Chapter 28 : Early Saturday Morning

I was painting. It was sometime after midnight on Saturday morning and I was dressed in my favorite long flannel pyjamas with panties and a vest underneath. It’s amazing how much security you can feel from just having proper underwear on. Oh, and since I was painting, of course I had thrown on a painting shirt over the top. It had been bugging me for days that I hadn’t had time to finish the second painting on my closet doors. Well I’d been lying in my bed, not sleeping, and I figured – why not do it now? So I was painting.

The other thing I’d figured out while I was lying in my bed not sleeping was that I hadn’t actually slept on my own since last Saturday night or maybe it was Sunday night – my memory was a bit vague about a few details. Every night since then, I’d either been sharing a bed with someone, or not been able to sleep properly until I went and crawled into someone else’s bed, or simply not slept properly. I guess I understand that for some of those nights I’d been really upset so it wasn’t that surprising that I would have trouble sleeping. The annoying thing was that I’d gone to bed last night feeling more or less okay. Sure, I’d had a fight with Dan, but I’d said I was sorry to him before I went to bed. Apart from that, I was feeling okay. So why couldn’t I go to sleep?

I love the way oil paint sits so heavy on the brush. You can push it and shape it or smear it onto your canvas. You can stretch it out thin or pile it up thick. It has texture and the colors are full – not washed out like some water-paints are. I love to paint. You can lose yourself in the painting – building up layer after layer – slowly but surely pulling a picture out of the mess of colors. I love painting – so I was painting.

Once I’d worked out that I was having a problem sleeping without someone else in the bed, you would think the solution would be obvious. All I had to do was creep down the hallway into Dan’s room and crawl into his bed and cuddle up to him and I’d be as snug as a bug in a rug. The only flaw in that plan was that I’d overheard Mum and Dan saying this morning that if I didn’t stay away from him, then he would have to move out of home. I didn’t think I could cope with that right now, so that meant I had to stay away from him. I’d sat in the bathroom after hearing that conversation and decided the short term pain of not being able to sleep in the bed with Dan was worth putting up with if it saved me from the big gi-normous heartache of him moving out of home. What really worried me was that maybe that wouldn’t be enough. Maybe I shouldn’t touch Dan at all. If that’s what it took to stop Dan from moving out, then that’s what I would do.

So now I had a new plan. I wouldn’t hug Dan. I wouldn’t kiss Dan. I wouldn’t hold his hand and I certainly wouldn’t crawl into bed with him. I’d mostly done that today anyway, except for that one time in the middle of the football game when I was kissing all the players. I’d kissed Dan too but he’d asked me to so that doesn’t count – does it? He’d touched me a couple of times, during the evening – grabbed my hands, wrestled with me, blew raspberries on my tummy – but all that doesn’t count – does it? I mean if he does it to me, it’s not my fault is it – so I can’t be punished by them making Dan move out of home. That makes sense, doesn’t it?

I had Nana’s locket around my neck. That had helped me all day. I could hold it tight and think of the pictures of Nana and Mum inside and pretend they were hugging me when I felt a bit low. I discovered it didn’t help me go to sleep though. So I was painting.

I’d stood in the middle of my room and held Nana’s locket in my hand. All the various painted Becs had looked down at me from their positions on my wall.

“Hello my name is Rebecca and I’m a Dan-oholic!”

“Hi Rebecca!” they all sung out in unison.

“It’s been fifteen hours since the last time I hugged Dan.”

“Aaah!” they all said.

I didn’t know what to say after that. That little scene had appeared in several TV programs and films that I’d seen. It’s usually about people who drink too much. One time it was about someone who ate too much chocolate. They always cut away to another scene after that line though so I had no idea what comes next. So I picked up my paintbrush and started painting.

