“It’s complicated’

That’s how my mother began to answer the questions about mine and my sister’s fathers

She said

“Just like the game of life there is a game of love” She was already rambling through her thoughts as she twirled with the ends of my hair “Everyone has their own set of rules they have to play by. Some are conventional and a storybook, others are maddening and even heart breaking…”

+++++++++++++++

We started taking trips to Martha’s Vineyard when I was just a baby. My parents promised themselves at least once or twice a year they would take time away from their jobs and go away if not for just a long weekend…

My sister and I ended up spending our childhood between the streets of Manhattan and the beaches on Martha’s Vineyard

My father had to work… his promises to go to the Vineyard that one weekend were crushed by  executive bigwigs in an opposing company who could have cared less about his weekend trip with his wife and daughter’s

He begged us to go without him… he insisted we would have a great time and that if anything my mother could use the sight of the ocean

She had grown to really love the ocean

A girl’s weekend it was…

We’ve always been close. My mother, my sister and I… mostly because she had always been honest with us and when she didn’t want to be truly honest she would say, ‘there are things we don’t tell you because we love you and we want to protect you…’ or because ‘some things in life you need to learn on your own…’

In return we were nothing but honest with her and my father both. We weren’t a family of secrets… my father and mother had sworn them off from what they referred to as past mistakes

And speaking of their “past mistakes” on that girl’s weekend Kristina asked what I guess; I only thought was the unthinkable, to my mother…

She wanted to know…

My sister wanted to know what happened between our mother and her father. She wanted to know how Ric became her father… and she didn’t want the fairytale that they had painted. She said  she and I both had become too old for that… and that we both understood people fell in love and then fell out of love, we understood that life wasn’t as simple as boy meets girl, they fall in love, get married and have a baby… She said we knew now that some people just had sex and that’s all it was, sex…

I admit I did sort of give her the look like “We did?” but I went with it. If Kristina was going to be as bold as to get all the dish on our mother’s past then I was going to be right there, front and center for it!

We sat out on the deck of our beach house. Our beach chairs huddled closely, deep in conversation

Like I said, my mother was nothing but honest, nervous, but honest

“Were you ever in love with my father?” Kristina asked as she curled her long tan legs against her body

“I was in love with the thought of him” Alexis answered biting at her bottom lip

“So I was an accident?”

“You were the most wonderful surprise I had ever been given”

“But she was an accident?” I added for insult

“Actually neither of you were planned!” My mother answered getting the best of us

“But you’re happy you got us both?” I questioned grinning

“Happy doesn’t describe how I feel because I have both of you”

“And our father’s?” Kristina asked boldly keeping on subject

Alexis looked at Kristina letting out a deep breath

She was like our mother: relentless

“Your father was handsome and charming and at one point I would have considered him one of my greatest friends”

“So what happened?” I asked getting caught up in the story

“I got pregnant”

Kristina and I both looked at her a bit confused knowing good and well that it wasn’t the case that Kristina’s father didn’t want her

“And?” Kristina said

“And I didn’t think your father lived a very safe lifestyle… you know that. And you know that he and I clashed over that. I wanted to protect you and he thought you didn’t need protecting from him…”

“But I did” Kristina stated knowing that part of the truth

“You’re a beautiful, healthy, and I know I’m a bit biased but quite perfect young woman. I think that in itself justifies all that I went through…”

Kristina bit at her bottom lip before Alexis pulled her closer to her

“And my father?” I asked

Alexis laughed a breathy laugh that left a lingering grin on her face

“After everything we went through… your father turned out to be the love of my life… and I had to have you…” Alexis said turning back to Kristina “to find that out”

Kristina smiled

“Your dad and I are connected with each other. We understood what the other needed out of love…”

“He was romantic” I stated proudly

“At first he was a pig” Alexis said amused by herself

“Really?” Kristina said leaning up looking at our mother amused herself

“We had our own little game to play. Which of course as you know eventually brought us together…”

“He fell for you?” I said willing to romanticize anything

“He fell for me and I fell for him”

“And my father in all of this?”

