Waking Charley Vaughan (10 page)

After my mother, my father came forward to see me. He simply patted my good arm, “How ya feeling, Chuck?” using the playful nickname he’d given me as  a little tomboy.

I smiled. “I’m okay, Dad. Hanging in there at least.” He just nodded. My father was not a man of many words. 

My sisters just waved from where they stood under the TV set, adding to the feeling I had that they didn’t care to be there.

By the time my family had been introduced to Brennan, pretending to be Matt, and his twin sister Sara, any party manners that my mother may have been displaying were off.

Within a five minute period, she insulted Sara’s lack of make-up. Of course, the insult was thinly veiled in a complement, as is my mother’s way.

“Sara, I’m just so impressed with you. I wish I didn’t care about my appearance, especially with you being a professional. I’d be just mortified if anyone at the marketing firm saw me that way. Kudos to you for not caring about all that.”

Sara rolled her eyes. “Some things are more important than appearance,” she said snidely.

My mother just huffed indignantly and moved onto her next victim.

“So, Matthew,” she said in her most official tone, “I was quite pleased to hear that you and Charley patched things up. Although I must say, you look much different from what I imagined. Charley always described you as more…appearance oriented,” she said that last bit while looking Brennan up and down, no doubt cringing internally at his lack of dress shirt or tie. What’s funny is that the real Matt would have been wearing those things. Brennan was more like me. He’d worn jeans and t-shirts every time I’d seen him, and always the same pair of beat up Chuck Taylor sneakers. That day, though, he had put on a polo shirt, and I thought he’d looked nice. Leave it to my mother to criticize anyway.

Finally, it was my turn for critique. My mother examined me for a moment, her disappointed gaze going from my hair to my un-pedicured feet before she finally let out the words she’d been holding in.

“Oh Charley! You’re a
mess
.” My mother almost yelled. “Look at you!”

“Yeah, mom, accidents tend to have that effect on people,” I said dryly.

“That’s no excuse, young lady. Look at that
hair!”
That was my mother for you—appalled by the state of my hair after recovering from an accident. She fished in her purse for something. After a moment, she shoved a small mirror in my face. I hated to admit it, but she was right. My hair had to be sitting at least four inches off the top of my head, and folded in about seven different directions.

“And would it kill you to put on a little make-up? My goodness, your future husband is here having to look at you all the time. The least you could do is pluck those eyebrows, or God forbid, put on a little mascara!” Her rant would have continued, but I cut her off.

“Mom, I’m sorry, okay? I’ll pull my hair back Sheesh.” With that, she handed me a small hair tie. I looked at her. “Thanks. I can’t do much about the make-up. And Matt is marrying me for better or worse…this falls into the latter,” I said, trying to hide my frustration. It was going to be a long trip, I might as well not get upset now.

Then, I did something unnecessary, and something I never would have done under normal circumstances. I looked up at my mother in mock innocence. “Aren’t you going to help me pull it back? ” I gestured to my sling.” I’m kind of shorthanded here.”

My mother made an uncomfortable move back from me, waving away my request. I should have left it alone—I wanted to leave it alone.  Something in me, though, just wanted to keep pushing. “Come on, mom. Just pull it back in a ponytail…please?”

“Charley, you know I don’t like messing with people’s hair…especially not when its…greasy,” she shuttered.

My youngest sister, Casey, chimed in. “Mom, why don’t you and I go find something to drink? I bet your throat is dry from the flight. Mine sure is!” the chatter continues as she escorted my mom from the room.

To my surprise, my sister Codey stepped closer to me, taking the hair tie from my hand forcefully. “For God’s sake, Charley,” she spat as her furious hands worked through my tangled hair. “You know she’s not going to touch your dammed hair. She hasn’t touched it twenty-some-odd years. Don’t be an idiot!”

“I know,” I sighed. “I guess I just forgot. I am on a lot of meds, you know?”

