Free Or Not to Be by Laura Lanni

was there. This from a girl who left her dirty clothes on the floor
wherever they landed at the end of every day. Then she blows her nose on the
dish towel and tosses it on the counter before walking out the back door.
That’s my girl.
    | | | |
    I looked for every opportunity to try to get Bethany to talk to me
more. It was tough, but she was so depressed after that bastard football player
showed his true colors and broke up with her. I saw my chance and dove in.
    “No,
Mom, you do not understand.” Bethany dumped a third scoop of sugar into her
coffee. It was two weeks before her high school graduation and one week before
prom, almost noon on a Sunday, and she’d just emerged from her bedroom.
    “Oh,
honey.” I tried to hug her. She pushed me away.
    “Who
ever broke up with you?”
    She
was right. I didn’t date enough to suffer a break up. Eddie was my first, last,
and only real relationship. In my daughter’s eyes, I was lucky. I got it right
on the first try. She considered me an overachiever.
    “There’ll
be other boys, Bethany.”
    “You
see?” she yelled. “You don’t know anything! Nobody wants to think about the next
guy when one just hurt you. That doesn’t help at all.”
    “What
I meant was—you’ll survive this.”
    “I
don’t even want to, Mom,” she wailed. “I just want to die.” She slammed her
coffee mug on the table and stormed out the kitchen door into our garage. I followed
right behind her, afraid she’d get in the car and drive herself into a wreck.
She wasn’t a great driver even when she wasn’t sobbing.
    “I’m
sorry, honey.” She leaned against the side of the car in a crumple, her
forehead on her crossed arms, her face hidden. “What happened, anyway?”
    She
spun around and grabbed her hair in two fists, holding the newly cut ends in
bunches. “This happened. Billy broke up with me because I cut my hair.”
    Oh.
He was an ass as well as a buffoon, then. I was not surprised, but at least I
had the tact not to say this out loud. Men and hair—what woman could comprehend
that twisted puzzle?
    “So, I’m furious,
Mom. You were right, okay? He’s an ass and an idiot, and he didn’t even care
about me. But talking about it with you makes it hurt even more.
Can’t you just go away without saying ‘I told you so’?”
    I
held my ground. No way was I leaving her like this.
    “Then
I’ll go away,” she said and left the house for a long walk.
    Late
that night, I was drawn like a bug to the line of light under her bedroom door.
I knocked. I just wanted to hug her, I swear. I wasn’t there to lecture or pry.
I just wanted my baby girl, who was almost grown up, to know that I loved her.
    “Go
away, Mom.”
    “How’d
you know it was me?” I asked the closed door.
    Her
muffled voice, sounding just like when she was little, answered, “Joey walks
in. Daddy waits for me to come out. You’re the only knocker.” Silence. I was
dismissed. I knocked again, trained in persistence long ago by her father.
    With
a heavy sigh, she yanked open the door. She stood before me, blocking my entry,
chin up and eyes defiant above her red and swollen nose. Mascara hung in black
shadows under her glassy eyes. Her blue sparkling prom dress looked lovely on
her petite frame, even with the toes of her bunny slippers peeking from the
hem.
    I
sighed, my gaze locked on her toes. When I looked up at her and opened my mouth
to speak, she raised her palm to me, Eddie-style, and insisted, “Do not say,
‘Oh, honey,’ or I will lose it again, Mom.”
    I
opened my arms and waited. She hesitated a tenth of a second before she dropped
her eyes from mine and stepped into my hug. And she lost it again anyway.
    | | | |
    Now
Bethany sits alone , with my planner, the map and chronicle of my life, in her lap. She
shakes her head and frowns. Mom,
how the heck did you do so much? I think my life is crazy, but you never took a
rest. Kinda scary, but it looks like life could get even harder. College