#WritingWonders 3.11 — Interview question 2: Briefly describe your relationship with your parents.
When I heard that question, I laughed and said, "Good. No conflicts. Ever."
I'd had tears in my eyes from Cliftown's last question about what I envied in my friends. I sniffed and wiped to hide the new ones. Obviously the Director of Home had written the script and the ancient woman was evil.
So was I.
I added, "My mother was an opera singer..." Note the tense of the verb there, Cliftown.
She looked down at the paper she held. "Midnight?" she asked in a way to prompt me.
I inhaled deeply and let out a long sigh. My mother had been one of those celebrities known by one name, but Cliftown looked pretty—probably hired for that feature and not reporting—and no more than a few years older than me. Midnight's album Broad Street and Main had likely came out before she was 10. Maybe never heard the name? Or ignored it because it was her mother's generation's music?
Parents. Plural. I didn't miss that, either. Nobody cared who your father was, only that another human got born. However...
"I knew who my father was because he was my mother's manager and Mom acknowledged it. I remember that he used to read me bedtime stories, and that he had a pet name for me."
"Which was?"
Yeah, clueless.
"Which I can't remember, other than it made me happy."
"What do you remember?"
"I remember visiting Home City and Director Rainy Days' personal space with them, having recently been invited back into it. Not much changed. Her and Mom were apparently friends—and I'm pretty sure that isn't public knowledge. I didn't know until two weeks ago." I brought my hand up to my chin, as if thinking about it... though I wasn't. I added, "I guess that explains why she gave the eulogy at my parents' funeral when I was 5."
The papers fell out of the woman's hands and fluttered to the wood floor as she went down on bent knee. I'd taken out my spite on the wrong target, forgetting I'd gone from the nobody I'd pretended to be to somebody whose flippant words could destroy lives and fortunes.
I swooped down, saying "Sorry! Sorry!" and hugged the bony wisp of a woman as she shuddered and cried. Rainy Days had set up the interviewer, and me. She'd made us both her tool.
As she had my parents. Midnight's international fame had made her the perfect spy, and the Director of Home had sent my parents on their last mission.
One day I would make her pay for that decision.
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