ELEVEN

When they got back to society, it was about a thousand times easier for Trip to act like their relationship was a mere friendship. He asked Annaliese to be his grad date and told everyone they were going as friends. All the tension was out of his shoulders. The time he spent with Annaliese on weekends was better. Helping her with her homework was easier because he wasn’t distracted because when they were alone, all the old restrictions were off.

Life was sweet.

Annaliese wouldn’t have liked to talk to anyone about teenage marital bliss, but she was much happier with their new arrangement too. She feared Trip would stop writing her little love books if they got married, but he didn’t stop. He still got on the bus and slipped a book into her backpack. If they ate lunch somewhere, he would reach under the table, slip her shoe off her foot, and put her foot in her lap, where he would treat her to a foot rub while they waited for their food. Sometimes Annaliese wondered if he chose the restaurants with the slowest service in the city just so he could rub her foot longer.

Annaliese’s mother was pleased with her choice of grad dress and was unaware that she had used half of it as a wedding dress. In retrospect, Annaliese’s mother was sorry she found a grad dress so easily and took her out shopping several more times before grad actually came, filling her wardrobe like she was creating a trousseau.

Trip and Annaliese chose the local university because they thought she could get into it and sent in their transcripts. She took political science because she believed the classes would prepare her for law school. Trip took the same classes, not caring for a second that he was not taking a degree he was even the least bit interested in.

The summer between high school and university came. Since they had chosen to attend a university close to home, they made Annaliese’s mother blissful, like all the difficulties in raising someone else’s child had been nothing. How could it matter who gave birth to a child when she turned out so perfectly?

They lived at home for the first year of university, but by the second year, both of them were getting annoyed. They were getting tired of saying goodbye after spending their days together and then being forced to part ways at night.

In the second year, they rented two studio apartments that were in the same building and finally got to live together, though the situation was not ideal. It would have been nicer if they had been on the same floor. As it was, they traveled between their apartments in their housecoats with toothbrushes sticking out of their mouths.

“Let’s just move in together,” Trip begged one day as they walked through the hall of their building. “We can decorate it like a girl’s place. Put anything you want in it and I’ll hide my clothes under the bed…” he trailed off.

Annaliese’s mother was standing in the hallway. Someone had let her in the building without her being buzzed in and she heard what Trip said. Not only that, but both of them were in their underwear and housecoats. Annaliese was walking back to her apartment and Trip had followed her because he always walked her back to her place.

“Annaliese,” the old woman said sternly.

As primly as any dutiful daughter, she welcomed her mother with a smile and a kiss and decided to try her luck at winning her over with charm. After all, she was twenty years old and she thought her chances of getting her mother to listen to her were better now than they had ever been. She told Trip to go get changed and to meet them upstairs in her room.

Annaliese was lucky when they went inside her apartment. It was extremely clean and well cared for. It made her feel more like an adult and less like a bratty child.

Trip changed his clothes, combed his hair quickly, and made it back to Annaliese’s apartment before she had finished changing.

She set her mother down in the only comfortable chair in the apartment. She pulled two folding chairs off the wall and put one down for Trip and one down for her.

“Let’s talk about dating,” Annaliese began with a smile that she hoped didn’t make her look like a defiant child.

“You two are clearly not dating. How long have you been sleeping together?” her mother asked coldly, the unforgiving wrinkles around her mouth puckering distastefully.

Annaliese was deeply unhappy at her mother’s way of slicing up her and Trip’s love and for a moment, she was unable to answer.

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Trip was faster. “This is a misunderstanding. We were doing laundry together. We’re just not shy about our bodies. You know how kids are these days.”

She glared at Trip. “Answer me!”

Annaliese took a deep breath and had the courage not to answer her. “Mother, I have the highest respect for you. I have always wanted to do things exactly as you wish, but asking me not to date has been a bit much for me.”

“You never complained,” her mother pointed out.

“Yes. That’s how much I have wanted to follow your instructions.”

“All right,” her mother said, straightening herself and breathing calmly. “I understand why you fell into temptation. I will forgive you completely if you gather your things together and move back home again—today.”

