Message in A Notebook

I got $20,000 by burning down my mom’s house.

We weren’t always on the best terms. Three weeks ago was the first time in six years I’d heard her voice. She sounded thin and quiet, a stark difference from the nasal siren that made every muscle in my abdomen clench when she’d call my name to come do something. Her last husband had kicked me out eight years ago, and made her choose between me or him seven years ago. That last phone call six years ago started with tears, and ended with apologies after she explained that he’d leave her homeless if she didn’t completely cut me off.

I wanted to ask her how she could choose a drunken sandbag over her only son. How a couch surfer she only dated for a few months before marrying was more important than the only person who was consistent in her life for the last 17 years. But the sobs she couldn’t hide over the phone, and the tear stains that made the ink on her letters run, told me that she didn’t think she had a choice. When they got married, he convinced her that he’d ‘better his ways and treat her like a queen’, by talking her out of her job and getting her to sell her car, ‘being a gentleman’ by controlling where she went and when she could go. He didn’t like when I’d take her to the library, or give her a little spending money from my part-time paycheck. He hated my music and when I’d spend hours writing stories in my countless notebooks, saying I should be at work even though they’d only let high schoolers be there a certain amount of hours a week.

He’d never hit her, at least not when I was there. She did say once that if he ever laid a hand on me or on her that she’d bury him in the backyard, and I know a few of our neighbors who would dig the hole and give her an alibi, so as far as I thought, she was somewhat safe.

My mom stood without a word to say as I filled my beater with as much of my stuff as I felt like cramming in there on the day I left, not truly thinking this episode of The Lightweight Wonder’s threats was as serious as he thought he sounded. I figured I’d drive over and spend the day with a friend and wait for him to sleep it off before bringing home dinner and hearing a half-assed apology grunt, like we’d done countless times before. Looking back and noting how frequently it’d happen in the last few months I was there, it was like watching a spider get washed down the sink drain, spiraling and circling the hole, getting closer with each orbit, until it got too close and the drain’s gravity sucked it in.

He was slamming things in a pattern that would punctuate whatever point he was trying to make about how I “needed to respect him” and “stop telling him that it was my mom’s house and not his and she could kick him out if she damn well pleased”; it was a sore spot for him apparently because my mom had him sign a prenup before she even got the marriage license, and she very well could kick him out if she damn well pleased. She still had payments to make, but what with her arm yanked behind her back now, his job was the one making the house payments.

It was around 10 that night when I got back to the house with cold pizzas in the backseat when I saw my mom sitting in the driveway. My headlights scanned over the soda cans crushed by her feet, and highlighted the streaks of not-long dried tears down her face, and knew she’d been out there a few hours before I even shut the car off. As I was getting out to talk to her, she put her hand up in a motion to stop me from talking too loudly, and I could see a new collection of small cuts on her fingers and palm, probably from picking up shattered knick knacks. She told me she didn’t want him to wake up and start yelling again, but that he told her if I was here when he woke up, there’d be more than porcelain birds and, now hours later, a window broken. He tried to throw out some of my stuff before passing out in the living room, leaving my mom to clean up after his tantrum, and she locked up my room because she couldn’t bear to see him destroy any more of her house and the things in it. She gave me the only keys to it, and told me that maybe it’d be better if I spent the next week with a friend until he cooled down, and tried to keep from crying as she saw that I wasn’t going to argue. A week turned into two months, until I had to go back to her house to get some things from my room while he was at work. She had been sleeping on the couch, and woke up when she heard my keys in the door. The look in her eyes when she saw that it was me was at first relief, then fear returned as she rushed to check the time, to see how long we’d have. We were talking as I was packing up my dresser into trash bags, and I couldn’t even look her in the eye. She helped me carry out the few bags, and promised me that even if we couldn’t see each other at home she wouldn’t stop talking to me, no matter what he’d say about it. I guess she didn’t hide my letters over the few months after well enough, or laughed too loud on the phone at 2 am with me, because she had to choke back tears during that last call as she told me we couldn’t talk anymore. I bet he was in the room, listening to her crying and smugly imagining that I was crying on the other end of the line, thinking he “got” me.

