

‘Who’s this?’ I ask thinking quickly on my feet.

‘I am the fool who received a bad check from you!’ the voice says getting more worked up with each word.

‘I’m not Carolyn!’ I tell him just as he reaches his stride.

‘Well, whoever the hell you are, Carolyn stayed at my hotel and paid me with a bad check!’

I contemplate what this might mean. Could this be a clue as to where my mom is? I quickly take out a pen and paper ready to take down any and all of the details this husky voice provides.

‘Hello?’ he says.

‘Hi,’ I answer. ‘So where exactly is your hotel?’

‘New Mexico!’ he answers sounding frustrated. ‘Look, Carolyn stayed here for five nights and today I go to the bank to be told the check bounced….’ I breathe as evenly as I can, ‘…. I want my money!’ The man demands!

‘Well,’ I begin trying to decide to come clean or to lie through my teeth…. I quickly decide to come clean. ‘Carolyn doesn’t live here anymore!’

‘Urrrggghhh!’ the man reacts. I can hear him breathing heavily. ‘How am I going to get paid now?’ he asks getting worked up.

‘Can you tell me,’ I ask inquisitively, ‘how did you get this number?’

‘We require all our guests to fill out a registration form on their arrival!’ He said as a matter of fact.

‘Was she alone?’ I ask.

‘Yea, it was just her!’ I could hear his eyeballs rolling, ‘she stayed from Tuesday ‘til yesterday morning’. She paid by check on Friday and this morning I went to the bank and her check…’

‘…...bounced. I get it!’ I nod scribbling down the details. I ask for the exact address and explain that we’re trying to find her too.

‘She owe you money as well?’ I can hear the chair creek through the phone.

‘Something like that!’ I answer vaguely.

‘Carolyn put this phone number and this address down and I need to get paid!’ He says angrily.

‘Well Carolyn doesn’t live here anymore!’ I reiterate getting angry myself at the fact that she expects for us to pay her hotel bill.

‘What’s her forwarding address then?’ The now gruff voice demands.

‘Look, sir, I would love nothing more than to be able to tell you but I don’t have that information!’

‘I’ll give you three days!’ He starts becoming irate.

‘How much does she owe?’ I ask inquisitively.

‘$250’ he shouts down the phone before saying, ‘you have three days,’ again, and hangs up.

I am pissed. ‘New Mexico no less!’ I say under my breath.

 

The phone rings again just as I’m about to sit down.

‘What!’ I answer thinking it’s the same guy ringing back.

‘Um hello?’ a soft female voice says on the other end.

‘Hi, sorry, I thought you were someone else!’

‘This is Miss Megan, Ethan’s teacher!’

My heart begins to thump out of my chest.

‘Oh, hi Miss Megan,’ I say, ‘how can I help you?’

‘Can I speak with Mrs. Fisher please?’

‘I’m sorry Miss Megan but she’s still away on business! Is there anything I can help you with?’

‘Can you please get her to call me when she gets back, please!’

‘Of course, Miss Megan. Sorry again!’

‘No problem!’

 

Just as I put the phone down, Zach comes in. I can see him linger in the doorway of the sitting room and nod, impressed that Ethan is quiet.

He makes his way towards me smiling, his face dropping the closer he comes. I can’t help it but my face is gloomy.

‘What’s up?’ He asks with a furrowed brow.

I swallow heavily and my mouth opens but nothing comes out. I try to search for my words but I’m dumbfounded.

Zach sits me down at the table and pulls his chair beside me putting a supportive hand on my shoulder. ‘What’s up Mare?’

‘It’s mom!’ I finally begin to speak.

Zach stares at me, his eyes looking expectant. ‘Go on!’ He encourages me.

‘She was in New Mexico!’

‘You talked to her?’

‘No, a man rang from her hotel because the check she wrote him bounced!’

‘Why would they ring here?’ Zach was so confused and I didn’t think I was explaining the situation very well.

I began to rub my knees with the palms of my hands. I took a deep breath as panic fills Zach’s eyes.

‘A guy rang from a hotel in New Mexico, the place mom hid from us for five nights. She cut him a check on Friday and today it bounced.’ I blurted out. ‘She left yesterday morning and he was ringing here to get paid!’

‘What?’ Zach asks astonished. He rubs his hands in his hair and suddenly gets up from the table. He looks as though he is about to scream.

I decide to give him some space and turn on my chair and watch him pace the kitchen. I know he has to work through what he just heard. I realize I haven’t processed it either.

I can see Zach’s lips move as the cogs in his mind turn. I know better than to disturb him when he is in this state.

‘How much do we have left?’ he asks.

I shrug my shoulders, ‘$1,000 at most…why?’

‘I’m going to go to New Mexico and bring her back!’ he says all pumped up. ‘This bitch isn’t going to see me coming!’

‘You said a bad word and have to…to put a dollar in the swear jar!’ a little voice from behind announces.

Zach goes down to Ethans level and apologizes for his language and promises to put the dollar in the jar when he as soon as he can.

It sounded like a brush off to me, but Ethan was happy enough and that’s all that matters.

Ethan returns to his movie with some encouragement from Zach and comes into the kitchen guns blazing.

‘You are not going to New Mexico!!!’ I tell him!

‘Why not?’ he starts, ‘you want to find her just as much as I do and she was there just yesterday!’

‘Exactly!’ I try to make him see, ‘yesterday… she could be in Timbuctoo now!’

Zach looks at me and then looks away his hands in his hair again.

‘Zach, do you really think she’s going to stay in a place she’s been writing bad checks?’ I see him begin to come around. ‘She’s long-gone Zach! Please recognize that!’

He looks at me, desperation in his eyes. He points his finger in the direction of the sitting room and tries to say something, but no words come out.

I get up and envelope him in a hug. ‘I know!’ I whisper in his ear and we both begin to cry.

‘Why are you crying?’ Ethan asks in such an innocent tone.

‘Oh, were just being silly!’ I break away from Zach and wipe my eyes before going down to his level. ‘Is the movie over?’ I ask.

He nods.

‘Did you enjoy it?’

He smiles and nods again.

‘Ducky did too!’ he holds up a very dirty ducky by the leg and I make a note to self to put him in the washing machine before school tomorrow.

He puts his arms around my neck and says, ‘I don’t like it when you fight!’

I look up at Zach who goes down to Ethans level also and we reassure him together that no one is fighting and that everything is ok.

‘If only!’ I think to myself! ‘If only!’