My mother was suddenly quiet

Whether she was trying to choose her words carefully or thinking of creative ways to answer the questions… well, I’m still sort of uncertain

“Ric and Sonny are brothers…” She hesitated again “It wasn’t the easiest thing to overcome…” Neither I nor my sister said a word for fear we would break her concentration “Sonny wanted you to be with him…” She was fidgeting now with my sister’s hand though her eyes were staring deep in to thin air “… And I was willing to give everything for that not to happen”

She was now telling more truth than she ever had

We knew there was bad blood, we knew that between my father and Kristina’s father and then our mother and Kristina’s father… we knew something had happened to make them all want to forget the past

“That’s when you and daddy broke up?” I asked curious but trying not to twist the knot in her stomach

“Yeah, we broke up…”

“But then you got back together” I stated wanting to suddenly make it better

My mother let out a soft smile

Maybe she was happy that even though I was fifteen I still had my hopeful innocence

“We got back together. We got back together because whatever it is that we have… it’s stronger than whatever we thought could break us…”

“Sonny?” Kristina questioned no longer directing him as “her father”

My mother looked in to her eyes, seemingly cursing herself for saying what she had to say

“Yes, Sonny… Ric and I realized we were stronger than Sonny”

“He could have caused you two to never get back together?” I asked

My mother laughed a breathy laugh

“He was a part of it, a big part of it. But your father and I both had something to do with it”

“Like?” Kristina asked

“Like we were thinking too much with our brains and not our hearts”

“Sounds cheesy” Kristina quipped

My mother laughed, as I swatted at my sister

“I wasn’t always the best at love but somewhere along the way every fear and hesitation I had about it diminished because of your father. We were bound together and sometimes it was painful and other times it was relief… But I couldn’t live without him. And I didn’t want to, and I didn’t want you to have to either” she said giving her attention to Kristina “Ric and I realized we needed to be together and that literally in the end we should be together”

“So everything you went through, even the stuff with Sonny was worth it?” I asked

“Everything was worth it” My mother said without hesitation “Absolutely everything! I wouldn’t have been able to live a life that I couldn’t even have dreamed of if…”

“If you didn’t play the game of love?” My sister asked suddenly sentimental

“Yeah… as cheesy as that sounds” my mother said giving us both a quick kiss to the cheek and a roar of laughter

++++++++++++

My father was home, waiting for us when we got back that weekend

He kept asking about us why we were acting different

We all laughed, told him it was a girl thing

Which by then, he was use to it being a girl thing with three women against one man

But the truth was my sister and I both had learned a few things about my mother and father that weekend that made us appreciate the value of love, especially between them and in return, even if as a lesson learned from past mistakes, the love they gave us…

And it changed us… we were acting different because knowing that changed us

++++++++++

I couldn’t sleep…

I was spying, yes. But I think it was ok

Ok to see what I saw

That night I watched my parents sitting on the couch together. My father’s arms wrapped around my mother

It was just the way he held her

It was the way their steady stream of conversation was just as easily interrupted by a comfortable silence and then back to conversation

They way she kissed him, they had been married for sixteen years and she kissed him like it might be her last kiss to him…

My sister graduated high school this last spring

This fall she’s going to be a freshman at Yale University

After much discussion my mother “won”

(Though no matter who won in the battle wills, if my sister didn’t want to go to Yale, trust me she wouldn’t be going to Yale)

Her father, Sonny would come to see her often and her high school graduation was no exception

My mother and father had learned to communicate with him, they almost seemed like friends

Along the way my parents decided they had to make it work not just for Kristina but because they needed each other and Sonny would forever be a factor…

My sister and I only had a few more weeks together

I admit I had been sick to my stomach with every thought of her leaving me…

She is the greatest part of my life and now she’s going to Yale

She promised she won’t forget me and I can come and stay with her… but she said I’ll get use to her being gone and I won’t even care when she comes home

That made me cry…

The thought of not caring if she’s in my life seemed absurd

My father said the one thing he had wished most for Kristina and I was that we would love each other and always stick up for each other

I knew nothing different

So there I was… I couldn’t sleep

I was spying yes… at the corner of the hallway watching my parents

Watching them actually in love with each other

Kristina and I had always known they loved each other, always seen them have affection for one another

But until after that weekend in Martha’s Vinyard I don’t think Kristina nor I ever understood the depth of how much they did love each other

What my mother said about love being a game with its own set of rules seemed almost cliché when she first said it. But describing playing by the rules of a fairytale but also having to play by the rules of love that’s completely heartbreaking seemed so apparent right then… right there

The depths of what they had to go through…

The battles they fought against and for each other…

And if my mother was right about the game of love, she had played it just right. She admitted to being bruised and scarred but she played it out and won the fairytale

Sitting there on the couch sixteen years later, she had her fairytale, she had Ric Lansing

End