(Then) Liv: The Difference Between Prison and Jail

Hi readers!  Don't get too excited--this is not an early comeback, merely a random post to help hold you over.  I had a very productive weekend and had some time today to write this post up.  Some more backstory on Liv and her family has been requested a couple times.  I was going to save it to be part of the 500k view bonus week, but thought instead that I'd share with you now.  It will answer some questions about Liv, about her background, her family, and start to give a little insight into why she is the way she is.  This is a post I've had in my head since last fall, but I wanted more of the story to play out before I gave you all the information.  I've avoided posting much of Liv's backstory because I wanted readers to learn about her at the same time Brody did, but I think it's time for this one.  Enjoy!

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January 2004

I had been 16 for 3 days when my mom caught me rooting her through her closet.

I only had a small window of opportunity.  My dad’s income had always been enough for us to live a comfortable middle-class existence, but once I was old enough to have some independence, my mom had gone back to work part time.  She made sure she always got done in time to pick me up from cross country or track practice.  During my off-season, winter, she was usually home by the time I got home from school, or shortly after.  This morning she had said she was covering for someone and wouldn’t be home until around 5:30 and had asked me to start dinner. 

“Olivia Renee, just what do you think you’re doing?” my mom snapped angrily.

I looked up from my spot on her closet floor, wedged into the corner, guilty.  Then I looked down at my watch and frowned.  It was only 4:30.  Instead of answering her, I responded with “Why are you home already?”  She cocked her head at me in warning and I quickly realized my mistake.  “I mean…I’m sorry.  I was just…” I sighed and offered up the photo album I had been looking through.  “Just looking for pictures.”

The irritation left my mom’s face, but I was still surprised when she sat down across from me, taking the offered album.  She opened it up and paged through it silently for several seconds before raising her eyes to mine.  “Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked curiously.

I shook my head, fighting the tears that were pricking the backs of my eyes for some unknown reason.  “No,” I said, but my voice caught and it came out a little strangled.  I cleared my throat.  “No,” I repeated.  “I was looking for pictures of…” I trailed off.  I didn’t know what to call him.  I couldn’t say “my dad” because pictures of Chris were easy to find.  Plus I saw him every evening when he got home from work.  What I wanted to see were pictures of my biological dad.  The man who was partially responsible for my existence, whose name I didn’t even know.  “Of him,” I finished, trusting my mom would know who I meant.

She did.  She nodded and shut the album on her lap.  “You won’t find them in this one,” she said matter-of-factly.  She stood on her tiptoes and peered up at the top shelf.  I pulled my knees to my chest and waited.  “Here we go,” she said, pulling down a small shoebox.  She sat back down and opened it up.  She rifled through the photographs inside and extracted 3, which she handed to me.  “I’m sorry, honey, that’s all I have.”

I took them, my hands trembling slightly.  I don’t know why the knot in my stomach tightened as I reached for the pictures.  I don’t know why the threat of tears was back.  I don’t know why my breath hitched as I tried to breathe in deeply before looking at the pictures.  I just held them for a second, staring at my knees.  “If you want,” my mom said gently, “you can take them and look at them when you’re ready.” 

I shook my head.  “I’m ready,” I said, sounding more confident than I felt.  I wiped my hand on my jeans and then tilted the photos up.  None of the feelings I had prepared myself for, that I had worried about, came.  Instead, I found myself staring blankly at an older picture of my mom and an attractive (for the 80s, anyway) man with sandy blonde hair.  He was short, skinny.  He probably weighed less than my mom, who wasn’t heavy by any stretch of the imagination.  My mom was easily recognizable.  She looked just like herself, only with longer hair and about 17 years younger.  The man in the photograph was laughing, and my mom was smiling, watching him.  I looked up at my mom, studied her face.  She hadn’t aged much.  Her hair was shorter, but was still blonde.  Impossibly blonde for a 38-year-old woman.  My friends were convinced she dyed it, but I knew she didn’t. 

“That was the day we met, actually,” she said, leaning over to look at the photo. 

I looked back down at it.  “I look like him,” I mused.

“You do,” my mom replied.  “You have his eyes, his jaw, and his nose.”  Another glance at the picture confirmed this.  I took a breath and looked at the next picture.  It was just him, in profile.  Clearly taken on the same day as the first picture. 

“Mom, were you guys at a field party?” I asked accusingly. 

“Hey, we were of legal age to drink,” she responded, laughing. 

“Barely,” I muttered.  She cocked an eyebrow at me.  I avoided her gaze and looked back down to the third picture.  It was the same man, this time in a group of other young men. 

I could feel my mom’s eyes on me as I flipped back through the pictures.  “What else do you want to know?” she asked gently.

