The Jump

[:::: Authors Note ::::]

This one came to me on one of my beautiful Friday mornings at our local coffee shop. I was in a bit of a forgiving mood as a lot of what I have written over the past six months has been quite dark, matching my outlook. But this one came to me quickly and I managed the first draft in a little under two hours.

It is a short, but pleasant read, something just a little different from much of what we so often read.

I hope that you enjoy 'The Jump.'

[:::: The Jump ::::]

I stood looking at the sky. It was a cold winter's morning, and I could see my breath misting each time I exhaled. My cheeks felt ruddy and flushed as my body siphoned up the heat of my figure up and out of my head. I looked around me at the others milling around, all of us waiting in anticipation of what was about to happen.

Getting out of my warm bed before sunrise was not my idea of fun, especially on a Saturday morning; it was the only day of the week I got to sleep in because my husband would look after the kids. But I had made a promise, and I had dutifully gotten up, bailed the family into the car, making our way to almost the middle of nowhere.

My daughter, Bridget, a feisty twelve-year-old, came up to me a minute later, she held a coffee in her left hand which she handed to me, followed by a quick hug. Of course, she also had a hot chocolate in her right which she then put both hands around before sipping while looking around the place. Bridget then grinned up at me, knowing she never asked to purchase one, but that I wouldn't bite her head off for not asking.

"How long?" she asked, changing the topic before I said anything 'motherly' about her purchase.

I sighed, deciding it was not worth the angst. I looked around and stared up into the cold, blue sky, which was currently empty.

"Not long, I think?"

"Within the next five minutes," I heard a voice say behind me.

"Mum?" I said, surprised to hear her voice. "What are you doing here?"

"What," she replied in a mock tone, affecting feigned hurt in her voice. "Is there a law banning me from being here?"

It wasn't quite what she said, but how she said it that had me on alert. My eyes narrowed.

"Mum, leave it alone," I told her as my daughter looked between me and her grandmother. "I don't think you should be here, and whatever you are planning is not going to happen the way you think it is."

She reached over and grabbed my right hand, the one not holding the coffee, and pat it like she would a favourite pet.

"It's all right, sweetie," she told me. "I've got this."

'No, you don't,'

I thought, but didn't say it. I was about to reply when Bridget took her grandmother's hand and walked her away, sensing that I was about to give my mother another in a long line of angry responses.

[:::: Fifteen years ago ::::]

"Alisha," Mum called up the stairs to me, "I'm heading off."

I ignored her statement, wiping the tears from my eyes. There was no way we deserved this. I dried my eyes and used my trusty Nokia to send a message to my boyfriend, Daniel.

[ Its happening, help! ]

"Alisha, did you hear me," Mum said, standing in my room's doorway. "I'm heading off, I'll be back on Sunday night. There is food in the fridge for you and your father."

The way she spoke, it was like she was heading out to spend some time with my ailing grandmother or just heading to a conference for work as she did once a year for her teaching certification. Her voice, tone, and inflection did not tell it like it really was; she didn't talk like she was breaking our family apart.

"Please Mum," I told her, my tears again falling down my cheeks. "Don't do this, don't break our family."

This had been a daily conversation for the past week, Mum and I, Dad and I, Mum and Dad. Each of us pairing off trying to convince my mother not to leave for the weekend.

Mum looked at her watch and then back at me and sighed.

"Alisha, sweetie," Mum said, coming and sitting on the edge of my bed. I wanted to hug her and stop her, but I was also repulsed by the woman now sitting next to me. "You're seventeen, you're experiencing the beginning of love. You care about Daniel, right?"

I nodded and responded without hesitation. "I love him."

Daniel and I had been together since we were four. Our fathers worked together, and they were constantly hanging out. He was a year older than me, but one day, when I was eight, I saw one of the other girls in the neighbourhood making eyes at my best friend and the green envy monster raised its head.

That same day, I grabbed Daniel by the hand, forcibly pulled him to my room, and for a good ten minutes, gave him a dressing down on not allowing his head to be turned by other girls. When he tried to defend himself, I went to town on him, no excuse was good enough for him to talk to another girl. He was mine.

