Who would have believed that Robert Finley would one day taste like dirt on our lips?
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I grew up watching my parents being the most lovingly annoying couple there could ever be. And I mean that in every sense of the word.
My mother, with her red hair and sea blue eyes, would wake up every morning and sit at that kitchen table with her husband, the blonde-haired, brown eyes guy, discussing how best to make our lives better, or would I correctly say, miserable.
At that table twelve years ago, I'm sure with their heads touching each other, they made a decision to send me to ballet school simply because I could lift my leg to my head without struggling for balance, and I could cross my legs at the ankles then bend myself low to the ground and stand like that for minutes. No one taught me that trick, I just found myself doing it and got sentenced to ballet school once I turned three because of it.
I didn't like ballet school even when I excelled at the art and my mother knew, but she said it was either that or gymnastics. I had to find a way to channel that talent of mine to make me become a superstar.
And Robert Finley Junior? My brother, still at that table, was sentenced to a life of cycling, although he enjoyed it very much. He could race, or outrace, almost anyone even in a vehicle and he got that from our dad.
Everyone who saw us concluded that we were a happy family, including me. I used to stand at the top of the stairs and watch them whispering at that kitchen table while buttering bread or chopping onions and I would wish that my husband would be that conspiratory with me. Well, not until our entire family fell like a pack of dominos.
My father, Robert Finley, returned from work that evening with his eyes as red as his favorite wine and a horrible stench coming from him like he had been frolicking with dead rats.
“Welcome darling.…” as usual she left everything she was doing and went over to take his suitcase but suddenly stopped. “My goodness, have you been drinking?”
“Take your filthy hands off me”
She gasped, and we all gasped. I grabbed Robert Junior and we headed upstairs immediately I caught my mother's instructive eye. We both lay on our beds as still as possible, waiting to hear any sound at all from then but there was nothing. When I heard that soft, snoring sound coming from the other bed, I quickly tiptoed down the stairs.
There she was, sitting at that same table where they used to sit together, drinking something I couldn't identify.
“Mom?” I hurried to throw my arms around her neck, whispering that everything was going to be fine even when I didn't think so. It was one of the few times I had ever seen my mom shed tears. “Did he hit you?”
She shook her head vigorously then took my hands in hers.
“Your father has never come home drunk before, It means something is very wrong, and that's the first time he hasn't told me what's wrong too”
I released a deep sigh and stroked her hair away from her face then cupped her tear-streaked face with my palms,
“I'm sure he'll come around. He's merely in a bad place right now”
Deep down I knew it wasn't just that but I was hoping, hoping that I would come down the following morning and see them whispering at that table but I never did.
I would come down every morning and see my mother sitting at that table, drinking herself away.
I had to become the mother to Robert Finley Junior. Preparing him for school, fixing breakfast and lunch, and dropping him off at his cycling classes.
I barely spied on my father except for a few times when he was either returning completely drunk from somewhere or leaving the house somewhere.
Everything was a mess.
In those days, I met green eyes Julian who took the time to listen to everything I had to say. He didn't care that all I did was rattle off to him about my parents and their sudden misunderstanding that had cost our family, he simply stared out at me from those green eyes and curly brown hair, offering his ears and his tender kisses.
Hanging around with Julian cost Robert Junior too. I began to forget to pick him up from his classes, I didn't want a kid tagging along when I was with my boyfriend, and I was too tired to read him stories when I returned from my escapades with Julian. He was eight for God's sake!
Nobody knew that anything was wrong until we woke up one morning and just didn't find Julian. We searched everywhere, took his pictures to the cops, and asked around at school. There was nothing.
Three days after Junior went missing, I slumped at school.
I woke up to my mother holding my hands at the hospital, sobbing softly. I knew before she said it that I was pregnant.
My father's sudden withdrawal from the family because he lost his job, as I later got to find out from Mom, had turned my mother into a drunk, made me a teenage mother, and made my younger brother go missing.
What else could be called the Domino Effect?