Stories from the Back of His Motorcycle

For some reason I had expected her to look different.

It didn’t seem right that she was the same physically, making it easy for her to just stand on my doorstep and become the found missing piece of the puzzle. Of course it was stupid of me to assume that since so much else had changed that she would have too, because she was the image of herself in all of the photographs. I remembered her exactly as she was.

So I frowned at her but it was more out of shock than resentment. Although there were feelings of anger and betrayal and disgust buried somewhere within me they were slow to emerge. As soon as I saw her, there was only shock which made itself plain on my face.

Vaughn was spread out languidly on the couch in my lounge. I had left him with some sports program beside an awkward Nick as they made idle chat about how good that particular play was or how much slack that player had been given. My momentarily frozen brain told me to step outside, to stand next to Mom, to close the door behind me quietly. And I listened to it. I knew that Vaughn couldn’t know who this was. That had suddenly become vital.

I was treading dangerous water with Vaughn, depthless water, and I was already past drowning. And, to make up for my incompetence, I had taken it upon myself to be his personal shield to everything that I could. My life, my problems, were the main things I hid from him. They were petty and I hated that I’d spent a good portion of our relationship already crying into him. My Mom showing up at my house after months of being gone was definitely a problem I wasn’t about to share with him.

She didn’t say anything, didn’t jump in with an apology or an explanation or even a greeting. Her blue eyes were raking over me slowly in the way distant relatives had done every Christmas, documenting the change in height and hair and clothes since they’d last seen you. It startled me, for some reason, to think that I may look different to her even if she was the same.

My throat was dry but I didn’t swallow. The silence was too potent to break. By her cool expression I knew she was restraining a lot and I was afraid of overlapping her with something stupid. She rarely looked so calm and collected. I wondered where she’d been for the past months, a place which had undoubtedly calmed her down.

But she remained tight lipped with only a determined stare focused on me. I hated standing there with her, and wished for this to be over quickly so I could go back to Vaughn. I didn’t need her to explain to me why she left, or why she was back, or how long she’d stick around this time. I didn’t need her at all; I had my independence after it’d been thrust upon me all those months ago.

And there was the anger, rising inside me like a tide finally finding its moon. Her silence was coaxing it out of me until it was the only thing I could see. She was tainted in it, my fury, and she didn’t even realise. She just kept her even stare on me as if I’d be the first one to break and say something. I had nothing to say to her. Nothing except goodbye.

“Whose bike is that?”

My eyes followed hers as they finally broke from me, resting on Vaughn’s motorcycle sitting on our drive. I wondered quickly what life had been like before his motorcycle had looked natural there. Before Vaughn had become such an important part of living. The drive was empty without it; Nick’s beaten-up second-hand car could never quite fill it up the same way. It was impossible to remember the time when my drive had been completely empty. Half the culprit surveying what had been fixed in her absence, standing beside me.

“Vaughn’s,” my own voice smothered me, cutting off the sarcastic remark I was dying to make.

“Boyfriend?”

I narrowed my eyes a fraction but didn’t reply. She had no right to know that. She had no right to be back here. This wasn’t here home anymore, not after she’d left me so suddenly without an explanation right after Dad had gone too. I understood she was hurting, I understood more than anyone else, but I hurt too. I hadn’t run off though because I’d had no choice, I’d had to be the adult for both of them after they’d decided to be children.

“Well it seems like a lot has changed,” she had the nerve to smile slightly, the corners of her mouth turning up as if to taunt me.

It was hard to remember that my mother wasn’t a malicious woman. She’d been a good Mom for most of my life. She’d held my hand through every injection because I would cry my eyes out if she so much as started to let go. She’d protected me from the mean things my father had sometimes said. She would sort out our sibling arguments fairly, and without bias, whenever one of us would go moaning to her about the others. And she’d loved me. I was sure she’d loved me.

But I wasn’t so sure if she did anymore.

She’d left after all. She had simply vanished one day, leaving her seventeen year old daughter alone to deal with life all by herself. If anything it was illegal, but since when had we ever involved the police in our screwed up domestic home life? My own pride would never have allowed me to dial those three numbers into my phone, let alone spill my guts about how I was an underage girl paying the bills and keeping herself only just afloat.

“What do you want?” I asked coldly, finally finding the right words to dreg together.

There was another long silence left to drift between us, filling in the blanks and covering up the gaps. It told me exactly what she was doing here and exactly what she wanted. She couldn’t have it though – there was no way I was giving that to her. She’d never be a part of this family again. Not with me in it anyway.