I couldn’t crawl into bed with Dan and I couldn’t sleep in my own bed. I couldn’t get into bed with my parents because, well, Dad went all weird every time I did that until I couldn’t stand it anymore and stopped trying. I suppose I could have curled up with Angie but she tended to move a lot during the night. Every time she turned over, she’d fling her arms and legs around. It was like sleeping with a thrashing machine – I don’t know what a thrashing machine is, that’s Mom’s expression, but you sure get hit often enough to feel as if you’ve been thrashed. Hold on, surely they wouldn’t have a machine they put children into and it thrashed them – would they?

I guess that leaves Tara. I was kind of leaving her as a last resort – in case I got desperate if you know what I mean. Tara and I have a sort of love/hate thing going and right now it leans a bit more towards the hate side of things. After all, I had probably just got her grounded by telling Dan about how she’d gone to a party full of high schoolers. She was a bit drunk too, so that didn’t help. I guess what I’m saying is that I wasn’t sure if I’d be welcome if I tried to cuddle up to Tara right now. So I was painting.

It was the middle of the night and the house was silent. The only sound was the scritching noise of my brush stirring up the paint on my palette and depositing it on the wooden door of my closet. I was up to that stage where you keep stepping back and looking at the whole painting, then stepping up and doing two little dabs to bring out the nose a bit more, then stepping away and looking again – and so on.

It’s after midnight. That means there’s only one more day to go until I’m a teenager. A thirteenth birthday is an important day in someone’s life. It’s like a milestone or something. It’s the day you officially stop being a child and start being a teenager. I remember when Tara turned thirteen – that was only a year and a half, nearly two years ago. She had two parties. One party was the family one for all the relatives where the adults sat around and talked about adult stuff while we children crowded into Tara’s bedroom and put on some real music and talked about real stuff. She also had a ‘friends party’ where the house was full of girls and they all made a fuss about Angie but ignored me. I wasn’t sure if that was a bad thing or a good thing.

A couple of weeks ago, Mum and Dad had asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday. At the time it had been obvious. I wanted to have Liz over for a sleepover. That kind of developed into us going to a movie together in the afternoon, then her coming over, and then she would be staying for the family party on Sunday. Now that it was about to happen, I was kind of wishing I had more friends so that I could have a house full of noise and excitement. Was it something wrong with me that meant I didn’t have enough friends to have a party? There were going to be just two of us. How pathetic is that? What were we going to do? Put on our party dresses and sit staring at each other? How many party games can you play with two people? Pass the parcel would be downright silly! I’m so pathetic.

I stopped painting. The stupid thing was finished anyway. It wasn’t very good. The hands were all wrong and the broken mirror didn’t look even a bit like it was supposed to. Maybe I should scrape it all off and have a plain white door. That would look better than this. The only thing that stopped me throwing my palette and brushes at it in disgust was the life-time of training from The Mother about how to treat artwork (no matter how bad) and equipment. I supposed I should clean up the brushes and stuff, but to do that properly I’d have to go out to Mum’s studio and no way was I going out to the shed in the middle of the night. I pulled the plastic film-wrap back over the palette so it wouldn’t dry out and put it back in the corner where it had lived for the last couple of days.

I looked around the room. Bed? No point! Homework? In the middle of the night? No way! Computer? All my regular e-friends would be off-line at this time of the night. Wait a minute. I had one cyber-friend who was always there. She wasn’t very chatty, but at least she would be a friendly face. I woke up my computer (password, of course) and typed in Cindi’s URL. The stupid Internet Nanny program that Dad had installed rejected it, of course. That wasn’t too surprising really because after all, Cindi is on a porn site. That was okay. I logged into it using Dad’s password and changed Cindi’s site to “permitted.” There she was, laid out flat on her bed, her naked skin glistening in the light. She stared out at me and I smiled to see her.

