Great Big Beautiful Life(119)

She stares at me, agog, blank faced.

My chest heaves as I try to even out my breathing. My eyes, I realize, are glossed with tears, and I’m gripping my fork like a lifeline.

One second ticks by. Another. I wonder if she’ll just pick up her fork and go back to eating, pretend this never happened.

I wonder if she’ll scream. If she’ll let me have it the way I just did to her.

Finally, she cracks: “Oh, honey.”

Her chair scrapes back from the table and she comes around toward me, crouching to wrap me in her arms. The simple contact, the tight hug with no casual backslapping, no rush to pull away, makes me start to cry in earnest. “You belong,” she murmurs, kissing the top of my head. “Never doubt that.”

“I don’t,” I argue, my voice wrenching upward.

My mom grips my shoulders in her hands, kneeling beside me. “Alice,” she says calmly. “I respect you. I love you. I like you. But I don’t understand you.”

I blink away the tears, and her elfin features come back into focus. “Your dad…” She shakes her head and tries again. “When you were a tiny little girl, you were always glued to my side. All day, every day. Audrey was more independent, but you were my shadow.”

I sniff, wipe my eyes. “I was?”

She nods. “And as you grew up, grew into yourself…I don’t know how to explain this in a way that won’t make me seem like an asshole, so I’ll just say it. The first few years as a mom, it felt like you and your sister were pieces of my heart walking around outside my body. You were your own people, but you were also mine. It feels like a miracle, because it is. You had your father’s DNA and you had mine, and somehow that made a whole new person who was both of us and neither.

“And then you started growing up, and you found new things to like. Things I’d never even really considered. Pieces of yourself that were all you. And you didn’t need me anymore. It was amazing—it’s what’s supposed to happen. But it was terrifying too. To let you grow past me. Suddenly there were all these locked doors that used to be wide-open hallways.”

“Mom, I didn’t need you because I didn’t let myself. Because Audrey was sick, and I thought that’s what everyone wanted from me. For me to just…be okay. Happy. And I was. I figured it out.”

“I know,” she says. “And that breaks my heart. Because I wish I could’ve been there more. Not just when Audrey was sick, but since then too. Your dad would’ve…”

She chokes up again, but she forces herself onward. “Your dad understood you.” Her voice squeaks, and her shoulders lift in a slight shrug. “He understood the things you love. He understood your sense of humor. He had access to pieces of you I couldn’t get to, and I was okay with that, mostly. But when he died—god, Alice, I haven’t been able to figure out how to be what you need. He always knew the right thing to say to you. He always knew how to cheer you up, or how to talk you down.

“And I want to be a good parent to you, but I can’t be him.”

“I don’t need you to be him,” I promise tearily.

“You deserve to have him,” she says. “You don’t know how many times I’ve wished it had been me instead.”

“Mom.” My heart cracks, shatters. I wrap my arms around her again. “Don’t say that.”

Her voice shivers out of her, wispy and ragged: “I miss him so much.”

I shut my eyes, the tears still managing to pour through my lashes. “Me too,” I squeak. “I should have asked him more. I should have written it all down. I should’ve recorded every stupid joke and every piece of advice. I should have taken videos of him singing in the kitchen while you cooked. I should have tried to know all of him while I had the time. Before it was too late.”

My mom’s embrace loosens and she sits back on her heels, swiping her own tears away. “Baby girl,” she says. “It’s not too late. What do you want to know?”



* * *



? ? ?

We prop my phone up on the table with a stack of old books, set to video. I place my recorder next to it, both angled toward where Mom sits with a stack of old photo albums. I hit record on each, then go join her at the table.

“Where should we start?” she asks me.

“The beginning,” I say.

She opens album after album until she finds the book she’s looking for. “Our commune days,” she says, smiling affectionately at the first Polaroid of them, out in the sun, each in overalls, both skinnier and younger. He has his arm slung around her. He’s wearing a different though not dissimilar wide-brimmed hat.

“You said he was ridiculous?” I ask her, and her smile widens.

“The most ridiculous,” she says.

“Tell me everything,” I say.

“Only if you’ll do the same,” she says.

I hold out my hand. We shake on it.

Then we take turns sharing our stories.



* * *



? ? ?

    The next morning, I sit down at the desk in Audrey’s room and start to write a letter.

After speaking with Mom, I know what I need to say. I can’t control how it will be received, but I have to try.