“No, actually I don’t even want to hear it. Just leave. Do us all a favour and leave,” I framed my eyebrows into the perfect display of displeasure. Even this, rearranging my face, was an effort with her here. Nothing was natural.

Because deep down, all my instincts were pleading with me to close the small distance between us and wrap my arms around her. They told me that she was my mother, that this was the only thing which mattered. I had missed her. A lot more than I had thought. It all just crashed upon me as we stared at each other, matching eyes not breaking contact for even a split second.

“Alice,” she said my name for the first time in months and hearing it from her mouth shocked me to the core. There are a million ways someone can say that word, your name, but there’s a tone only your mother can use. She pulled it out right then as if it would re-awaken something she herself had killed. It did, too, but I was far too stubborn to let her know.

“You don’t get to just turn up one day out of the blue after five months with not even a phone call to let me know you’re still alive. I won’t have it; you can just leave right now.”

“Baby please, I know you’re angry-.”

“No,” I cut her off just because listening to her try to reason with me was too much like listening to my mother telling me that pudding was for after dinner. And that my brothers didn’t mean anything by their spiteful words. And that I was the most wonderful little girl she had ever met.

“You have no idea Mom, no fucking idea.”

She looked affronted by my curse, as if this was the worst thing that had transpired in all of this time. My bad language. As if I hadn’t overheard her and Dad screaming it to each other all of my life.

“Alice, really, let’s just talk about this rationally for a minute. Can I come in?”

“No. You can’t.”

“Is that your call to make sweetie? This is legally my house you know.”

“I’ve been paying the bills for all of the time you weren’t here. It’s just as much my house as yours – so yes, it is my call to make,” I rebuked, nostrils already flaring with so much fury. “And don’t start with terms like ‘legally’ Mom; I’m sure whatever court you go to would love to hear how the parents of a child abandoned them for almost half a year.”

“You just need to calm down,” she declared like she had that kind of power over me anymore.

“You need to leave,” I countered.

“I’m not leaving until we’ve talked about certain things Alice. Aren’t you wondering where I’ve been for this time? I haven’t just bummed around the world, baby, I booked myself into a rehabilitation centre. I got a job. I met someone.”

If the knife wasn’t twisted already it was certainly turning with her words. Of course, she’d been out ‘getting better’ as if there was anything wrong with her in the first place except for her unhealthy relationship with Dad. Of course, she’d met someone else, someone better no doubt. Someone important enough to prevent a woman from calling her own daughter.

“Good for you Mom but I really don’t give a shit.”

“Sweetheart-.”

“And you can stop with the endearments,” I cut her off bitterly “you’ve never used them before and you’re not going to start now. My name is Alice. You should know, you did name me after all.”

I watched her deflate, knowing I had popped whatever hope she’d had. She should have known better. Not everything was going to be as she had left it. She wouldn’t just find me frozen in time, hovering above the stairs, possibly off to school, possibly off to bed, still wondering when her mother was going to emerge from the spare bedroom.

“As far as I’m concerned you’re still out living your life like someone without a family,” I spat. There were pricks at the back of my eyes but I just blinked them harshly away. “So you can go off and carry on that wonderful life you were building with whoever you met.”

“That’s not how things work,” she murmured “now that I’m back we can start to mend this family.”

There was a harsh bang behind me, sending my body into spiralling chaos. I was wound so tight that every muscle leapt over itself at the sudden noise and had me scrabbling to the side like I could avoid whatever was about to happen. I knew even before I turned that it wasn’t going to be pretty. I could feel his furious force before he’d even reached the front door.

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

The woman stared at her youngest son, the last of her hope dying away. She was outnumbered now, more of her disjointed family staring her boldly in the eye, not backing down. She should have known we weren’t the rolling-over type. She’d bred us after all. We’d grown up in their war zone.

“I happened to get a call from Mister Delorentez actually, talking about one of my boys marrying his daughter. An Ellie or something?”

“El,” I corrected automatically, still trying to dissolve myself into the rough house bricks. Nick stood in the doorway with a glare so passionate I could practically see the dark hate oozing from him. It scared me to see him like this. He had only been deadpan and sad and frustrated. He had never been hateful.

