Pretty Things Don't Break Read online

  This Book is Dedicated to…

  God, who started as my imaginary friend and ended up being my heart, love, and constant guide. I can truly say I couldn’t have done it without you.

  My children, who are the light and joy in my life every day. My favorite thing in the world is being your mom.

  Carmen, my first friend who taught me how to laugh, love, dive, and drive.

  Some of the names and places in this book have been changed to protect privacy. Some of the events in this book have been combined. A minimum of 10% of the net proceeds from this book will be donated to Childhaven and other charities benefiting children. For more information on how to break damaging cycles, go to BreakIt.org

  Together, we will break the cycles that bind us.

  Table of Contents

  Seattle 2008

  Chapter 1: Dancing in the Dark

  Chapter 2: Stateside

  Chapter 3: You’re Gonna Love It

  Chapter 4: Defiance

  Chapter 5: We’re Going To Sink

  Chapter 6: Go To School

  Chapter 7: Shhh, I’m on the Phone

  Chapter 8: Seattle’s Alcatraz

  Chapter 9: Dinner’s Ready

  Chapter 10: Welcome Home

  Chapter 11: Sunday Brunch

  Chapter 12: Peach

  Chapter 13: Faithfully

  Chapter 14: What the Fuck?

  Chapter 15: Summer’s Over

  Chapter 16: Beastie Boys Rule

  Chapter 17: I’m the Biggest Coward

  Chapter 18: Roller Hill

  Chapter 19: Lake Kachess

  Chapter 20: Confidential

  Chapter 21: AVM

  Chapter 22: The Black Trench

  Chapter 23: Field of Dreams

  Chapter 24: Be Nicer

  Chapter 25; The Beast

  Chapter 27: Rome Via Vegas

  Chapter 28: Do You Still Love Me?

  Chapter 29: One Call

  Chapter 30: Freedom

  Chapter 31: Queen City

  Chapter 32: The Mountlake Mess

  Chapter 33: Sometimes We Have to Completely Break to Truly Come Back Together

  Chapter 34: It’s Finally Over (Or Maybe It’s Just the Beginning)

  Thank You…

  About the Author

  Seattle 2008

  Climbing up into our bed, surrounded by a sea of silk-covered pillows, I glanced over at my husband. He was fast asleep in under a minute, a luxury I’ve never known. I reached over to slide my light from dim to off. Darkness enveloped me like an unwelcome hug. The house was quiet; my mind was racing with snapshots of her, my ears filled with music I wasn’t playing when the familiar scene unfolded behind my closed eyes: fumbling down the dark cement stairs, the vacuum tube in one hand with a roll of duct tape swinging from her wrist; a freshly lit smoke in the other hand, scissors and a beer tucked into her back pockets, she sloppily made it to her frosty car. She placed the beer sideways in the cup holder, sending liquid flying as she walked to the back of the car. Crouching down, her clumsy body stooped to the exhaust pipe while her outstretched arm kept her from landing on the cold cement. She took a deep, long drag from her cigarette, setting it on the back bumper as she reached down to the freezing cement searching for the tubing she’d thrown there moments ago. Placing the tube into the pipe in her state wasn’t easy, but a few tries later and she had it. Taking the duct tape bracelet from around her wrist, she began to wrap the tape around and around. Grabbing for one last drag, she inhaled as a gust of wind almost shook her out of her hazy state. She found the scissors, cut through the gooey duct tape, and squeezed the pipe with her cold, shaking hands. Falling into her car, nothing but darkness surrounding her, she closed the squeaky door, lay her head back on the blue faux leather seat, took a long pull from her icy beer, and turned the key.

  Chapter 1

  Dancing in the Dark

  Sydney, Australia 1974

  The hot Sydney street warmed my pudgy, three-year-old toes through the leather of my saltwater sandals. I strained to see as Mom’s bouncing red hair dropped out of sight in the distance. Like three little ducks in a row we descended the familiar, black encased stairs, our heads bobbing like apples in water: my ten-year-old sister, Hope, still in her school uniform, my almost five-year-old brother, Noah, with his true-to-the-time, blonde 70’s bowl cut and red shirt, and me in my white and yellow gingham dress with two sloppy ponytails sticking out from my head.