In the middle of his reply, saying that he was just being friendly, I had had enough. I pushed him down on my bed, climbed on top of him and kissed him. While I was only eight and he was nine, there were enough hormones in our systems that it brought us both up short.

"You're my boyfriend now," I told him as I pulled back from marking him as mine. "Any girl comes near you like she did, and I will end them."

Over the next decade, there had never been another issue. I made sure that everyone knew Daniel was mine and I was his. We knew we would marry, and I would often smile as my fingers traced patterns on my body, thinking of the day when the man I loved was able to make me his woman in the biblical sense.

Mum nodded, the movement bringing me back to reality. She knew I was lost in thoughts of how much I cared for Daniel.

"Just like I care about your father," she stated.

"NO," I yell back. "Then don't do this, don't Mum. If you love him then don't break his heart like this."

It was then that she did it for the first time. She took my hand in hers and patted my arm. I was revolted at the condescension of the act.

"I love your father and he loves me," she explained in the mothering tone that we all know. "But I need to do this, I need to do this for me. Your father loves me and is going to let me have this. When I come back Sunday, I'll show him how much I love him for letting me have this weekend away."

At seventeen I had read enough trashy romance novels to know the cheater's justifications, their delusions. While I was young enough never to see my love for Daniel end, I was also old enough to know that life is not always a fairytale and you have to work at love.

Mum was throwing that all in the bin and leaving Dad and me for a weekend in bed with her boss, the vice-principal of my school.

Having one of your parents working at the school you attend is a mixed blessing. On one hand, there is no hiding it anytime you get in trouble at school. For example, the time I got busted smoking. That night, Mum and Dad gave me what for, and I was grounded for a month. Then again, Mum was always the first to my defence after telling me off.

On the other hand, it worked sometimes in my favour. For instance, when I got my first period in the middle of class, having Mum there with me at school was a godsend.

Mum wasn't a bad person, but she was led down the path by our vice principal, Garret McDonell. In my view, Mr McDonell wasn't a nice guy. He was always harsh and frowned, but worse, he was also quite a leech. He had been caught several times looking down the shirts of us female students, and despite many complaints, he was somehow still employed in a position of authority and control.

I don't know how it started with Mum, but she had fallen for his bullshit at some point and, a week ago, sat down and told my father that she was heading off for a weekend with the prick. It was not long after that that the yelling started. I sat in the doorway to my bedroom at the top of the stairs as my mother threw statement after statement at my father.

I still don't get how cheaters can say, 'They'll make it up to them'. I mean, how? How do you betray someone you love, and what actions would ever make it up to the person that they destroy?

At the end of their 'conversation', Dad stormed out, slamming the front door and burning rubber down the road. Mum saw me sitting in my doorway crying as she walked sadly up the stairs.

"Alisha, I..." she started to say. But she stopped as I stood glaring at her, stepped back into my room, and closed my door behind me. I spent the rest of the evening on the phone with Daniel.

Dad had not returned the next evening, but Daniel's mother turned up with my boyfriend. She sent him into my arms and up to my room where he held me, and I cried. Dad hadn't returned my calls or text messages, and I was worried he had hurt himself.

We heard nothing from downstairs for almost two hours, and while usually we would fool around a little, I wasn't in the mood. When the knock came at the door, I was still in his arms as Heather, Daniel's mother, popped her head in. I looked up at her from within her sons' arms, and she shook her head sadly. I felt more tears run down my already red and puffy face as I stood and slid into my future mother-in-law's arms. She wrapped her arms around me, and I felt more love in that moment than I had felt from my mother in the past month.

"She's still going to do it?" I asked Heather.

"Yes," was all she said.

"Where is she?" I asked, worried that she was in the hallway behind Heather.

"She's down in the lounge crying. She knows what she is doing is wrong, but this man has convinced her that you and more importantly, your father would be forced in time to accept her betrayal. She refuses to listen to reason."

We spoke quietly for a few more minutes before Daniel and his mother headed off.

Not long after they left, Mum came and knocked on my door. I yelled at her to go away. I let her know, in no uncertain terms, that when Dad divorces her, I will live with him, not her. I may also have thrown a few more hurtful statements in my anger until Mum walked away crying.

