Longing to Belong - Chapter 22
Chapter 22
Birch Creek, April 2003
Running her index finger over the steamed glass, Lou made up shapeless forms on the car window. Her eyes kept focused on the rain falling outside, mirroring her present low mood. Today she and her father were driving to Rachel’s place where she would meet her sons, which was the last thing she wanted to do.
Over the last few months she had seen plenty of Rachel Dunne either in their apartment when she visited or in some other venues when her brother let the woman tag along in their outings. Louise had not got past her initial feelings; she did not really hated Rachel, but she did not want her to be her father’s girlfriend. So every single day Lou hoped and prayed Rachel and her dad would split up, but her prayers were unanswered so far. They were still together, and from what she could see, there was no reason to believe they would break up any time soon. Actually, they got on like a house on fire. Her father looked happy, always laughing and joking with Rachel, and Lou felt mean for wanting to thwart her obvious joy. Yet, she couldn’t help herself. All she wanted was for things to return to the way they had been before Rachel, and the longer this relationship went on, the more difficult her wishes became. And she felt like such a hypocrite! She was angry and miserable inside, but she forced herself to act as normal as possible around her father and Rachel. Her tantrums or protests wouldn’t do anything but push her father further from her, just as she had realized that first time when she had met Rachel, so she had simply learnt to hide her feelings and swallow her pride.
“Here we are!” Teaspoon announced as he pulled over. Lou wiped the condensation on the window with her hand and curiously glanced at the identical houses running from one end of the street to the other. They were solid, two-storied houses, with bay windows downstairs and sash windows upstairs, and all of them had small fenced gardens, each boasting of more or less excellence depending on how much care they receive from their owners.
Louise eased out of the car. It had stopped raining, so she left her raincoat and followed Teaspoon to one of the houses a few feet from where they had parked their car. As Lou wended her way along the path leading to the house, she noticed the multicolored flowers in full bloom, which embellished the very trimmed garden. So Rachel had green fingers, something that did not surprise Lou. The woman seemed skilful in everything, and Lou had yet to find something at which the woman was less than perfect. No wonder her father was so smitten with her; the woman was flawless, and this embodiment of perfection was what irritated Lou more than anything.
Just when they were close to the pillared porch, the door opened and a beaming Rachel appeared. “Hello, there!” she exclaimed. Teaspoon regaled her with one of his usual compliments whereas Lou’s greeting was brief and demure. “Louise, you look lovely.”
Lou glanced down at her own attired. Instead of her usual get-up of jeans and top, today she had donned a straight-cut dress in red hues, brown tights, and flats. Lou now wondered why she had decided to wear this since she usually was more comfortable in pants. Maybe this visit made her feel so strange and ill at ease that she had even disguised herself in this ensemble.
“Thank you,” Lou sheepishly replied to Rachel’s kind compliment.
“But please don’t stand there and come in.”
Lou and Teaspoon followed Rachel inside. While her father slid out of his jacket and handed it to Rachel, Lou studied the hall. The interior of the house was no surprise. Everything looked dainty and perfect just like Rachel. The furniture glowed spotless, and on the wall there was an arrangement of photographs of Rachel with several other people, but from where Lou stood she couldn’t make out the faces to tell which ones were her children. From the corner of her eye Lou noticed Rachel’s gaze on her, and she blushed. “You… you have a lovely house, Ms Dunne.”
Rachel smiled. “Thanks. We’ve only lived here for nine months. You should have seen this place when we moved in… not the most welcoming sight you could lay eyes on. Only boxes and this empty space. There are still unpacked boxes upstairs, but this starts to look and feel like home.” Rachel stopped to share a knowing look with Teaspoon, which made Lou wonder, but she kept quite. “And Louise, haven’t I told you that you should drop the Ms and call me Rachel?”
“I… I keep forgetting.”
Rachel kept smiling, contrasting dramatically with Lou’s stern countenance. “And I’ll keep reminding you then.” She paused for a second. “Let’s meet the boys, shall we?”