  At the red-carpeted landing, Mom pulled the door back with all the might in her tiny, curvy body and, without looking back, glided down the stairs like Miss America. The bright sun of a moment ago faded to night as I hopscotched behind Mom over the diamond-checkered floor. On the stage a woman sang apologetically into the mic, arms wrapped around her body as men tuned their instruments behind her. Always searching for Mom, her hair caught my eye as she lifted her bellbottom-covered leg and rested it on a barstool. Reaching into her slouchy bag, she pulled out a cigarette and leaned over for a light, resting her fully-blossomed body on the shiny bar. As she threw her head back and blew smoke up toward the black ceiling, her arched back exposed her tan stomach.

  Looking over each shoulder, I stood alone searching for my brother or sister in the dark room. The music coming from the stage pulled me closer; as I stood, thumb in mouth, I was mesmerized by the five men playing on the stage, sounding like one. The shy woman was now moving her body in the darkness, swaying to the music with her eyes closed. The restaurant was dotted with customers whose faces flickered behind the bumpy, red candles that sat in the center of each square table.

  Finding Noah and Hope, who were standing in the corner talking to some of the waitresses who were like aunts to us, I nuzzled in between them just as their huddled group splintered.

  “Let’s go,” Noah said, as he darted off after Mom, me following behind.

  As Mom pushed the black metal door back with her hip, the sunlight streaming down the staircase hit the dark room. Looking back to get one more peek at this magical place before heading home, I rubbed my eyes and sped up to Noah, tugging on his shirt before the door slammed behind us.

  “Noah, those ladies…they…they’re not wearing shirts,” I said, hanging on to him.

  “I know, dummy. That’s why they call it a topless jazz club. Come on,” he said in a knowing voice that made me feel stupid.

  *

  After we had drunk the milk from our cereal bowls, Noah clicked off the TV and we headed to the backyard for a swim. When we walked back in a few hours later to drum up something to eat, we were a little startled to be greeted by our parents, who usually slept past lunch. “Let’s get out of here,” Dad said as he put his coffee cup in the sink, wearing short white shorts, a navy polo shirt, and shiny sunglasses.

  Mom grabbed her patchwork denim Jag bag, complete with a “Make Love Not War” pin, and threw it over her tiny shoulder. Wearing striped pants that looked like she was poured into them, a tiny, red button-down shirt that was overflowing at the top, and small round-framed sunglasses that barely covered her hazel eyes, she flicked off the lights.

  “What about Hope?” I whispered into Noah’s ear, and he repeated to Mom.

  “We won’t be gone long,” Mom said as she closed the door behind her.

  When the light green, opal car door squeaked open, a familiar waft of coconuts and plastic breezed up my nose. Breathing in deeply, I crawled over the hot seats behind Noah, pulled the door closed, and watched as the sun-drenched day whizzed past my window. Mom, Dad, and Noah were engrossed in conversation; I rested my forehead on the door and stared up at the bouncy-looking white clouds above, wondering where today’s adventure would lead us. As the city got smaller behind us, we
rolled down a street without buildings; beyond the blacktop was red dirt and mountains. As Dad flicked on his blinker, Mom tossed another cigarette out the window, and the car stopped.

  I gave Noah a raised eyebrow look that said, “Anything? Do you know anything about where we are or what we’re doing in the middle of nowhere?” as Noah jumped out and charged into the bush.

  Running behind him, dust between my toes, the prickly, dead branches that sprung from the thirsty dirt scratched my calves. Noah finally stopped, put his hands on his knees, and pointed up to a gnarled tree. Plopping down on the red dirt by Noah, I watched as little bears reached from limb to limb and ate as slowly as turtles.

  “Wow, are those koala bears?” I asked.

  “Shhh, they may look cuddly, but they can actually get aggressive,” Noah answered in a hushed voice. “And they aren’t really bears. I don’t know why they are called that,” he added.

  We sat knee to knee in the dirt and watched as the bears picked at each other like monkeys in the zoo and ate the thin, light green leaves from the trees.