“Oh please,” Codey said, “I know damn well what you were doing, and let me tell you, crap like that isn’t going to make this God forsaken trip any better for any of us, so could you please knock it off?”

She took a step back to see that my hair was  properly in place on top of my head, then she stomped out of the room, I assumed to get Casey and my mother.

Brennan stared blankly, “What was that about?” he asked.

I just rolled my eyes, refusing to try to explain my mother’s idiotic behavior to anyone.

Sara jumped in. “Charley’s mom doesn’t like her and her sisters’ hair.” She said frankly. “It’s too ‘greasy’ for her taste.”

Brennan looked at me in what I guessed was a desire for me to clarify.

“By ‘too greasy’ Sara means to say
not like her hair
” I said sadly.

“But your dad is…I mean, his hair is…” Brennan began

“ She doesn’t touch his hair either,” Sara interjected. “Doesn’t like how it feels .” And there it was once more. The “poor charley” look. It was coming from both of them now. I wanted this conversation to end. Everything about it was humiliating.

Seeming to sense this, Brennan just said “Oh,” then added quickly, “Well, I’m not a chick or anything, but, I think your hair looks fine…for what it’s worth.”

“Thanks,” I laughed. “good thing you weren’t around when we were little. Hairstyling was left up to our dad, so if we didn’t end up with a boy haircut, we just had mounds of curls flying all over the place.”

“How is that any different from now?” Sara asked me with a grin.

“Shut up,” I retorted.

“Charley, don’t be so vulgar,” my mother scolded as she walked into the room. I knew she hadn’t heard much of the conversation since that was her response to whatever she’d heard.

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said mechanically. Something about my mother’s presence made that phrase from my childhood enter back into my vocabulary.

I sighed and tried to convince myself that the next week might possibly go by quickly: I wasn’t buying it. Brennan looked over at me and gave me a sympathetic smile.

Then, his eyes moved toward the call button resting on my bed. I wanted to. I really wanted to. I knew I shouldn’t though. Oh, but I wanted to. I spent some time mentally going back and forth. Brennan must have seen that I wasn’t going to act. After a moment, he spoke up, “Well, uh…Mom,Dad,” he began awkwardly. “Why don’t we get you settled into your hotel? I can take a couple of you there in my truck, and I’m sure Sara can transport the other two in her car,” he gave Sara a look that said, ‘help me out here.’.

“Uh, Sure!” she jumped in, “ I can show you girls the best shopping and stuff along the way. That way Charley can get some rest.”

My mother looked uninterested in the suggested activities, and my father, as always, looked uninterested in being so close to my mother. Eventually, my mother made a move for her purse and agreed, stating that “If Charley really can’t stay awake to visit with her family, then there’s no sense in hanging around here. No need to drive us. We rented a car,” she said. “But, it’d be nice if you could show us how to get there. This city doesn’t make any sense. Nothing is where it should be,” she said.

Bravo, Mother. One more jab for the road. I hugged everyone goodbye, and for one awkward moment, couldn’t figure out exactly how Brennan and I should part ways. He saved me, yet again, but giving me a brief peck on the forehead, and saying, “We’ll see you later tonight. I’ll bring some dinner.”

I was relieved to see my family go. They hadn’t been there any more than an hour, but seeing them brought up too much intense emotion. Mostly, it was my mother. It made me remember everything—all the pain, the insults, and the ugliness that had caused me to leave my home town in the first place.

***

The first few days of my family’s visit were almost tolerable. Brennan and Sara seemed to be working extra hard to counteract all of my mother’s negativity with happy things. Most of Christmas Eve day, Brennan wasn’t around. I assumed he was working. My mother, of course, had plenty to say about “a man who can’t even take Christmas Eve off to spend with his family…” I just shook my head and offered my ‘yes ma’ams” in the appropriate places while my sisters sat around rolling their eyes in unison and looking bored.

