They told me apathetically, using a torpid tone and an evasive argument that was too heavy for me to believe. It was an innocent day nearing the end of October. I walked home from school feeling sick in the stomach as the sun's heat overreacted with my emotions. The sun was just as hostile as I had become and it emphasized its pressure down on me without a touch of sensitivity.
My fifteenth birthday had taken place on a desolate rainy day, just one week before. It was six in the morning when I sat in my childhood treehouse, surrounded by torrents of uncontrollable rain that I knew it was going to happen. I'd heard them arguing again the night before. Dad had called Mum a name I didn't know and she'd screamed back something about how hard she tried. I knew then, on that isolated morning, that my typically perfect family was about to be ripped apart at the limbs.
The day had been filled with fake smiles, cheery façades, excessive presents and a hidden truth. Dad, ever the actor, had even offered Mum a compliment, telling her that the traditional chocolate cake was 'delicious'. In response, Mum had thrown him a spiteful look and rolled her eyes. My day never got much better than that.
And since that one mendacious event, I'd been tensed, waiting for the imminent downpour. I couldn't sleep and I wouldn't eat. My parents knew I knew and were still too cowardly to come out and admit it. It was almost seven days later when I was told the news, which was admittedly better than the torture of waiting for it. I had just come home from school. It was a Wednesday. I hated Wednesdays at school. And if the dreary, tiring day at school hadn't been enough; the scene that greeted me as I entered the house, was.
They stood together which on its own was a satirical irony. Their faces were blank canvases, a façade hiding the fury beneath. I dropped my school bag with a satisfying thud and took a choked breath.
This was it.
I inwardly contemplated running to my room but couldn't bring myself to achieve the action. My feet were cemented to the ground, my shoulders tensed. I stood stiffly, mirroring my parents' postures, silently challenging them to speak. My dare hung between us heavily in the hostile air.
Their eyes were reluctant and Mum's were suspiciously bloodshot. Dad's face was intangible and opaque, proud and conflicted at the same time. I watched them both, standing remarkably still, petrified of the statement that was to come. Minutes passed and nobody spoke. My calves were stabbed with a dull pain and still I kept standing, my arms stiff against my side, my face downcast.
Dad's arms were crossed, as was his signature. Arms crossed signified that he was in charge. He was the authority.
Mum's arms were crossed too and though she didn't look half as convincing as Dad, her eyes were stubborn. They stared at the space on the wall above my head, still not speaking, still too childish to own up to their problem.
It was at that moment, that I realized doubtfully, that I was the adult in the situation.
I broke the silence harshly and without feeling with a choked up voice that wavered in the middle.
“Who am I going to live with?”
A relieved silence followed my statement and Mum shifted position. They hadn't decided where I was going and neither one had the energy to argue about it. Exhausted and irritated, I stepped over to my left and heaved myself up to sit on the kitchen bench. Both Mum and Dad had always reminded me never to sit on the bench. It was a common rule in our house. I waited to be told off, almost hopefully. Still no one spoke. My Dad glanced over in my direction and not wanting to have him in her sight, Mum looked too. I knew what they saw. They saw a frail girl of fifteen with large grey eyes and light brown hair left growing past her shoulders. They saw judgmental eyebrows and a pensive expression. It hurt me to know that's all they knew about me. It was all they would ever see. They didn't look beneath that and they didn't care, nor have the time to find out.
It seemed like a long time before Mum spoke. Her voice was clipped and her red hair was straightened into a bob. Her green eyes were dull with depression and her pixie-like nose was red.
“We're still discussing that, Honey.”
Dad made an obnoxious noise that clearly said 'discussion isn't an option' and both Mum and I frowned simultaneously. I had always been closer with Mum. We shared the same slight frame and small features. Dad, who had passed down to me judgmental eyebrows and soft mouse coloured hair, had never been remarkably close with me as a teenager unlike the years prior. As a child, my father and I had been almost glued together. We'd done everything together. And then, not three years before, Dad's company - Sutton and White Lawyers - had taken up a high-end deal. Since then Dad and I weren't friends. Instead, he was simply the man who came home late and complained that his dinner was cold.
Dad is a lawyer. He argues for a living and at times when I sat, cramped into my shivering position, huddled at the top of the stairs, subject to his shouted arguments towards Mum, I would pity my mother, and wish that Dad would say something wrong, or maybe lose his train of thought.
He never did, though.
We stood motionless as if one move would blow us apart. After a rough internal argument, I opened my mouth tetchily, shooting my words at both parents.
“Well make your minds up.”
Both Mum and Dad started at my sharp words and in response Dad angrily stalked off in the direction of his office, leaving Mum, who wordlessly made her way slowly - almost dazed, like a blinded animal - to her studio.
I stood in the empty kitchen, kicked my school bag viciously behind the door and made my way to the sparse pantry where I began pulling out the simple ingredients for lasagna. I turned and switched on the oven, holding up with my aggression by kicking everything in sight. This was the fourth time this week, since Sunday, that I had made lasagna for dinner.
It was only Wednesday.
~
I roughly slammed the saucepan down on the hot plate and swung around, grabbing the lid and smashing it on in one swift movement. I emptied frozen mince into the saucepan with a loud thunk and then grabbed at an onion and began slicing, the stinging in my eyes a pleasant relief to the thick pain just below my skin.
Emotion like this was all new to me. The actual announcement had been more than my suspicions had ever let me believe. I hadn't been prepared for the actual sting, the proper kick in the guts that resulted from hearing of the divorce.
Glancing out the window, I saw Ash State - a prestigious boy in my class - helping his dad make a barbeque for dinner. Ash had clear blue eyes, a shock of ashy blond - almost brown - hair, a strong set jaw and perfect teeth. His mum; pretty and blonde, came out the back door armed with a salad and planted a kiss on his head, before spinning around playfully and kissing his father.