I looked up, surprised.  I wasn’t expecting her to offer information, even though she had told me that after I turned 16 she’d tell me whatever I wanted.  “Nothing,” I said hurriedly.  “I just wanted to see him.  I’ve always wondered if I look like him.”

“You do,” my mom repeated.  “You can keep those if you want.” 

I looked back down at them and flipped through one more time.  I separated the photo of him and my mom, and handed the other two back.  “Just this one, if that’s okay.” 

She looked at me curiously, but then she nodded and put the other two back in the box.  Then she stood, put the box back on the shelf, and reached a hand down to me.  “Come help me with dinner,” she said.  I let her help me to my feet and then went to my room.  I put the picture on my desk and walked back towards the door.  Before I flipped off the light I paused, then turned around.  When I got to my desk, I flipped the photo over so it was face down, then headed downstairs to help my mom with dinner.

Summer of 2006

“I’m going to a movie with Lauren and then we’re sleeping over at Lynn’s house,” I called over my shoulder, hoping to slip out before someone could stop me.  My parents had been extra controlling and overprotective lately.  Like, even more than they had been my entire life.  It was getting annoying, especially now that I wanted to spend as much time with Lauren as possible before she left for Colorado for college.  I was completely fed up with it, which is why I was trying to get out before I had to answer 20 questions about where, when, who, how long, what else, who else, then what?

“Hold it,” my dad said, appearing in the living room.  Shit.

I sighed and said, “What?”

He gave me that look he had--you know the one.  The one that says “Keep using that tone and you’ll be going nowhere tonight, young lady.”  I had to fight the urge to roll my eyes.  Then he said, “I wonder if it would have been a good idea to let us know before you walked out the door?”

I shrugged.  “I’m 18.  I’m done with high school.  I didn’t think I had to ask permission.  It’s not like I’m going out to a rager, you know me better than that.”  And he did.  Sure, I’d been to my fair share of field parties.  I’d even been drunk a few times.  But I was a good kid and it wasn’t really my scene.  I really was going to a movie with a Lauren and then sleeping over at Lynn’s.  Tonight, anyway.

“Does your mother know?”

I almost wasn’t able to keep my eyes from rolling this time.  “She does if she heard me say it just now,” I replied.

“So she doesn’t, because she’s not even home and I’m pretty sure you knew that.  Lynn isn’t going to the movie?”

I tried hard to keep my attitude in check.   “No, she works until 9.”

“What time is the movie over?”

“I don’t know.  It starts at 7:05, and it’s probably somewhere between an hour and a half and two hours…so between 8:30 and 9?”  I was becoming seriously frustrated.

“So what are your plans between 8:30 and 9…or 9:15, if you give Lynn time to get home?”

“Are you kidding me?!” I exploded.  “Maybe knocking over a liquor store, spray painting someone’s car, the usual.”  He raised his eyebrows at me, a mild look considering I was now screeching at him.  It just infuriated me more and I continued, raising my voice even more.  “I’m so tired of you guys constantly controlling me!  You’re so fucking overprotective.  I’m an adult.  I don’t even care about ‘your roof your rules’--this is ridiculous!  You treat me like I’m 12, and I’ve never done anything to make you not trust me!”

He looked like he was considering this.  Then he surprised me.  He sat down on the couch and motioned to the chair.  “Have a seat, Olivia.”

I didn’t know what to make of this, especially because it was phrased more as an invitation than anything.  “And if I don’t?” I challenged, still on edge from my explosion.

He simply shrugged.  “You will.”  It wasn’t a threat, like it could have been.  It wasn’t even a direction.  It was a statement of fact, and he was right.  I sighed in defeat and sat.  I had my attitude, but in the end I was way too much of a rule follower to walk out of the house without at least implied permission.

“I’m going to let you go, but there’s something I think it’s high time we talked about first,” my dad said. 

I made a face.  “If this is about drinking, drugs, and sex, I already know.  I’m 18, for Christ’s sake.”

He actually laughed, confirming my suspicion that I had no idea what was going on.  “I’m quite sure you do,” he replied.  “But this is about your biological father.”

I was confused before, and now I was just stunned.  This was the first time my dad had ever volunteered to talk about him.  I mean, sure, he acknowledged from the time I was old enough to understand that none of his genetic material was floating around my body.  That was never a secret kept from me.  And he had seemed perfectly content with my mom giving me the little bits and pieces of information I had asked for randomly.  But he had never contributed to those conversations or offered anything up.

“Ummm,” I said, feeling like I should say something, but not knowing what.  “Why?”

Instead of answering, he said, “How much do you know about him?”

