(no subject)
01 - No Obstacles, Only Challenges
02 - Girls Like Us
03 - Champagne Beat Boogie
04 - You're the Lucky Ones
05 - Duke's Up
06 - 20 Minutes of Disco Glory
07 - Perpetual
08 - Halcyon
09 - Anomaly Calling Your Name
10 - Heaven Scent
11 - Beachcoma
Title: Groove ♠ Protocol [12/14]
Pairing: Addison; Addison/Mark
Rating: PG-13ish
Summary: Addison and Mark explain some things because their daughter asked, Juliet pulls a Rachel because there has to be some accidental invented kid personality crossover, Addison finds something personal because that’s what moms do when they’re worried, Mark provides a towel because he’s nice and his wife got wet, Addison questions herself because that’s what she does best and then explains things more in depth because that’s only fair, and it’s raining because that’s the default weather when things go wrong.
Juliet saw her chance and jumped in. It wouldn’t save her permanently, but it would buy her some time until she figured out what to say. “Really. Because I think that you two are the ones who have a lot of talking to do. Why doesn’t Dad show up in pictures with me until I’m four?”
Addison and Mark looked at each other, shocked. They’d never thought of that, never thought that one day Juliet might wonder why she didn’t remember Mark until she was four. Addison had always assumed that Juliet wouldn’t remember much from then and Mark had never given it any thought. They’d never figured out how to tell her because it never crossed their minds.
“Because I remember you having a dream,” she looked at Addison, “a dream you told me was a good one but you were crying because it ended. And I had a bad one and wanted a hug and you told me to go away. And the next night, he,” she nodded at Mark, “showed up.” Juliet shifted her eyes from one parent to the other. “Why weren’t you around from the beginning?” She said, slightly accusatory.
They looked at each other again and Mark tipped his head toward Addison, indicating that it was really her story to tell. She looked at him, pleading for him to do it; Juliet was pissed off enough at her as it was. But Addison caved and closed her eyes and took a deep breath and forced herself to remember that this was not the point, the point was the fake ID and the alcohol and pot in Juliet’s car.
“I left him before you were born because he cheated on me and I kept him away because I didn’t want that kind of behavior in your life or mine. That dream was about the three of us and I couldn’t hold out. And you were so excited when I told you I had a dream about your dad and so devastated when I didn’t immediately tell you he was coming.” Addison had no desire to dive into the Derek debacle and the unknown father problem right then and she and Mark had an unspoken agreement that the abortion part was never, ever going to get out.
Juliet switched her gaze to Mark. “Why didn’t you try? Why did you hold back until she called?” The hurt began to reach her voice.
Because I didn’t know you were mine, he thought, but spoke the other half of the truth instead. “Because I love her too much to push her on something she didn’t want.”
She stood slightly open-mouthed in disbelief and shook her head. “God. And you wonder why I’m doing this. My mother doesn’t want my father in my life and it takes her dreaming about happily ever after and telling her four year-old to piss off and find someone else to kill monsters to actually give him a call. Well done, guys.” She turned and quickly walked upstairs and closed her bedroom door behind her, desperately wanting the satisfaction of slamming it but not angry enough to do it. She was mostly just upset now.
A few minutes later Mark and Addison heard the sound of someone climbing down the drainpipe to the backyard and running off.
Mark shook his head and thought of James Bond and why she couldn’t just run out the front door and slam it. It would have had more effect. “How long before we get a call from Ellie?” He turned to Addison only to see her hopping off the table and tugging on a pair of Juliet’s sneakers left by the door. He blinked and realized he’d never seen his wife in sneakers before; she’d always changed before she left the gym.
“We won’t,” she said under her breath and sprinted out the door after her daughter into the pouring rain. She caught up quicker than she thought and grabbed Juliet’s arm, catching the girl before she stumbled. “Julie...”
“What do you want?” Juliet screamed, hot tears mixing with cold rain. “You want me to come back inside so we can talk about it? Here. How’s this? For two years, I wished on every single star and penny and birthday cake for a dad. Until you two got married, I wished on every single star and penny and birthday cake for him to stay. And while everyone else was wishing for ponies, I was wishing for a dad.” She stopped a moment to breathe. “You think I don’t remember, that no one remembers what they wished for on their third birthday, but I do.”
“Julie, I’m sorry.” Addison pushed wet hair out of her eyes and blinked away dots at the sudden flash of lightning. “I thought it was best for you, I really did.” And then she made a mistake. “But he’s here.”
Juliet laughed harshly and shook her head, smiling without any happiness or emotion. “And you know what really sucks about that? Is that it took you being mean to me to figure out that he should be here.” She easily broke her mother’s grasp on her arm. After of few seconds of pointed staring, she turned and ran.
Addison stood in the rain and gave up her own battle with her tears. She was too stunned to move, too hurt to start running after her again. So she simply stood still and started to shiver from the cold rain as she watched her daughter disappear around a corner. She remembered all the times in her life that she thought about running away, all the times in her life that she tried running away, all the times in her life that she came back in five minutes and defeated her own point because she felt guilty and had nowhere to go. In a way, she was jealous of Juliet for having the courage to run and stay out. The odd jealousy didn’t dull any of the anger toward her daughter for running but it hurt a little in a different way; Addison began to feel like she missed out a little on childhood by being the oldest and having all the expectations on her shoulders. She could still feel it, feel the pressure and the demands and she was doing everything she could not to throw that onto her own daughter.
But she had always been wistful and a bit jealous when she overheard extraordinary shouting matches between her parents and her brothers, wishing she had the self-confidence to yell about absurd expectations. But the time she walked into a now-legendary fight between Ellie and their mother was what really sealed it and in that moment Addison swore to herself, even though she was twenty-five and barely married, that she would not be her mother when it came to parenting. Incidentally, she never wanted to deal with a daughter like Ellie, who threw the empty bottle of Bombay Sapphire that sparked the fight in the general direction of her mother, but she decided that she wouldn’t be one of those people who demanded perfection and excellence at everything to the degree of needing superhuman powers. So she let Juliet play in mud puddles when she was younger and required a B+ average (which wasn’t all that difficult for Juliet) and didn’t want her to look back at the age of 51 (she cringed a little at that thought) and feel like she missed out.
