The Descent Ch. 05

"What do you mean? Dinner?" Sharon replied, confused as to what her daughter was getting at.

Amanda responded with a knowing grin, followed by a voracious drag on her cigarette and another dramatic inhale.

"Now what are you up to?" Sharon asked after expelling a tight stream of smoke out of the side of her mouth.

"Mom, don't you think I've noticed how you've been acting differently lately? You and dad are out late on the weekends, you've been keeping the fridge stocked with alcohol, you started smoking randomly at in your 40's. And not to mention your outfits, and your make-up, it constantly looks like you're dressing for a nightclub. Are you really telling me that you and dad are just going out to dinner and having a stroll, business as usual?" Amanda explained, with all the accompanied eye-rolls and voice inflections you'd expect from a teenage girl.

Sharon was, expectedly, caught off-guard—again. It seemed that Amanda had been paying closer attention to the comings and goings of the Weaver household than she'd imagined. Sharon reviewed her behavior in the previous month and tried to see it from the perspective of her teenage daughter who'd always seen a mother who was respectful, cautious, and reserved. She suddenly realized that to anyone who'd been paying attention, Sharon had made a drastic change to her lifestyle that was impossible to ignore and immediately felt foolish to believe that her own daughter would not have seen it and had questions.

"Oh, honey, I'm just letting loose a little bit. Your dad and I are retired, and you and your brother are adults now and I think it's time that we had a little fun ourselves. We need to do something because if we don't learn to enjoy retired life we'll end up watching news ten hours a day and scrolling Facebook for the rest of our lives," Sharon rebutted, trying her best to maintain a casual tone despite the fact that she was extremely terrified of being found out.

Amanda narrowed her eyes at her mother, scrutinizing her statement while taking a deep, pensive drag off her cigarette. She stubbed out the butt in the marble-filled bowl they'd hastily decided to use as an ashtray and exhaled a tight stream of smoke that cascaded across the glass coffee table and hung in the air around the two women.

"Did you have dinner with Rich and Barb tonight?" Amanda asked slyly.

Sharon took a final drag off her all-white cigarette and stubbed it next to her daughter's cork, noticing the presence of her lipstick stained filter and feeling a pang of surprise that she had finished it so quickly.

"Why do you ask?" Sharon replied, settling on a non-answer while she thought about what to say.

Well, I just know that they were over recently, and you guys seemed to have a good time, I figured you might all be enjoying your retirement together.

Sharon felt her heartbeat jump to another level and a familiar unease wash over her and fill her belly with knots. She suddenly pictured her daughter, watching from the shadows as she snorted cocaine and got bent over the kitchen counter by Rich while her father did the same with Barb right next to her. A sheer panic swept up Sharon's ability to remain composed and she could feel a cold sweat begin to accumulate on her forehead as millions of possible excuses buzzed through her mind.

"Mom?" Amanda urged, a note of concern in her voice.

"Yeah, uh, I don't know honey, what's this all about? You seem awfully inquisitive tonight, is everything okay?" Sharon replied, trying to fall back on the old parenting trick of shifting the focus on the child disguised as maternal instinct.

Amanda snorted, an incredulous burst of laughter that displayed her unwillingness to be distracted or tricked into letting her mother slip out of this situation so easily.

"We're talking about you, mom, not me. I'm not the one who's dressed to the nines in full make-up and heels, coming home from God-knows-where smelling like alcohol and sneaking cigarettes. You don't even eat sugar and suddenly you smoke? What aren't you telling me?" Amanda continued prodding, intent on breaking down her mother's ability to resist her onslaught of questioning.

Sharon sighed in exasperation, not sure of what lie to tell or what truth to withhold but knowing full-well that she wasn't going to get out of this conversation without giving up something. Unless she wanted to run screaming from the room and lock herself in her bedroom, it was going to take some sort of meat for her daughter to chew on to get her drop this particular bone.

"Just tell me, mom, we've always told each other everything. Why are you hiding things from me now?" Amanda pleaded, adopting a more sympathetic approach now that she sensed her mother breaking.