Even though I was sure he knew what I knew, I responded automatically.  “I know what he looks like.  Or at least, what he looked like in 1987.  I know that he went to jail shortly after my mom got pregnant.  I know that mom has tried to keep up with where he is, but it’s hard, and it was hard to track him down to get him to terminate his rights so you could adopt me.”

“Prison,” my dad said. 

“What?”

“He went to prison shortly after your mother got pregnant.  Not jail.”

I frowned.  “What’s the difference?”

“The difference is that jail is where you go when you caught driving drunk, or get in a bar fight.  Prison is where you go when you attempt to murder someone.” I blinked at him.  He cringed.  “This is not going the way I planned,” he said.  At least one of us had a plan.  “Your biological father was involved in a crime with some other people, and someone almost died.  Would have died, if the police hadn’t been called to the area on something unrelated.”

I broke in.  “I don’t want to know this,” I said.  “He doesn’t mean anything to me.  You’re my dad, you’ve always been my dad, and I don’t care about what he did or didn’t do.  It doesn’t matter.” 

“While I’m very glad to hear that,” he said wryly, “there’s a good reason I’m telling you this.  I won’t give you anymore details about him personally though, I respect that.”  He paused, looking at me for permission to go on.  I nodded reluctantly.  “Your mother hated not working.  She couldn’t wait until you turned 13, because in her mind, you were safer then and she could breathe easier. Why 13, I don’t know.” 

So far, all this conversation was doing was making me more confused.  “Your biological father was in and out of prison and jail.  He’d get out on parole, violate and get sent back.  Get out, get arrested for something new, go back.  Well, during one of the short times he was out, he asked to see you.”  This was new information.  I had always just assumed he didn’t want anything to do with me, even though no one had flat out told me that.  “Your mother said absolutely not, reminded him he had voluntarily terminated his rights.  He told her that he’d get to meet you, one way or another.”

He paused, giving me a chance to absorb this information.  When I nodded slowly to show that I was ready, he went on.  “Do you remember when we moved when you were 7?”  I did remember.  I remembered that was about the time my mom had stopped letting me go to friends’ houses for awhile.  I had been so angry, in my 7-year-old way.  “She was worried that he was going to find us and show up.  That he’d try to take you.  I don’t know if her fear was unfounded or not, but we took the necessary precautions anyway.  She tried to get an order for protection but since there was no direct threat, it was denied.” 

He waited, maybe waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t.  “You’re right.  We have been overprotective.  I’ll absolutely give you that.  But there have been good reasons for it.  Good reasons that your mom wrestled with, trying to figure out if it was better to tell you or not.  That poor woman stayed awake at night, arguing with herself about what to say to you, or if it was better that you didn’t know.  In the end, we decided not to tell you anything more than you asked.  It made the most sense that way.  In fact, she’s probably going to be furious with me for telling you now.  We didn’t want you living in fear—it was bad enough that we were.  Of course, we only heard from him once more, and never saw him again, but the fear was still there.”

I stared at him.  My thoughts were racing and I had no idea what to say.  I was at once furious they had kept this from me, and relieved that I hadn’t grown up fearing my biological father.  I wanted to understand why they had decided to be honest about my parentage but keep this important little tidbit a secret.  I had questions.  In the end, what came out my mouth was, “but why do you keep doing it?”

He smiled tightly.  “Your mother isn’t quite ready for you to be an adult.  Our ability to protect you is falling away rapidly, and it’s pretty scary for us.  We haven’t heard from him in many, many years, and the last I heard he was serving a very long sentence somewhere in South Dakota, but it’s the unknown that’s frightening.”  I looked at him, still trying to collect my thoughts.  “Do you have questions?” he asked gently.

“Yes,” I managed, “but I’m not quite sure what they are yet.”  At that moment, my cell phone rang.  It was Lauren, I’m sure, wondering where I was. 

“If you still want to go, go ahead.  I won’t ask any more questions.  When you get your questions together, you, me, and your mother can sit down and talk about it.”  He nodded at my purse, which was ringing again.  I answered the phone and told Lauren I was leaving shortly. 

My dad examined my face carefully as I stood up. “Are you okay?” he asked.  I looked at him blankly.  I had no idea.  “It’s okay if you’re angry,” he continued.  Good, because I was.  “And I’m not going to stop you from going out, but you look a little shaken up, and you might consider hanging out here for awhile.”

I shook my head.  “No, I need to go.  I think maybe we should talk tomorrow.” 

“Okay,” my dad agreed reluctantly.  “Call if you need anything, I’ll be home.”

I nodded and walked towards the door.  I needed to leave before my anger and confusion came out sideways at a person who had wanted nothing more than to protect me.  As I shut the front door behind me, I vowed to never need someone to protect me again.