Yet as she watched the empty street in front of her in false hope that Juliet would pull a sixteen year-old Addison and come back, she wondered whether she had done too good a job of avoiding becoming her own mother.
She thought she heard her name through the wind and turned and saw Mark standing at their doorway, towel in hand. Addison shot one last look in the direction Juliet ran and then slowly walked back up their driveway and into the house. He wrapped the towel around her and hugged her. Mark kissed her wet hair and held her for a moment before she slipped out of his arms and mumbled something about dry clothing. He sighed and watched her go up the stairs. Even if he hadn’t heard anything through the heavy wind, he still saw the entire altercation down the street. He had a good idea that it didn’t have anything to do with finding two twelve-packs of bad beer in Juliet’s trunk.
Mark jumped when the phone rang and grabbed it.
“I have something of yours and she doesn’t really want to be returned.”
Mark groaned, hearing Juliet yelling in the background clearly unhappy with her aunt. “Put her on.”
“Mark, I don’t think that’s a good idea...”
“Put her on, Ellie.” He heard his sister-in-law sigh and hand the phone over. “Juliet, quiet,” he said firmly when she started to talk. “You are not allowed to hurt my child and if you keep this up, that’s exactly what you’re going to do. I want you home by eight tomorrow morning and I want you sober and awake and if you’re home at 8:01, we’re going to have problems.” Mark closed his eyes as he imagined the look on his daughter’s face. Possibly the realization that what she was doing really was wrong and a bad idea and maybe some guilt, thinking that Mark overheard what she said to Addison.
“Okay.”
He sighed, hearing the emotion in her voice as she handed the phone back to Ellie. Mark wasn’t going to force her to come home: he knew where she was and that she was safe and, perhaps most important of all, that Ellie wouldn’t cut her any slack just because she was crying. But he also wanted her to know just how not happy he was and how not okay it was that she ran off. For the sake of sanity, he gave Ellie a brief overview of the evening - Juliet wouldn’t spill anything except her anger with her parents - and a strict warning to leave any explaining to him and Addison.
“Mark, I am not six. You can ask nicely or assume that I’m not stupid.”
“Ellie, it’s been a hell of a night. I discovered that my daughter is using a fake ID, smoking a lot of pot, having sex and god knows what else. And she just implied that it is Addison’s fault she’s drinking because she kept me out of her life for the first four years. I don’t have the capability to be nice right now.”
“Fair enough. But...take care of my sister, alright? I’ll make sure Juliet’s home and calms down a little.”
“Thanks, El.”
--
Addison looked up when Mark came into their bedroom. She was sitting on her side of the bed in comfy pajamas with her feet tucked under her, staring out the window. “Do you think she has a point? That keeping you away for that long really was a bad idea?”
“Did you really tell her to go away?” Mark sat down near the foot of the bed, unsurprised when she didn’t turn.
Nodding, Addison tipped her head down. “Not one of my better moments.” She looked back up and pursed her lips as she stared straight ahead, tears threatening at the back of her eyes. “God, I still remember the look on her face when I told her to go. All she wanted was for me to flip a light switch on and give her a hug.”
Mark scooted next to her and put a hand on her knee. “Addison, that’s not what caused this. This is how a decent percentage of teenagers live regardless of how they grew up. It happens.”
“I know. I just...I just wish that she could’ve stayed innocent a little longer.”
“Me too.” After a few minutes of silence, Mark sighed. “What are we going to do?”
“My mother threatened to take away horseback riding lessons when I didn’t have straight As.”
Mark laughed a little. “Well, that explains a lot.”
Addison searched around her and found a piece of paper, crumpled it up and threw it at her husband. “Shut up!” She couldn’t help but laugh despite how much her emotions were getting to her. “Ballet?” Addison bit her lip and hated herself for even suggesting that as an option.
He blinked, shocked that she would mention that. Ballet was Juliet’s life and had been for twelve years; taking away the funding for it would kill her. “Addie...”
“What else? The car? I think she’d willingly find someone else to drive her.” Juliet had a job to provide herself with fun money, so removing that wasn’t an option either.
“Okay,” he sighed reluctantly. “Give her a month. A month to clean up her act or we’ll pull out from that.”
After a few minutes of agreed silence, Addison spoke up. “Was that Ellie earlier?”
“Yeah. Told Juliet she’d better be back by eight in the morning.”
“Why did you do that? Why did you let her stay out? That’s defeating the whole purpose, Mark.” She began to get worked up again. “You said yourself that she keeps breaking everything we set for her. If we let her stay at Ellie’s, she’s going to think that’s okay.”
Mark shook his head and took Addison’s hand in his and slowly rubbed gentle calming circles into her palm. “You have no idea how much Ellie whips people into shape.”
“That doesn’t matter! She’s still going to think that’s the better option than being forced to come home tonight.”
“Addison.” Mark hooked a finger under her chin and guided her to look at him. “You’ve never been on the receiving end of Ellie’s wrath when you get hurt.” He carefully pulled back the covers and guided Addison down and into his arms.
--
“Mom!” Juliet protested, the anxiety evident in her voice as she sat on her bed holding a stuffed animal for comfort. For the last half hour, she had watched Addison systematically go through her drawers and bookshelves and boxes under her bed. There was nothing in Juliet’s room; she was smart enough to know that, if she got caught, her room and bathroom were the first and likely only places her parents would look besides her car. That didn’t change the fact that her mother was now finding clothing she never wanted to imagine her daughter wearing and stray Post-Its of what to bring to what party when.
Addison opened up the third drawer in Juliet’s dresser and, after neatly removing every shirt in the drawer, came up with a book. She turned it over in her hands. It was clearly a diary, the cover carefully collaged with ballet-themed pictures cut from magazines and the programs of professional shows, the kind Juliet secretly dreamed of being in. On the very front and center was a picture from her first dress rehearsal, looking terrified and holding a doll. On the back was the most recent, completely poised and postured with a genuinely confident smile on her face. Addison looked at it and then looked over at her daughter whose expression matched that of the five year-old on the cover, just with more eyeliner. She silently handed it to Juliet.