Sharon thought a moment, what could she tell her? It needed to be meaty enough to satisfy her, but not so salacious that it generated a consistent lure of curious inquiries. A middle ground that ended this conversation and didn't immediately invite a follow-up, so she could brainstorm with Jim to find a good enough story to explain away her recent behavioral change. But there was also the possibility that Amanda already knew too much for something like that to work. Sharon had been sure that Amanda was out with her friends the night when Rich and Barb had been over. But she could have come home at any time during the festivities. It required some more investigating.

"So, you were home the other night? When you saw Rich and Barb? I thought you were out that night," Sharon asked, again volleying the focus back to Amanda.

Amanda reached into the front pocket of her sweatshirt and pulled out her pack of Camels, flipping open the top and extracting a cork-tipped cigarette and crushing it with a satisfying 'pop.' Amanda looked up to her mom and placed the cigarette between her plump lips, raising her eyebrows expectantly. Sharon took the hint and lit her daughter's cigarette for the second time that night, something that would have only occurred in a nightmare version of her life just hours ago.

Amanda collapsed her cheeks several times, illuminating the cherry of her freshly lit cigarette in the indirect lighted living room. She plucked the cigarette from her lips after a monstrous drag and allowed a ball of smoke to appear for a moment before it was snapped sharply down her throat with a powerful inhale. A smile began to grow on Amanda's face as she slowly began to exhale a lazy stream of smoke up towards the ceiling.

Sharon was now the one who narrowed her gaze at Amanda, her display of dramatic smoking conveying something she dared not believe. There was something in Amanda's eyes, locked on to her own, that seemed to confirm that Sharon's worst nightmares were most likely true—she'd seen it all. If not all, she'd seen enough to know Sharon had delved far deeper into certain activities than she had been letting on. Sharon felt like a mouse caught in a cat's claws, her daughter having the power to take this conversation in a direction that left her no room to excuse or explain the events as anything other than what they were—a terrifying prospect.

A few minutes of silence passed, with Amanda smoking her cigarette in her dramatic way and smiling to herself in a knowing, self-assured way that made Sharon increasingly frustrated. She wanted whatever she was going to do with her knowledge to happen already and was tiring quickly of being the worm squirming on the hook.

"So? Are you waiting for something?" Sharon finally spoke, tension and stress influencing her tone in an obvious fashion.

Amanda broadened her smile and exhaled a final stream of smoke as she stubbed out her cigarette, joining the others in the bowl. When the last few tendrils of smoke escaped her lips, Amanda replaced her gaze on her mother, retaining the smile that was now wide enough to show the top row her gleaming, white teeth.

"I was just hoping you'd tell me what's going on, without having to pry it out of you. You know I know more than you've told me, so just spill it and get it over with," Amanda concluded with an invitation to overcome the uncomfortable moment like ripping off a Band-Aid—quickly so it doesn't get dragged out.

Sharon would admit, it was tempting. Anything, frankly, was preferable to the excruciating predator and prey dynamic that was currently playing out at that moment. But she was also still clinging on to the fading possibility that Amanda only knew a sliver of what had truly happened and was fishing for the rest of the pieces of the puzzle. Another part of her was simply uncomfortable with having a conversation about swinging, group sex, drugs, and everything else with her daughter. The ramifications of her actions on the perception she had of herself as a mother was now coming into play—and it wasn't easy to accept.

Sharon drew a deep breath in and let it out slowly over the course of several seconds—steeling herself to say what needed to be said. She noted to herself how wonderful it sounded to have another cigarette but resisted the urge to interrupt the moment by walking back to the laundry room to grab her pack of cigarettes. Amanda, however, seemed to read her mind. She dug into her sweatshirt pocket again and revealed her Camel Crush Menthols, flipping the box open and offering its contents to her mother who was visibly trembling.

Sharon shook her head in defeat and offered a feeble laugh, reaching her unsteady hand out toward the rows of cork-tipped cylinders nestled in the box in her daughter's hand.

"This is crazy," Sharon admitted herself aloud.

Amanda's lips parted momentarily to respond but curled into a grin instead, satisfied with her mother's acceptance of her offering. Sharon placed the cigarette between her lips and grabbed her lighter before Amanda shook her head and stopped her. Sharon, now desperately seeking the relief of a cigarette, reacted with a hard look of confusion and frustration but watched as she extracted a cigarette of her own and held the cigarette eye-level as she crushed the filter and smiled.

