Chapter 41: Monday Evening Part 2

The cook served dessert almost as soon as we returned to the dining room. She served Laura first and then me. I smiled at her when she did that and she winked at me. Then she served the two parents and the other children. Dessert was a slice of home-made apple crumble – fairly similar to the way Mum makes it. There was custard in a little serving boat and whipped cream to go on top. The whipped cream had cinnamon whipped through it which gave it an interesting flavor. Mrs DiMartino handed the custard boat to Laura so that she could serve herself first before handing it to me. I smiled a quiet little smile to myself when I saw that.

I thought the apple crumble was delicious. Laura hardly touched hers. Frederick whined once that he hated apple but he was immediately scolded and told to be silent by Mrs DiMartino. After that he didn’t make a sound. He coated the apple crumble with custard and proceeded to eat the custard and the crumble and leave as much of the apple on his plate as he thought he could get away with.

We all finished eating as much of that as we were going to and then sat around letting the food digest. There had been a few scattered discussions around the table but nothing interesting. I was watching Melissa pretty carefully. Laura’s comments had made me think. I realized that she was pretty good at hiding what was going on inside her head. I also realized that the happy and cheerful Melissa was pretense. I guess I recognized it more easily than most because I sometimes do the same thing.

After having been silent since returning from the bathroom, Laura stirred and announced, “I have something to say.”

Mr DiMartino scowled. “What makes you think we are interested in hearing what you have to say? You’ve already said far too much this weekend.”

“Father, I’m sitting here as a guest. Are you going to start being rude to your guests now? For as long as I can remember, you’ve been telling me how guests in our house should be treated. Are you going to break your own rules? Tonight I’m a guest. Are you going to be rude to me and turn all those countless lectures into lies?”

Laura’s words were angry but she delivered the entire speech in a controlled, superior sort of tone. Mr DiMartino was less controlled.

“You are not in a position to accuse me of telling lies.”

Laura sat there and glared at her father. He blustered for a moment, but then he raised both hands in surrender and sat back.

“Well, go on then. Say what you want to say.”

Laura sat still for a moment with everyone watching her and waiting. I think she was composing herself, or maybe she was thinking of how to say whatever she wanted to say.

“I actually wanted to thank Rebecca and her brother for helping me at the party last Friday night. I haven’t actually said it and I should. I got myself into a bad situation and I couldn’t get myself out of it. I’m glad Rebecca and her brother were able to help me and bring me home. So, thank you. Will you please tell Dan as well?”

She had been looking down at the table and didn’t look at me until the very end but she had sounded sincere and it had seemed important to her to say all that in front of her family so I nodded at her.

“And I have a question. Father, have you actually thanked her as well? I know you said you wanted to, but I haven’t actually heard you say it.”

Mr DiMartino blustered a little bit. “What do you mean I haven’t thanked her? This whole evening is about thanking her. Why do you think she is here?”

He turned to me and lowered his voice a bit. “You understood that, I hope. You understood that I invited you here as a thank you. That is why you are here.”

“But Father, you haven’t actually said it, have you?”

He spread his arms wide as if to say, “Isn’t it obvious?”

Melissa joined in the conversation. “Father, sometimes you have to actually say things like that. You can’t always assume people will understand what you mean by seeing what you do.”

Both Laura and Mr DiMartino seemed a little bit surprised that Melissa had spoken up like that. I wondered if maybe the two of them arguing was a normal thing and that Melissa usually kept out of it. Laura relaxed back into her chair and stared curiously at Melissa. Mr DiMartino looked at her thoughtfully for a moment and then shook his head slightly and turned to me.

“Rebecca, I was always taught that actions speak louder than words. Apparently in this case my actions have not been loud enough. I do genuinely wish to thank you and your brother for helping Laura. Without your intervention, the situation would likely have become even more serious. You have my sincere gratitude.”

I managed to mumble something appropriate in response. Then I realized I was mumbling and tried to get Little Miss Rebecca back, but she seemed to have abandoned me.

The cook came in to clear the plates away. When she removed my plate, she laid a folded piece of paper on the table in front of me. I smiled at her, but curiosity dragged my attention back to the piece of paper sitting on the table. I picked it up and opened it. Inside was a recipe for beef medallions with red wine and mushroom sauce. It was all in neat handwriting, in perfect English. At the bottom, she had written, “Muchas gracias. Me ha hecho feliz. Ustéd es una pequeña muy valiente. Lopita.”