Ash turned and laughed at his father's joke and gave him a childish hug while his mother threw a soccer ball at him, only to have it caught deftly and pegged back within a second.
Their laughs echoed into the kitchen.
I turned away from the window, sat down on the kitchen bench, my legs hanging helplessly over the edge, and cried.
Not twenty meters away, the State family was eating dinner together, unknowingly mocking me with a spiteful cheer.
I bit my lip and cried harder.
~
That night I closed myself off from the world, washed my face and decided I wasn't going to cry anymore. I figured that I was old enough not to; argued that it wouldn't change anything.
Instead, I lay motionless on my bed, staring vacantly up at the shadowed ceiling, reluctantly allowing the heavy block of hopelessness to sit unflinchingly in my stomach. Downstairs, I could hear the strong, unmistakable tone of Dad yelling something at Mum.
An undefined mumble was returned. Another shout vibrated the walls. I squeezed my eyes shut against the lonely dark and as a last resort, pulled the blanket protectively over my head.
When I woke, Dad would be in the kitchen making coffee. He would slam the mug on the cold marble and curse, as if the thick liquid was at fault.
Mum would be asleep on the couch in her studio. It was, I knew, the only room she felt safe. I had witnessed, on occasion, her fevered, fearful shaking and cold tears as she slept.
I would never tell her of what I saw. I could never imagine that I would one day sleep in much the same way. Later, Dad would be angry at Mum and Mum would be snapping helplessly at his crude remarks. When I woke to that regular dreary morning, Mum and Dad would still be getting a divorce.
To my ultimate distress, I was completely, unchangeable right. The morning played through, scene after scene, precisely as I had imagined it. When I desperately ran for the door in hope to get away from the tense atmosphere, Mum grabbed me, almost playfully, kissing me firmly on my head.
Dad muttered something about 'wanting the child on your side', and I slammed the door furiously, wondering if my parents' affection was even real anymore.
I walked slowly, grudgingly, my school bag swinging desolately off one shoulder. My mind consumed with Thursday morning thoughts, it was almost guaranteed that I didn't notice Ash when he jogged casually up next to me.
“Are you okay?”
I looked up, surprised at the concern. I knew Ash well, or at least I had. In preschool we had made mud pies together, smashed his mother's favourite china plate, burnt my mother's tablecloth and placed our handprints onto the concrete driveway that his dad had redone one Saturday. In year three, we had carved our initials into the tree in my yard. Year four, we had scratched them out - that is to say, Ash scratched them out, disgusted at our lack of maturity. I had looked on and giggled. Year six, Ash had been a shadow in my life which followed me home from school at distance with his friends and didn't associate with me, a popular socialite, if he could help it. In late year seven, Ash had lost his boyish cheeks and became as my silly friends put it, 'so romantic-looking'. I had assumed my popular nonchalance and ignored their stupidity while Ash played along with his friends, teasing the girls and attracting their attention away from me. It angered me at the time that he wouldn't speak willingly to me, though I understood as to why. After all; it wasn't as if we could be friends. In middle school, mixed gender friendships were a crime of the underhanded sort.
Year eight, we didn't speak. This year, year nine, he was practically an alien in my life. Something had happened early in the year and Ash had been absent for almost an entire month, returning with a strangely serious maturity that little of our year was familiar with. He became the most wanted boy in the school. I avoided him at all costs, desperate to divert the attention back to myself. And now? The year practically over? Apparently Mr. Perfect and I were speaking again.
“I'm fine.”
My eyes were drilled ahead. I didn't care if Ash thought me rude. He had probably experienced me at my worst, years before.
“What about…”
He nodded his head back towards my house, his boyish curiosity getting the best of him.
My mouth hardened, and my eyes grew colder. I repeated my previous statement edgily.
“I'm fine.”
In response, Ash shrugged at my concrete expression replying with a tone of disbelief.
“Mmm. Well okay. I'll see you later.”
He patted me awkwardly on the shoulder before jogging ahead to some friends.
I kept moving, stamping on the sidewalk with a twisted, unhappy glee.
~
I experienced another lonely afternoon after returning home to the sound of more arguing. I hid in my room, the door barricaded, not hungry for dinner and too scared to venture downstairs. The atmosphere was heavy - almost suffocating, and once again, I fell asleep to the sounds of what was to become a divorce.
I was woken in the early hours of the morning by a small figure, which I guessed to be Mum. She'd crept into my room and had sat on the bed, which was the movement that woke me.
“Mum? Is everything okay?”
It seemed a stupid question to my tired ears. Nothing was okay. In answer, she pulled herself under the covers alongside me and lay staring up at the ceiling, wordlessly, seeking for some form of comfort. Minutes passed, and I thought she had fallen asleep, when finally, she spoke.
“Sometimes I think I still love him.”
I closed my eyes, blocking out the conversation, in no mood to comfort my Mum on divorce matters.
“We were so young, and he was so dashing and confronting…so protective…”
I sighed in answer, hoping it was enough.
“But he doesn't want to marry me. He wants a wife who sits and writes papers and makes his dinner at exactly seven every night. He wants to wake to a wife who has been up for hours, preparing breakfast. He doesn't want me; an artist who can barely cook.”
I squeezed my eyes closed, disgusted and angry.
My mum let out a sigh.
“I hate him, darling. I'm so sorry. I'm such a bad example.”
A silent tear tapered down my cheek and I clenched my teeth at the silence.
“Honey…we've decided. You're going to stay here. With me.”
And that was it. There was nothing I could do. It wasn't going to be changed.
My parents were getting a divorce.
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