grey and gloomy. It suits me. My mood is overcast with a chance of more tears.
“I’ll take a Coke One if you have it…or anything diet.”
“I have ginger ale,” my mother replies. And isn’t that just like her. She asks you what you want and then offers you something not even remotely similar.
“I’ll pass. Thank you.”
Zelda sashays outside with a glass of white white in her hand and a smile in her hazel eyes. She takes a seat in the chair next to mine and sips her Chardonnay.
Meanwhile, I can’t help my roaming attention. I’d forgotten how much we look alike. The same kneecaps, the same slim legs and narrow feet. Her toes are perfectly pedicured in coral polish. Mine in red. If I put my feet next to hers I probably couldn’t tell much of a difference aside from the color of the toes.
Jackie looks exactly like my dad and I resemble Zelda. There’s no denying it. It’s my cross to bear.
My phone vibrates, and Jake’s picture appears on screen. It’s the fourth time he’s called so I finally turn it off.
“Aren’t you going to ask why I’m here?”
“No. I’m sure you’ll get around to it.”
If she thinks she’s going to play doctor with me, she is sorely mistaken. “Please don’t psychoanalyze me.”
“I’m not, Carrie. I’ve asked to see you so we could talk at least a hundred times…” She sips her wine. “I’m done trying. You’re not a hurt little kid anymore. You’re an adult. You should start acting like one.”
The top of my head practically explodes. “I should start acting like one? Are you kidding?” I scoff. “You’ve been running around town trying to hide your illicit affair with my father––”
“I wasn’t hiding anything. I was keeping my word to your father. He wanted to break the news to you girls. I owe him that much.”
“Oh, you owe all of us a lot more than that.”
My mother tips her head back, closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
Thing is, I don’t want to fight either.
“Why? Why the sudden change? Why are you here?”
“I made a mistake, Carrie, and I’m trying to repair what I can.”
“You can start by leaving dad alone.”
“I won’t. My relationship with your father is none of your business. Leaving him for Joan wasn’t a mistake. And that’s between your father and me.
“I don’t owe you or your sister an explanation as to why I had to get out of my marriage. Nor do I regret living the life I wanted to live. I got a degree. I built a successful career. I’m proud of those achievements...The mistake I made was leaving you girls behind.”
Between the farmhouse and this, I can’t push any more emotions back down. They rise up and pour out of me. I wipe my damp cheeks with the back of my hand.
“I was ashamed,” my mother says, her gaze faraway and directed at the ominous cloud cover. “I was ashamed so I ran away. I should’ve been strong enough to take you with me, but I wasn’t. I felt like a caged animal given a taste of freedom and I had to protect that at all cost…unfortunately the cost was my children.”
The silence lasts a good long time. It takes me that long to gather my thoughts and not lash out indiscriminately.
“I was mad at dad for a long time. I said terrible things to him because I thought you couldn’t be the person everyone said you were. I defended you for years.”
Everyday at school, I would wait at the curb, convinced that would be the day Zelda would return. My mother was famous for forgetting. Absentminded, my father called it. She would forget all the time to pick me up from ballet, from piano lessons, from day camp during the summer. I just accepted it.
So I thought it was only a matter of time before Zelda would drive up in her red Subaru Forrester, smiling her bright smile, take me in her arms and apologize. Then everyone would see that she didn’t run away from us. That it was all a mistake. I would be vindicated and I would have my mom back.
Until one day my father got tired of getting calls from the school that I had once again missed the bus. That I was the last kid standing outside, waiting to be claimed like lost luggage.
He drove up that day and parked the car, waited for me to get