MAJOR EDIT DONE 1/1/2021
how did you loyal readers endure this trash? lol
I hope to completely revamp this thing, piece by piece so please don't read ahead until I post an update- you will vomit or possibly roll your eyes to death. Love you all! -Nae
"Are we nearly there?" Rene's sharp-edged tone drew my eyes up from the paperback book I was reading. We had driven over an hour to get here, and I still wasn't all too sure why we made the pilgrimage in the first place. "You could have warned me this would be a voyage, Charles." My mother bit out without moving her eyes from the visor's mirror as my dad continued driving in silence.
I bit my lip in silence and tucked the book into the seat's crevice before Rene had something else to drone on about. My mother would have much rather had her only daughter nose deep into a gossip rag rather than a political science novel. "Dad, do you suppose we'll make it back in time for The Carson Show?" I asked more so to gauge how much of my Thursday evening would be wasted entertaining his friends and less about the television set at home.
Before he could comment, Rene shot her head towards my spot in the backseat. "Isabella, keep your lazy ideas to yourself this evening. Your father needs to impress these people, and that's not gonna happen if you say things like that all night." She eyed the folded book beside me, "and nothing about your books either! The last thing we need leaked to the press is your list of reading material." She hissed the words as if it burned her mouth to say them- oh what a dread to have a daughter with some kind of brain.
Should I call the press and have them draft a story on the deep void that is your marriage instead? I smiled to myself at the thought but tucked it somewhere deep. Ever since my father's indiscretion the press wouldn't leave us alone, and something that my mother once reveledin was now the bane of her existence. News magazines, gossip rags, cheapnewspaper outlets... everyone wanted a piece of our family, and not for any reason good.
As much as it secretly pleased me to see my mother fall from grace and karma instantly work its intuitive way, life also grew harder for myself as well. We had to move cities, our new house was so much smaller and that was the second bane of my mother's existence, and these "dinners" were becoming a new normal as my father tried to claw his way into society's good grace's.
I spent so many evenings eating plain salad, laughing at boring conversation, and pretending to be even slightly entertained- but as much as I was annoyed by my parents, I did want them to reclaim at least a semblance of their lives from before. Charlie would never be a Chief again, he knew that & Rene would never be the head of any Women's club again, she knew that... but I knew how resourceful my parents could be and we had seen greater strife before.
Also, my possible college tuition was on the line. I could fake laugh and flirt innocently for a little bit longer. Besides, how bad could a restaurant called Don Von's be?