I can’t say much for the years after; I graduated high school, got a better job, a tiny apartment, work friends that came and went, and a car that didn’t have the headlight held in with zip-ties and duct tape. I hadn’t been writing much… not at all really - didn’t have as much spare time I guess. No real relationships or big life events to talk about, just living to stay alive.

Two weeks and 5 days ago I got a package from my mom. I got home late, and kinda kicked it because it had been hidden under the doormat. No postage marks were on it, just her name and the little smiley face she’d been using as a signature her whole life. It was about the size of a game board box and felt fairly hefty, giving me a pretty good guess of what was in it. Upon opening it, I saw I was right; they were some of my old notebooks that had gotten left at my mom’s house. There were 4 of them in the box, and didn’t seem like there was a particular order or reason for them, as two of them were full of algebra notes and one had the cover torn off and was half-full of doodles and possible book titles I toyed around with. The fourth one, however, was this really nice black notebook I had gotten from my English teacher who said I could have a future as a writer, and was tucked in between the other three notebooks, looking like it had been hidden in the box on purpose. I hadn’t seen or used this notebook in years, but as soon as I saw it, I felt this pang of heartache and homesickness that I had forgotten I could feel. It fit perfectly into my hand, just like it had when I first got it, and I went to flip through the soft, expensive-feeling pages like I used to, when my thumb stuck on a page about a third of the way through; in between pages filled with a short story I had written was a note from a yellow legal pad. I picked it out of the small book and opened it to find a short letter from my mom, written in a chicken-scratch version of her handwriting, like it was hastily done. What I could read was her telling me how heartbroken she’d been over the last six years, and how sorry she was that everything had played out this way, and that she loved me. A p.s. at the bottom said to expect a call from her at exactly 12:34 pm of the next day. I knew that that meant that she knew when he’d go back to work after coming home for lunch-but-really-it’s-to-keep-tabs-on-her time. I went to bed shaking, wondering why she was reaching out now, and why she had to do it in such a cryptic way, and set an alarm for 12:20 pm so I could take my break in time for the call.

I woke up at around 6 am and just called in to work, saying I must’ve tried my luck one too many times on food trucks and wouldn’t be of any use, got told that I need to “say no more” and “try to feel better by tomorrow”. When noon rolled around, I had given up on whatever movie I tried to distract myself with and had just been watching my phone for hours. I could feel my eyes burning in the last few minutes before the phone rang, making me jump a lot more than I’m willing to admit.

“...hi honey”

“...hi mom”

Not two seconds after she heard my voice, I could hear her crying, painful and breathy sobs. She told me how sorry she was and how much of a mistake letting me leave was. We both cried for a while, I didn’t realize just how much I missed her until that call. When we finally got to where our words were understandable again, I asked how she was, and why she sent the message in a notebook like she had. She got quiet for a minute, then “...he’s been getting worse. He rips up anything I try to mail, he broke my cell phone...he pushed me through your bedroom door so hard it broke...after he fell asleep, I...I couldn’t...I had to reach you. I’m so sorry.”

After our conversation, I watched the sun set through the front window, got up, and changed into dark clothes. It was a two hour drive to my mom’s house. Before we hung up, I told her to spend the night with her neighbor, to do it for my peace of mind until we could come up with a plan to get her away from him.

I knew just how heavy he could sleep, and that it was common knowledge that he’d habitually fall asleep drunk.

My house keys still worked, and it wasn’t hard to damage the old wires on his heated blanket, and as bad as he smelled, it wouldn’t take long for him to catch. I could just smell the smoke as I walked out the door.

His life insurance set my mom up to live comfortably, with enough to get a new house, and then some. Last week, I lined up an alibi with my mom’s neighbour, and the $20,000 we each got is looking pretty good. Maybe I’ll get back into writing; that short story in my little black notebook had some promising potential.