Amber Brown Is Green with Envy (8 page)

“Amber, we have to talk,” my mother says.

I just stare at her and don’t say anything.

“Amber, we have to talk,” she repeats. “We really have to talk.”

I continue to stare at her.

My mother stares back.

She blinks first.

I win.

Somehow it doesn’t feel like I’m winning anything great by staring my mother down….. but I’m still glad that I did.

She sighs.

I finally blink, but blinking after a sigh is not giving in.

She sighs again.

It looks like she’s going to cry, but then she just gets an upset look on her face. “Amber Brown. Your attitude is not helping the situation.”

“This situation is not helping my attitude.” I, Amber Brown, am surprised that I say this, but I’m glad that I have.

What is she going to do, send me to my room?

I don’t care. I like my room, and since I’m going to have to move away from it, then I might as well spend as much time in it as I can.

I go to the refrigerator and take out the container of orange juice.

Pouring it into a glass, I concentrate on not spilling any.

“Amber.” My mother speaks softly. “I know that you are angry. I understand
why
you are so angry.”

I put down the orange juice container and finally speak. “Do you really?”

“I think so.” She nods. “And Mr. Robinson talked to me about what you told him.”

Good for Mr. Robinson, I think. I wonder if he would adopt me.

I think about being Mr. Robinson’s kid…a life of Twizzlers and soda. I do remember,
though, that some kids think that he can be really strict sometimes….. and I’m not sure it would be fun to be the principal’s kid.

I stare at my mother, trying to look really mad, but feeling like I want to cry. “I really don’t like what you are doing…. moving us….. and deciding to move without talking to me about it first.”

My mother nods. “Honey, I think that Max and I owe you an apology.”

“We’re not moving?!” I clap my hands.

My mother pours herself a cup of coffee and then says, “Honey, let’s sit down and talk this out.”

I think about it….. will sitting down and talking about the move mean that I’m going to give in….. and they can move me out of my house, out of my town? Will I be able to convince them to leave things just the way they are?

I sit down and take a sip of orange juice.

She smiles, sits down and takes a sip of coffee.

I take another sip of my orange juice.

She takes another sip of her coffee.

First we had a staring contest…. now we seem to be having a “sipathon.”

Finally, my mother speaks. “Max and I have been talking about moving for a long time. We want to live in a larger space. We want more room.”

“You know,” I say, blinking back tears, “when my father left, you started asking me a lot of questions about what to do. You let me help make decisions. When I was littler, that was hard for me. Now I’m used to helping make decisions. Now that you and Max are getting married, is it back to the way it was when you and Dad made all of the decisions?….. Only now it will be you and Max making all of the decisions?”

She just looks at me, really thinking about
what I have said. “Oh, Amber. I didn’t realize that I was putting all that responsibility on you. I’m sorry.”

“Well, you did,” I say, “and now you are just going to take it all away. I don’t think that’s fair.”

“Amber, don’t you want to relax and just be a kid again?”

“Too late,” I say. “You can’t just take all of that away…. and anyway, it’s not fair for you to just move a person without her permission or discussion.”

She thinks about it and then nods. “I understand. From now on, Max and I will talk with you about life-concerning decisions involving you.”

“Good,” I say.

Mom continues. “But the reality is that we must move…. for the reasons we’ve already discussed. And we definitely need more room.”

“Why?” I ask.

She explains. “There are many reasons. We need a guest room so that there is room to put people without having them sleep on a living room sofa. Don’t you think that Aunt Pam would like that?”

“I can let Aunt Pam take my room, and I’ll sleep on the sofa. I’ve done that before,” I tell her.

Mom shakes her head. “What about when Max’s sister and his niece come for a visit?”

“I can sleep in the backyard,” I say. “I can put up a tent.”

“If they visit in the winter?”

“I can stay at Brandi’s or Kelly’s.” I smile at her. “Please. Oh, please. Don’t make us move.”

“Honey,” she says, shaking her head.

I have noticed that my mom calls me “honey” when she wants to tell me something that I don’t want to hear.

“It’s not just the guest room. We need more room so that Max and I can have office space. And we need more room because sometime
you may have a baby brother or sister.”

Shocked. I am shocked. I put my head down on the table and say nothing for a minute.

If my mother thought that this talk was going to make me less upset, she was wrong.

Raising my head, I say, “Baby? Who said that we were going to have a baby?”

Then I ask a question that I never thought I would ask my mother, my own mother. “Are you getting married early because you are going to have a baby soon?”

She gasps. “Amber. How could you have thought that?”