“You’re...you’re not gonna read it?” Juliet stammered, the tears of panic that had filled up her eyes quickly turning to tears of relief. She’d heard horror stories of mothers reading diaries and expected her mother to do the same. She clutched the book to her.
Addison shook her head softly and spoke quietly. “I’m in here to throw stuff out, not to hurt you.” The thought never even crossed her mind.
Juliet smiled a little and wiped her eyes. “Thank you.”
Addison nodded and gave her a small smile. She picked up the shirts and carefully set them back in exactly in the order she found them and finished off the last two drawers quickly. Sitting down, Addison leaned her back on the dresser. “Jules, what am I looking for and where am I going to find it?”
Juliet sniffled and wiped her eyes, deeming it safe to put her diary down next to her. She shook her head. It was no longer so much that her parents caught her but the principle of making it difficult.
“Juliet Marie Montgomery,” Addison said softly, “look at me.” She waited until her daughter looked up. “Your dad and I are giving you a month to clean up your act. And if you don’t, or if you don’t keep it up, we’re cutting the money for ballet.”
Her eyes flew open, a whole new set of tears falling down her cheeks. Ballet kept her sane, it kept her happy, it was her life, it was her thing. She’d loved it from the moment she stepped up to the barre when she was four. “You can’t,” she whispered.
Shaking her head, Addison blinked away her own tears and spoke slowly as she tried her hardest to keep her voice steady. “I don’t want to, Julie. I really don’t. I’m not here to make your life miserable but...like your dad said last night. No one is allowed to hurt my kid, and that includes you. I love you too much to stand back and let you fall. Julie, I don’t want to take ballet away from you but I don’t know any other way to get through to you.”
With that threat over her head, and very much believing her mother, Juliet’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “I want you tell me the whole story about you and Dad.”
“After you tell me what I’m looking for and where I’m going to find it.”
Juliet swallowed and tried to find her voice. There was nothing in the house. No drugs, no hidden alcohol, the only thing her parents were going to find was a box or two of condoms. But she took too long and her father jumped in, mistaking her silence for refusal rather than an inability to talk.
“Then I’m going to search every inch of this house, the garden, the garage, all three cars and the gutters of the roof. And I am not going to be happy when I’m done which means that you’re in even further trouble.” Mark had been listening in after he finished finding nothing but nearly-empty tubes of toothpaste and hair gel in the bathroom.
Juliet looked at her parents. “There’s nothing here,” she said with an air of resignation and slumped against the wall.
“Thank you,” Addison said softly. Against all logic, she believed Juliet.
Mark, however, didn’t. “Where is it?”
Juliet angrily sat up straight and screamed at him. “There’s nothing here!” She blinked out a few tears and didn’t care. “Search the whole goddamn house, you won’t find anything!” The realization that ballet really could be taken away from her had just hit and that, combined with the feeling that she had royally screwed up, was pushing her closer and closer to the edge.
Addison turned her head and looked up at him. “Mark...” she cautioned softly but only saw her husband’s back retreating as he began a fruitless search. She focused her gaze back onto Juliet curled up in a ball, holding her stuffed bunny rabbit tightly as she cried. Addison sighed and stood up and slowly made her way to the bed. She kissed Juliet’s hair and whispered that she loved her and then quietly shut the door on her way out.
--
Addison stood at the sink, hands braced on the counter, and stared at the soapy water draining out. Dinner had been strained and missing a person, a certain blue-haired daughter who chose to make a sandwich and eat in her room instead even though Addison had made one of Juliet’s favorite foods for dinner. She closed her eyes and then opened them and looked out the window and tried to get herself to stop thinking about how much she might have screwed up. She jumped as she felt Mark’s arms loop around her waist. Dropping her head, she let go of the counter with one hand just long enough to turn out the light above the sink and then set it down again.
Mark kissed her shoulder. “Addison, this is not your fault. You don’t know if she’d be doing this if I weren’t here at all and you don’t know if she’d be doing this if I’d been around from day one.” He closed his eyes and rested his chin on her shoulder. “You did not screw up, Addison. Stop thinking that.”
She had stopped thinking about that but her thoughts had gone elsewhere, someplace similar. Addison raised her head and slowly turned around to face him. She locked her eyes with his. “How do you not hate me, even just a little, for keeping you away?”
He knew Addison wanted a real answer so he didn’t give her the hug he wanted to give and instead stepped back a little to give her some space. “For one, because I love you.” He brought his hand up and brushed her cheek lightly and pretended he didn’t feel the tears. “And for two, I cheated on you. With a lot of people, including your sister.” Almost seventeen years after the fact, he still didn’t understand why that made it worse but he had accepted that it did. “I understand why you didn’t want me around.”
Addison nodded and stepped closer to him to remove any distance between them. She nestled her head on his shoulder and simply stood there and let herself be hugged by the man she loved the most. “You know I called for me and her,” she whispered. She was never certain whether Mark knew that she had called because she needed him too or whether he thought that it was because Juliet needed him and Addison’s love came later.
“I know.” As he bent in to kiss her, Mark hoped that Addison hadn’t heard the tell-tale squeak of the top step and the soft pattering of feet in the hallway above them.
--
Addison knocked softly on Juliet’s door and waited a few moments before going in without an invitation. “He didn’t know,” she said softly to her daughter’s back as Juliet lay on her bed reading. “Until I called him, he didn’t know he was your father.”
Juliet looked up from her book and over her shoulder. “I’m not following.” She sat up. Her eyes were still red and there was still a rather large pile of tissues on the floor by her bed and her voice was a bit hoarse but other than that, she had calmed down. For the moment.
Addison sighed lightly and gestured toward the desk chair, politely asking her daughter if it was okay, and sat down when she received a nod. She tucked her legs under her. “I was married before, for eleven years to a guy named Derek. I cheated on him with your dad and the timing was such that I didn’t know who your father was until you were born. I assumed Mark was your dad, because I was trying with Derek and after five months there was nothing, and was trying to figure out a way to tell him when I walked in on him with someone.”