As far as I can tell from my four months of learning Spanish, it means something like “Thank you very much. To me (something) happy. You are one (something) and brave.” It was nice to know that she had a name – Lopita. The DiMartinos didn’t seem to use it very much.

Lopita had reverted to Spanish for a reason, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe she was worried that if it was in English her boss would see it and realize that by complimenting me, she was criticizing him. I also decided that I should pay more attention in my Spanish classes.

I smiled at her again and folded the note up small. I didn’t have any pockets so I just held it in the palm of my hand.

Mr DiMartino didn’t seem to know what to do next, I think he was going to suggest serving coffee but suspected I didn’t drink coffee and wasn’t sure whether to offer or not.

“Perhaps I should get home. I have to go to school tomorrow and today has been a long day for me. May I use your phone? I’ll call my dad and ask him to come and collect me.”

“Nonsense. There is no need for your father to come out again. I will drive you home.”

He stood up and that seemed to be a signal for everyone to stand up as well. I stood up and took the cushion off the seat and then carefully slid the chair back under the table. Frederick silently took the cushion from me and then picked up the one he’d been sitting on. He tucked one cushion under his arm and that allowed him to pick up the one Laura had been sitting on as well. Then he trotted out of the room to return them from wherever they came from. Benjamin followed behind him clutching his cushion in both hands.

“If you will wait for me out front, I will drive the car around,” said Mr DiMartino. He followed the boys out of the room. I thanked Mrs DiMartino for having me for dinner. She smiled at me and then gestured for the two girls to escort me out the front.

Melissa held my jacket for me so that I could put it on and then I carefully tucked the cook’s note into the little pocket in the front of the jacket.

The three of us stood inside the front door where we could watch for Mr DiMartino to bring the car around. I glanced at Melissa and then looked carefully into Laura’s face.

“So do you get it now?” I said to Laura.

“No!”

Oh! I was thinking she must have figured something out after the way she launched into that little fight (maybe it was fightlet!) with her father.

I looked her straight in the eye. “I know you lied in there. But that’s okay. I probably would’ve lied too if it was me, so it’s no big deal. I thought you should know that I know.”

“I didn’t lie. What are you talking about?”

“From what your father said, I’m guessing you tried lying to him about the party but he didn’t believe you. You probably started off trying to blame the other girls and said they made you go. He didn’t believe that, so my guess is that then you changed your story and you admitted that you agreed to go but you said that guy got you completely drunk and took advantage of you while you were out of it. How am I doing so far?”

Laura just glared at me, but I saw Melissa giving the tiniest little nod in the background so I knew I was right.

“Then in there tonight, you changed your story again. You said you accepted that you’d got yourself in a bad situation that you couldn’t get out of. That must have been what your father was waiting to hear from you, because he seemed pleased to hear you say it, but that was the lie.”

Laura’s eyes were really narrow and she was staring at me very hard. She was trying not to give anything away but after trying to read what Mum and Miss Webster were thinking, she was a piece of cake. I was totally sure that what I was about to say was completely correct.

“When you were on that bed, you were exactly where you wanted to be. You weren’t actually ‘out of it’ until soon after I came into the room. You don’t know if you could’ve got out of the situation or not because you didn’t try. I’m right, aren’t I?”

Her face had gone a bit pale. “How dare you say...”

“Shhh!” I cut her off. Amazingly enough, it worked. I seemed to have her mesmerized. “It’s okay. Like I said, I would’ve lied too if it were me.”

Suddenly I knew what I had to do. I had no idea if it would work or not, but I knew I had to try. I hoped I wouldn’t hate myself in the morning for doing this.

“I want to try something.” I walked up to her and put my arms around her. “Hold me.”

She was still angry with me for accusing her of lying, off-balance because I’d been correct when I accused her of lying, ashamed because I knew that she deliberately went out and had sex with a stranger, and confused because I’d spent the whole night doing things she didn’t expect me to do.

I suppose it wasn’t surprising that she was all tense and stiff in my arms. “What are you doing?” She mumbled. I noticed she wasn’t fighting me off.

I rolled my eyes a little bit. The real question should have been: what are we doing?

“Hugging!” I tried to put that “well, obviously” tone in my voice.