It didn’t hit me until a few seconds after my mothers had spoken; El’s father had tracked her down and called her. Told her about the wedding and most likely about his trepidations with it. She was only here because she saw an opportunity to patch up what she had ripped apart. She saw another part of her family back in the area with the possibility for expanding it even further. My disgust with my own flesh and blood just grew.

“Yes, El. I can hardly believe my big Ross is getting married and I didn’t even know. It made me realise how much I was missing out on by being away. I thought if I could just re-gather my thoughts without the memories of your father then I could start to mend again. It took me longer than expected, but I’m better now. I’m mended,” she smiled weakly.

“So you’re back after you left Alice because you’re fixed?” Nick snarled.

“Oh don’t act so high and mighty, you left her as soon as you could too.”

“Because of you Mom, not because of her. And I regret it too because I left her with two unfit parents! Look at the both of you, scarpering off because things got a bit too hard. You had responsibilities but you shirked them like a child!” he was shouting, the vein in his neck visibly throbbing. “While you had a child of your own here!”

Mom raised a hand to her head, loose pieces of dark hair falling over her painted fingernails. She was the picture of despair, and I hated that it pulled at my heartstrings. I hated that I didn’t hate her. Not even after she’d abandoned me. I still didn’t hate her.

I didn’t realise the tremors running throughout my body until Vaughn appeared in front of me, warm hands already closing over mine. They were still yelling at each other in the background. A few ‘look what you’re doing to her’ here and a couple ‘this is my house too!’ there. I just stared unsurely into Vaughn’s grey eyes, wondering where on earth he’d suddenly come from.

“Baby,” he whispered to me softly, guiding me inside with those steady steps of his. “Keep it together for me, okay?”

I was fine; it was just the sudden onslaught of emotion catching me up in its grasps. I wasn’t even crying yet there were tears streaming down my cheeks. And I was so glad for Vaughn. Stabling, safe, sure Vaughn. This boy who loved me enough to take my wretched body away from another battle it couldn’t fight, who loved me despite being my being so weak.

He was saying that to me again and again as he settled me onto the couch. The game was still playing on the television but it was silent. I could imagine the two boys hearing my raised voice and rushing to see what was wrong. My boys.

“I love you Alice, and I won’t let anything hurt you again.”

It was a bottomless promise, one which he could never keep, but I believed him anyway. Such was the stupidity of love, such was its depth, that even though I knew something was a lie I chose to take it as truth. As long as it was coming from Vaughn it was my truth.

He left me still shivering on the couch for a minute to dash off back into the hallway, re-emerging with the shouting match taking place on my doorstep.

“If you don’t get off this property within the next minute, ma’am, then I’m going to call the police. And don’t think that they won’t take my side. I’m well acquainted with the police. In fact, my father’s deputy up at the station and I’m sure he’d be all too happy to deal with Alice’s estranged mother harassing her daughter,” his cool voice reached me far clearer than any strangled voice had. He could do that. He could cut right through everything, make sense of it.

I knew he was stretching the truth – his father was a lawyer and he was only acquainted with the police because of various run-ins he’d had with them. But from my mother’s silence I understood that she believed him.

“Just who do you think you are?” she finally asked, her voice shrill as it always was when she was cornered.

“Alice’s boyfriend, the one who’s been looking after her since you left.”

“Well this is family business and you aren’t family.”

“Alice loves him Mom,” Nick cut in fiercely “which is more than I can say for you.”

“She’s too young to know what love is,” she scoffed.

I was already rising from the couch to fight this one myself because my mother was the one who didn’t understand love, not me. But Vaughn beat me to it, his words taking all of the air out of my lungs.

“She’s more mature than you give her credit for, and I know that she loves me. Because if she didn’t I wouldn’t still be here but six feet under – your daughter is the only thing worth living for. And it’s mighty sad that you didn’t realise that until it was too late.”

I heard the door slam and fell back once again onto the soft material of the couch. As soon as the boys stepped into the room I was upon them, strangling them both in my arms. Never had anyone stood up for me as they had, I hadn’t had anyone to do such a thing before. It was always just me at home with the parents after my brothers left. Always the three of us, me left defenceless and invisible.

Here was a part of the family I had remaining, and God it was the best family I had ever known. My boys grinned back at me, Nick rolling his eyes and twisting away after a few seconds, Vaughn giving me his best wink and twisting in closer. My body lay rigid against his, and I wondered if anything I said or did could ever let this boy know what I felt for him. If it would ever be enough.

In that moment I settled for kissing him because it was the closest thing I could think of.