“Hello, Beth.” She strides towards me and then I am enveloped in her arms, and so is Dylan, and he doesn’t protest and neither do I; even though it feels so strange, something about it is incredibly right.
Of course, a hug doesn’t solve everything. In fact, it doesn’t solve anything. The moment my mother releases me, the tension is back—twanging between us, tightening in my chest. Why did you leave me? Of course I don’t ask that desperate question out loud. I never have. Yet while there might not be a solution, there is a beginning, and the three of us walk inside.
It isn’t until much later that my mother and I are able to talk, just the two of us—a conversation I’ve been both dreading and longing for since she first invited me here, or really, since she left nine years ago.
Dylan has finally settled to sleep after a restless hour, although since we’ve arrived he hasn’t screamed once, just been very quiet, a silence that feels deeper than usual, because I can’t read his emotions the way I used to be able to. I can’t keep from feeling he’s here on sufferance, but I tell myself that will change. It has to.
Ron has made himself scarce after an uneasy dinner where he kept jumping up to get things, his smile too wide, the look in his eyes a little panicked. I don’t think he knows what to do with me or Dylan, although he tries.
I find my mom in the kitchen, wiping down already clean counters, as if she is simply waiting for something. She turns as I come in, a smile popping onto her face like a button has been pushed.
“Dylan went down okay?”
“He’s asleep.”
“Great.” Her smile starts to fade as she nods, and I stare at her, waiting, although I’m not sure for what. “I’m so glad you came,” she finally says.
“I felt like I should.”
She keeps nodding, a bit uncertainly, not sure what to make of my words. I’m not sure, either. My relationship with my mom was never super close; we didn’t do girly days together, or share our secrets, but I still thought it had been solid. She worked as a nurse throughout my childhood, and her erratic shifts meant she wasn’t always home, but when she was, she was there, dinner on the table, laundry folded, a kind of old-fashioned motherhood that didn’t involve quality time so much as basic, competent provision. I suppose that was in part because my father is a very old-fashioned man—a plumber by trade, expecting a dinner every night at six, his evenings in front of the TV with a beer or three all sacrosanct. He still made time for family—barbecues, occasional trips to the park, his attention rare and yet wonderful when I got it. I thought most fathers were like him; even now I think most probably are. Until my mother left, and I got in trouble, and my father turned into someone who didn’t seem to like me at all.
Now, nine years later, my mother and I have never really talked through the why or how, and I’m not sure how to start.
“I’m seeing a counselor,” I say abruptly, and my mother blinks.
“Oh. Okay. That’s good, I think?” She raises her eyebrows, her smile skirting off her face and then creeping back, like some shy animal that wants to be petted.
“Yes, it has been. It’s brought up a lot of issues for me—the way Dad was, the way you were.” The words lie there, heavy, immovable. I realize they sound accusing, but I didn’t mean them to be, at least not entirely. “How it all affected me, I mean.”
My mother keeps nodding, but more slowly now. “Yes. Yes. Of course it affected you.”
I draw a breath and force myself to continue. “And I guess what it’s made me realize, what I really want to know after all these years is why?”
My mother stares at me uncertainly. “Why?”
“Why did you leave the spring of my senior year? I mean, I get that you weren’t happy with Dad. I do understand that, and I can see why, in a way. But why then? Why couldn’t you have waited until I was at college? It would have made so much difference. You had to have known that, right?” My voice rises with each question, throbs with pain. My mother looks away without answering, her body seeming to sag and deflate. “And why,” I