Lionel Monologue

Mom had never really been too clear about what had happened to Dad. I knew that something bad had happened, and that I wasn't ever going to see him again; she just shrugged it off whenever I prompted anything else. It was after these one-sided conversations that I had to run away. Whether it was out to the park or just down into my backyard, I didn't want to have to be near her. She expected us to be together every second of every day after Dad was gone, as though she was trying to replace him- make it as though he wasn't gone, or had never been here in the first place. I knew for a fact that I was the only one who really found him being gone hard. The housekeepers just made jokes about him. I wasn't sure if that was better or worse than pretending he didn't exist.

The other day mom had started to make side comments about him. I had run out to the dinghy earlier that morning after hearing a particularly mean joke from Sandra. She had called dad a kite. I'd never heard kite used as a mean word, I loved the ideas of kites. They got to be free as much as they wanted and never have to worry about getting too high; they had a permanent safety line to bring them down. It was just the way Sandra had said it that I knew it was bad- a big, sloppy kite. So I ran away to the dinghy where I felt closer to my dad. He used to come out there with me all the time and teach me how to steer so that one day, when I was older, I would be able to do it all by my self out on the lake, and not just against the dock. We hadn't gotten far enough in the lessons before he left; now the dinghy would just bump up against the shore for the remainder of it's days. I thought that maybe sitting out there like the old times would make it up to him for the ways everyone else in the house had been acting. The dinghy gave me a sense of his forgiveness, and all around relief. That was when my mom had walked down. I wasn't really paying attention to her. She just made me mad, trying to claim she was an admiral and such. My dad and I both knew that was impossible; she was just a woman. The rest of the conversation sort of blurred together, until I got so tired of her that I gave in and told her what Sandra had said. I didn't really even see it as giving in though, more as a form of revenge. I couldn't get my mom in trouble over how she was acting towards my dad, but I could do that to Sandra. She didn't deserve to get away with this; she was getting exactly what she asked for.