“Ellie.” Juliet realized that that was the reason she remembered some tension the first few holidays spent with her father and the entire Montgomery clan.
“How the hell do you know that?”
“I was listening on the stairs earlier.”
Addison gave her a look and Juliet simply shrugged. “So I ran and kept it to myself even after you were born. Neither one of them were particularly good candidates at the time and I saw Mark when you were two and he hadn’t really changed.” Addison offered a soft smile while she wondered if Mark truly hadn’t changed in those two years or whether it was a fault of seeing him with Derek. “I stopped thinking about it. I guess I got used to the idea of just you and me.”
If she hadn’t listened to the scene in the kitchen, she would have asked whether her parents were together just for her or if it was for them, too. But she had and believed everything she heard. “Why’d you cheat on your husband?” Juliet had trouble imagining her mother as someone who would cheat.
“Because he fell in love with his job and forgot two anniversaries and a birthday.”
“And why’d Dad cheat on you?”
Addison bit her lip and looked away for a moment. “Because I was still married and wasn’t in any position to give him what he wanted.”
Juliet recognized the tone in her mother’s voice as one that pleaded for no more questions in that area so she dropped it. “Would you have told him?”
“What?”
She softened her voice even further. She could tell how much talking about it hurt, and suspected that there was a lot more than Addison was letting on and even if she was angry with her mother, Juliet still cared about her and didn’t want to be that mean about it. The previous night in the rain covered mean fairly well. “If that night hadn’t happened. If you hadn’t had your dream or if I hadn’t had monsters, would you have ever told him?”
Addison thought about that and knew that she was taking too long to answer what Juliet wanted to hear. Juliet’s face gave it away. “I don’t know.” She swallowed. “I honestly don’t.” She watched Juliet struggle to keep the hurt out of her face, succeeding everywhere except her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Julie.”
Juliet nodded and took a deep breath to keep herself from screaming. “You were doing what you thought was best for me.” She managed not to yell, managed to hold back most of everything she wanted to say but unable to keep some of the ice out of her voice. It all made sense and Juliet knew it but that didn’t stop her from feeling otherwise.
“Yeah,” Addison said, finding her voice again. She tried not to think about what she almost did that definitely wasn’t the best thing for Juliet. A cloud of selfish guilt gathered over her head.
The two of them sat in silence for a long while, each thinking her own thoughts. Juliet, convinced that her mother left out a significant part of the story, tried to guess what was so secretive that she would hide it. When she caught a look that crossed Addison’s face, a look she had seen cross a friend’s not too long ago, she blinked and immediately tried to forget it and, when that didn’t work, reminded herself that she was there and it was okay. Addison wondered whether Juliet really did understand why she kept Mark away but decided that there was no way she’d ever know if the girl got it. With a quiet sigh, she began to imagine what life would have been like if she hadn’t called Mark, if it had stayed just the two of them, but she shook herself out of that line of thought and back into reality; there were a lot of things in her life she regretted, but that phone call wasn’t one of them.
Addison stood up with a soft smile. “Goodnight, Juliet.”
Addison was almost out the door when Juliet spoke up. “Thank you,” she said quietly, encompassing everything.
“You’re welcome,” she returned. “Sweet dreams.”
--
Over the next week, Addison and Mark had nightly chats about their daughter when she was locked in her room doing homework. When they dug out report cards (because Addison was one of those people who saved everything because you never know when you might need it), they realized that her grades hadn’t dropped and when they really thought about it, her performance at ballet hadn’t suffered at all. With mutual sighs, they understood that there was no way they were going to get her to give it all up entirely and they simply asked her to keep it to a minimum and to call if the 1:00am curfew couldn’t be met; they’d be angry but they’d rather know than be lied to (and Ellie told them about a confession that Juliet had been messing with the cheap watches Mark was putting underneath the wheels of Juliet’s car). And they told her to be safe and that family dinners on weeknights were now non-negotiable.
Juliet rolled her eyes because she was supposed to and sincerely agreed, thankful that her parents were slightly more reasonable than those of some of her friends. Complaints of read diaries and hacked-into computers abounded within her group of friends and the punishment of grounding or an earlier curfew had managed to escape only Juliet and one boy. She still had to jump through hoops and listen to things she already knew but, considering the exaggerated frustrations she heard from others, she was willing to jump.
Addison, according to Mark, essentially threw Juliet on birth control and asked her to please not be stupid.
Mark, according to Addison, essentially handed Juliet slides from a talk he gave on craniofacial reconstruction and slipped in some drunk driving accident photos.
Ellie, according to Mark and Addison, essentially gave Juliet a lecture on the Massachusetts legal system’s opinion of underage drinking and marijuana possession.
But really, Addison made Juliet a doctor’s appointment with a colleague and said go with a stern an inarguable look and Mark told her to give him a call if she ever needed to get home and couldn’t and Ellie gave her a lecture on the Massachusetts legal system’s opinion of underage drinking and marijuana possession.
The first to recognize the existence of her best friend’s mother - the woman who discovered it all and called every parent of her daughter’s close friends - Juliet cleaned up quicker than her parents thought given everything they’d heard and found (Addison wasn’t pleased with the implications of some of the clothing, the alcohol and the condoms). Though she kept the somewhat revealing clothing, most of the attitude and all of the black eyeliner, the rest of it seemed to be genuinely cut back. The blue had washed out in time for her spring ballet recital but she promptly put in purple the day after. Addison and Mark were willing to give her that one as a freebie.
“Hey, hang on!” Mark tapped the window of Juliet’s car before she made it fully out of the driveway.
Juliet turned down her music, rolled down the window and raised her eyebrows in a very exhausted and somewhat confused fashion. “I have my lunch.”
“Yeah, but you’ll need this.” He handed Juliet a check due at the beginning of every month. Addison had wanted to do it but she got called in hours earlier for an emergency and left muttering something about can’t babies wait.
Juliet blinked at it and a smile grew across her face. “Thank you.” She pushed her sunglasses up and her hair back and the smile reached her eyes.
“You’re welcome.” Mark grinned and tapped Juliet’s nose. “Be good.”