  “Are those gum trees? You know my koala bear that Grandma and Grandpa brought me…” I sang the song that played when I wound the metal key on my stuffed bear.

  “Shhh,” he said, throwing his hand over my mouth.

  As the big bears turned their heads and looked down at us, I stared back at them, stiff as a statue.

  When they went back to eating, Noah said, “No, this is a eucalyptus tree.”

  He got up, dusted off his tan shorts, and walked right into the tall, dry grass. Reaching down, he came up with a stick and started slashing us a path. Running behind Noah, I saw him stop abruptly ahead of me; when I reached him, he put up his hand signaling me to stop. I stood there, then crept over to him at the edge of a high cliff. Following his gaze down, I saw people with long, wavy, coarse black hair, wide noses, and deep-set eyes standing on the hard, red ground, wearing only what looked like pieces of leather around their private parts. Except for the girls - their things were unlike any I’d ever seen. Instead of pink, they were almost purple. And long.

  “Who are they and what are they doing?” I whispered to Noah, making sure they didn’t see us.

  “They’re called aborigines; they are kind of like our Indians, but they still live back here, in the outback,” he said without taking his eyes off of the busy people below us.

  Women with babies wrapped in blankets around their bodies swept the floor with big, paintbrush-looking brooms, as the men and boys sharpened sticks and gathered thin pieces of wood.

  They were surrounded by a wall of dirt with writing on it that I’d never seen before, I asked, “What’s that?”

  “Hieroglyphics,” Noah said. Then he pointed down to a family of kangaroos that were bouncing behind the aborigines like family dogs and said, “We gotta go; I need daylight to get us back.”

  Mom and Dad were leaning up against the car when we walked out of the bush and crossed the small road. When they saw us, they crushed out their smokes; Dad ran his hands through his black hair and as if they were picking us up from preschool, we jumped into the car and headed home.

  “Have fun out there?” Dad asked.

  “Yea, we saw aborigines and kangaroos and koalas,” Noah answered. “Did you know that koala bears were almost endangered, and then they had to re-populate, and now they’re all over?”

  They both looked back at Noah and smiled. “He’s amazing, where does he get all this stuff? Have you ever heard a five-year-old talk like that?” Mom beamed.

  “TV,” I said in a whisper. But no one was listening.

  As we drove home, my cheeks tight from the sun, I drifted away into the clouds as they chatted.

  *

  A few sleeps later, as I walked to the kitchen to find Noah and myself a snack, I saw Mom glide out of her room: hair curled, skin tanned, wearing a white dress that swirled when she walked. She looked so pretty; I gave her my biggest smile of approval, my eyes going from her head to her toes.

  She patted her hands around her tiny waist and said, “We were supposed to leave an hour ago. Where’s your dad?”

  Looking up, I shrugged my shoulders as the door opened. Dad blew in like a tornado.

  “Are the kids dressed? I told you, my boss wants to meet them.”

  Half an hour later, we arrived and were greeted by men opening our car doors for us. Mom and Dad zipped out of our car, and Noah, Hope and I did our best to follow behind in the crowd of adults who looked like they should be on TV. Our eyes were wide open as we were led through what looked like a hotel with shiny marble floors. From the balcony, we looked down at the grass that was growing through cement diamonds in the ground as people sipped drinks, laughed, and danced to the music. We crept away from the conversation as our mouths hung open. I was still in shock at the size of the house, the pools sparkling in the night, the tennis courts, and cars Noah was naming off to me. We stood on the back lawn and watched as, one by one, everyone migrated toward my parents. Even though I’d heard my mom say that Sid, Dad’s boss, basically owned Sydney, and this was his party, all eyes were on my parents. Mom stood beaming and laughing along with the rest of Dad’s audience, but I could see by her eyes that she was a million miles away. Dad held court in the middle of the room, surrounded now by the party-goers, looking like he had a light shining on him. He was telling a story. I listened from across the room, unable to breathe, waiting for him to finish. Dad could impersonate anyone, and if you weren’t looking, you’d think Nixon was in the room. Everyone was laughing so hard, wiping tears from their faces as they applauded him. Watching my parents at a party was like having my own private movie playing right before my eyes.

