CHAPTER TWO
Stacey
It was shocking, my mom getting married.
“Ana, I’m getting married,” she announced one day, not even looking up from her laptop. Her nails clacked, fingers flying in a fury, and that’s how I found out I was going to have a new dad … and two new stepbrothers.
I was surprised, beyond surprised really. My mom is a workaholic, someone who travels a lot as a bank executive, and it’s been a good living for the last ten years. It was a shock when my dad divorced her, leaving nothing in his wake. He’d been a sneaky bastard, emptying their joint bank account, their safe deposit box, heck, even taking some of the jewelry my grandma left her.
But my mom is tough. She was a bank teller back then and despite her broken heart, the endless crying jags, she showed up at work each morning like nothing had happened, her suit perfectly pressed, ready with a firm handshake and calm smile. Some women are born resilient, and Virginia was the best.
And I’m proud because she’s done well. Management liked Mom, the way she was always punctual, her natural way with numbers, how she was meticulous with money, even though it was just helping little old ladies with their retirement accounts at first. Mom was promoted, then promoted again, then again and again, until she was Senior Vice President with a shot at the top job. Can you believe it? My mom, who doesn’t have a college degree, is in competition with a bunch of Wall Street guys with slicked back hair and perfectly-cut, thousand dollar suits.
But it’s a lonely life, working 7 a.m. to midnight, so I was surprised to hear that she’d even met someone, much less gotten all the way to marriage.
“Who is it?” I asked, my eyebrows raised. Had she met someone on the job? That was the only plausible explanation, she had no time to socialize. But I was wrong.
“He’s a nice man, I met him at a coffee shop,” she said, still barely looking up, fingernails clacking away at the keyboard. “You’ll like him.”
Okay, at least this wasn’t an interoffice romance that would get her fired. But I was still curious.
“Name?” I pressed. It was unlike Virginia to be so secretive.
“Gordon Jones,” she replied, finally looking up. “He’s an insurance exec, a widower, lives out in White Plains with his sons.”
I knew I should have asked more about the man, about his family, but all I could hear was “White Plains,” a desolate suburbia thirty miles north of Manhattan.
“Um Mom,” I said slowly. “Sorry to intrude, but does this mean we’re moving out to White Plains? Or are they going to move in here? Or,” and here, I hoped against hope, “we’ll just stay separate?” To me, anything other than NYC was the boonies, much less the outer boroughs. In fact, White Plains wasn’t even outer boroughs, it was Westchester County. Right? Maybe I was wrong, but I sure as hell didn’t care. Anywhere other than Manhattan was a living death.
Finally, my mom closed her laptop with a click, meeting my eyes.
“Yes Ana, it means that we’re moving,” she replied. “In fact, I’m getting married this weekend and we’re moving into Gordon’s home next week.”
I sat stock still, my mouth open. You probably could have tossed a golf ball in without missing, I was so flabbergasted. WTF? Mom made a nice living in the City, why were we moving? What did they have out there anyways? A jail? A mall? Nothing, seriously nothing, at least not compared to Manhattan.
“Mom, no,” I said forcefully. “I can’t move, you know how well I’m doing at school, Trinity is awesome, I love my coach, I love my friends, I can’t go.”
But she cut me off.
“Ana, there’s more to life than track, and besides you can still run at your new school. You’ll have new brothers to show you around, they’re your age and athletic too. You’ll get along like a house on fire, I’m sure of it,” she said emphatically.
Um, she was completely wrong, boys had never been interested in me. I was “The Bean,” a girl ten miles tall and shaped like a string of rope. No guy had ever looked my way, but that was beside the point.
“Ma,” I shook my head furiously, “no way am I moving. No way.”
But Mom just ignored my protests.
“Yes you are because I’ve already given up the lease on this apartment, you’ll have no place to live.”
Oh no. Our beautiful triplex on the Upper West Side, and it was going to be gone? The rug was pulled out from under me with a whoosh and I could literally feel a jolt to the stomach, the surprise overwhelming and disorienting.
“I don’t care!” I whined. “I’ll stay with Jenny instead.”
But Virginia just shook her head. Jenny was my friend since kindergarten, and we’d practically grown up together.
“Jenny’s parents would never let you stay, they don’t have the room. You have no idea how lucky you are living here anyways,” she replied. “Not everyone has their own room and bathroom in the City.”
And I sat back, floored, because unfortunately she was right. Even at a fancy school like Trinity filled with well-to-do families, real estate in NYC is expensive and most families are squeezed into tiny apartments, siblings sharing rooms, even opposite-sex siblings sometimes sharing a living space. Jenny lived in a three bedroom with her parents and two sisters and I knew the Millers didn’t have a square foot to spare, much less a spare bedroom for me.
So mentally, my mind started exploring new options, furiously trying to come up with something. There had to be a way out of this. I had to resist moving to the boonies, I couldn’t go there, not even if my twin brothers were gorgeous … as I discovered in the most intimate way.