Lydia finds her mother's diary and uncovers Elizabeth's secret affair with her brother-in-law, Bill, Lydia's uncle.
*
Home from college until late August when she started her Sophomore year in September, soon-to-be 20-year-old, Lydia sat on her bed. When she closed her eyes, as if they were still fighting, she could hear her mother and father fighting. When she closed her eyes, she could hear her mother slamming doors, breaking things, and crying. She had to put a pillow over her head to muffle the sounds so that she'd fall asleep.
'Home sweet home not,' she thought.
With her gone for nearly a year, she looked around her room as if seeing it for the first time. Not feeling as comfortable as she thought she would coming home, returning home felt weird. Instead of making her feel all warm and fuzzy, coming home made her skin crawl. It was as if she came home to a different house.
Her room looked like a copy of her room found on a stage set. Perhaps because her dorm room was so much bigger but her room looked smaller than she remembered it looking last year when she left for school. With everything changed and everything seeming so differently unfamiliar, nothing looked the same. Instead of feeling as if she was part of the family, she felt more like a house guest.
Unbeknownst to her, nothing had changed and everything was still the same. It was only her perception of things that had changed. Now, instead of happy to be home and back in her room, she was bored and embarrassed by her little girl's room. The things that once amused her, dolls, posters of singers, photos of celebrities, and costume jewelry didn't amuse her now. Now, not as easily amused, she felt more like a woman than a girl.
"I've grown up," said Lydia to herself for no one to hear. "I'm a woman now and am no longer a little girl."
'When did that happen? How did that happen? As if I've come alive, maybe when I lost my virginity, now more aware of my body and my sexual needs, that one act opened my eyes to everything around me,' she thought. 'Having sex with someone I like and thought liked me, then never hearing from him again, had a way of maturing a naïve girl into a cautious, savvy woman.'
With her room how she left it, the only thing that had changed was her immaturity. A virginal, confused, and frightened teenage girl when she left for her first year of college at 18-years-old, living on her own and making her own decisions for nearly a year matured her. A lot has happened in just a year. Having done a lot of growing up in a year, now at 19-years-old, as if she was a flower that had bloomed and blossomed overnight, she had grown into a beautiful woman.
When she looked in her mirror, she didn't see her familiar self. She saw her mother, Elizabeth. With them both having the same blonde hair, the same pretty face, and the same blue eyes, they looked so much alike. The only obvious difference between them was, with her taking more after her maternal grandmother when it came to her breast size, she had huge D cup breasts and her mother had modest B cup breasts. Other than that, she looked just like her mother when her mother was her age. As if overnight, she had grown into the beauty that her mother once as.
'With my father, Charles, fat and bald, I'm glad that I look more like my Mom than my Dad,' she thought while laughing how funny she'd look if she looked more like her father than her mother.
No longer a virgin, the sexual experiences that she had with the young men she met at college had helped her blossom from a budding beauty of a moody and morally modest teenager into a white rose of a confident, sexy woman. For sure, she'd never return to the naïve, teenage girl that she was when she left for college. Yet, glad that she had matured, why would she want to replace her experience with innocence? With her birthday at the end of August, by the time she returned to school, she'd be 20-years-old. Ready to begin her second year of college, as if a whole new horizon of knowledge had expanded before her, especially after returning to her old room, she suddenly felt enlightened.
Lydia looked more closely around her room. As if she was moving, all her things, her personal possessions were moved, put in boxes, and stacked in the corner of her room by the door. Always doing spring cleaning, even when it wasn't spring, her mother was turning her room into the guest room. Her mother had a thing for cleaning. Cleaning helped her not to drink.
"Cleaning instead of drinking is my motto now," said her mother after finishing her Alcoholics Anonymous, twelve step program and proud of getting her first AA chip.
Now with her not drinking, the house never looked as clean. Everything shined and the furniture smelled of polish. With the dog nearly able to feed himself by eating dropped crumbs of food, the kitchen floor was swept and every carpet was vacuumed.
Her way of not falling off the wagon, with her baking cookies, cakes, and pies, instead of hungover in bed, her Mom had turned into a '50's TV mom complete with wearing her apron, makeup, and a dress. Only, with her not drinking and having stopped smoking at the same time, doubly difficult, she was eating more and had already gained a little weight. Yet, it was healthier for her to gain a few pounds than to die of a fatal disease from smoking and/or drinking.
No doubt, unless Lydia wanted to squat in the guestroom after she graduated from college, she needed to get a job and find her own place to live. Obviously, a not so subtle hint, with her mother turning her room into the guestroom, she was no longer welcome here. Just as well and for the better, her skin crawled with the thoughts of still living at home after graduating college in three-years when she'd be nearly 24-years-old.