Dad’s password had taken me ages to find. I’d tried all the obvious names and dates and combinations. I guess he was too smart to use an easy password. In the end I called Dad into the room and asked him to change something in the program. Then I stood back and watched out of the corner of my eye while he typed in his password. I memorised the way his fingers moved on the keyboard. It was pretty sneaky, I guess, and I felt a bit bad about tricking Dad like that. It wasn’t that I wanted to be able to look at sex stuff all the time, but the stupid program blocked out half the internet sites in the world because there was some word on the site that was on its banned list. It was frustrating. It was like using a dictionary with every second page torn out. I did a food assignment and it blocked any site that talked about Virgin Olive Oil. Any other sort of Olive Oil was okay, but apparently I’d be corrupted if I found out about Virgin Olive Oil. Go figure!

I slumped on my chair and looked at Cindi. I liked her. She seemed so calm and serene. She looked like she was about my age, but she was so much more confident. She looked so happy. Mum was convinced that she was probably being abused by her parents or had been kidnapped and was being held captive or something, but I wasn’t so sure. How could a girl smile like that if she was being abused? Someone who’d been treated like that would surely be miserable – even more miserable than me.

Wait a minute? Why was I feeling miserable? I’d been so happy before. I’d had such a great time at the football game, and then in the car. Then I’d been in that house and punched that high schooler in the nose – that wasn’t so great. But I’d had a mostly good day. It’s hard to describe my mood after the football game. It was like I was so excited that I was giddy. Then Lance was kissing me and I don’t know why I let him do that. Then I was at the pizza place and that was a bit exciting and a bit weird. Then I was going into that party which was pretty stupid – especially when I went back the second time on my own. Then, first the quarterback, and then his girlfriend, had pretty much attacked me and not once did I really feel scared. Okay it was scary, but I wasn’t frightened. It was almost as if I was a little bit drunk. I hadn’t had any, like alcohol drinks, so why would I be drunk? It was almost as if I was drunk on the excitement of it all. Can you get drunk on excitement? Drunk enough to stop thinking clearly?

And now the excitement was over and I was feeling all sad. I wasn’t actually crying, but I sure felt down. I reached out and stroked Cindi’s arm – well I stroked my computer screen where the picture of her arm appeared. Cindi looked so happy. I wondered if Cindi had times when she felt sad for no reason.

I remembered that I’d done a Lino print of Cindi back in art class this morning. I wondered what I’d done with it. Then I figured out that it was in my bag, and that my bag was still in the trunk of Dan’s car. I’d forgotten all about it. Well it could stay there until morning.

I wrapped my arms around myself and hugged myself tightly. Last time I’d felt this bad, Dan had hugged me and stroked me and kissed me until I felt better – and the time before, and the time before that. But there could be no Dan this time. Not any more. There was just me – me and Cindi – me and Cindi and Lucy. I stood up and went over to my closet. There, sitting up on the high shelf was Lucy, my old doll. She was looking a bit tired and old but she sparked so many memories in my heart. I reached her down and hugged her to my chest. I had to leave a lot of my childhood stuff behind in England but I’d made sure Lucy came with me. I went back and sat down in my chair and introduced Lucy to Cindi.

I don’t know if it was because she was all faded, or what, but some of Lucy’s old magic seemed to have disappeared. She didn’t give me as much comfort as she used to. I hugged her harder but it didn’t seem to help. I looked up at Cindi and sighed in despair. Maybe I could go and look at Dan. If I didn’t touch him, then that wouldn’t count – would it?

I stood with my jaw wide open. There was someone already in bed with Dan. I was going to rip Tara’s hair out. If I couldn’t curl up next to Dan, then no way was I going to let her get away with it. Then my brain sort of whacked me across the ear. Don’t be so stupid, Bec. Don’t forget Pearl! It was most likely Pearl – but how to know for sure?