Lou shrugged her shoulders, and without a word she let Rachel steer her towards a door at the end of a narrow corridor. As they approached, Lou could hear loud voices and the sound of banging noises. Once they stopped in the doorway, Lou threw a look inside, and this time she was taken aback by what she saw. This room looked as if it did not belong to the rest of the house. It was small, with just a very battered beige sofa, a coffee table, and a television. Everything was a mess. There were magazines, CD sleeves, and candy and chocolate wrap-us scattered on the carpeted floor; the table was also covered in the debris of what seemed to have been the boys’ late lunch or maybe last night’s dinner. There was a line of soda cans surrounding the greasy box of a pizza in which there was still one cold piece. Apart from the mess, the room was deafeningly loud as the two boys sitting on the sofa hurled cheers and expletives at the TV screen, which also belted out with the sound of the video game they were playing.
Rachel vigorously rapped her knuckles against the opened door as she called, “Boys! Boys! Will you please turn the volume down?” The two boys did not shift the eyes fromt eh screen, and without waiting for an answer, Rachel exclaimed as she took a few steps into the room. “What on earth is this? Don’t tell me you’ve eaten that pizza now?”
“We were hungry, mom.”
“And you know I slaved away in the kitchen all morning to have a nice, decent meal tonight!”
“Mom, we’ll eat what you cooked,” Jimmy replied, trying to appease her mother. “Especially this one,” he added, pointed at his brother with his right thumb, “who eats like a horse.”
Rachel sighed and shared an exasperated with Teaspoon, a few feet behind her with Lou. “They’re just boys. Let them be,” he said, chuckling.
Rachel heaved another sigh, and shifted her eyes to Lou, who silently watched the whole scene from a discreet position. “Louise, as you can imagine, these are my sons, Jimmy and William.”
“Please, mom, I’m Cody. Cody. William is too common.”
Rachel did not comment on her youngest son’s rebuke. For her, he would always be her Billy, but as of lately he’s got into his mind that he wanted to go by his middle name. Probably another phase of her very peculiar third child.
“And boys, this is Louise.”
The two brothers cast a perfunctory glance at Lou, but neither they nor the girl uttered a single sound, and soon Cody and Jimmy were once again immersed in the virtual world of their video game.
“Teaspoon and I will now set the table, and in the meantime you’d better clear this dump, or I might have sudden bout of amnesia and forget about your allowance this week.”
“Yes, mom,” the two brothers chorused in unison, but still kept their eyes riveted on the screen and holding the joystick tightly in their hands as if their lives depending on it.
“Louise, why don’t you stay here and get acquainted with the boys?”
Before Lou could voice her protest, Rachel and Teaspoon were gone. The last thing she wanted to do was to befriend these two dirty, lazy teenagers. Gosh, she didn’t want to be here at all, and she was already regretting every single second of it.
Standing in the middle of the messy room, Lou felt self-conscious and exposed. Curious, she ventured a look at the screen, and in that glimpse she saw a parade of scruffy cowboys, and grotesque saloon girls being shot and their blood spurting gorily in the virtual street of an old western town. How some people, especially boys, found some pleasure in that inane activity, she didn’t know. It wasn’t she didn’t indulge in some digital games herself. Her father had a computer with Internet connection, and she also played some, but her kind of games was quite different. She normally enjoyed quizzes or those similar to the traditional Scrabble.
“So you’re Teaspoon’s little princess?”
Lou turned her eyes to see the blond, younger boy eyeing and smirking at her. The humor in her blue eyes made her own hackles rise. Lou met his gaze with a glare, folded her arms and lifted her chin naughtily.
“Why don’t you make yourself useful instead of standing there like an idiot? There are some black garbage bags in the cupboard in the corridor, and you heard what my mom told us to do.”
“I’m not cleaning your mess!” Lou snapped, outraged by the nerve of the boy. “Who do you think I am? Your servant?”
“No, but you’d surely want to make a good impression on us. Your daddy might marry my mommy sometime in the future, and I bet you don’t want to get on our bad side.”