Later that night, I did get a call from my father. He asked how I was, and I told him I hated what Mum was doing to us and that I was far from okay. Dad told me he was sorry for walking out. He had crashed at his brothers', my Uncle Dave's and gotten drunk. He would be home tomorrow.

I told him I loved him, and that we will get Mum to stop. But he replied sadly that he doesn't think there is anything that will stop her.

The next evening, Dad came home, and to say things were tense would be an understatement. Mum had prepared a simple meal of Spaghetti and nothing much was said as we ate. I excused myself to my room knowing I wasn't needed for the next part of the evening. Sitting on my bed feeling like the world was ending, I listened to the raised voices of both my parents. Dad didn't leave that night, but he did sleep on the couch, letting Mum know that he would not sleep with her again until she gave up on the stupid idea of cheating on him.

For the third night in a row, I cried myself to sleep. I now hated my mother even though I still loved her, and I could not reconcile the two people my mother had become.

The rest of the week was like a tropical storm within the house; in some moments, the conditions were wet and windy, as my parents argued and emotions ran high. Other times, it was like the eye of the storm, quiet and cold. I spent any moment I could with Dad. We constantly hugged, and I told him how much I loved him.

But when it came to Mum, I tried to avoid her. I didn't want to interact with someone who was going to throw her family out the window despite all our pleadings and warnings.

So here we were, Friday night, and my mother was trying to justify to me how she could be spending the weekend with another man.

"Daniel and you are so in love now," she was saying. "What you don't understand is that love will grow dull as the years go by. You polish it now and then, and while we will never part, I need something new and shiny, something your father can't give to me."

I looked at her, scrunching up my face, wondering who the hell the woman before me was. It wasn't the mother I knew and had so deeply loved in the past.

"Cheating is cheating Mum," I replied. "It's not like polishing Nan's old silver vase."

"Well, when Daniel struggles to get it up when your sex drive is twice that of his, you'll tell me it's not worth denying your needs."

I sat and looked at my mother for a moment, wondering indeed if this was my mother or a replicant that just looked like her. The pure nastiness in her voice as she said the last statement had me ripping my hand away from her and backing away in disgust.

"You know what Mum," I said, my surprise and pleading suddenly being replaced by anger. "Go, go and spend the weekend in another man's bed. Go and get yourself fucked. Spread your legs, breaking your vows while breaking our hearts. Walk away from a family that loves you. I hope you enjoy the regret you will need to live with for the rest of your life when Dad and I refuse to let you be part of our lives if you walk out that door."

I then stood and walked to the door of my room, placed my hands on my hips and waited. I scowled at my mother and waited some more. Secretly I hoped that being so crass with her would snap her out of the delusional state she was in.

"Well, if my own daughter is going to hate me..." Mum said.

I saw the guilt trip, and it didn't work.

"Then don't go be a slut Mum, stay and beg Dad to forgive you. If you're contrite, you may still be able to earn his forgiveness."

Mum snorted, "Forgiveness. For what? He's the one being so pigheaded that he won't see reason, and obviously, neither do you. Alisha, I need this one weekend, two nights in the vast days of our lives. A small amount of time just for me to prove I am still desirable before age takes it all away from me."

I looked at her; it was almost like a crone was morphing into my mother's features as I watched; it was ugly and vile. The thing was selfish and only cared about what it wanted. Despite that, I hoped the woman I loved was still there somewhere.

"Then take Dad away for the weekend and give him one of those little blue pills that everyone jokes about," I snapped back at her. "For fucks sake Mum, if you want, take my bloody vibrator, and use both it and him at the same time. But don't disrespect my father like this. You do this, and neither Dad nor I want you back."

Mum looks at me, "Vibrator? You have a Vibrator. Alisha, you are only seventeen."

I snorted, "You're trying to change the topic Mum. But, yes, I have a vibrator. While both Daniel and I are of the age of consent, he will be my first and, God willing, my only. We are waiting. But I am still a hormonal teenager."

I glared at her in challenge, though she said nothing.

"But hang on, Mum, this is not about me; it's about you, about you becoming a slut and cheating on your husband, on your daughter."