♠ Wanna Go to the Endup?
02 - Girls Like Us
03 - Champagne Beat Boogie
04 - You're the Lucky Ones
05 - Duke's Up
06 - 20 Minutes of Disco Glory
07 - Perpetual
08 - Halcyon
09 - Anomaly Calling Your Name
10 - Heaven Scent
11 - Beachcoma
Title: Groove ♠ Protocol [12/14]
Pairing: Addison; Addison/Mark
Rating: PG-13ish
Summary: Addison and Mark explain some things because their daughter asked, Juliet pulls a Rachel because there has to be some accidental invented kid personality crossover, Addison finds something personal because that’s what moms do when they’re worried, Mark provides a towel because he’s nice and his wife got wet, Addison questions herself because that’s what she does best and then explains things more in depth because that’s only fair, and it’s raining because that’s the default weather when things go wrong.
Juliet saw her chance and jumped in. It wouldn’t save her permanently, but it would buy her some time until she figured out what to say. “Really. Because I think that you two are the ones who have a lot of talking to do. Why doesn’t Dad show up in pictures with me until I’m four?”
Addison and Mark looked at each other, shocked. They’d never thought of that, never thought that one day Juliet might wonder why she didn’t remember Mark until she was four. Addison had always assumed that Juliet wouldn’t remember much from then and Mark had never given it any thought. They’d never figured out how to tell her because it never crossed their minds.
“Because I remember you having a dream,” she looked at Addison, “a dream you told me was a good one but you were crying because it ended. And I had a bad one and wanted a hug and you told me to go away. And the next night, he,” she nodded at Mark, “showed up.” Juliet shifted her eyes from one parent to the other. “Why weren’t you around from the beginning?” She said, slightly accusatory.
They looked at each other again and Mark tipped his head toward Addison, indicating that it was really her story to tell. She looked at him, pleading for him to do it; Juliet was pissed off enough at her as it was. But Addison caved and closed her eyes and took a deep breath and forced herself to remember that this was not the point, the point was the fake ID and the alcohol and pot in Juliet’s car.
“I left him before you were born because he cheated on me and I kept him away because I didn’t want that kind of behavior in your life or mine. That dream was about the three of us and I couldn’t hold out. And you were so excited when I told you I had a dream about your dad and so devastated when I didn’t immediately tell you he was coming.” Addison had no desire to dive into the Derek debacle and the unknown father problem right then and she and Mark had an unspoken agreement that the abortion part was never, ever going to get out.
Juliet switched her gaze to Mark. “Why didn’t you try? Why did you hold back until she called?” The hurt began to reach her voice.
Because I didn’t know you were mine, he thought, but spoke the other half of the truth instead. “Because I love her too much to push her on something she didn’t want.”
She stood slightly open-mouthed in disbelief and shook her head. “God. And you wonder why I’m doing this. My mother doesn’t want my father in my life and it takes her dreaming about happily ever after and telling her four year-old to piss off and find someone else to kill monsters to actually give him a call. Well done, guys.” She turned and quickly walked upstairs and closed her bedroom door behind her, desperately wanting the satisfaction of slamming it but not angry enough to do it. She was mostly just upset now.
A few minutes later Mark and Addison heard the sound of someone climbing down the drainpipe to the backyard and running off.
Mark shook his head and thought of James Bond and why she couldn’t just run out the front door and slam it. It would have had more effect. “How long before we get a call from Ellie?” He turned to Addison only to see her hopping off the table and tugging on a pair of Juliet’s sneakers left by the door. He blinked and realized he’d never seen his wife in sneakers before; she’d always changed before she left the gym.
“We won’t,” she said under her breath and sprinted out the door after her daughter into the pouring rain. She caught up quicker than she thought and grabbed Juliet’s arm, catching the girl before she stumbled. “Julie...”
“What do you want?” Juliet screamed, hot tears mixing with cold rain. “You want me to come back inside so we can talk about it? Here. How’s this? For two years, I wished on every single star and penny and birthday cake for a dad. Until you two got married, I wished on every single star and penny and birthday cake for him to stay. And while everyone else was wishing for ponies, I was wishing for a dad.” She stopped a moment to breathe. “You think I don’t remember, that no one remembers what they wished for on their third birthday, but I do.”
“Julie, I’m sorry.” Addison pushed wet hair out of her eyes and blinked away dots at the sudden flash of lightning. “I thought it was best for you, I really did.” And then she made a mistake. “But he’s here.”
Juliet laughed harshly and shook her head, smiling without any happiness or emotion. “And you know what really sucks about that? Is that it took you being mean to me to figure out that he should be here.” She easily broke her mother’s grasp on her arm. After of few seconds of pointed staring, she turned and ran.
Addison stood in the rain and gave up her own battle with her tears. She was too stunned to move, too hurt to start running after her again. So she simply stood still and started to shiver from the cold rain as she watched her daughter disappear around a corner. She remembered all the times in her life that she thought about running away, all the times in her life that she tried running away, all the times in her life that she came back in five minutes and defeated her own point because she felt guilty and had nowhere to go. In a way, she was jealous of Juliet for having the courage to run and stay out. The odd jealousy didn’t dull any of the anger toward her daughter for running but it hurt a little in a different way; Addison began to feel like she missed out a little on childhood by being the oldest and having all the expectations on her shoulders. She could still feel it, feel the pressure and the demands and she was doing everything she could not to throw that onto her own daughter.
But she had always been wistful and a bit jealous when she overheard extraordinary shouting matches between her parents and her brothers, wishing she had the self-confidence to yell about absurd expectations. But the time she walked into a now-legendary fight between Ellie and their mother was what really sealed it and in that moment Addison swore to herself, even though she was twenty-five and barely married, that she would not be her mother when it came to parenting. Incidentally, she never wanted to deal with a daughter like Ellie, who threw the empty bottle of Bombay Sapphire that sparked the fight in the general direction of her mother, but she decided that she wouldn’t be one of those people who demanded perfection and excellence at everything to the degree of needing superhuman powers. So she let Juliet play in mud puddles when she was younger and required a B+ average (which wasn’t all that difficult for Juliet) and didn’t want her to look back at the age of 51 (she cringed a little at that thought) and feel like she missed out.