“Cody, stop fooling around, and concentrate. I’m giving you a good thrashing already.”
“You wish,” Cody replied cockily, and this time he moved his attention from Louise to the videogame.
Meanwhile, Lou had turned her back to the two boys, her face flaming with fury. She wasn’t sure what infuriated her more; this boy’s stupidity, or the ludicrous, but probable, notion of her father and Rachel Dunne tying the knot. The latter was the worst thing that could happen. The prospect was bad enough before meeting Rachel’s son, but now realizing what they were like, the idea was totally appalling.
Some minutes later Rachel appeared to announce that dinner was ready. Lou was glad to escape from the sole presence of these two nasty boys, and she hoped that dinner could be over soon. The dining room was not very spacious, with just enough room for a table and its chairs, and a glassware and crockery cabinet in one corner. There was a chair that accessed the kitchen and from which Rachel and Teaspoon came carrying platters and bowls full of food. Lou was sitting next to Rachel, who was at one extreme of the table, and opposite her was her father. On her right there was the least horrible brother, and the nearly nasty one was opposite him.
“I’ve made a roast,” Rachel remarked. “I wasn’t sure what to cook, and your dad told me you’d like this.”
Lou simply nodded at Rachel’s questioning look, and then the platters and bowls were passed around. Louise helped herself to some meat, a big portion of boiled peas and carrots, and a tiny dollop of mashed potatoes. “Let’s dig in now,” Rachel exclaimed, picking up her fork and knife.
“It smells delicious, and I’m sure it must taste as good,” Teaspoon complimented her with a smile.
Louise grabbed her fork, and even though she did not have much appetite, she forced herself to eat. The sooner they ate, the sooner they’d leave. Rachel and Teaspoon were conversing, but she did not pay them any heed, and she heard the two boys snickering and bickering foolishly in low tones, and out of the corner of her eyes, she could see the elder brother hurling tiny pieces of bread at the other boy. Then, all of a sudden, as she was about to fork some vegetables into her mouth, she was startled as something warm and sticky slapped her face. Her fork fell from her hand, clattering on the plate at the same time as a yelp echoed in the room. “Billy!!!” Lou’s eyes turned to Rachel, who looked livid, her usual amenable bearing totally gone, and she lifted her hand to touch her face and find her right side smeared with a lump of mashed potatoes. “Look what you’ve done!” Rachel continued her furious reproof.
“I’m sorry, mom. It wasn’t meant for her, but for Jimmy.”
“Do you think that justifies your disgraceful table manners? What will Louise and her father think of us? Stop acting as if you were still five!!! And Jimmy, that goes for you as well. You’re older and should know better!!!” Her tone mellowed as she turned to Lou. “Honey, I’m so, so sorry. Why don’t you clean up in the bathroom?”
Rachel showed Lou the way to the bathroom and gave her a towel and some soap to wash the goo off her face. The woman was all solicitous and apologetic even though it was not her fault. Lou heard her words half-heartily as she was even angrier and more upset than she had previously been. This was turning out to be a more taxing experience than she had counted on.
When Lou finally came out of the bathroom clean and fresh, and joined the rest, Cody apologized to her contritely, but she could see it was just a front, and his mother surely had put him to it.
Lou did not say much as she ate. Maybe later her father would tell her off for being surly, aloof, and impolite, but she did not care. After the way Billy Cody and his brother had treated her, she could well be rude as well.
When Rachel had served desert - sugar-free ice-cream for Louise, and normal mouth-watering chocolate mouse for the others - Lou was already in slightly better spirits as the end of the night was closer. The ice-cream was not as bland and tasteless as some other brands she had tasted before. This was exactly what was running in her mind when she heard Teaspoon clear her throat and say, “Lou… boys… Rachel and I would like to tell you something… something important.”
Lou lifted her eyes. Teaspoon and Rachel were holding hands and smiling. A cold fear crept into her stomach, and her mind started repeating over and over again, ‘Please no, oh please no.’ Then her hopes crashed as Rachel opened her mouth and said, “Teaspoon has asked me to marry him, and I’ve accepted.”
