Eleven: “The Deal”

A couple nights later, I got a phone call from my sister. “Please tell me you’re free next Sunday,” she pleaded.
Consulting my schedule – thankfully one of the last Jon would be making – I noted that I was, indeed, free on Sunday, though I was stuck closing on Friday and working until nine on Saturday… which would likely turn into at least ten before I got out of there, given how busy we usually got. “You’re in luck. What’s up?”
“Mom wants to come out here for a belated birthday lunch and shopping trip,” Kate explained. “I was hoping you could come as a buffer.”
“And spend two hours in the car with her both ways?” I added. “Okay, but only because I love you and barely got to spend any time with you when I was there for your birthday.”
“Thank you! I owe you!” she replied.
My poor mom; she really wasn’t as bad as we sometimes made her out to be. She loved us and meant well, but had always been a bit overprotective and overly involved (my brother had her saved in his phone as “Smother”) and was having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that her children were adults now… and in particular, that we were adults with viewpoints that differed from her own conservative, devoutly religious ones.
“Just do me a favor and don’t show her any pictures with Meredith in them,” I requested, ‘“Cause Mom asking questions is the absolute last thing I need right now.”
“Kristin… I have to tell you something,” my sister began, “You know how I thought Meredith seemed cool at first? Well… once I was around her for awhile, I actually really didn’t like her all that much. I don’t know… she just got weird and moody and sort of annoying as the night went on or something. I’m sorry! You said you wanted me to tell you though…”
I sighed. “I know. I’m really not sure what was up with her either, to be honest. She just pulls this complete one-eighty on me sometimes, and all I can really get out of her when it happens is that she’s still really fucked up about her uncle’s suicide.”
“Huh. Weird,” Kate remarked. In the background, I heard her light a cigarette.
“To tell you the truth, she actually kinda pissed me off that night,” I admitted, “Like, one second she was fine and then she’s going off about how Jared seems like a dick and you weren’t hanging out with us enough so she thought you had an agenda or some bullshit.”
“Wait… she said I had an agenda? Ew! Now I really don’t like her,” Kate replied, “What does that even mean anyway?”
“I have no fucking idea,” I confessed with a laugh, “I just told her your agenda was to celebrate turning twenty-one.”
“Seriously!” my sister agreed.
“Yeah, it annoyed me,” I reiterated. Then something occurred to me, “Actually… come to think of it, she shut down on me right around the time I said something to her about it.”
“Sounds like maybe she’s the one with the ‘agenda’ then,” Kate said a little snarkily.
I laughed again, “Maybe,” I conceded, “But I have no idea what. Will you do me a favor though and meet her again somewhere more low key? Maybe it’ll be better if you guys actually have a chance to talk.”
“I’m up for it if she is,” she replied agreeably.
With that settled, we wrapped up the conversation to head to our respective jobs.

***

I was running late as usual by the time I got changed and left for work, and it had begun raining. Suddenly, I heard a siren and noticed flashing lights behind me. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I griped, pulling over and yanking my glove compartment open to grab my registration and insurance card. My plan was to have everything ready to shove wordlessly in the cop’s face as soon as he reached my window. I hoped it would limit his power tripping time. It didn’t.
“So, where are you headed in such a hurry?” His tone was one step away from tacking a condescending “little lady” or something of that nature onto the inquiry, and I indulged myself in a brief daydream of slapping the self-satisfied expression off his face.
“Work,” I replied shortly.
“Running late?” he asked with a smug smirk.
“I will be,” I retorted.
He raised his eyebrows, then went through the drill of running my information while I called to let Leila know I would be late. It felt like a year before he came back to return my documents… and deliver a ticket. “I decided to be nice and just give you a ticket for using your windshield wipers without having your headlights on,” he informed me.
 “Gee, thanks, Officer,” I chirped with mock perkiness.
 My sarcasm went right over his head. “No problem. But slow it down, okay?”
I clocked into work fifteen minutes late and in a foul mood. “I don’t have extra money for this shit!” I complained to Alex.
“Why don’t you just make your slave guy pay it?” she suggested.
“Huh. That’s actually not a bad idea… can I do that?” I wondered aloud. Tim and I had been emailing back and forth for over a month now, and he had been up my ass lately, begging me to give him an opportunity to be of service to me so he could prove to me that he could be a good slave. He had emailed me all three of his phone numbers – work, home, and cell – so I could reach him anytime, but I had yet to take him up on the offer.
“If he’s stupid enough to agree to it, why the hell not?” Alex reasoned. She had been immensely entertained by the whole Tim scenario and was of the opinion that I should have begun taking advantage of his sycophantic adoration weeks ago.
Giggling, we composed a text message to Tim during down time. I immediately received no less than four gushing reply messages, telling me how honored he was to hear from me and eagerly agreeing to do whatever he could to help his beloved Mistress Estella.  
When he texted me again asking for further instructions, Alex already had the schedule out. “We’re both off Sunday night. Tell him to meet you then; I’ve gotta see this.”
I told Tim to clear his schedule for Sunday evening and that further instructions would follow. It looked like I would be going straight from my conservative mother’s passenger seat to my first domination experience.

