The Long Winter #67
Unseen part one
With the lack of preceding incidents on record with the Institute, Miss Paula and her counterpart Mr. Kenneth were able to do little more than issue a warning to Travis Hartner about his behavior towards the two girls and be present for the exchange of most of Maddie’s things for Travis’s extravagantly expensive engagement ring. Even with the witnesses Penny could produce, there was only Maddie’s word of his treatment while residing off-campus with him. With called set about calling her mom to explain the situation. She did not receive the reaction she expected.
“You get back over to his house and you get on your knees and you beg for his forgiveness.”
Maddie stared at the image of her mother on the phone, dumbfounded at the response. The confines of her room felt suddenly sweltering, the walls pulsing towards her, everything threatening to fall in on her and swallow her up. Her mother continued.
“You hang up with me and call him right fucking now. I am not playing around on this, Madison. You need to beg for his forgiveness.”
“Why do I need to beg? He was the one abusing me!”
“He could rape your ass with a pineapple and beat you bloody purple with it afterwards and I would still tell you the same thing! Do you think this whole world revolves around you? It doesn’t! Your wedding is set up! Hundreds of thousands of dollars are tied up in it, to say nothing of our relationship with his family! Do you realize you’re about to jeopardize the most important working relationship in your father’s life? Hang up the phone right now, stop being a spoiled little brat, and beg for that young man’s forgiveness, and then you get your spoiled ass back over there and play the devoted little wife with all your meager little heart!”
“No!” Maddie stomped. “He hit me! In the face! And you have no idea what sort of names he’s been calling me for months now—”
“And I’m sure this is something you’re not making up. Right. What did he really do to upset you like this? Did he have the robot make the wrong kind of coffee? Did he leave the toilet seat up? What really has you upset?”
“I don’t believe this. You’re my mother. You’re supposed to believe me—”
“I’m supposed to guide you on the path of becoming a grown-up, mature, adult woman! And allowing you to throw this pathetic attention-grabbing temper tantrum is something I simply will not countenance. I am your mother, not your friend, and as your mother I am ordering you to hang up this phone and—”
“NO! I already told you what he did! I told you all the things he said to me in the fall, and how he acted after the semester started, and he hit me! He slapped in the face and knocked me over! I’m not going back to him! Never! If that means—”
“It means you will be responsible for a break in the family! I was not exaggerating about the importance of your marriage to him! If you think for one minute I’m going to let this slide—”
“Well I’m not going back to him! I’ll die before I do!”
“That can be arranged! This isn’t some childish game we’re playing at, Madison! This is real life, with real futures being threatened because you don’t want to grow up! Fine then! Play at the spoiled child!”
Maddie ended the call, an action certain to further anger her mother, and then she dialed her dad. The phone rang once and went straight to voicemail. She could not even see the image to touch to end the call, so thick were her tears. How had this suddenly turned into a crisis? With her mother threatening her life! Her own mom! She blinked her tears clear and swiped through her contacts, finding the number to her uncle Clint Carter, the black sheep of the family. He answered her call on the first ring, his slender face and shaggy hair hanging across his brow. He smiled easily, putting a kind shine in his eyes.
“Well well well, if it isn’t my favorite niece. What can I do for you, Madison?”
“Uncle Clint, something terrible has happened.”
“I can see that. What do you need?”
“Well, I was engaged to Travis…”
“Was, eh? What happened?”
“He was…” Maddie shuddered to suppress an oncoming sob and then squeezed her eyes shut and blushed in shame. “It’s going to sound stupid.”
“I won’t judge.”
“Okay. He was mean all fall semester. I thought he was just going through hard times himself, stress or whatever, but he was so angry with me every time we talked, so suspicious and jealous, and the things he called me… Well, I thought maybe it was just being apart, too, you know? And when I saw him at Thanksgiving it was nice again, and things felt normal at Christmas, but since we came up here he’s been… He doesn’t, I mean, he didn’t let me out of his sight unless I showered or whatever, and we argued a couple of times, bad ones, and the last one he hit me and knocked me down. I couldn’t stay with him so I left. I’m not going back. And Mom, she… she didn’t take the news well.”
“Kassandra is her best friend,” Clint murmured, nodding in understanding. “I’ll get together with your dad. We’ll leave the women out of that. I can’t imagine he’ll let you go back to a woman-beater.”
“That’s the thing, too. My mother said I needed to go and beg for Trav’s forgiveness, and then put up with whatever abuse he could dish out. But I can’t live like that. She called me selfish and spoiled, like I wouldn’t do anything for the family, but I can’t see why anyone would want to live like that. How little self-respect do you have to have to put up with someone’s abuse like that?”
“Well, that depends on a lot, people will do and put up with some fucked up shit, Maddie. Anyway, so long as I can trust you aren’t lying to me I’ll put in a word with the favored Carter son and see if we can’t put this right.”
