Just Friends(42)

“No, stop for a second,” I say, voice stern.

All of this is already too overwhelming for me to handle without her skirting around her true feelings. I’m feeling smaller and smaller beneath the reality of Lottie’s death and this huge new responsibility by the second. I need her to be honest with me, to guide me in this.

“I don’t talk about New York all the time because I’m enamored by the city and crawling out of my skin to sit in an office building all day. I do kind of romanticize that, sure. The independence of moving and proving that I can make something of myself, but—” The words get lodged in my throat. I don’t actually know how to admit this to her. “I don’t—I just—I want to do that for you.” I gesture my open hands toward her. “You gave me everything my entire life. You were always working so that I could have everything, and I am so grateful for that. But, now I want to be able to give you that. To give you rest. To see you finally relax and…” I shrug, trying to emphasize how okay I would be with the idea of “… maybe you could even date someone. I don’t know. Whatever you want to do with your independence I would be fine with. I just want you to feel freed up enough to do things because you want to. Not because you have to for me.”

I’m out of air now that it’s out. If I thought I had a vulnerability hangover this morning, I can’t imagine what I’ll feel like tomorrow.

My mom doesn’t say anything for a beat. I’m about to start talking again to fix what I’ve done when she says, “Oh, Blair.” She shakes her head. “You’ve always been the sweetest girl.”

I nod furiously, anticipation and the intensity of my emotions swelling inside me like the tide.

“But you don’t have to do that for me.”

“What?” I ask, stunned. “Why? You don’t have to feel guilty about it if that’s what it is. I want to do that for you, Mom. It would be my joy. And I’m not just saying that.” I gesture wildly with my hands, pleading, urging her to understand. To give me something in return.

“Oh honey,” she scoff-laughs, in a motherly “that’s so cute and naive” way. “I don’t need you to take care of me, baby.”

My eyebrows furrow.

“Do you think Lottie made me work at the cash register all those years?”

“Yes?” I say, honestly. “I mean, not like, forced you, but like gave you a job, yeah.”

“No!” she exclaims, scaring me slightly. “I begged Lottie to let me do that. She would’ve just let me live in her house with you. She probably would’ve paid for everything for both of us! She love, love, loooooved you so much. Oh my goodness. You have no idea how much she loved you. You were like the daughter she always wanted, truly.”

Tears sting my eyes. Not again, I think. I keep my lips pressed tight, urging my tear ducts to dry up. I tense every cell in my body, willing myself to listen to her words without crumbling.

“But I was excited to work.” She sighs and rolls her eyes in an expression of relief. “Oh my goodness, I was so excited to work. To make something of myself like you said. I relied on your father for everything. I let myself get so—” She shakes her head and moves on. This is the most I’ve ever heard her open up, but she’ll probably never tell me what she endured under my father’s hands in detail. “I didn’t want to go from relying on your father to relying on Lottie.”

“So, did we only live with Lottie because… you wanted to?” I ask.

She smiles softly, seeming to ponder her answer before speaking. “In Vietnam, living with your grandparents is very common. We probably would have done that, but since they had already passed away, and I couldn’t provide you with a father figure, I thought living with Lottie would be a close second. Don’t get me wrong, if she hadn’t let us live with her, it would have been much harder.” She blows out air, eyes wide. “Much, much harder. But you know we always make things work. And above all, I just wanted you to grow up in a house full of love.”

I smile back, a small, broken thing.

“Wow,” I don’t manage to say more as I try to process everything she’s revealed. To learn that it was love fueling her actions instead of stress had my world tilting on its unreliable axis. “You definitely gave me that. And so much more.”

Her eyes soften with affection as she studies me. “You know, con.” She inhales. “Something I learned after leaving your father is that creativity is not just in how a painter paints or how I sew my own clothes, or writing stories like I know you like to do.”

Blood races to my cheeks. How do mothers always know more than they let on?

She continues, “I learned that creativity was also in how I could construct a beautiful world for you. Especially because the one I thought we’d have came crashing down. Of course, you don’t picture your daughter growing up without a father. But I also never could have foreseen my relationship with Lottie. I had so many aunts growing up, her and I were never that close. But then look how that turned out. She became our rock.” Her voice warbles, but she blinks and somehow it steadies out again. “Working at the convenience store was not easy but I loved doing it. That money was mine because I earned it. And what I earned all went to you. That’s how I wanted it to be. You are mine, baby. If I did it for you, I was doing it for myself.”