Yet as she watched the empty street in front of her in false hope that Juliet would pull a sixteen year-old Addison and come back, she wondered whether she had done too good a job of avoiding becoming her own mother.
She thought she heard her name through the wind and turned and saw Mark standing at their doorway, towel in hand. Addison shot one last look in the direction Juliet ran and then slowly walked back up their driveway and into the house. He wrapped the towel around her and hugged her. Mark kissed her wet hair and held her for a moment before she slipped out of his arms and mumbled something about dry clothing. He sighed and watched her go up the stairs. Even if he hadn’t heard anything through the heavy wind, he still saw the entire altercation down the street. He had a good idea that it didn’t have anything to do with finding two twelve-packs of bad beer in Juliet’s trunk.
Mark jumped when the phone rang and grabbed it.
“I have something of yours and she doesn’t really want to be returned.”
Mark groaned, hearing Juliet yelling in the background clearly unhappy with her aunt. “Put her on.”
“Mark, I don’t think that’s a good idea...”
“Put her on, Ellie.” He heard his sister-in-law sigh and hand the phone over. “Juliet, quiet,” he said firmly when she started to talk. “You are not allowed to hurt my child and if you keep this up, that’s exactly what you’re going to do. I want you home by eight tomorrow morning and I want you sober and awake and if you’re home at 8:01, we’re going to have problems.” Mark closed his eyes as he imagined the look on his daughter’s face. Possibly the realization that what she was doing really was wrong and a bad idea and maybe some guilt, thinking that Mark overheard what she said to Addison.
“Okay.”
He sighed, hearing the emotion in her voice as she handed the phone back to Ellie. Mark wasn’t going to force her to come home: he knew where she was and that she was safe and, perhaps most important of all, that Ellie wouldn’t cut her any slack just because she was crying. But he also wanted her to know just how not happy he was and how not okay it was that she ran off. For the sake of sanity, he gave Ellie a brief overview of the evening - Juliet wouldn’t spill anything except her anger with her parents - and a strict warning to leave any explaining to him and Addison.
“Mark, I am not six. You can ask nicely or assume that I’m not stupid.”
“Ellie, it’s been a hell of a night. I discovered that my daughter is using a fake ID, smoking a lot of pot, having sex and god knows what else. And she just implied that it is Addison’s fault she’s drinking because she kept me out of her life for the first four years. I don’t have the capability to be nice right now.”
“Fair enough. But...take care of my sister, alright? I’ll make sure Juliet’s home and calms down a little.”
“Thanks, El.”
--
Addison looked up when Mark came into their bedroom. She was sitting on her side of the bed in comfy pajamas with her feet tucked under her, staring out the window. “Do you think she has a point? That keeping you away for that long really was a bad idea?”
“Did you really tell her to go away?” Mark sat down near the foot of the bed, unsurprised when she didn’t turn.
Nodding, Addison tipped her head down. “Not one of my better moments.” She looked back up and pursed her lips as she stared straight ahead, tears threatening at the back of her eyes. “God, I still remember the look on her face when I told her to go. All she wanted was for me to flip a light switch on and give her a hug.”
Mark scooted next to her and put a hand on her knee. “Addison, that’s not what caused this. This is how a decent percentage of teenagers live regardless of how they grew up. It happens.”
“I know. I just...I just wish that she could’ve stayed innocent a little longer.”
“Me too.” After a few minutes of silence, Mark sighed. “What are we going to do?”
“My mother threatened to take away horseback riding lessons when I didn’t have straight As.”
Mark laughed a little. “Well, that explains a lot.”
Addison searched around her and found a piece of paper, crumpled it up and threw it at her husband. “Shut up!” She couldn’t help but laugh despite how much her emotions were getting to her. “Ballet?” Addison bit her lip and hated herself for even suggesting that as an option.
He blinked, shocked that she would mention that. Ballet was Juliet’s life and had been for twelve years; taking away the funding for it would kill her. “Addie...”
“What else? The car? I think she’d willingly find someone else to drive her.” Juliet had a job to provide herself with fun money, so removing that wasn’t an option either.
“Okay,” he sighed reluctantly. “Give her a month. A month to clean up her act or we’ll pull out from that.”
After a few minutes of agreed silence, Addison spoke up. “Was that Ellie earlier?”
“Yeah. Told Juliet she’d better be back by eight in the morning.”
“Why did you do that? Why did you let her stay out? That’s defeating the whole purpose, Mark.” She began to get worked up again. “You said yourself that she keeps breaking everything we set for her. If we let her stay at Ellie’s, she’s going to think that’s okay.”
Mark shook his head and took Addison’s hand in his and slowly rubbed gentle calming circles into her palm. “You have no idea how much Ellie whips people into shape.”
“That doesn’t matter! She’s still going to think that’s the better option than being forced to come home tonight.”
“Addison.” Mark hooked a finger under her chin and guided her to look at him. “You’ve never been on the receiving end of Ellie’s wrath when you get hurt.” He carefully pulled back the covers and guided Addison down and into his arms.
--
“Mom!” Juliet protested, the anxiety evident in her voice as she sat on her bed holding a stuffed animal for comfort. For the last half hour, she had watched Addison systematically go through her drawers and bookshelves and boxes under her bed. There was nothing in Juliet’s room; she was smart enough to know that, if she got caught, her room and bathroom were the first and likely only places her parents would look besides her car. That didn’t change the fact that her mother was now finding clothing she never wanted to imagine her daughter wearing and stray Post-Its of what to bring to what party when.
Addison opened up the third drawer in Juliet’s dresser and, after neatly removing every shirt in the drawer, came up with a book. She turned it over in her hands. It was clearly a diary, the cover carefully collaged with ballet-themed pictures cut from magazines and the programs of professional shows, the kind Juliet secretly dreamed of being in. On the very front and center was a picture from her first dress rehearsal, looking terrified and holding a doll. On the back was the most recent, completely poised and postured with a genuinely confident smile on her face. Addison looked at it and then looked over at her daughter whose expression matched that of the five year-old on the cover, just with more eyeliner. She silently handed it to Juliet.
