That Surprise Visit Make Me Happy

The Andersons still lived in town, but there was a new pastor here now, a younger guy who seemed to be well liked. I wasn’t exactly the church going type, so I hadn’t met him yet.

I had seen Elizabeth from afar two or three times, but I wasn’t sure she had recognized me. I looked very different now from the skinny, punky rebel she took to her bed. I had dark shoulder length hair and bangs now, and ten years of New Mexico cooking and better mental health had given me the curvy figure my scrawny ass teen self had once dreamed of.

Then again, maybe Elizabeth was just ignoring me. That suited me fine. I sure as hell wasn’t going to give the gossips the pleasure of being seen chatting with her.

I closed my office door on the flow of kids finding their way to their homerooms, knowing I could get a bit of time to prepare for my first interview of the day, due in the second period. Robert, a junior jock not doing well with his science grades. He was a sweet kid, trying hard but just not getting there. He was coming in with his parents and I was going to recommend that he get tutoring and a bi-weekly counselling interview with me.

I suspected that he needed to get some things off his chest that he wasn’t going to tell his parents, but it would probably take some time before he trusted me with his problems.

Next up would be Danny. He was one of my regulars: the goal there was to get him to stop acting out at school to get his problems at home out of his system. Absent mother, alcoholic father. Not a very original story. Danny hated counseling and he was warming me like the North Dakota winter. Oh well, maybe he’d come ’round once he figured out that I wasn’t going to give up on him.

It was weird to be working in my old high school. The chairs on the other side of my desk were even the same ones where I had regularly planted my ass in definitely all those years ago. When I looked at them, I could picture a sneering kid with one side of her hair shaved close, a home pierced eyebrow, an attitude the size of Montana and her big flight boots resting angrily on the edge of my desk.

It was like being on the other side of a surreal ghostly mirror, looking back in time.

I hadn’t come looking for this job, but the chronic shortage of teachers here worked in my favor. The position was open when I was preparing to move back here before Christmas and I had both the degree and the experience working with troubled kids.

My Dad used to say I was going to be good at it because I already knew what it was like to be one. He wasn’t wrong: it helped. It was probably why I had gone into this line of work.

The principal hired me even though I gave her a clear heads up that some of the parents might have issues with my orientation and my history.              

And I wasn’t in the job for two weeks when some of the people on the local school board took issue with my hiring and sent a delegation to Principal Stewart to protest, demanding that I be replaced.

She told them that if they forced her to let me go, given there was a well-known staff shortage and no other applicants for the position, she would have no choice but to explain to the parents in general why their children had no one to turn to when they got in trouble at school. She would explain that their children were going to be at a disadvantage because the school board was pursuing a personal vendetta against the highly qualified, highly recommended professional counsellor that was currently doing a great job working with their kids.

I blushed when she told me all this, incredibly thankful that she took my side so strongly. She was proud to have made them back off, but I suspected that they wouldn’t let it lie. Mostly because I knew one of them was Rose Anderson, Elizabeth’s bitch sister-in-law.

—

Dad was awake. Sometimes he’d sit sleeping in his chair when I came to visit. I would sit and watch him sleep, wondering how he could look so old and frail. He wasn’t even sixty yet, but he looked ten years older.

“Hi Dad.”

“Hi honey.”

I gave him a kiss and a hug and sat down on the sofa. It was a good nursing home, all things considered, the room was big enough for some furniture, he had pictures of mom and me on his nightstand, of the farm on the wall and some books and things.

His speech had started to slur a little and the hard consonants were weak.

“Good day?” He always asked.

“Yeah, not too bad. I brought you some apple pie.”

I got the pie out of the bag and got some plates and forks.

“How was your day?”

“Oh, you know, another busy day of sitting,” he chuckled, earning himself a little cough.

Despite all the horrors of his sickness, he had never lost his good humor. At least, he never showed me anything else. I thought he must have moments of despair, but he kept them to himself.

“I went to the Jacks for dinner last night, Martin and Marjorie said they’re coming to visit you on Sunday. Marjorie said to leave space at lunch because she’s bringing cake.”

Dad laughed; we were both well acquainted with Marjorie’s ‘cakes’. Huge things, packed with sugar and berries and held together with whipped cream.

“Martin’s already out seeding spring wheat over in section 20, rotating out last year’s sunflowers. He says the soil’s rested enough, it should yield pretty good. He’s thinking of changing the rotation in the main and west sections over to lentils next year. There’s a good market for lentils building and it will rest the soil well after the wheat. He might use section 28 and 29 for soy though.”

“That makes sense. Martin knows what he’s doing. He’ll take good care of the land.”

Dad liked to know that his friend and neighbor would continue his life’s work.

I cut a piece of apple pie and put the plate on the table beside his chair. His hands were weak and shaking, so even if he could still hold a fork it was hard for him to eat by himself.

His smile as I gave him the first bite warmed my heart.

“Mmmm, that is my favorite pie.” He had another bite and closed his eyes as he enjoyed it.

“It always reminds me of your mom, you know?”

I knew. That’s why I made it for him.

“I know Dad. Me too.”

And for a while, we just sat there quietly together, silently enjoying the taste of good memories.

—

I got home around dinnertime. I left the truck on the gravel in front of the barn and hurried in through the light rain.

I popped the frozen lasagna into the oven and climbed the stairs to my room. I still slept there, something just felt wrong about moving into the master bedroom before Dad…

Yeah.

So, I had just cleaned out some space in my old wardrobe and moved back into my rebel years sanctuary.

My huge old Evanescence placard still dominated the room, Amy Lee’s haunting eyes staring down from it.

Fallen was the soundtrack of my pain. Going under, Everybody’s Fool, Bring Me to Life, My Immortal. I must have listened to that album a million times back then.

Even now, whenever I heard it, the sublime piano of Hello and the heartbreaking lyrics still accosted my soul like a familiar demon, reaching out for the black pit that it used to feed. The pit that I still carried somewhere buried deep inside.

Ten years, a university degree and a few relationships later, I could look at Amy on my wall without falling into that pit. Even if she brought back difficult memories, she also reminded me of how far I had come. And I guess I still had a little crush on her.

I stripped down to my panties under her familiar stare and pulled my Joe Boxers up over them, my clothes ending up in the usual heap on the chair. I grabbed a tank top from my bed and skipped down the stairs again, rubbing the underside of my bouncing tits, sore from the bra as usual.

I tidied up the kitchen a bit, and when the oven dinged, I put on the tank top and sat down to eat, reading on my phone.

Frozen lasagna, ketchup and milk.

There were probably Italians somewhere having heart attacks because of my eating habits, but I always regressed into a ketchup monster when I got back home.

Home.

I still thought of this place as home, although I’d been living in Albuquerque since I was nineteen. Breakfast burritos and Carne Adovada were more my style now than meat and potatoes and cabbage from my mom’s old vegetable garden. I still had my apartment in Silver Hill, rented out for the year now, but as long as Dad was here, here was home.I curled up under a blanket on the couch after dinner. My book was fun, my white wine was chilled, and the fire was warm.

This place, this house, held a lot of difficult and painful memories for me, but also a lot of good ones. And right now, alone with my thoughts, under a blanket in front of the fireplace, I felt more at peace here than I had for a long time