Page 10 of Reeling in Love

“Go on. Ask me,” she yells.

Well, guess I need to respond.

“Why?” I whisper.

“Because you don’t want one. You wanna know why?”

I believe she wants me to say yes, so I do.

“Because you already have one. Nora. So fuck you and fuck her.” She throws the lamp to the floor and opens the door.

“I really liked the lamp, y’know,” she says.

“Do you want it? You can take it if you like,” I offer.

She glares at me for a moment, then at the broken pieces of the lamp on the floor, and gives me the middle finger, followed by the inevitable door slam. I slip into the couch again. That didn’t go as planned. I check my watch. And I still have a dinner to go to. Ugh!

My life is such a mess and if I had to pinpoint the time in my life when all the messiness began and my life, such as it was, changed significantly, I’d say it was the day my maternal grandfather died.

No. It wasn’t because I was close to him. That’s as far away from the truth as Mariana Trench is from the peak of Everest. In fact, I’d never met him. Not once. All I knew about him was from the few times Mom spoke about him—sometimes positive things, but mostly rants. So he was like any other person—Neil Armstrong, or Nixon, or Columbus. Essentially, a man who had built an extensive business from scratch, a person to be admired but who didn’t affect me or my life.

Not until he died. And then he caused an upheaval in my, till then, peaceful life.

I was in middle school when one fine day I came home to find Mom and Dad, standing by the door with two packed suitcases ready to go to France. It was my first time traveling out of the country and despite the grim circumstances, I was super excited. Mom was crying occasionally, and every time I visibly showed my excitement, I had to face Dad’s feral stare. It wasn’t my fault I was more excited to visit the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower than being sad about the death of a person I knew nothing about.

During the week we stayed in the mansion that was my grandfather’s house in Paris, I realized two things. One that the Eiffel Tower is completely overrated. And two, that my granddad was super rich. It was no wonder, then, that he never forgave Mom for eloping with a regular American man—my dad, who barely had a fraction of his wealth. But Mom was in love and money was of no importance to her. Not then, at least.

But all that changed. Mom changed. It was as if she was a different person in Paris, one I had never met. She wore these fine designer clothes and rattled away in French, a language she had taught me, but one we didn’t speak very often back home. She had these airs around her and found fault with the way Dad and I walked, the way we ate, or spoke or sat. Whatever we did was never enough to meet the expectations of her and the people who came to visit.

One night, a couple of days after our arrival, Dad and I were sitting in the room that used to be Mom’s room as a child. Mom sashayed in, wearing her beautiful silky gown. I don’t even know where she got it from, just that it was super soft to touch.

“Honey, when can we return home?” Dad asked. “I was wondering if we should book the tickets for the third day after your father’s service?”

Mom went straight to the dressing table and began removing her earrings. “But we’ve just arrived.”

I was already bored of Paris, so I pipped in. “I want to go back. I miss my friends, not to talk about the school work that I’m falling behind on.” I knew talking about schoolwork was a long shot, but a guy’s got to try.

“Yeah, you mean you miss that girl, Nora? She’ll be fine. Don’t worry. Enjoy the new city, new country, new culture.”

“Can I at least talk to Nora? I don’t know how she must be managing with us not being there.”

“She’ll be fine. You won’t always be there for her, y’know. You can talk to her when we’re back.”

“So how long do you think we’ll be here, a week or…” Dad’s voice trails off as Mom jerks her head back.

“Why don’t you see that this is home for me? Can you at least try and be normal for my sake? Pretend to be one among the family.”

Dad scoffs, unfortunately, a little too loud.

“What does that scoff mean? You don’t consider yourself family?”

“I do. But do they consider me family? Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed how they treat me and Gabriel or how they look at us.”

“Maybe it’s because you both act so different. You’re dressed poorly. You eat weirdly.”

“Maybe we do that because that’s who we are. And you never had a problem with that until we came here.”

That was the first day I saw my parents fight. I resented Mom for not standing by Dad when her family treated him poorly. I resented her even more for not letting me talk to Nora.

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