Birch Creek, April 2003
Running her index finger over the steamed glass, Lou made up shapeless forms on the car window. Her eyes kept focused on the rain falling outside, mirroring her present low mood. Today she and her father were driving to Rachel’s place where she would meet her sons, which was the last thing she wanted to do.
Over the last few months she had seen plenty of Rachel Dunne either in their apartment when she visited or in some other venues when her brother let the woman tag along in their outings. Louise had not got past her initial feelings; she did not really hated Rachel, but she did not want her to be her father’s girlfriend. So every single day Lou hoped and prayed Rachel and her dad would split up, but her prayers were unanswered so far. They were still together, and from what she could see, there was no reason to believe they would break up any time soon. Actually, they got on like a house on fire. Her father looked happy, always laughing and joking with Rachel, and Lou felt mean for wanting to thwart her obvious joy. Yet, she couldn’t help herself. All she wanted was for things to return to the way they had been before Rachel, and the longer this relationship went on, the more difficult her wishes became. And she felt like such a hypocrite! She was angry and miserable inside, but she forced herself to act as normal as possible around her father and Rachel. Her tantrums or protests wouldn’t do anything but push her father further from her, just as she had realized that first time when she had met Rachel, so she had simply learnt to hide her feelings and swallow her pride.
“Here we are!” Teaspoon announced as he pulled over. Lou wiped the condensation on the window with her hand and curiously glanced at the identical houses running from one end of the street to the other. They were solid, two-storied houses, with bay windows downstairs and sash windows upstairs, and all of them had small fenced gardens, each boasting of more or less excellence depending on how much care they receive from their owners.
Louise eased out of the car. It had stopped raining, so she left her raincoat and followed Teaspoon to one of the houses a few feet from where they had parked their car. As Lou wended her way along the path leading to the house, she noticed the multicolored flowers in full bloom, which embellished the very trimmed garden. So Rachel had green fingers, something that did not surprise Lou. The woman seemed skilful in everything, and Lou had yet to find something at which the woman was less than perfect. No wonder her father was so smitten with her; the woman was flawless, and this embodiment of perfection was what irritated Lou more than anything.
Just when they were close to the pillared porch, the door opened and a beaming Rachel appeared. “Hello, there!” she exclaimed. Teaspoon regaled her with one of his usual compliments whereas Lou’s greeting was brief and demure. “Louise, you look lovely.”
Lou glanced down at her own attired. Instead of her usual get-up of jeans and top, today she had donned a straight-cut dress in red hues, brown tights, and flats. Lou now wondered why she had decided to wear this since she usually was more comfortable in pants. Maybe this visit made her feel so strange and ill at ease that she had even disguised herself in this ensemble.
“Thank you,” Lou sheepishly replied to Rachel’s kind compliment.
“But please don’t stand there and come in.”
Lou and Teaspoon followed Rachel inside. While her father slid out of his jacket and handed it to Rachel, Lou studied the hall. The interior of the house was no surprise. Everything looked dainty and perfect just like Rachel. The furniture glowed spotless, and on the wall there was an arrangement of photographs of Rachel with several other people, but from where Lou stood she couldn’t make out the faces to tell which ones were her children. From the corner of her eye Lou noticed Rachel’s gaze on her, and she blushed. “You… you have a lovely house, Ms Dunne.”
Rachel smiled. “Thanks. We’ve only lived here for nine months. You should have seen this place when we moved in… not the most welcoming sight you could lay eyes on. Only boxes and this empty space. There are still unpacked boxes upstairs, but this starts to look and feel like home.” Rachel stopped to share a knowing look with Teaspoon, which made Lou wonder, but she kept quite. “And Louise, haven’t I told you that you should drop the Ms and call me Rachel?”
“I… I keep forgetting.”
Rachel kept smiling, contrasting dramatically with Lou’s stern countenance. “And I’ll keep reminding you then.” She paused for a second. “Let’s meet the boys, shall we?”