Why do parents always think that kids never think about or can figure out some things easier than the parents thought they could? I watch television. I listen to people in supermarkets talk. I even heard my dad talk to Steve about the wedding date change, and they wondered if Mom was going to have a baby soon. I don’t tell my mom about that, though.

I do say, “Mom, I thought that you and Max were going to involve me in any decision-making that has to do with me? This definitely affects me.”

She laughs and then stops when she sees that I don’t see anything funny. “Amber, this is really something that is between grownups…. between Max and me.”

“But it affects me. There will be another person, a fourth person in the family,” I say.

“The decision to have a baby is one that adults make,” she says firmly. “Amber, you used to say that you wanted a baby brother or sister.”

“That’s when you and Dad were married,” I say. “Now it’s you and Max.”

I can tell that she is trying to talk her way out of this.

She says, “Amber. We’re not talking about having a baby immediately. We want to get used to living together, Max and I….. you, me and Max…. a baby may come later.…Just think….. someday, your own baby brother or sister!”

“Baby half brother….. or half sister. We’ll have different fathers,” I remind her.

She smiles. “Half brother…. half sister. Does that really matter?” she asks. “Amber Marie, they are going to be part of our family…. all family. Half brother. Half sister. What’s the other half going to be?”

I think about it and decide to joke. “Tuna fish…. half tuna fish.”

I try to think about what a half baby-half
tuna fish
would look like.

Thinking about it makes me laugh. I think that the words tuna fish are funny. I don’t know why.

“Okay,” I say. “We can have a half tuna fish-half human baby…. but that’s it.”

Sometimes it’s easier to joke about something serious than to really deal with it.

As long as they aren’t planning to have a baby for a while, I feel better. Maybe they will change their minds.

Mom continues to explain why they want and need more room. In addition to wanting more room, they want to live in a house that my dad never lived in…. that they didn’t want him to walk into their house and act like HE was the one who once lived there, who had rights because of that.

“Amber,” she says, “you can understand. Can’t you?”

I think about the way my dad acted when he brought me back to the house.

He shouldn’t have acted that way.

He just doesn’t get it….. he and Mom are not going to get back together again.

Sometimes I wonder why they broke up. I used to think that I was the reason they broke up, but now I don’t think so. I’ve given up trying to guess. They won’t tell me.

Even I, their kid, don’t think that they should get back together…well, mostly I don’t think that they should get back together.

I do want to suggest one more thing. “Why don’t we just leave things the way that they are? Max in his apartment? We can stay in our house?”

She shakes her head. “That won’t work. Max and I really want to live together in
our
own home.”

“Yours and Max’s?” I ask.

“OURS,” she says. “Mine and Max’s and yours.”

“If I say that I understand why you want to leave the house, can you understand why I hate it, and why I want to stay in the same town?”

She nods. “Understanding, though, doesn’t mean that we won’t move to another town…. we still may…. but….. I promise that we will try to stay in the same town. That’s fair to you….. That’s fair to your father too, I guess.”

I ask her another question that I really want her to answer. “Do you hate Daddy?”

“No,” she says. “I don’t hate him…. but I definitely do not want to remarry him. I love Max…I want to marry Max….. and I don’t want your father to dictate where or how Max and I will live.”

It is not easy for me to figure all of this
out…. but this move is because of my dad…. so he is dictating it.

I say, “Mom, please promise me that you will try to find a house in town.”

She nods. “We will
try
.”

She said that so quickly.

I wish that I hadn’t used the word TRY and asked her to promise that they WOULD find a house in town.

Somehow, I don’t think that she would have made that promise.

I guess that I’m just going to have to wait to find out.

My dad has a date.

He’s going out with some lady he met today at the grocery store.

Most parents leave grocery stores with bags filled with food and toilet paper.

My dad leaves with the telephone number of the woman he met in the freezer section while deciding which flavor of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to buy.

She suggested Chubby Hubby.

Then she said that, as a single person, it was the only hubby in her home.

I should have gone with him when he
asked me to go instead of taking a bath.

I would have told him to buy the chocolate chip cookie dough.

But I wasn’t there, so he got Chubby Hubby ice cream and a date for tonight.

He promised to take me to the movies tonight.

Now he is taking a stranger to the movies instead.

He promised to take me.

I think about it.

When he was looking for apartments, he promised me that I could help him choose one….. and then he found this place without me.

After that, he said that he would NEVER break a promise to me again…. and NOW he has.

I’m sitting in this house, very mad.

I’d call Mom and go home, but I know that she and Max have gone to New York City to a play.

My dad keeps saying that he really wants to spend some time with me, especially now that there is a chance that I will be moving to another town.