Sharon's eyes fluttered in relief that it wasn't another game and followed her daughter's suit, removing the cigarette from her lips and crushing the filter before replacing it. She again reached for her lighter but was beat to the punch by Amanda, who seemed to want to return the favor she'd received from her mother and flicked it to life—extending the flame to the tip of Sharon's cigarette and lighting her mother up. After a few puffs Sharon pulled back and took a healthy drag, after which Amanda lit her own cigarette—her third in about an hour.

The two Weaver women sunk into their places on the couch and exhaled twin streams of smoke into the open space between them. Sharon enjoyed the immediate sense of calm that washed over her as the nicotine and deep breathing brought her anxiety and stress level down a few notches just below 'unbearable.' It helped her think a little more clearly and made the prospect of spilling her guts a little less horrifying.

"So?" Amanda encouraged; her beautiful face framed by the cigarette between her fingers angled as if she were imitating Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

"So, you saw it all, didn't you?" Sharon started tentatively.

Amanda simply nodded, a familiar smile forming on her face through the haze of another voluminous exhale.

"Jesus," Sharon sighed in disgust.

"Honestly, that was the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life. And I'm a teenager who is friends with some pretty freaky people," Amanda chided playfully, not quite giving away her honest reflections.

"Why did you even want to see that? We're your parents and Rich and Barb are practically family—they've been around you since you were in diapers," Sharon mused out loud.

"Aren't teenagers supposed to be repulsed by even the thought of their parents love life?" Sharon continued, her boiling embarrassment simmering to a general sense of confusion and shock.

"Hey, I didn't ask to come home to you doing cocaine and swapping partners with your best friends, I would have been happy to sneak up to my room unnoticed," Amanda countered somewhat defensively.

"So, why did you stay and watch then?" Sharon asked seriously.

"Who said I did?" Amanda responded in kind.

Sharon's eyes narrowed and her mind churned, pausing a moment to take another drag off her cigarette and still trying to decide what she thought of the minty menthol taste it left on her tongue.

"So, you didn't stay and spy then?" Sharon clarified.

"Well," Amanda replied, drawing the word out in a dramatic way that insinuated it wasn't quite that simple.

"So, you did spy?" Sharon shot back, much less a question than a statement this time.

"I wouldn't say I spied, more like I couldn't bring myself to look away. It was like a car crash happening in my kitchen, what can I say?" Amanda retorted with an air of amusement that Sharon didn't particularly appreciate.

"So, if you knew all of this already, what do you need me for? You have all the answers why draw this out and torture me with it?" Sharon asked with a tone of rising tension that gave away her frustration of the entire charade.

"But I don't have all the answers, because I don't know why any of this is happening. And more than that, I don't know what this means for you and dad, and our family. Are you guys like, not together anymore or is it an open relationship or something? And cocaine? I mean, you have to admit that night generates a lot of unanswered questions to someone who doesn't understand what's happening or why," Amanda reasoned clearly, showing a level of maturity beyond her 18 years.

Sharon took her words in a moment while she stubbed out her cigarette, trying to view the situation as a confused teenager instead of a spy who happens to share the same bloodline. It was immediately clear to her in that moment how difficult it must have been to understand what was happening and why and how uncomfortable it must have been to try to seek those answers from her own mother. A wave of guilt washed over her and combined with the already present shame and embarrassment to create a three-headed monster of remorse.

"Oh, God, I'm so sorry Amanda, I... I've been so selfish," Sharon confessed, feeling her face burn and tears threaten to spill from her glassy eyes.

"Come on mom, don't do that," Amanda replied, hugging her mother and imploring her not to cry.

"I can't believe I allowed that happen in my own home, where you could see it and, and, what was I thinking?" Sharon continued to berate herself aloud, eliciting continued requests from her daughter to calm down.

After a few more minutes of hugging and sniffling the two Weaver women broke their embrace and sat awkwardly on the couch, each of them waiting for the other to break the silence.