“You’re...you’re not gonna read it?” Juliet stammered, the tears of panic that had filled up her eyes quickly turning to tears of relief. She’d heard horror stories of mothers reading diaries and expected her mother to do the same. She clutched the book to her.
Addison shook her head softly and spoke quietly. “I’m in here to throw stuff out, not to hurt you.” The thought never even crossed her mind.
Juliet smiled a little and wiped her eyes. “Thank you.”
Addison nodded and gave her a small smile. She picked up the shirts and carefully set them back in exactly in the order she found them and finished off the last two drawers quickly. Sitting down, Addison leaned her back on the dresser. “Jules, what am I looking for and where am I going to find it?”
Juliet sniffled and wiped her eyes, deeming it safe to put her diary down next to her. She shook her head. It was no longer so much that her parents caught her but the principle of making it difficult.
“Juliet Marie Montgomery,” Addison said softly, “look at me.” She waited until her daughter looked up. “Your dad and I are giving you a month to clean up your act. And if you don’t, or if you don’t keep it up, we’re cutting the money for ballet.”
Her eyes flew open, a whole new set of tears falling down her cheeks. Ballet kept her sane, it kept her happy, it was her life, it was her thing. She’d loved it from the moment she stepped up to the barre when she was four. “You can’t,” she whispered.
Shaking her head, Addison blinked away her own tears and spoke slowly as she tried her hardest to keep her voice steady. “I don’t want to, Julie. I really don’t. I’m not here to make your life miserable but...like your dad said last night. No one is allowed to hurt my kid, and that includes you. I love you too much to stand back and let you fall. Julie, I don’t want to take ballet away from you but I don’t know any other way to get through to you.”
With that threat over her head, and very much believing her mother, Juliet’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “I want you tell me the whole story about you and Dad.”
“After you tell me what I’m looking for and where I’m going to find it.”
Juliet swallowed and tried to find her voice. There was nothing in the house. No drugs, no hidden alcohol, the only thing her parents were going to find was a box or two of condoms. But she took too long and her father jumped in, mistaking her silence for refusal rather than an inability to talk.
“Then I’m going to search every inch of this house, the garden, the garage, all three cars and the gutters of the roof. And I am not going to be happy when I’m done which means that you’re in even further trouble.” Mark had been listening in after he finished finding nothing but nearly-empty tubes of toothpaste and hair gel in the bathroom.
Juliet looked at her parents. “There’s nothing here,” she said with an air of resignation and slumped against the wall.
“Thank you,” Addison said softly. Against all logic, she believed Juliet.
Mark, however, didn’t. “Where is it?”
Juliet angrily sat up straight and screamed at him. “There’s nothing here!” She blinked out a few tears and didn’t care. “Search the whole goddamn house, you won’t find anything!” The realization that ballet really could be taken away from her had just hit and that, combined with the feeling that she had royally screwed up, was pushing her closer and closer to the edge.
Addison turned her head and looked up at him. “Mark...” she cautioned softly but only saw her husband’s back retreating as he began a fruitless search. She focused her gaze back onto Juliet curled up in a ball, holding her stuffed bunny rabbit tightly as she cried. Addison sighed and stood up and slowly made her way to the bed. She kissed Juliet’s hair and whispered that she loved her and then quietly shut the door on her way out.
--
Addison stood at the sink, hands braced on the counter, and stared at the soapy water draining out. Dinner had been strained and missing a person, a certain blue-haired daughter who chose to make a sandwich and eat in her room instead even though Addison had made one of Juliet’s favorite foods for dinner. She closed her eyes and then opened them and looked out the window and tried to get herself to stop thinking about how much she might have screwed up. She jumped as she felt Mark’s arms loop around her waist. Dropping her head, she let go of the counter with one hand just long enough to turn out the light above the sink and then set it down again.
Mark kissed her shoulder. “Addison, this is not your fault. You don’t know if she’d be doing this if I weren’t here at all and you don’t know if she’d be doing this if I’d been around from day one.” He closed his eyes and rested his chin on her shoulder. “You did not screw up, Addison. Stop thinking that.”
She had stopped thinking about that but her thoughts had gone elsewhere, someplace similar. Addison raised her head and slowly turned around to face him. She locked her eyes with his. “How do you not hate me, even just a little, for keeping you away?”
He knew Addison wanted a real answer so he didn’t give her the hug he wanted to give and instead stepped back a little to give her some space. “For one, because I love you.” He brought his hand up and brushed her cheek lightly and pretended he didn’t feel the tears. “And for two, I cheated on you. With a lot of people, including your sister.” Almost seventeen years after the fact, he still didn’t understand why that made it worse but he had accepted that it did. “I understand why you didn’t want me around.”
Addison nodded and stepped closer to him to remove any distance between them. She nestled her head on his shoulder and simply stood there and let herself be hugged by the man she loved the most. “You know I called for me and her,” she whispered. She was never certain whether Mark knew that she had called because she needed him too or whether he thought that it was because Juliet needed him and Addison’s love came later.
“I know.” As he bent in to kiss her, Mark hoped that Addison hadn’t heard the tell-tale squeak of the top step and the soft pattering of feet in the hallway above them.
--
Addison knocked softly on Juliet’s door and waited a few moments before going in without an invitation. “He didn’t know,” she said softly to her daughter’s back as Juliet lay on her bed reading. “Until I called him, he didn’t know he was your father.”
Juliet looked up from her book and over her shoulder. “I’m not following.” She sat up. Her eyes were still red and there was still a rather large pile of tissues on the floor by her bed and her voice was a bit hoarse but other than that, she had calmed down. For the moment.
Addison sighed lightly and gestured toward the desk chair, politely asking her daughter if it was okay, and sat down when she received a nod. She tucked her legs under her. “I was married before, for eleven years to a guy named Derek. I cheated on him with your dad and the timing was such that I didn’t know who your father was until you were born. I assumed Mark was your dad, because I was trying with Derek and after five months there was nothing, and was trying to figure out a way to tell him when I walked in on him with someone.”