“But–”

The old lady cut Annaliese off. “I understand why you fell for him. He’s been there for you since you were a baby, held your hand through everything, and he’s been a gentleman enough not to take up his father and uncle’s disgusting habits. But Annaliese, it’s time for you to do this next bit without him. If he truly loves you, he’ll wait until you are finished law school.”

“There’s no way that I can get through law school without him. I’m stupid on my own,” Annaliese said without flinching. “I wouldn’t have even made it this far if he didn’t match the classes I had to take. He’s been tutoring me through it all.”

“You’ll never respect yourself if you don’t do it alone,” her mother said inflexibly.

“Then I’ll never respect myself because I would never be able to do it alone.”

The situation was tense. Annaliese had given Trip strict instructions that he was never to tell her mother that they were married. No matter what provocation came, no matter what she said, no matter what good he thought he could do, he had to let Annaliese handle her mother in her own way. Mostly, that meant avoiding her mother and going behind her back. Trip hadn’t minded doing that, but he also looked forward to the day when he could tell his old men that he respected women and that he respected Annaliese so much that he had already been married to her for over two years. He was completely committed.

It was a blow for him when he discovered the secret Annaliese had been keeping from him.

“If you don’t come home today, I swear to you, you will lose me and you’ll end up exactly like your biological mother,” the pitiless old woman said strictly.

The words that came out of the woman’s mouth were not like a slap. No, it was like she had shot her straight through the heart. Annaliese’s eyes went wide like the moment of surprise when your heart stopped.

Trip turned to catch her, to put pressure on her wound, but where should he put his hands? There was no blood, just a sputtering like blood that spewed from her lips.

“Didn’t she tell you?” the old lady continued.

“Tell me what?” Trip asked in a cold panic.

She stood up, looking down stonily at Annaliese. “Her biological mother didn’t surrender her to social services, or ask for help. She wrote a note, overdosed on the sick little cocktail she was injecting herself with, and left Annaliese all alone with her corpse in a room for three days before Annaliese’s crying became too much for the neighbors.”

Trip stopped dead where he was.

Annaliese’s mother continued coldly, “I have loved her and cared for her in a way her real mother couldn’t and I only ask for the opportunity to put Annaliese on the correct path, so that she will always be safe, always be provided for no matter what man comes and goes from her life. No matter what help you gave her, Trip, I believe you meant well, but I don’t want to see you with my daughter again until she has finished law school.” She looked down at Trip with her dead brown eyes. “Help her pack.”

“Wait. I love her,” he said, on the verge of breaking his promise to Annaliese and spilling to the old lady that they were legally married. “I love her and I only want to help her. If you’re scared she’ll get pregnant–”

“I’m not scared she’ll get pregnant because she won’t be with you anymore. I’ll wait downstairs for half an hour. You’d better have her most important things packed and her in my car before my timer goes off,” she said, with her hand on the door.

“Or what?” he burst.

She didn’t look at him. “You don’t want to know.”

The old lady left the room with a click of the door and the clack of her heels on the hardwood floor in the hallway.

Trip wrapped his arms around Annaliese and held her closely. Suddenly, he realized why the dead rabbit scared her so much all those years ago back at the camp. He held her again while she cried like she was a little girl all over again.

“We have to do what she says,” Annaliese wailed once she could get a few words out. “I have to do what she wants.”

“Why? Can’t we tell her we’re married because everything is fine between us? I’ll never leave you and…”

“It won’t be fine to her,” Annaliese shrieked, cutting him off. “It won’t be! I have to go down there and leave with her. I have to. We can’t tell her we’re married. She’d file for divorce for me. I don’t want to divorce you. Even if I have to move back home and we have to go back to how we were living when we were married and still in grade twelve, fine, but I have to go home. I can’t let her file for divorce.”

The last thing in the world Trip wanted was to go back to the way they lived when they were still in high school, but there was nothing else to do at that moment. Following his wife’s instructions, he went around the room and picked up the things she said she needed most.

He felt sick that he was not one of them.

When the half-hour was up, Annaliese sat in her mother’s car, blowing her nose and covering her eyes with a pair of sunglasses.

Trip didn’t get to kiss her goodbye.