“You can trust me. I would never make any of this up. I loved Travis with all my heart, but I can’t see he loves me and it… it breaks my heart. I feel so betrayed.” Maddie let the tears fall. She wished Uncle Clint was there to put his arm around her, warm and strong and reassuring.
“Don’t worry none. I’ll be in touch. Hang in there, Maddie.”
“Thank you, Uncle Clint.”
They said their goodbyes and hung up. Maddie set her phone aside, noting the several messages her mom had sent during her conversation with her uncle. She did not want to read them. She knew what was in them anyway. Threatening her life? “That can be arranged?” Really, mom?
Maddie blinked her eyes clear again and flopped backwards onto her bed. She knew plenty of connected people, especially being up there at that particular institute. Penny had to know people. She had to. There was no way she was just a plain-jane regular ol’ citizen of the world, not attending Gravenreuth, and especially not coming from Port Matthew in particular.
But then again, how pathetic, right? “Oh, Penny, help me, help me.” No. Not again. Never again in a million years. Crying on the phone to Uncle Clint was one thing. But to her roommate? No. She had already done that entirely too many times. Besides, this was a family matter. Uncle Clint would solve it. And until he did, she had an obstacle course to prepare for.
***
“Ping pong, Maddie? Really?”
Clark held the little wooden racket aloft and gave Maddie a pouty expression. She laughed at him and bounced the light plastic ball on the table.
“You know, this isn’t going to do much to get you back in soccer shape if you’ve got Bart’s buddy’s soiree in mind.”
“Maybe not, but we can make this more fun. I win a point, you reveal a deep, dark secret from your past. You win a point, and I’ll do the same.”
Clark glanced around. There were two other ping pong tables in this room at the Adler Gymnasium, one room of many down a hall with other games for the Institute’s students to enjoy. No one else was in there, just Clark in a pair of long Adidas pants and a plain white t-shirt and Maddie in teeny-tiny shorts and a navy blue hoodie with the Institute’s logo on the front. She smiled at him and lifted the ball.
“Ready?”
“I guess.”
“Then let’s!”
She fired the ball at him and he whacked it back at her, bouncing it over her racket and striking her belly. It fell to the floor in a forlorn series of taps. Maddie bent down and scooped it, preparing to fire it back at Clark.
“Wait! What are you doing?”
“Serving.” She lifted her racket.
“Where’s your deep, dark secret?”
She squawked and bounced the ball on the table with her racket.
“I don’t want to play anymore.”
Clark laughed at her.
“Shut up! You always laugh at me!”
“Nuh uh.”
“Yes huh.”
Clark laughed and then his smile turned into a smirk. “You still teasing Penny?”
Maddie served. Clark tapped it back. They volleyed.
“How do you know about that?”
“I heard Leah and Penny discussing it one day last semester.”
The ball dribbled to a stop on Clark’s side of the net. He looked up at her and shrugged.
“I find it hot that you teased her,” Clark said.
“I only teased her because…” Maddie trailed off as Clark lifted the ball to serve it. He stopped and waited. “What?”
“Because why?”
“Ugh, spending time with you is like babysitting an annoying little brother.”
“Please. I’m far more charming and handsome than any little brother has any right to be.”
Maddie glared at him. He held up the ball and smiled.
“Fine.”
He served. She blasted it back at him. He returned it with a love tap. It bounced twice on her side and she scooped it up before it fell off the side.
“Fine. I teased her because I wanted her to prove to me she was really a lesbian.”
“She went slumming with that waitress chick last fall. That wasn’t enough for you? What, did you need to see them making out right in front of you?”
“No, I…” she looked down at the ball. “Penny is cute. When I was teasing her it felt nice to be with a cutie like her who actually liked me.”
“Because your asshole fiancé was an asshole.”
“Asshole doesn’t quite cut it. He threatened Penny, too.”
“Yeah. So did my asshole fiancée. Well, more or less.”
Maddie nodded. She felt her mother’s words threaten to ruin her fun and she squeezed the ping pong ball—
“We caused her some trouble, eh?” Clark said, eying the ball in Maddie’s hand.
“Whatever, she loved having The Best Defense come to her rescue. Otherwise she’s just some poverty case here on a scholarship.”
“Aw, don’t say shit like that. You know she’s more than that. Honestly, I’m not much more than that myself. I certainly didn’t grow up with any of Mommy Dearest’s privileges.”
“You spent the entire winter break in France.”
“Yeah, and it was the first time I saw my mom since I was a toddler.”
Maddie nodded and served. Please stop talking about moms…
“Probably why I dated Sandra.”
She raised an eyebrow at him after she returned his volley. This was better, but only a little.
“She seemed more normal than some of the other girls here.”
“Normal? I don't seem normal to you?”
“You're special.”
Maddie laughed.
