‘Trust me,’ he said.
She stayed overnight, but around six o’clock in the morning said she wanted to go back to her apartment across town. Garfield wasn’t so sure that was a good idea, but Melissa said she could handle it. She wasn’t going to stay there. She’d still come back later on and stay overnight in the room she used to live in. All the same, she needed some time by herself, to think. Melissa shared the apartment with her friend Olivia, but Olivia was away right now, visiting her parents in Denver.
Garfield was awake at six – he’d never been asleep – and said he would drive his daughter back to her place.
He parked in front of the apartment, which was actually the top floor of an old house with a separate entrance.
Garfield said, ‘Are you sure you’re going to be OK? Do you want me to wait?’
Melissa said, no.
Even though she was only nineteen, Melissa had been living away from home for three years. She was the first to admit she’d been a difficult teenager from the beginning. She drank, used drugs and slept around. She ignored the limits her parents attempted to set for her.
When she was sixteen, Ellie and Wendell decided they could take no more. They gave her a stark choice. She must live by the rules of their house, or get out.
She chose to get out.
Melissa found a place to live with Olivia. She dropped out of school and got a job as a waitress at Denny’s. It turned out that getting kicked out of her parents’ house was the best thing that had ever happened to her. It forced her to get her act together. She didn’t have anyone else to take care of her, so she had to take care of herself.
She started to become responsible. Whoever would have guessed?
Ellie and Wendell were quietly optimistic. Once Melissa got her head screwed on, they thought, she could go back and finish school. If she did well enough, she might even have a chance of going to college, Ellie mused one evening. Maybe she’d even think about becoming a vet. She reminded Wendell of how, when their daughter was little, she had said one day she’d love to work with animals and—
‘For God’s sake, Ellie, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,’ Wendell said.
Melissa used to come over for dinner. Some of these get-togethers went better than others. One night, Melissa would tell them about how she was getting her life back on track. Her parents would nod and try to be encouraging. Yet on another night, Ellie, keen to see her daughter get her life back on track, would start pushing.
She’d tell her daughter it was time – now –to stop being ‘nothing more than a waitress’. Melissa should go back to school and make something of herself. Did Melissa have any idea just how embarrassing it was for her mother, an employee of the board of education, to have a daughter who was a dropout? Melissa hadn’t even finished her final year at school. How long was she expected to wait before seeing her daughter get on a path where she would amount to something?
Then they’d start fighting and Melissa would storm out. Before she did so, she would ask out loud how she’d managed to live in this house for so long without blowing her brains out.
It always took a few days for the dust to settle.
Ellie and Wendell still kept their fingers crossed that Melissa was growing up. She held on to her waitressing job. She was saving some money, even if not a lot. It was only about twenty-five dollars a week, but it was something. Then one day, when talking to her mother on the phone, Melissa happened to mention that she’d looked at a college website to see what grades you needed to enrol in the course to become a vet.
Ellie was beside herself with joy when she told Wendell the news.
‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ she asked. ‘She’s growing up, that’s what she’s doing. She’s growing up and thinking about the future.’
What neither Ellie or Wendell had counted on was that the immediate future would include a baby.
Melissa was already three months’ pregnant when she broke the news to her parents. They did not, to say the least, take it well, but Wendell tried to find the silver lining. Maybe this meant Melissa would get married. She’d be a very young mother, but at least it would mean she had a man in her life, a man who could look after her. Wouldn’t that take some of the pressure off Ellie and him?