Her arms came around and rested lightly on my lower back. I squeezed a bit harder.

Inside my head, Little Bec was shaking her head at me. “Did you forget that this is our worst enemy? She bullies us every day at school. She’s rude and obnoxious. She hates us. We hate her. Why are we hugging her?” I shrugged at Little Bec. I didn’t have a good answer for that. Not one she would understand anyway.

Through the window next to the door, I saw the car lights arrive and heard the sound of the car engine.

Laura tried to push away from me. “You should go.”

I squeezed tighter. “Not yet.”

Melissa, who’d been silently watching the two of us with absolute fascination, quietly slipped out the door to talk to her father.

“Why are we doing this?” Laura’s voice was a bit muffled because I had used one hand to push her head into my shoulder. I started stroking her hair.

“I’m teaching you a lesson,” I said quietly.

I didn’t mention that this was my first time as a teacher instead of as a student. I suppose that’s not totally true because I sometimes help Mum with Angie. But then I guess I’m being more like a teacher’s aide. This time I was being a proper teacher, teaching my very own lesson. I didn’t mention that I had absolutely no idea if I was doing the right thing or not. I wondered how often The Parents had that feeling when they were teaching us lessons. I found it hard to imagine, but I figured it must have happened occasionally. Being unsure if they were doing the right thing or not, I mean.

“What lesson? All we’re doing is hugging.” I actually felt Laura relax slightly into me for the first time.

Melissa slipped back inside, closed the front door and leaned against it, watching us silently.

I could talk directly into Laura’s ear. I could have whispered, but I didn’t want Melissa to think I was keeping secrets. I did talk quietly though.

“This isn’t sex.” I felt her tense up when I said the “s” word, so I said it again.

“This isn’t sex. This is a hug,” I said.

I held her tight and stroked her hair and stroked down the center of her spine. “Shhh!” I whispered. “Shhh!”

Slowly I felt her relax a little. I waited until she had relaxed a bit more. Let’s say that on a scale of one to five, where one is as stiff as a board and five is floppy, she was at two and now she made it to three. She had a relaxed rating of three.

I kept talking in my best soft-and-soothing voice.

“This isn’t sex. This is affection.”

“The difference between these two things is like the difference between eating dark Swiss chocolate and scoring the winning goal in a grand final. They both feel great but they feel totally different from each other – and they mean different things.”

I don’t know if that makes me sound like I know all about sex or something. I’m not exactly an expert. I guess I was making it up a bit. But it sounded right so I said it.

As I talked I felt her move gradually to a relaxed rating of four. Maybe I should call it an RR. Her RR equalled four. I figured that was probably as good as I was going to get for now.

I carefully let go and stepped back. She stood looking at me with a slightly confused expression on her face.

I wondered how much I should spell out for her and how much she could figure out on her own. I had no previous experience to base my decision on. How on earth do The Parents do this all the time? This was a lot harder than I expected.

“I think I get what Tara meant when she said that stuff about you,” said Laura.

“What stuff? What did Tara say about me?”

“She said you were an uncomfortable person to live with. I thought she meant you were a pain in the butt, but she said that wasn’t it. She tried to explain what she meant but I had no clue what she was saying. Now I think I get what she meant. You’ve been making me feel uncomfortable all evening. You’ve been making all of us feel uncomfortable all evening. I don’t mean in a freaky way...”

Her voice tailed off into nothing as she came across the same problem that Tara obviously had.

That was okay. I took that as a compliment. But I still didn’t know if she’d understood my lesson.

“So do you get it? Do you get why we were hugging?”

Her nose crinkled. On anyone else, I would have said it looked cute. On Laura it just made her look more confused.

“Not really.”

I hid my sigh from her. “Come on.”

I held out my arms and hugged her again. She started off tense again but then relaxed a tiny bit. I decided I needed an arch of lights above her head and a little bell that would go “ding” every time a new light went up. Right now, there were about two lights on, “ding, ding.” She had an RR of two.

I resumed my quiet voice in her ear.

“This is a hug. It doesn’t cost anything. You can’t get pregnant from a hug. You can’t catch any diseases. You won’t feel guilty afterwards. You won’t feel ashamed. You won’t feel dirty. You don’t need to drink yourself stupid to do it. You won’t get into trouble for hugging someone. You won’t get grounded, or belted, or sent off to boarding school. You can hug someone and walk away with no strings attached. You can hug your friends. You can hug your family – anyone in your family. You can even hug your worst enemy and it still doesn’t cost anything.”