“I had a pretty normal girlfriend in high school. She was nice or whatever, but we broke up after graduation. She left, joined the army, actually.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Yeah. I told her if she comes back as a cyborg I’d marry her. That’s one of my fetishes.”
“Cyborgs?”
“Sexbots.” Clark let the ball bounce twice and grinned up at Maddie. “Come on, tell me you don’t like the idea of sexbots and I’ll know you’re lying.”
“I’m not a horny boy, so no, I don’t like the idea of sexbots.”
“Bet Penny does.”
Maddie giggled as the ball floated over the net at her.
“Robot or not, Penny likes any girl that smiles at her. She flirts with the servers in the dining hall all the time.”
“No, she’s just being nice to them, and she’s like the only one,” Clark said. “It surprises them and they’re nice in return.”
“Whatever, the rest of us are plenty nice, too.”
Clark scoffed. “None of you, or rather, almost none of you have any idea what it’s like to be one of them. I didn’t grow up like you did, we didn’t have ski holidays at exclusive resorts in Maine, or fly to our opulent lake palace in Ontario every summer. I swam in my friend’s pond down the road. My dad made just enough to keep us in one house and put us in beat up old cars when we were old enough to drive. When’s the last time you had to count your money before you went out with your buds?”
Maddie frowned at the ball as it careened off the edge of the table away from her.
“I get that point. It was in.”
“Fine.” Maddie stomped across the room to grab the ball. “I don’t think I’ve done anything rude or snooty in my life, unlike Sandra. That girl is as snobby as anyone I’ve ever met.”
“She’s not, but you two hate each other for reasons, so whatever.”
“Whatever. Right. Anyways, I’m polite when I go out, and I was always nice to my dad’s employees when we had barbecues. He always gave them great bonuses at Christmastime, and my first boyfriend was our plumber’s son. He picked me up for junior prom in a Nissan.”
“Oh my gosh, a Nissan? How plebeian!” Clark feigned shock, letting the ball bounce into his chest before he grabbed it. “My first car was a Nissan, some dumpy little 4X4.”
“I never had a car.”
“Wow, you underprivileged youth, you.”
Maddie sniffed and slapped the ball with all her might. It missed the table completely, ricocheting off Clark’s bicep and bouncing away towards the wall. He laughed at her and went to pick it up.
“I don’t know why people like you wear poverty like it’s a badge of honor. Like it makes you more of a person to have suffered through it or something.”
“I don’t feel that way at all. I grew up the way I grew up. No big deal. I’m saying that you shouldn’t interpret Penny’s kindness towards the hired help as flirting.”
“Sometimes it is flirting.”
Clark paused before serving and then nodded.
“You’re right, of course.” He grinned and served. “What do you think it is she does with Sandra when they’re alone together?”
Maddie sighed and let the ball bounce to her, her paddle hanging from her arm limp at her side.
“I don’t like them hanging out,” she said. “I know it’s stupid, though. I can’t really help it. I wasn’t such a great roommate last semester, and when Penny needed it Sandra was there for her. I still hate her for it, but this is how it is. Now she’s with Becca and I want to start teasing her again, especially because I’m single and it’s my fault Trav threatened us and I know she liked it no matter how embarrassed she acted, but since she sort of has a girlfriend I feel guilty about it.”
“You didn’t seem to feel guilty about it in the fall.”
Maddie shrugged and served. “It didn’t feel serious.”
Clark laughed.
“You almost sound like you’re into her.”
Maddie shrugged and kept her focus on the ball. An intriguing idea, that. If she really wanted her mom to lose her marbles she would bring Penny home at spring break.
“Holy shit, really?”
Maddie glared at the ball and whacked it back at him.
“It’s fine to admit it. I’m not going to tell anyone. Least of all her.”
“She’s cute,” Maddie said, watching Clark return her volley. “I don’t understand why Sandra’s grossed out by lesbian sex. If Penny came on to me I wouldn’t turn her down. But she’s with that Becca girl, so she’s not going to. It’s fine. I’m fine with it. Maybe I will start teasing her again, though.”
“How do you tease her?”
Clark maintained the volley no matter how skillfully Maddie fired it at him.
“Oh, just stuff that would please your adolescent imagination. I have sexy underwear. I shower with my door open. I asked her to help me pick out dresses a few times. She’s a cutie. I love it.”
Clark laughed.
“She’s lucky to have you as a roommate, Maddie.”
“She knows it.”
“So listen, you’ll have to let me know how it goes if you start teasing her again. Maybe she deserves to be stolen from her girlfriend since she stole her high school girlfriend from her boyfriend.”
Maddie laughed.
“Let’s play strip ping pong now that we’re becoming best friends.”
“No way, Clark. You’re going to have to imagine what sexy panties I’m wearing right now.”
He chuckled, his eyes falling to her teeny tiny shorts.
“Or NOT wearing!”
They laughed together.