“Ellie.” Juliet realized that that was the reason she remembered some tension the first few holidays spent with her father and the entire Montgomery clan.
“How the hell do you know that?”
“I was listening on the stairs earlier.”
Addison gave her a look and Juliet simply shrugged. “So I ran and kept it to myself even after you were born. Neither one of them were particularly good candidates at the time and I saw Mark when you were two and he hadn’t really changed.” Addison offered a soft smile while she wondered if Mark truly hadn’t changed in those two years or whether it was a fault of seeing him with Derek. “I stopped thinking about it. I guess I got used to the idea of just you and me.”
If she hadn’t listened to the scene in the kitchen, she would have asked whether her parents were together just for her or if it was for them, too. But she had and believed everything she heard. “Why’d you cheat on your husband?” Juliet had trouble imagining her mother as someone who would cheat.
“Because he fell in love with his job and forgot two anniversaries and a birthday.”
“And why’d Dad cheat on you?”
Addison bit her lip and looked away for a moment. “Because I was still married and wasn’t in any position to give him what he wanted.”
Juliet recognized the tone in her mother’s voice as one that pleaded for no more questions in that area so she dropped it. “Would you have told him?”
“What?”
She softened her voice even further. She could tell how much talking about it hurt, and suspected that there was a lot more than Addison was letting on and even if she was angry with her mother, Juliet still cared about her and didn’t want to be that mean about it. The previous night in the rain covered mean fairly well. “If that night hadn’t happened. If you hadn’t had your dream or if I hadn’t had monsters, would you have ever told him?”
Addison thought about that and knew that she was taking too long to answer what Juliet wanted to hear. Juliet’s face gave it away. “I don’t know.” She swallowed. “I honestly don’t.” She watched Juliet struggle to keep the hurt out of her face, succeeding everywhere except her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Julie.”
Juliet nodded and took a deep breath to keep herself from screaming. “You were doing what you thought was best for me.” She managed not to yell, managed to hold back most of everything she wanted to say but unable to keep some of the ice out of her voice. It all made sense and Juliet knew it but that didn’t stop her from feeling otherwise.
“Yeah,” Addison said, finding her voice again. She tried not to think about what she almost did that definitely wasn’t the best thing for Juliet. A cloud of selfish guilt gathered over her head.
The two of them sat in silence for a long while, each thinking her own thoughts. Juliet, convinced that her mother left out a significant part of the story, tried to guess what was so secretive that she would hide it. When she caught a look that crossed Addison’s face, a look she had seen cross a friend’s not too long ago, she blinked and immediately tried to forget it and, when that didn’t work, reminded herself that she was there and it was okay. Addison wondered whether Juliet really did understand why she kept Mark away but decided that there was no way she’d ever know if the girl got it. With a quiet sigh, she began to imagine what life would have been like if she hadn’t called Mark, if it had stayed just the two of them, but she shook herself out of that line of thought and back into reality; there were a lot of things in her life she regretted, but that phone call wasn’t one of them.
Addison stood up with a soft smile. “Goodnight, Juliet.”
Addison was almost out the door when Juliet spoke up. “Thank you,” she said quietly, encompassing everything.
“You’re welcome,” she returned. “Sweet dreams.”
--
Over the next week, Addison and Mark had nightly chats about their daughter when she was locked in her room doing homework. When they dug out report cards (because Addison was one of those people who saved everything because you never know when you might need it), they realized that her grades hadn’t dropped and when they really thought about it, her performance at ballet hadn’t suffered at all. With mutual sighs, they understood that there was no way they were going to get her to give it all up entirely and they simply asked her to keep it to a minimum and to call if the 1:00am curfew couldn’t be met; they’d be angry but they’d rather know than be lied to (and Ellie told them about a confession that Juliet had been messing with the cheap watches Mark was putting underneath the wheels of Juliet’s car). And they told her to be safe and that family dinners on weeknights were now non-negotiable.
Juliet rolled her eyes because she was supposed to and sincerely agreed, thankful that her parents were slightly more reasonable than those of some of her friends. Complaints of read diaries and hacked-into computers abounded within her group of friends and the punishment of grounding or an earlier curfew had managed to escape only Juliet and one boy. She still had to jump through hoops and listen to things she already knew but, considering the exaggerated frustrations she heard from others, she was willing to jump.
Addison, according to Mark, essentially threw Juliet on birth control and asked her to please not be stupid.
Mark, according to Addison, essentially handed Juliet slides from a talk he gave on craniofacial reconstruction and slipped in some drunk driving accident photos.
Ellie, according to Mark and Addison, essentially gave Juliet a lecture on the Massachusetts legal system’s opinion of underage drinking and marijuana possession.
But really, Addison made Juliet a doctor’s appointment with a colleague and said go with a stern an inarguable look and Mark told her to give him a call if she ever needed to get home and couldn’t and Ellie gave her a lecture on the Massachusetts legal system’s opinion of underage drinking and marijuana possession.
The first to recognize the existence of her best friend’s mother - the woman who discovered it all and called every parent of her daughter’s close friends - Juliet cleaned up quicker than her parents thought given everything they’d heard and found (Addison wasn’t pleased with the implications of some of the clothing, the alcohol and the condoms). Though she kept the somewhat revealing clothing, most of the attitude and all of the black eyeliner, the rest of it seemed to be genuinely cut back. The blue had washed out in time for her spring ballet recital but she promptly put in purple the day after. Addison and Mark were willing to give her that one as a freebie.
“Hey, hang on!” Mark tapped the window of Juliet’s car before she made it fully out of the driveway.
Juliet turned down her music, rolled down the window and raised her eyebrows in a very exhausted and somewhat confused fashion. “I have my lunch.”
“Yeah, but you’ll need this.” He handed Juliet a check due at the beginning of every month. Addison had wanted to do it but she got called in hours earlier for an emergency and left muttering something about can’t babies wait.
Juliet blinked at it and a smile grew across her face. “Thank you.” She pushed her sunglasses up and her hair back and the smile reached her eyes.
“You’re welcome.” Mark grinned and tapped Juliet’s nose. “Be good.”
♠ Wanna Go to the Endup?