Ding

“And if you let it, it feels awesome.”

I stopped talking and stroked down her hair and down her spine. I used the other arm to squeeze her into me and rocked gently side to side.

Ding. Ding.

I looked across at Melissa and saw a tear rolling down her cheek. Wow! Two lessons for the price of one! I thought I knew what lesson Melissa was learning but I wasn’t sure. Melissa was normally so good at hiding things but she was actually crying. I wondered how long it was since she’d cried in front of other people.

I rocked back and forth and held Laura to me. Her face was buried in my shoulder. I heard an impatient car horn beep at me from outside. I ignored it. I heard a rattle of footsteps as the two boys returned. They saw me and Laura standing and hugging each other and they stared at us both as if we were aliens that had landed in their entrance hall and were asking them to go ghhzzazzing with us. That’s assuming they didn’t know what ghhzzazzing meant. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t, because I just made it up right then.

Laura pushed herself away from me, I let her go. She kept her face down as she turned and fled into the depths of the house. My shoulder was damp. Wow! I thought. It might have just worked.

I looked across at Melissa. “I have some homework for you to do.”

“Let me guess. You want me to hug my sister before we go to bed tonight.”

I smiled at her.

“I don’t think you know what you’re asking. We don’t hug each other. We don’t touch each other. We hardly talk to each other. The only time we communicate is when we’re shouting at each other. Your homework for me is going to be very hard to do.”

“My dad always says that if homework is too easy then it’s a waste of time. This won’t be a waste of time,” I said with a gentle smile.

Melissa still looked unconvinced.

“You might need to practice,” I said. “Come here.”

Her confident expression vanished. I didn’t think I was that scary.

“I don’t think I want to.”

I smiled at her. “I’m not going to hurt you. It’s just a hug. Come here.”

Tentatively, she walked across the small distance between us. It was as if she was being led to the electric chair to be executed.

I waited where I was until she actually made it all the way across to me. I think she was actually trembling as she stood in front of me. I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her. In my head I tried to be Dan or maybe even Dad (my ideal of Dad anyway). I tried to be this great, big protective guy hugging this small, lost, little girl. I wrapped myself around her and held on tight. She was so thin – thinner than me. I felt like I could crush her if I squeezed too hard.

The front door burst open and Mr DiMartino rushed in – ready to demand I explain why I was keeping him waiting. He saw Melissa, with her back to him, wrapped in my arms. Whatever he’d been about to say never made it past his lips. He chewed on his mouthful of words and swallowed them. I glared at him over Melissa’s shoulder. This was his job and he’d left it for me to do. This was all his fault. If my magic powers had been working properly, he would have shrivelled up and turned to dust under the power of my glare. Sadly, my magic powers didn’t seem to be working. He stood there – watching – trying to figure out what was going on. If he asked what we were doing, I was going to scream.

I whispered in Melissa’s ear, careful to make sure no one else could hear me.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I was so caught up in my own life that I didn’t notice how bad yours is. I’ll be your friend if you’ll let me.”

Melissa burst into great, shuddering sobs. That shoulder of my jacket was getting a good workout tonight.

She broke away from me and ran. Wow! I was shooting two for two. I eyed the two boys.

“I suppose you two want hugs from me as well.”

They nodded and then glanced uncertainly at their father.

“Come on, then,” I said to them and held out my arms. “Your father doesn’t want to wait all night.”

They rushed over to me and we had a nice three-way hug. I held it for a moment and then let them go. I knelt down on one knee so I was at eye level with them. Actually it made me shorter but that wasn’t a bad thing.

“It was really nice to meet you both tonight. Thank you for being such gentlemen.”

I solemnly shook hands with both of them.

Frederick had this kind of glazed expression on his face. It was like he just got off the most awesome rollercoaster and was standing there trying to recover from the fright and absorb the magic of it at the same time. I wondered why he would be looking so stunned ... oh!

I tried very hard not to blush.

I wondered if I should tell him that the fleshy softness of the girly breast that he’d had his face pushed into was actually courtesy of Kleenex.

I didn’t say anything. I guess a girl has to have some secrets.