Title: Once Apon A Time.
Rating: PG
Summary: 'I spent that summer, trying to make myself believe they love each other, but I soon found myself doubting if there was ever a time that they did.'
I always hated summers, always muggy and humid, always too damn hot to do anything but lay on the cold tiles in the kitchen with the fans going around and round in an effort to escape the heat. But the summer of 2020 proved to be the most horrid summers of my short life.
In the month before the onset of the summer months of 2020, I celebrated my 13th birthday - I was a teenager at last. And I had all the raging hormones and mood swings to accompany my recent milestone. My older brother, Jacob, then 16, didn't help my predicament, feeling a need to tease me at every given moment. Added to that was my younger twin brothers Thomas and Daniel, then 10 and who I felt where the most annoying kids I had ever come across. I wanted a horse more than anything, I hated my brothers and father's idea of 'fun', which normally consisted of fishing, hockey and their Play Station 3000, or whatever new console Sony had released that week.
Yep, at 13, I was the typical hormonal teenage princess, who was all grown up, who was all knowing and always was right, and who could get anything I wanted from Daddy simply because I was his only daughter, who had him wrapped around my little finger. I was too self-involved at the time to realise just how good my life had been.
2 weeks into that summer I got my first period. Cramps, which later became the monthly norm, plagued me for 6 long days. I remember planning my trips to Charlotte's house, and subsequently, her swimming pool, during the week. It was too hot to do anything except lie down and feel sorry for myself, something I was good at. When it had been and gone, I realised I didn't want to risk swimming. Inspite of my mother's reassurances that I wouldn't get them for another month, my anxiety that I would be caught out overpowered my logical side, that told me mum was right. It didn't help when I got them again 2 weeks later, with mum explaining that sometimes, in the beginning, they were irregular. I refused to listen, and burst into tears in the dinning room. Hormones, no doubt playing a role in my outburst. I didn't want anyone else to know. Why I didn't want anyone to know that I had monthly 'friends' visiting is beyond me now. Just another one of my stupid childhood ideas, I guess.
Either way, I decided then that I wouldn't be swimming that summer. Living in an area where the mercury regularly pushes 100 F, it did cause my options for summer to shrink dramatically. It was that decision I always blamed my summer of hell on, but now, with the added luxury of hindsight, I realise that the root of our trouble was always there, I just never took the time to really look at the people around me. The hidden conflict, the disagreements that looked insignificant, if you weren't paying close attention, it was always there, in the shadows, waiting, before it finally blew up in our faces.
In the beginning, I was stretched out on a deck chair, reading the latest issue of 'Cleo', painting my nails, or talking on the phone at any given moment.
By the end of the summer, my finger nails, with small remnants that polish had once donned them, now chewed down so much they bled, 'Cleo' was replaced by 'Brave New World', and the phone never once near me.
It was this summer I saw my family fall apart.
It was a long time coming, you already know that. But to sit back and watch two people who always thought loved each other so clearly despise the others existence, it forces you to change, to re-evaluate your life and everything within it.
Their squabbles were small to begin with, they seemed insignificant to me. Disagreements over who took the rubbish out, who was to drive Tom and Danny to their friends place soon turned into arguments I never understood. They fought about their past, about people I've never met, secrets the other kept for years. They'd argue about Wars gone by, I never knew what they had to do with my parents, but often fuelled arguments I know I was not suppose to hear.
They did attempt to hide it - when I looked back, I realised they'd been trying to conceal it from us for years. One day, during that summer, it dawned on me that they were only together because of us. I spent that summer, trying to make myself believe they love each other, but I soon found myself doubting if there was ever a time that they did.
I was already pulling away from my old circle of friends, from my family, especially my dad. He wasn't 'Daddy' anymore, he was just my father. And my mother, I needed someone to blame. She got handed that responsibility. All of my anger and frustrations were thrown out on her.
2 months before school returned - before I made the big step to High School - my best friend was diagnosed with terminal leukaemia. Left way too late, apparently. Charlotte was the kind of person who refused to let anything get her down. She'd get sick and ignore it. I didn't know how she could ignore something as serious as cancer at the time. Charl didn't make it to High School.
When you know someone your whole life, it's hard to believe that they're gone. Your mind tells you that she won't be back, but there is always a part of you that feels like she'll be over that afternoon, bouncing through that sliding door, ready with all the latest gossip, or with news of her latest swimming comp. I liked having a part of me that kept her alive. It was also the part that hurt the most, when any logic quelled that small pilot light that I kept on for her.
Since that summer, I grew into a jaded, cynical, cold bitch. Jacob had dropped out of school in Year 10, he didn't really keep in touch. Thomas left in Year 11, became a mechanic after he got an apprenticeship in town. And Daniel, the only one to go to University.
Which is why we're here. Danny's graduation from Medical School, we're celebrating. Even Jacob came, how he was contacted, I'm not sure.
And I find myself on the back deck, my old chair seems to have gone. The summer, just like the one of 2020, is blistering. My old shirt still sticking to my body, but I am soothed by the gentle evening breeze that has settled in. Not that I'm suprised, I haven't been here in 15 years. And I opt for the old wooden steps instead. Pushing silently on my cigarette, absent mindedly flicking the cap on my zippo, I try to remember a time when we were happy. When I could honestly say we were a true family. I hear her come out, as she takes a seat beside me, but refuse to acknowledge her.
For a few minutes she doesn't speak, waiting, maybe, to see if I will.
"They'll kill you" she speaks matter-of-factly.
"Yeah well, we're all dieing. I'm just speeding up the process" I respond, taking another drag.
She doesn't argue, just shrugs her shoulders, before pulling out her own pack. It suprises me a little, but I try not to show it. I guess the stress finally got to her as well.
"What happened?" my mouth asks before my mind can stop it.
"Happened where?" she asks, looking at me.
"You, Dad. Us?"
She smiles, bitter-sweetly, "I guess somethings just aren't ment to be" she returns her gaze to the long yard, "Looks like the regs were right after all"
"What?" is my confused response.
The smile fades as she takes a long drag, as if prepping herself, "We were two very different people, we had too many skeletons that we refused to face ourselves, let alone talk out loud about. Our pasts, we shared a lot. Just wasn't enough"
"So you didn't trust each other?"
"No. We trusted each other, we trusted each other with our lives. We just couldn't open up. Either of us. There is a lot you and your brothers don't know about us." She lowered her eyes, as she handed me large envelope that she had laid down beside her, "I hope it explains a lot. You have to read it all for it to make much sense though."
"Sam! Samantha!" I could hear a voice calling from inside. My grandfather, no doubt.
Finishing her cigarette, she put it in my ashtray, and walked back towards the door.
"Mum?" she turns to face me again, "Did you ever love him?"
The first genuine smile I have seen in years, "I did, Janet. I loved him more than I though possible."
She turns, re-entering the house I grew up in, leaving me with my thoughts, and an envelope from my parents.
Putting out my cigarette, I eye the envelope, addressed to me in my Dad's writing. Inside, are dozens of letters and Journal entries, some dated as far back as last millennium. Some typed, but most are hand written, and all are held together in what appears to be two separate books, each with a cover letter. One from mum, one from Dad. Leaning against the railing, I pick up Dad's first, dated 1997.
October 1997
I don't know how Daniel talked me into keeping one of these damn things. Why I take advice of a man who has a freaky fascination with rocks is beyond me..