seat, a fake-as-fuck smile plastered on her face. She was incredibly uncomfortable.
“Hey, babe. We gotta go,” I said, cutting the conversation short and tossing my mom a life preserver so she didn’t drown all alone.
“Oh. Okay. It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Davies,” Sunny shouted because I had grabbed the phone and was walking into another room.
“I’ll try to call you later, but things are a little tense here,” I explained, and her eyes pulled together. I could tell she was worried.
“At least text me if you can’t call, okay?” she suggested, and I agreed before ending the call and heading back into the kitchen.
My mom hadn’t moved an inch. She was sitting in the same chair with her hands folded as she stared at the table.
“Mom.” I put my hand on her shoulder, and she turned her head toward me.
“She’s really sweet,” she said, meaning Sunny.
“Yeah, she is.”
I sat down next to her again, and she faced me.
“Mac, I hope you know that I want to come see you play,” she began to explain, but I knew what was coming next. It was the same thing she always said.
“But you can’t. I know,” I finished the sentence for her.
She put her head in her hands and started shaking. “I wish I were stronger. You needed me to be stronger.”
“Mom,” I said, feeling small, “I never understood why you couldn’t stand up to him before. But I understand now.”
Sunny and I had talked about it a little bit once, and she gave me a perspective that I had been too pissed to ever see clearly in the past. I’d made everything about my parents’ relationship this black-and-white thing, but Sunny showed me all the shades of gray. She made me see my mom’s side instead of just my own. I’d been so mad, but she had been right.
“How—” She sniffed. “How do you understand now?”
“Because he’s a controlling asshole who gets off on making us feel less than,” I explained before adding what Sunny had taught me. “But I get it now—that you feel stuck. And powerless. And you’ve been with him for so long that you don’t know how to get away.”
“I stopped working when you were born,” she said.
I never knew that she’d worked before I came along, which was stupid and naive of me to think that my mom never had something of her own. The reality was that I’d never asked. I always assumed she liked the lifestyle DD provided.
“I don’t have any property or assets. None of this is in my name.” She waved a hand around in the air, indicating our massive estate.
“But it is though. Your marriage assures that. And he couldn’t have built his little empire without your support. He would still have to take care of you and provide for you. He’d have to give you alimony,” I argued, but she had to know all of that already.
“He’d make me sorry for leaving. For embarrassing him publicly,” she said, and I realized that DD treated us both the exact same way. Like pieces of property. Pawns. And he ruled not with an iron fist, but with fear.
“You need to stop drinking,” I insisted out of nowhere, like the very concept should be that easy.
But if my mom wanted any semblance of life going forward, she needed to actually participate in it and stop numbing away her days. She had to regain control of her senses, and that was impossible to find at the bottom of a bottle.
“I never used to drink, you know. Not a drop. I hated the taste of it.” Her eyes got that faraway look in them, and I leaned closer, invested in the words I’d never heard before. “But eventually, I started looking for ways to cope.” She swallowed hard, and I knew she was talking about coping with him doing things, like canceling her appointments and hiding her credit cards. “Drinking made me numb. And being numb was so much better than being angry.”
I hated that I understood her perspective, but I did. Understanding felt like I was saying what she had done was okay when it wasn’t. I’d needed her, and she’d chosen the bottle over me. Although, in essence, she’d chosen herself over me. Neither option made me feel that great.
“What did you do before I was born?” I asked before elaborating, “For work, I mean. You said you used to have a job. What did you do?”
“Oh, I worked at the bookstore