***

As I had anticipated, it didn’t take long before my overly involved mother turned the conversation on Sunday toward the topic of Kate’s birthday celebration, clamoring for every detail: “Did you have fun? I hope you didn’t drink too much. What did you end up doing?”
“Shots mostly,” Kate answered with a smirk, producing her list of twenty-one things, which our mother perused, forcing a laugh and trying gamely to conceal her horror at the smorgasbord of alcoholic concoctions.
After that, it wasn’t long before she asked if Kate had taken any pictures. I was hoping Kate would make up an excuse for why she didn’t have them, but instead, she hopped up and headed for her room, emerging a moment later with her digital camera in hand. And of course, when I tried to intercept her in the hallway to remind her to skip past the pictures Meredith was in, my mother was right behind me before I could finish my sentence, peering intently at the camera and peppering Kate with questions as she tried to scroll past the group shots, and then eyeing me suspiciously for the rest of the afternoon.
Mom and I drove home that evening in uncomfortable silence. I spent the bulk of the ride texting back and forth with Alex and Tim, firming up plans for that evening. We had decided to meet in the parking lot of the pharmacy behind Starbucks. Once I had given Alex my ETA and texted Tim with instructions to start getting ready, I texted Meredith to let her know that the cat might be out of the bag with my mom. A minute later, my phone rang.
“You okay, babe?” she asked with concern.
“Yeah, aside from being on the most awkward drive home in the world,” I muttered into the phone, turning my back to my mother whose eyes were still burning into me.
“Aw, I’m sorry, baby!” Meredith said sympathetically.
“Thanks. I’m bouncing and meeting Alex, like, the second we hit the driveway,” I told her, surprised at how casually and easily the stretched truth had rolled off my tongue. Perhaps it helped that my mother was beside me since the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was pretty much par for the course with our relationship. And technically, Alex and I were meeting up… I’d just left out the minor detail of what we were doing.
“Oh. Does that mean we’re saying our goodnights now?” Meredith sounded disappointed.
“Aw… you’re too cute! No, we won’t be late,” I assured her. “I’ll call you when we’re done.”
“Okay, good,” she replied.
“So, who was on the phone?” my mother asked with unconvincing forced casualness as she pulled her minivan into our driveway.
“My friend Meredith. You don’t know her,” I replied shortly, fishing in my bag for my keys without making eye contact.
“So is this the same ‘friend’ you didn’t want me to know was at Kate’s party with you?” she challenged triumphantly. Ugh, this was just what I had been dreading. My mother had this immensely annoying habit where she would overhear a snippet of conversation or come across the tiniest shred of information, fill in the blanks for herself, and think she knew everything. I had tested her once at thirteen, writing a mostly fictionalized journal entry about getting drunk and high with a friend (in reality, we had simply stolen some Fuzzy Navels from a cooler at a family barbeque and snuck off to consume them under a big pine tree in her grandmother’s backyard). Mom had gone ballistic when I had planted the journal for her to discover, shaking me by the shoulders and shrieking, “Was it worth it?”
“What’s the deal with this girl?” she demanded now.
“There is no ‘deal,’” I retorted, “And at my age, I hardly think I’m obligated to share every detail of my life with you.”
“As long as you’re living under our roof…” she began.
“Well, nothing’s going on under your roof,” I interrupted snippily, “And I have somewhere to be.”
“It’s a simple question,” she persisted, a broken record, “What is the deal with this girl?”
I flung the passenger side door open. “Fine! She’s my girlfriend. Are you happy?”
Setting her mouth into a firm line, she fought for control before replying in a far more level tone than I had expected her to be able to pull off, “No, of course I’m not happy! You know what the Scripture says about…”
I held up a hand, silencing her, and spoke slowly and evenly, matching her astonishing, uncharacteristic calmness, “Look, I’m twenty-four years old. I can vote, I can drink, in a few months I can rent a car… so, the way I see it, I can also choose not to have this conversation. I respect your right to your opinions and the rules that go along with living under your roof, but when I’m not under said roof, I’m entitled to my own opinions and decisions as far as how to live my own life, too. I’m not asking you to agree with those decisions and opinions, but like I said, I respect your right to yours, so I think it’s only fair that you show me the same courtesy.”
“But you know…” she tried again.
“I know that I have somewhere to be,” I told her firmly as I got out of the car, “And that it would be rude to keep Alex waiting. So, I’ll talk to you later.”
For all my bravado, though, my hands were shaking as I got into my car and turned my key in the ignition. I knew my mom, and this conversation wasn’t over by a long shot.

© Kristin Despina, (2010).
 Reproduction Prohibited Without Permission.