  A month later, Noah and I were in the midst of a handstand contest in the pool when I saw a serious-looking black car roll up to our house. Reaching down and grabbing Noah from the bottom of the shallow end, we ran to the house to alert Mom, who had been up cleaning and straightening all day like we had never seen her do before.

  “Mom, there’s a limo out front!” Noah yelled as he slipped down the tile to her.

  “OK, go and get dressed and wipe up this water. I worked all day on this house.” She smoothed her sleeveless shirt over her belted waist.

  Both of us dressed in the matching Hawaiian outfits Mom had laid on our beds. Noah and I saw each other and rolled our eyes as we walked out to Mom.

  “Do you remember them?” she pointed to a tiny lady with silver hair swept neatly from her sunglass-covered face. The glasses stretched from her forehead to the middle of her cheeks, exposing only her coral-painted lips. Dripping in gold and pearls, she smoked a cigarette in a long holder that she held with her red-lacquered fingernails. Next to her was a short man wearing a blue hat with a red rim, black square glasses, a white sweat suit with blue and red accents, and white leather shoes.

  “Of course she does!” the man said with his arms held open. “Get over here, kid!”

  As I walked into his powdery-smelling arms, he said, “OK Sandy, we’re going to the hotel to lay down. The flight from Vegas–fagettaboutit–world’s longest flight. I gotta lie down before I throw myself into a rut of depression. We’ll pick you up for dinner at 9.”

  “Don’t you want to look around?” Mom asked.

  “I get it, a couple of bathrooms, a kitchen. It’s nice, kid, real nice. You did good.” And he patted Mom on the back.

  Then Mom said to the lady, “OK, Mom, we’ll see you later.”

  I looked down to the funny man with the hat and said, “Bye, Grandpa,” figuring he must be, since this was my mom’s mom and we’d just done this when my dad’s parents came for my fourth birthday.

  He walked back up our front steps, knelt down to me like he was going to tell me a secret and said, “It’s Milton, kid. Don’t ever call me that again; I’m too fucking young to be anyone’s grandpa.” And he laughed so hard he was making himself cry, which made me laugh so hard I was bending at my waist, with my hands over my face. “
OK kid, pull yourself together–you’ll hurt yourself,” he said while trying to stop laughing himself. Reaching his hand into his tracksuit pocket he said, “Come here, kid,” and he put out his hand like we were going to shake. I put my soft, warm hand in his and with a squeeze he dropped it. Feeling something in my palm, like he’d just done a magic trick, I looked down and saw American money. As we stood waving goodbye to the long black car, I handed it to my mom.

  “Only Milton would give a little girl a hundred dollars,” she said, putting it in the pocket of her tiny shorts.

  *

  Coming downstairs one morning, I found Mom up and dressed, looking a little like a kid caught with her hands in the cookie jar. Mom saw me and said, “I have to run out, want to come?”

  I looked over to Noah and Hope’s rooms with raised brows and shrugged my shoulders.

  “They’re still asleep. Shhh, we’ll be back before they get up.”

  Jumping in the front seat and slamming the door, I hummed along to Mom’s music as we glided down the busy city streets. At a stoplight, Mom grabbed her bag from the floor by my feet and started digging through it. Popping a cigarette into her mouth, she poked around in her bag, finally taking the cigarette out with a deep sigh of frustration that she couldn’t find anything to light it with. Just then a man appeared at her window. With a flick of his wrist, he put his shiny lighter up to Mom’s cigarette; she took a deep drag, exhaled out the window, and drove off without ever looking up at the smiling man; it seemed she just expected her cigarettes to be lit. Getting on my knees to look behind me at the man still standing in the street, I felt bad as he opened the door to his idling convertible and drove off.

  Pulling up to a building, Mom said, “I’m going to run in. Wait here.”

  I waited as the breeze whirled through the open windows, pushing the hot air out of the car. Then Mom, in doll-sized white pants that stopped at her calves, jumped in the car, her sunglasses covering her hazel eyes as she shook her wavy hair away from her face.