"God won't ever give you more than you can handle. Remember that, Clare."
Growing up, Clare would nod eagerly, in full belief of the cliché from the eyes of a child with the world in her hands. The perfect family, the loving upbringing and the presence of God in their home. Things were good while they were good.
"God won't ever give you more than you can handle, sweetie."
The words sounded rehearsed, but Clare was probably just hearing things that day. There was a hint of sadness in her mother's eyes, but Clare kept quiet for both of their sake. She was too young to understand whatever was going on, and if she questioned it, her mother would have no problem reminding her of that. So she stayed quiet and things were still good.
"God won't give me more than I can handle."
The tables are turned now and the interior is the Friendship (read: Jesus) Club at school. Clare sits with her back to the door so that no passerby's can recognize her. It's no secret in the halls that the cross she bears around her neck isn't worn ironically, but lately she's had more questions than she's been getting answers to and it's shameful to her that she has to voice them. She bows her head for the Serenity Prayer but her eyes stay open for the first time.
Clare's father is aging before her eyes and there's no conviction to the childhood nickname he murmurs, even though it's exactly what she needs to hear right now. Instead she hears arguing and crying, slamming doors and then deafening silence. It's becoming her lullaby.
Her mother cries at weddings, and once at a soap opera, but it's glaringly obvious that Clare wasn't meant to see the crumpled form hunched over the kitchen counter, dripping salt water onto the granite. She backtracks out the door as quietly as possible and waits at the park down the street until twenty minutes pass before going back. When she comes home the second time, her mother is composed and chipper and it makes Clare so sick that she's missing 58 words from her essay the next morning and is docked half a grade. It's hard to keep your mind on gun control when you mother is alone in bed at eleven pm. She glances up to her empty ceiling and debates on whether to open the floor for a quick chat with the man upstairs, but the phone rings and the sobbing starts back up a few rooms away and Clare decides that she doesn't really want to hear what he has to say.
The next morning, neither parent bothers to look happy. They aren't up to it and Clare makes no commentary and her elbows stay down, though she's as tense as she's ever been. The table is silent, but Clare swears that her mother's mouth opens once or twice as if to say something important, but she stays quiet in the end. That night, the world war resumes and a scary word falls from her mother's lips, enough to keep Clare wide awake all night long. She doesn't hear the context or her father's reaction, but she hears divorce and suddenly can't remember when things were good.
She thinks she hears the threat again come March, then twice in April and early in May. She's facing the hallway at Jesus Club again to show God and her classmates alike what a good Christian she is; one deserving of an answered prayer. She dedicates her time at home to remind her parents of what good comes of them working together. Their daughter. Their perfect daughter.
"Keep your elbows off the table," she'll remind herself at dinner. Her homework will be done before bed, even though it was nearly impossible to focus on anything but the it'snotreal, thisisn'thappening fighting going on downstairs, ended abruptly with a dish being discarded halfway through a hand-wash in an angry shatter at the bottom of the kitchen sink. Things aren't as good.
Selfishly, she wishes that Darcy was here to help her through this.
One afternoon she's met by both parents, stoic, and this time the word isn't a threat. It's an ambush and nonononono, she despises herself for not seeing this coming. That night, she cries in tandem with her mother, both silent through the too-thin walls. The inventory of the Edwards' home house is shrinking rapidly and Clare clings to her father, letting him know that she's on his side. Soon, Randal Edwards is no longer a resident and Clare doesn't believe that things ever were good around here. Her elbows stay on the table, seeing no point in poise now. She isn't afraid to question her mother's choices anymore, and given the opportunity she speaks her piece, convinced that when her mother doesn't defend herself,she considers it proof that she is the villain and while she's never known contempt, she's learning it towards her mother.
It wasn't completely out of left field for Glen to be in the living room a few months in. Clare had known him since she was a baby, and it was nice to have Jake around too. She didn't know how much she'd missed him until he was back in town. She didn't have to worry about the eggshells he didn't lay out for her, or the sympathetic looks he didn't cast her way. The only real risk was whether he had any dead frogs in his arsenal, and she'd take that over family matters any day. In the meantime, his lips are a nice distraction from the tornado.
She didn't expect to fall for Jake, and the same could probably be said for him, but it happened one way or another. They were the ones with a secret now and Clare enjoyed having the upper hand. What she didn't expect, while hunting down matches in her father's old office, was the crisp document she stumbled upon. She knew the words: infidelity, adultery, irreconcilable, but there had to be some sort of mistake. These signatures were forged, the names wrong, the hearing wrong, everything wrong. It was impossible that the perfect patriarch, Clare's superhero and good Christian role model was anything but. But there it was in black and white, and red from where Clare was standing. The paper wasn't the mistake. She'd made the mistake; her elbows were the mistake, Jake was the mistake.
So she blew out the candles she'd lit in anticipation for Jake's arrival, and she packed away the watch she'd been taught to tell time on. It took a long time for her to be able to look her mother in the eye again, too guilt-stricken to see what pain she might have caused.
Soon, Jake and his dad are all moved in, and while the culture shock isn't all that difficult to get used to, Clare still isn't seeing a lot of good. Her mother seems happy, and for that Clare is more grateful than Glen will ever know. She and Jake work things out and he ends up being a better sibling than she's really ever had. The worst she has to hear through the walls now is Jake's snoring, a welcome change from the sorrow of a lonely wife.
Things are good enough for now.