She looked at my anger and tried to stand and intimidate me. When she opened her mouth, I interrupted her to plead again.

"I'll ask one more time Mum. Don't go, stay and cut the crap about how you need this, you deserve this or any of that other shit excuses. Until your brain ran off with the fucking fairies, you were my role model. But Mum, if you do this, I'm dead serious that I will cut you out of my life."

Mum gasped.

"Alisha George Other," Mum said. "You don't mean that."

I looked at her, doubling down. "Cross my heart, I do. If you go this weekend, I don't want you in my life. Don't come to my graduation or my wedding or support me with any kids that Daniel and I have. You wouldn't be my mother, and they will not be your grandchildren. I don't want you near me or Dad as you will be dirty, unclean and not welcome in my life. Please Mum," I pleaded. "Don't do this!"

For long moments, we started at each other and there was at last fear in her eyes and she was wavering. However, any opportunity then went out the moment as the doorbell rang.

The prick had arrived.

"I have to go," she told me, shaking her head and ignoring the last parts of our conversation. "We will talk more about this on Sunday when I get home."

I shook my head sadly, "No Mum we won't."

She made no more excuses and walked out, rolling her suitcases without seeming to have a care in the world.

[:::: 3 ::::]

The next twelve months were hell for Dad and me. Mum did it, the idiot. She went away and slept with Garat, then tried to breeze back into our lives like nothing happened.

When she turned up home on Sunday, she found the lights off, the locks changed, and neither Dad nor I were anywhere to be found. We were in another state, Dad having booked flights and accommodation for the two of us to be away for a week. We spent a morose time at the beach, lamenting the loss of the meaning of her existence in our lives. At least Dad and I had each other, and the time together bonded us closer as father and daughter.

Returning home, we found that Mum had someone open the house. She had retrieved the bags and boxes that Dad and I had piled with her clothes and then left, relocking the house behind her. We both breathed a sigh of relief that she wasn't around.

For me, though, it was short-lived as Mum came and found me at school the next day.

"So, are you and your father over your little snit yet?" She asked, cornering me in a classroom following a study period. I will admit I was hiding, not wanting to see her.

"So, am I to assume you're staying with your lover?" I spat back.

For a moment, she said nothing, knowing my off-the-cuff comment was true. Snorting and knowing this conversation would go nowhere, I slipped my bag over my shoulder and walked past her. But she spun and grabbed my arm, halting my progress out of the room. I looked at her and then down at her hand, and she understood that she had crossed a line. No adult was permitted to touch a student, parent or not, on school grounds without the student's permission.

"You will remove your hand Mother," I said in a low but menacing tone.

She did and looked down at her feet.

"I gave your father and you your space Alisha. I told you it didn't mean anything, and it doesn't. I still love you both as much, if not more. There was no love, it was just...."

Mum paused and blushed while I stood there looking at her like a piece of gum needing to be scrapped off my shoe.

"Sex," she continued, embarrassed to say it. "And not very good sex either. He was not even close to your father."

I crossed my arms over my chest.

"So you gave Dad up for something that you say wasn't any good," I spat at her. "You walked away from Dad when he pleaded with you. You walked away from me..."

Mum looked away, tears welling in her eyes.

"What can I do?" She said, suddenly broken.

I looked at her, "Nothing."

She looked back, lost.

"Mum, you took something beautiful, a marriage between two loving people with a loving daughter, and purposefully dragged it through the mud, then stomped on it until it was broken. You killed any romantic love that Dad had for you. He still cares about you, but he doesn't love you anymore, not in a romantic way."

I looked at her with anger. It should not have been up to a seventeen-year-old daughter to explain to her mother, but I knew I had to do it.

I sighed. "One thing good to come out of this is I now know how not to treat Daniel when we get married. I love him and I always will. And while I won't cut you out of my life like I promised, I will prioritise Dad in my life over you following the divorce."

"Divorce," she said, repeating the word suddenly, her head snapping up and her eyes locking on mine.

I nodded sadly, "Dad was going to tell you this weekend. He was going to ask to meet you and explain why he and I can't look past your betrayal. He still might, but to say it in his own words. Dad and you are done."