I went back to the hallway and put the hallway light on. Back in Dan’s room with the door only half open, light spilled in but didn’t really light up the room. There on the floor was a scattering of clothes. I recognized the jacket Pearl had been wearing. I sighed quietly to myself. It kind of surprised me that Pearl had gone to bed with Dan after their first date – I suppose it was their second date if you counted lunch. According to Mum, it was supposed to be a rule that you don’t have sex with a guy after the first date. Most of Dan’s girls seemed to ignore that rule. I had thought Pearl was a bit different but apparently she wasn’t that different. At least she was a girl that I approved of.

I crept up to where I could make out her face tucked into the side of Dan’s chest. She looked so relaxed. She was obviously deeply asleep. I wasn’t worried about her being cold; sleeping next to Dan was like sleeping with an oversized hot-water bottle. I was still holding Lucy, so I held her up and gave her a good look at Pearl. Then I whispered in Lucy’s ear that I wanted her to meet Pearl because she was Dan’s latest girl and if I had my way, Pearl would be around for quite a while. Of course, Pearl being in the bed with Dan made it completely impossible for me to slide in and cuddle up to Dan. Not that I was going to – after all, I promised myself that I wouldn’t. But even still, now there was absolutely no chance of doing that. Pearl would probably find it a bit freaky to wake up in the morning and find me lying in there with them. Especially since I could see proof that neither of them was wearing anything – absolutely ALL of their clothes were strewn around on the floor. Pearl struck me as the sort who would look after her clothes better than that, but I’d read enough romance stories to know that sometimes clothes ended up strewn on the floor – it was a part of the whole sex thing. It was how you were supposed to work out they were having sex without the book actually saying it. Maybe they weren’t allowed to say it in those types of books.

Pearl’s jacket was going to end up all crinkled and creased if it stayed where it had fallen. I went back to my room and found a coat hanger. The jacket was soon hanging nicely from the knob on the door of Dan’s closet. I picked up and folded her jeans and sat them on the shelf under where her top was hanging. A t-shirt and bra went on top of that to make a neat pile. I was about to put her panties onto the pile when I figured she might not appreciate having to re-wear panties. I certainly wouldn’t if it was me. She was about my size, so I went back to my bedroom and found a clean, newish pair for her that I added to her little pile of clothes. Then I went to the bathroom and rinsed out her panties in the basin and hung them up to dry. Maybe they’d be dry by morning. Back in Dan’s room I tidied up Dan’s fallen clothes too, then left and quietly pulled the door closed behind me.

Lucy hugged herself under one arm as I flipped off the hallway light and wandered back through the house.

The dim light spilling into The Parents’ room didn’t reveal the expected two lumps separated by an acre of empty bed. Instead there was one extra big lump in the middle. I stood in the darkness at the foot of their bed and tilted my head to the side. This was unexpected – in a nice sort of way. They were lying there fast asleep, all cuddled together. I was relieved to see that. My last few midnight visits had almost convinced me they didn’t do that anymore. It was kind of sweet that my parents still liked to cuddle up to each other sometimes. It was kind of reassuring that my father, who found it hard to show us any affection, could at least cuddle with my mother at night – even if he didn’t do it every night.

As quietly as I could, I backed off into the darkness in the corner of the room. In the corner sat a wooden chest with a cushion on top, turning it into a seat. I lowered myself onto the chest and curled my legs up underneath. I hugged Lucy and watched my parents sleep with a gentle smile on my face.

The gentle harmony of their relaxed breathing rose and fell in a soft duet. Then one set of breathing faltered and changed, there was the smallest stirring under the blankets as an arm shifted. One of them was awake. Was it Mum or Dad? I couldn’t tell.

There was stillness for a moment, then small repeated movements under the blanket as if hair was being stroked - or maybe an arm. The other person’s breathing changed – now they were both awake. I could hear soft kisses, then a murmur, then quiet almost unspoken words, then – of all things – a soft giggle. More stroking, more murmurs, more unheard words. Then there was a slow and careful rearrangement under the blankets. Then it was happening. I silently let out a breath I hadn’t been aware I was holding. In the stillness of the night, with me as a silent unknown witness, my parents were making love.