Lou shrugged her shoulders, and without a word she let Rachel steer her towards a door at the end of a narrow corridor. As they approached, Lou could hear loud voices and the sound of banging noises. Once they stopped in the doorway, Lou threw a look inside, and this time she was taken aback by what she saw. This room looked as if it did not belong to the rest of the house. It was small, with just a very battered beige sofa, a coffee table, and a television. Everything was a mess. There were magazines, CD sleeves, and candy and chocolate wrap-us scattered on the carpeted floor; the table was also covered in the debris of what seemed to have been the boys’ late lunch or maybe last night’s dinner. There was a line of soda cans surrounding the greasy box of a pizza in which there was still one cold piece. Apart from the mess, the room was deafeningly loud as the two boys sitting on the sofa hurled cheers and expletives at the TV screen, which also belted out with the sound of the video game they were playing.
Rachel vigorously rapped her knuckles against the opened door as she called, “Boys! Boys! Will you please turn the volume down?” The two boys did not shift the eyes fromt eh screen, and without waiting for an answer, Rachel exclaimed as she took a few steps into the room. “What on earth is this? Don’t tell me you’ve eaten that pizza now?”
“We were hungry, mom.”
“And you know I slaved away in the kitchen all morning to have a nice, decent meal tonight!”
“Mom, we’ll eat what you cooked,” Jimmy replied, trying to appease her mother. “Especially this one,” he added, pointed at his brother with his right thumb, “who eats like a horse.”
Rachel sighed and shared an exasperated with Teaspoon, a few feet behind her with Lou. “They’re just boys. Let them be,” he said, chuckling.
Rachel heaved another sigh, and shifted her eyes to Lou, who silently watched the whole scene from a discreet position. “Louise, as you can imagine, these are my sons, Jimmy and William.”
“Please, mom, I’m Cody. Cody. William is too common.”
Rachel did not comment on her youngest son’s rebuke. For her, he would always be her Billy, but as of lately he’s got into his mind that he wanted to go by his middle name. Probably another phase of her very peculiar third child.
“And boys, this is Louise.”
The two brothers cast a perfunctory glance at Lou, but neither they nor the girl uttered a single sound, and soon Cody and Jimmy were once again immersed in the virtual world of their video game.
“Teaspoon and I will now set the table, and in the meantime you’d better clear this dump, or I might have sudden bout of amnesia and forget about your allowance this week.”
“Yes, mom,” the two brothers chorused in unison, but still kept their eyes riveted on the screen and holding the joystick tightly in their hands as if their lives depending on it.
“Louise, why don’t you stay here and get acquainted with the boys?”
Before Lou could voice her protest, Rachel and Teaspoon were gone. The last thing she wanted to do was to befriend these two dirty, lazy teenagers. Gosh, she didn’t want to be here at all, and she was already regretting every single second of it.
Standing in the middle of the messy room, Lou felt self-conscious and exposed. Curious, she ventured a look at the screen, and in that glimpse she saw a parade of scruffy cowboys, and grotesque saloon girls being shot and their blood spurting gorily in the virtual street of an old western town. How some people, especially boys, found some pleasure in that inane activity, she didn’t know. It wasn’t she didn’t indulge in some digital games herself. Her father had a computer with Internet connection, and she also played some, but her kind of games was quite different. She normally enjoyed quizzes or those similar to the traditional Scrabble.
“So you’re Teaspoon’s little princess?”
Lou turned her eyes to see the blond, younger boy eyeing and smirking at her. The humor in her blue eyes made her own hackles rise. Lou met his gaze with a glare, folded her arms and lifted her chin naughtily.
“Why don’t you make yourself useful instead of standing there like an idiot? There are some black garbage bags in the cupboard in the corridor, and you heard what my mom told us to do.”
“I’m not cleaning your mess!” Lou snapped, outraged by the nerve of the boy. “Who do you think I am? Your servant?”
“No, but you’d surely want to make a good impression on us. Your daddy might marry my mommy sometime in the future, and I bet you don’t want to get on our bad side.”
“Cody, stop fooling around, and concentrate. I’m giving you a good thrashing already.”
