My Mother Got Married Read Online Free Page B

Like he had just had the wind knocked out of him or something. It took me a second to realize that he was almost as upset by the news as I was. I guess it’s weird finding out that your wife is marrying another man. Even if she’s not your wife anymore.
    He sat there a minute staring down at the floor. Like he was trying to sort out his feelings. It gave me hope. It shouldn’t have, but it did.
    “Maybe it’s not too late, Dad,” I blurted out suddenly. “Maybe you and Mom could still …”
    But my father didn’t let me get any further. He shook his head. “No, Charlie,” he said firmly. “That’s over and done with. You know that.”
    Then he took a deep breath. “I’m afraid this is one of those things you’re just going to have to accept.”
    It made me mad, the way he said it. Like having a whole new family move into my life was just a minor inconvenience that I’d have to get used to, like a chipped tooth or a bad haircut.
    I threw my hands in the air. “Sure, Dad. No problem. Just one more little adjustment in my life, right? First I start out with two parents. Then all of a sudden they get divorced and I lose my father. Then my mother backs into some guy’s truck and what d’ya know, I’ve got a dad again. Only this one comes with a teenage sister who calls my mother Janet and a goofball little brother. And what d’ya know, all I have to do is accept it. Hey, that sounds easy enough.”
    Dad looked hurt. “I’ve never stopped being your father, Charlie. Not for one minute. Don’t put that on me. It’s not fair.”
    I turned away from him and covered my face with my hands. “Tell me about fair, Dad. It seems like nothing in my whole life is fair anymore.”
    He didn’t answer. There was nothing more to say. Not even for an insurance salesman.

STEP—A DEFINITION

    Sometimes I look up words in the dictionary. Divorce, psychology —words that affect my life, you know? And I wonder how they do it. The people who write the dictionaries, I mean. How do they take complicated stuff like divorce and psychology and make them sound so simple?
    I looked up step. Not the kind of step like in a stair step or putting one foot in front of the other. I looked up the kind of step you get when your mother remarries. Like when you get a stepfather or stepbrother or stepsister. And the dictionary said: step- , a prefix meaning related by remarriage.
    And I wondered how the dictionary could make it all sound so easy.
    Why didn’t they talk about what step really means? About how it means stepping aside so that a man who’s not your father can hold your mother’s hand. And how it means stepping out of the way to let a little kid scoot into the booth next to your mother so she can fold his pirate hat. And how it means stepping over a teenage girl who has taken your favorite spot on the floor and now you have to watch TV from the uncomfortable chair in the corner.
    It’s not that I hated the Russos. In another situation, even Thomas might have grown on me. But I never put out the welcome mat and invited them into my life.
    Let’s face it. A welcome mat’s just one more thing for someone to step on.

(four)

I
    N THE weeks before the wedding, my mother tried hard to be extra nice to me. Parents do this sort of thing when they feel guilty about something.
    One week we went to the movies three times. Each time I got to have a box of Dots plus Junior Mints, plus popcorn, plus a soda. If that’s not guilt, what is?
    One Sunday afternoon she packed a couple of sandwiches in a backpack and we went to the park to eat them. We sat under my favorite tree. The one with branches so low, it practically begs to be climbed.
    “I love you, Charlie,” she said out of the clear blue as she handed over an egg salad sandwich. She’d been saying stuff like that a lot lately.
    “The important things will never change between us. You know that, don’t you?”
    I shrugged. “Yeah, sure. Whatever you say,” I answered