"So, what is happening with you and dad?" Amanda asked, breaking the stalemate.

"We're fine, actually, we're really good. It's probably hard to believe but this is all an attempt to improve our marriage. Things were, well, we've been married a long time and the passion was just gone. Rich and Barb suggested we join this swinger group that they're in and one thing led to another and...," Sharon trailed off.

Amanda took a few moments to process what her mother had said, staring into space with wide eyes and nodding as if willing herself to accept what was an almost inconceivable series of events.

"I know it's crazy, and it was completely irresponsible of me to bring it home and there's definitely no excuse for the smoking and drinking and drugs but, this is all new to me. I never went through a teenage rebellion stage, I just, I think I just got carried away. And I'm really, really sorry you had to see that, it's just... awful," Sharon continued, shaking her head throughout in a physical display of her remorse.

A few more minutes of quiet reflection followed, neither woman quite sure of where to go or what to say next. Amanda had gotten what she wanted—an end to the lies and pretending and answers for all of it. But she wasn't prepared for the aftermath of the confession, the confirmation that everything she had seen wasn't just a dream or hallucination. Her mom had really been getting screwed on the kitchen counter, her father had really been screwing her mom's best friend. Not to mention everything else that was going on. So many conflicted thoughts and feelings filled her head that she had to take some time to pick through them and settle on one that seemed true.

For Sharon, guilt, shame, and embarrassment had sealed her mouth shut and robbed her of anything further to explain. There would have to be a re-examination of what it meant for her and Jim to live this life, and if it was even appealing now that the impact to their family was factored into it. Sharon was wracked with guilt and she desperately wanted to run and tell Jim, console in him and receive his strong sense of things to dictate their next move. Mostly though, Sharon simply wanted to break down in his arms and be vulnerable. But there needed to be some sort of closure—and walking out of the room now wouldn't do.

"I'm not mad at you," Amanda uttered, cutting through the minutes long silence that had fallen on them like a heavy blanket.

"You're not?" Sharon asked, somewhat shocked.

"I can't believe it, but yeah, I'm not," Amanda responded flatly.

"So, how do you feel then?" Sharon pressed, feeling like her relationship with her daughter hinged on what she said next.

"I don't know, I guess I'm just kind of... surprised. It seems... unreal to me. But I'm also kind of... I feel like I need to get to know you again. Like, you weren't really the person I thought you were and now I have to start over in a way," Amanda explained slowly, as if her words were being fed to her one letter at a time.

Sharon's heart sank, she had become estranged from her daughter in one fell swoop. One night of reckless indiscretion had undone a lifetime of maternal bonding. Sharon had revealed herself a stranger to her own daughter and at the precipice of adulthood and independence there would likely never be an opportunity to repair it. It was almost too awful to accept.

"I'm looking forward to it though. I feel like there was this entire side of you that I had no idea about and now, I don't know... I feel like we can be friends and have a real adult relationship instead of mother and daughter," Amanda continued, Sharon only now realizing that she hadn't finished her thoughts, she had only paused for a moment to compile them.

"So, you, I mean... we're okay?" Sharon stammered.

Amanda's wide grin returned, and she nodded enthusiastically.

"Yeah, of course. We were never not going to be okay, mom. I was just pissed that you were sneaking around and living this other life and believing I was some moron who wouldn't notice. Like, hello? I live in the same house. Did you honestly think you could hide all of that from me? And since when are we like, hiding stuff from each other anyways?" Amanda continued in mock annoyance.

"Well, you said you've been smoking since you were 15 so, it goes both ways little lady," Sharon replied in kind.

"Yeah, okay, you got me. But you know how you were! You wouldn't let me drink soda, or have ice cream, if you knew I was smoking I'd literally be dead. I wouldn't die of lung cancer because you would murder me," Amanda enthused animatedly.

Sharon laughed, a large weight finally being lifted and some of the guilt and shame floating away.

"Well, I still really don't like that you smoke. I really want you to quit, both of us actually. It's stupid, we're too smart to be doing something so stupid," Sharon said motioning toward the bowl of smoked butts sitting on the table.

"I don't know, you sure didn't look like you wanted to quit tonight," Amanda retorted slyly.