I Love Lucy

I Love Lucy

Annette stared over her coffee cup towards the center of her universe, who was currently sitting in the corner of the coffee shop, completely unaware of her existence. Annette had coffee with her daughter almost every morning, however her daughter had no clue of their standing ritual. She looked so exhausted today. Was she getting enough sleep? Of course she wasn’t. Lucy was in the home stretch of her senior year at university, and was law school bound. Annette couldn’t be more proud that her daughter would go on to do things she herself had never dreamed of. As underwhelming as her own life had been, it seemed to be a special sort of poetic justice that her progeny would drift up towards the heavens.

She looked like Annette’s ghost from glory days past, with her auburn hair flowing like a river down her back. Her ivory skin looked as though it would burn if she even thought of the sun. She beat her thumbs on the table on either side of the mountain of books in front of her. This was one of her little quirks, an idiosyncrasy she always performed when she was in a hurry, demanding that the information absorb into her brain before her final in ten minutes. Annette knew she shouldn’t be here every day. She knew she shouldn’t have her class schedule and daily routine engraved into her mind. She knew she shouldn’t spend so much of her life watching Lucy live hers, but what could she do? As a mother, you never stop worrying, do you?

Her pile of papers fell to the floor as she pulled a mangled copy from the bottom of the heap. Her carefully scripted sticky notes were completely askew, but she sorted them back into their proper place without so much as a resigned sigh. She came by her tenacity honestly, from her father. Her birth father, that is. He had courted her in earnest, the wild eyed boy from the wrong side of the tracks. The ecstasy of their unorthodox romance had seduced her, as surely as Eve was powerless to resist the apple that the serpent has presented her. Down the rabbit hole they fell, the well-to-do girl from the city, and the persistent lost boy.

Though, come to think of it, the only thing her had been determined about in the end was getting away from the two of them. Annette had thought their vows of “till death do us part” had meant just that. However, to Dale, it had turned out to mean “until you get pregnant”. He had jumped on the first bus to Florida, and she had never seen him again. He left Annette at age eighteen, pregnant, and alone. Isn’t that sadly stereotypical? She thought with an eye roll as she took another long sip of her latte. Her parents hadn’t had a thing to do with her since she had married the “good for nothing loser”. The thought of their “I told you so” coupled with her own arrogance had kept her from going home again.

As Lucy grew inside of her, time seemed to move at a warp speed towards the most significant decision she would ever make in her life. When the time came, she chose to give Lucy a better life with someone far more equipped to bring up a child than she was, or at least that was what she forced herself to believe. As she sat in the coffee shop, she couldn’t help but admit that a large part of her was quite simply scared stupid at the thought of being responsible for another human being. She hadn’t allowed herself even a glance at Lucy, as she collapsed against the hospital bed, completely exhausted after eighteen hours in labor. She held her body ridged against the cries of her daughter as she stared out the rain soaked window. A chill crept down her back as she remembered the haunting sound of her screams disappearing down the long hallway. She held her coffee cup tightly, and wished for something stronger to chase the memories away.

Regardless of where the truth lay, she paced up in down the halls during the ten day waiting period before the adoption would become final, her last chance to change her mind and demand to have her baby girl returned. She lost count of the number of times that she picked up the phone, only to set it back down again. On day eleven, she felt deep within her bones that she would never forgive herself. She would never be okay again. Closed adoption, her lawyer had said. No contact allowed until Lucy turned eighteen, he continued. So Annette sat down into her purgatory and waited.

She did her time quietly, for a time. Then slowly, she found herself in Lucy’s neighborhood, watching her play in the yard. She had laughed so hard as she jumped into the piles of leaves the fall she turned three. When she started kindergarten, she had watched from across the street as Lucy marched through those double doors to claim her kingdom, tear streaked face and all. Annette had begun to work as a substitute teacher at Lucy’s middle school, knowing that young teenagers are the some of the most evil monsters on the planet. She had just wanted to be close-just in case Lucy ever needed her. She was the one who had gotten that little bitch Ansley Spears expelled when she started the rumor that Lucy stuffed her bra. She knew her tactics were questionable, but with God as her witness, her heart was pure. She had called and paid for a cab when Lucy got drunk at a party when she was sixteen, and she was afraid to call her parents. She had made sure Lucy caught her asshole of an ex cheating on her senior year of high-school. She had loved her as well as she possibly could-from a far. She was a guardian angel in the flesh, who glided in and out of Lucy’s life like a silent super hero.

Unseen.

Unheard.

Unappreciated.

All of her apologies and explanations were stillborn, and sat like the weight of the world on her chest.

Through her years of watching and waiting, she saw herself in her daughter. The dimple that she had on her right cheek. The way she loved gymnastics. Her fiery temper that matched her hair perfectly. She would day dream about the life the would have built together. The hard truth of it all was that Lucy had all of those things with another man and women. She had carefully picked them out at the adoption agency. She wanted Lucy to have two parents what would make sure she had everything she ever needed. She had succeeded, and now she hated them for it.

As time marched defiantly onward, Annette could see that despite all her caring consideration, the picture perfect house that she built for her daughter seemed to cave in upon itself as she grew. Nature verses nurture was alive and well, just as she had learned about in school. Through time and pressure, she saw her darling daughter duel the same demons that she fought-even in present day. She listened from the bathroom stall as Lucy reeled up her lunch at school, every day, during a season of bulimia. She had anonymously reported her little den of pot smokers to the school principal during an enchanting time of experimental drug use.

She watched her picture perfect parents, teachers, friends and enemies alike poke and prod at her to dance a new jig at each turn. Lucy did as she please, taking and leaving parts of their interpretation of what she should be, as she saw fit. She was resilient to it all in a remarkable fashion that seemed to puzzle her peers. What did the little adopted girl know that they did not? Annette knew one thing for certain: She was the only person on the planet that loved Lucy for the brilliant brittle mess she was, instead of the pristine porcelain doll they all tried to paint her into.

After she turned eighteen, she had no excuse not to make herself known. She would toss and turn at night over what was the most fair thing to do, for Lucy. She took to pacing the halls, just as she had eighteen years before. She could have sworn that she had worn a hole through the granite from the force of her steps. She would dream about what it would be like to hold her daughter. What it would be like to explain her decisions. How do you explain to a child that it wasn’t that you didn’t want them, but that you were just utterly incapable of providing them the life they deserved? Many nights she awoke screaming at the thought of Lucy’s face contorted with rage upon meeting the woman who had abandoned her without a second through, or so she thought. If only she could express to Lucy just how far and wide her love spread. Then, she knew, she wouldn’t have a fear left in this whole God forsaken world.

As a tear trickled down her cheek, she watched Lucy leave the coffee shop with her stack of books at a whopping pace. Another day gone. Another opportunity evaporated into the morning mist. Another day that Lucy would trudge through life with the great unanswered question, why didn’t my mother want me?

“Tomorrow is the day,” she said in a throaty whisper, “It has to be.”

Then, Lucy stepped off the side walk into the path of the city bus. She never saw it coming, and it didn’t have a hope of stopping.