The highlight of my Christmas Eve came that evening, when Brennan and Sara came into my room with two of the biggest smiles I’d ever seen on either of them. Despite my protests, Sara rolled me out of my room in the stupid wheelchair I thought I’d been done with; and this time, Brennan did not come to my rescue. She wheeled me to the cafeteria doors where I saw a janitor whose nametag said, “Glenn”. He escorted the three of us to a table where my sisters were already seated. The table was covered in wax paper, and two huge mixing bowls sat in the middle of the table. I wasn’t sure what was going on until I saw the cookie cutters in front of Codey and Casey.

“Christmas cookies!” I shouted. Even my sisters, who had been stone faced every moment I’d seen them, managed to smile slightly at my exclamation. Sara placed my chair at the end of the table, and the six of us began making cookies. Codey and Casey rolled out the dough while Sara and I cut shapes, then we placed them on some of the hospital’s huge baking sheets. From there, our friend Glenn brought the cookie trays to the back of the cafeteria. I thought we were done—until about 10 minutes later when Glenn brought all the trays back out, and Sara followed behind when frostings and sprinkles.

It was an amazing night. My sisters talked—not much to me, but they did talk to Sara and Brennan a lot. It was nice to just be around them while they were smiling and happy. It had been so long since I had seen that from them.

After hours of baking and decorating, we all gathered back up in my room to watch
A Christmas Story.
It turned out, Brennan had never seen the movie all the way through, so we had decided it was a must. When we got back in the room, Glenn was installing a newer, bigger, nicer, television.

I remembered Sara telling me about Brennan’s trick with the chairs. I gave him a look.

“Is this your doing?” I asked.

“Hey, you can’t watch
A Christmas Story
on a small TV,” he said smiling.

“Wise words from a man who’s never seen it,” I teased.

We thanked Glenn as he headed back to the kitchen. My sisters stayed for the whole movie before heading back to the hotel to be with my parents.

It was strange. Like, they didn’t want to talk to me, but they still sort of wanted to be around me. I didn’t quite understand how it worked, but I was at least thankful for the brief time with them. I was even more thankful that my parents hadn’t been there that night. Christmas Eve had been perfect, and my mother’s presence would have only ruined that.

***

That night, after I thought everyone had left, I sat up in my room, trying to find something to watch on Television. I had already had the chance to see all of my favorite Christmas movies on TV that week, and I couldn’t find any good ones on right then anyway.

Somehow I ended up settling on Telemundo, the Spanish channel. My sister and I had once loved making fun of the soap operas on the station. Part of me must have been feeling nostalgic because I sat the remote down and began watching.

From what I could understand, a woman named Maria had been cheating on a man named Francisco with another man named Miguel. I was half laughing, half fascinated as I heard Francisco ask with too much seriousness, “Porque Maria? Porque?”

“You speak Spanish?’ came a voice from the door. I turned too quickly and a sharp pain struck my head.

“Ouch!” I hissed, grabbing my head with my good hand. “That hurt!”

Brennan came over to the bed, concern in his eyes. “Do you need me to call a nurse?” he asked, sounding scared.

“No,” I said, “I’m fine. I just moved too quickly. That’s all.” I was still holding my head, but the pain was starting to subside.

“To answer your question,” I started, “No, I don’t speak Spanish. But, you don’t need to speak the language to know that Maria is an El Skank-o.”  This elicited a small chuckle from Brennan, who was now sitting in one of the recliners next to my bed.

“Can I ask you something?” he said earnestly.

“Yes,” I said, wondering what he wanted to know. It took a minute for him to actually ask.

“Am I bothering you by being here?” he seemed to genuinely want to know.

“Of course not,” I shot back. “Why would you think that?’

“Then, why don’t you want me to help?” he asked, ignoring my question. “Is it because you don’t know me? Or do you just not let anyone help you?”

“You’re already helping me, Brennan. You’re spending the weeks of Christmas and New Years with my crazy family, pretending to be my fiancé.” I looked at him as sternly as I could. “If that’s not letting you  help, I don’t know what is.”