Answering Machine

Too tired to begin unpacking, but kept far too awake by the thoughts swimming around my head to even consider sleep, I drove mindlessly around town until finally ending up at my parents’ house. I sat idly in the driveway at first, my hand hovering over the key in the ignition as I glanced at the Thompson’s house next door. Millions of memories, it seemed, began to flood my thoughts. Everything that had taken place inside that house, from our impromptu sleepovers during high school to the dinners during which we had announced our engagement and, eventually, Lindsay’s pregnancy, floated to my conscious thought. I cut the ignition of the car and leaned my head back against my seat, closing my eyes.

I don’t know how long I sat there, alone in my car in my parents’ driveway, letting each and every memory pass through my mind, playing the images on my closed eyelids like a series of mini movies. Eventually, though, I was ripped from my thoughts by a soft tapping on the window next to me. My eyes snapped open and I looked up to see my mom standing patiently outside, smiling down at me. I sighed, rubbing my eyes wearily, before pushing the door open and stepping into the daylight.

“Were you enjoying your nap?” she asked as soon as I had shut the door behind me.

“I wasn’t napping,” I told her. “I was just… thinking.”

“John, you were sitting in your car, eyes closed and mouth hanging open, for three hours. I’d call that a nap,” she insisted with a chuckle, motioning for me to follow her inside.

“Three hours?” I sputtered disbelievingly. I shook my head and looked down at my phone, reading the time. Sure enough, it was nearly 11:00 in the morning. “Why didn’t you wake me up sooner?”

“Oh, believe me, I tried,” she informed me with a knowing smile as we entered the house. “You were out – wouldn’t wake up the first few times I knocked on your window. I would have thought you were dead if you hadn’t been fidgeting and moving around so much in your sleep.”

I couldn’t bring myself to do anything more than sigh and slump into a chair at the kitchen table. Without even bother to ask if I wanted some, my mom began bustling around the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. Normally, I would have objected and told her not to go to the trouble of making coffee just for me, but I knew that it would be useless, and as soon as the wafting smell of coffee beans hit my nose, I knew I needed caffeine.

“So I thought you weren’t supposed to get home until Tuesday?” she asked, setting a mug in front of me. I eagerly reached for the sugar, dumping a spoonful into the coffee before even considering answering her.

“Kennedy and I flew back last night,” I explained. “It was a last-minute decision and we got in late, otherwise I would have called you or stopped by.”

“It’s fine,” my mom responded, waving off my excuse as she sat down in a chair to my right. I picked up the mug and held it to my chapped lips for a moment, before taking a long sip. It was unbearably hot and burned my throat as it went down, but I hardly noticed or cared. “John, are you all right? You look awful.”

“Thanks,” I muttered sarcastically, rolling my eyes. She didn’t say anything, but continued to stare at me, a worried look growing more and more evident by the second.

“I’m serious, John,” she persisted, giving me a warning look that was enough to coax me into telling her the truth.

“I don’t know,” I murmured, staring into the dark depths of my coffee before taking another gulp. “I don’t know what to do anymore. Lindsay’s mad at me for being gone all of the time – hell, I’m mad at myself for being gone all of the time – and she’s been so distant. I wish I could be home with her and Allie, Mom, I really do, but being in the band is my job just as much as being a teacher is Lindsay’s job. It was all fine, and we made it work, for so long, but everything changed with Allie. God, though, I love her so much and I wouldn’t trade her for the world – “

“Seems as if that’s what you’ve done, though,” my mother interrupted quietly. I looked up at her from my mug in disbelief.

“What?”

“She’s your daughter, John,” she sighed, wringing her hands on top of the table. “I don’t at all doubt that you love her, because I know you do, but you’re leaving her – trading her – for your band, and your tours.”

I groaned loudly and let my head hit my arms, which were folded haphazardly on top of the table. I hated being the bad guy, and that’s all I was anymore.

“I’m not telling you to give up the band, or anything like that. I’m just saying that you have to find a better balance. You need to be fair to your bandmates, and you need to be fair to your family. She might be mad at you, and she might be confused about what to do, but Lindsay loves you, John. She loves you and supports you, and she can deal with your absence, but she doesn’t want Allie to have to deal with it.”

I raised my head to look up at my mom.

“How do you know all of this?” I asked her. She simply smiled and folded her hands on top of the table.

“We talk,” she said with a small laugh.

“Why can’t she tell me these things?” I wondered angrily, feeling my jaw clench. “Does she think that refusing to talk to me and getting into stupid arguments is a better way of going about things?”

“Calm down,” my mother scolded, narrowing her eyes at me. “She’s scared.”

“Scared?” I repeated with a scoff.

“Yes, she’s scared. In case you’ve failed to notice, John, your potential reactions to things seem to worry her quite a bit. Sometimes, you have a funny way of showing people you care about them.”

“What the hell does that mean?” I raged. She narrowed her eyes at me once again, and I sat back in my chair, attempting to take deep breaths.

“You love Lindsay, right?”

“Of course I love her,” I sputtered back immediately. Why would she even ask me that?

“Maybe you need to show her that,” she suggested simply.

“I do show her that I love her! And she should know that I do, no matter what! Shouldn’t she trust me enough to know that I love her?”

“It’s hard to trust someone who’s never there,” my mom mused quietly.

“I need to think,” I blurted with frustration. Our conversation was killing me; I didn’t want to be gone all of the time, I didn’t want Lindsay to think she couldn’t trust me, and I didn’t want to keep missing out on watching my daughter grow up. “I’m going to take a nap.”

“You’re welcome to stay here if you’d rather not drive,” my mom offered, without bothering to chide me for giving up on our conversation. I nodded appreciatively and stalked upstairs, heading towards my old room, which was now more or less a storage space and makeshift guest bedroom. I fell onto the bed and closed my eyes, trying to imagine feasible possibilities that would make my life work better, until I finally fell asleep.

“John.”

I groaned as a hand gripped my shoulder, shaking me out of my slumber.

“John,” my mother’s voice repeated, this time with more urgency.

“What time is it?” I grumbled, trying to swat her hand away from me.

“It’s almost four,” she informed me. I rubbed my eyes and opened them, sitting up immediately as I noticed the look on my mother’s face.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, studying the worry- and panic-stricken expression on the face in front of me.

“Allie’s preschool teacher just called me.”

I immediately felt the blood drain from my face as my eyes went wide.

“What happened? Where’s Allie? Is she okay?” I found myself leaping out of the bed, pulling on my hair with anguish as I waited anxiously for her response.

“Allie’s fine,” my mom told me cautiously. I let out the breath I had apparently been holding in, “but she’s still at school. Lindsay never picked her up.”