“You wish,” Cody replied cockily, and this time he moved his attention from Louise to the videogame.
Meanwhile, Lou had turned her back to the two boys, her face flaming with fury. She wasn’t sure what infuriated her more; this boy’s stupidity, or the ludicrous, but probable, notion of her father and Rachel Dunne tying the knot. The latter was the worst thing that could happen. The prospect was bad enough before meeting Rachel’s son, but now realizing what they were like, the idea was totally appalling.
Some minutes later Rachel appeared to announce that dinner was ready. Lou was glad to escape from the sole presence of these two nasty boys, and she hoped that dinner could be over soon. The dining room was not very spacious, with just enough room for a table and its chairs, and a glassware and crockery cabinet in one corner. There was a chair that accessed the kitchen and from which Rachel and Teaspoon came carrying platters and bowls full of food. Lou was sitting next to Rachel, who was at one extreme of the table, and opposite her was her father. On her right there was the least horrible brother, and the nearly nasty one was opposite him.
“I’ve made a roast,” Rachel remarked. “I wasn’t sure what to cook, and your dad told me you’d like this.”
Lou simply nodded at Rachel’s questioning look, and then the platters and bowls were passed around. Louise helped herself to some meat, a big portion of boiled peas and carrots, and a tiny dollop of mashed potatoes. “Let’s dig in now,” Rachel exclaimed, picking up her fork and knife.
“It smells delicious, and I’m sure it must taste as good,” Teaspoon complimented her with a smile.
Louise grabbed her fork, and even though she did not have much appetite, she forced herself to eat. The sooner they ate, the sooner they’d leave. Rachel and Teaspoon were conversing, but she did not pay them any heed, and she heard the two boys snickering and bickering foolishly in low tones, and out of the corner of her eyes, she could see the elder brother hurling tiny pieces of bread at the other boy. Then, all of a sudden, as she was about to fork some vegetables into her mouth, she was startled as something warm and sticky slapped her face. Her fork fell from her hand, clattering on the plate at the same time as a yelp echoed in the room. “Billy!!!” Lou’s eyes turned to Rachel, who looked livid, her usual amenable bearing totally gone, and she lifted her hand to touch her face and find her right side smeared with a lump of mashed potatoes. “Look what you’ve done!” Rachel continued her furious reproof.
“I’m sorry, mom. It wasn’t meant for her, but for Jimmy.”
“Do you think that justifies your disgraceful table manners? What will Louise and her father think of us? Stop acting as if you were still five!!! And Jimmy, that goes for you as well. You’re older and should know better!!!” Her tone mellowed as she turned to Lou. “Honey, I’m so, so sorry. Why don’t you clean up in the bathroom?”
Rachel showed Lou the way to the bathroom and gave her a towel and some soap to wash the goo off her face. The woman was all solicitous and apologetic even though it was not her fault. Lou heard her words half-heartily as she was even angrier and more upset than she had previously been. This was turning out to be a more taxing experience than she had counted on.
When Lou finally came out of the bathroom clean and fresh, and joined the rest, Cody apologized to her contritely, but she could see it was just a front, and his mother surely had put him to it.
Lou did not say much as she ate. Maybe later her father would tell her off for being surly, aloof, and impolite, but she did not care. After the way Billy Cody and his brother had treated her, she could well be rude as well.
When Rachel had served desert - sugar-free ice-cream for Louise, and normal mouth-watering chocolate mouse for the others - Lou was already in slightly better spirits as the end of the night was closer. The ice-cream was not as bland and tasteless as some other brands she had tasted before. This was exactly what was running in her mind when she heard Teaspoon clear her throat and say, “Lou… boys… Rachel and I would like to tell you something… something important.”
Lou lifted her eyes. Teaspoon and Rachel were holding hands and smiling. A cold fear crept into her stomach, and her mind started repeating over and over again, ‘Please no, oh please no.’ Then her hopes crashed as Rachel opened her mouth and said, “Teaspoon has asked me to marry him, and I’ve accepted.”