Say You'll Remember Me(65)

But what if it was important? What if it was a hereditary cancer she wanted me to know about? What if my dad had died and even though we didn’t talk she didn’t want me to find out through the grapevine.

I should answer.

I picked up the phone. “This is—” I paused. Who was I? Was I Xavier? That’s who she knew me as. Or was I Dr. Rush, the person I’d become after her? She was somehow someone intimate to me but also a complete stranger.

I decided Dr. Rush gave me the armor I needed to deal with this call.

“This is Dr. Rush,” I said, giving her my professional tone, like maybe I didn’t know who was on the other line, maybe Maggie hadn’t relayed the message.

“Xavier?”

I was a child again, instantly. A Pavlovian response. I felt four feet tall and ready to wince.

“Are you there?” she asked.

“Yes. What can I do for you?” I said dryly.

“Oh. It’s been a long time,” she said, like I was a friend she’d bumped into at the supermarket.

I didn’t respond.

My silence shifted the energy. I pictured her smoothing her shirt down the way she always did when she was uncomfortable. “I’m sure you’re wondering what this is about,” she continued. “Your dad and I were wondering if you’d like to talk.”

I drew my brows down. “What do you want to discuss?”

“Well, we’d like to see you. See how you’ve been. I understand you have your own practice now.”

I stared at the grand opening picture.

“I know it’s been a long time,” she went on. “I wanted to call you, but—”

“But what?” I said coldly.

She went quiet on the other end.

So she didn’t have anything important to tell me. This was a social call.

Thirteen years. She couldn’t care less about me for thirteen years. I could never do that. I could never abandon my child. I couldn’t even conceive of the story she could give me to justify it.

They never came to my high school graduation, my college graduation, my ribbon cutting. I’d had my friends and sometimes their parents there, of course. But none of my family ever came for me. For anything. I’d been alone in this world after being knocked around and belittled and made to feel like I was worthless for the first half of my life. And she wanted to talk? Now?

She cleared her throat. “We were hoping to reconnect. Your dad and I aren’t going to live forever. We’d like to know our grandkids one day. Your wife. Are you married? Dating anyone? What have you been up to?”

When I didn’t respond she went on. “Your dad and I have a new church. He’s stopped drinking, you should know that. He’s been sober for six years.”

“Congratulations,” I said flatly.

Now she paused. “I don’t know why you have to take that tone.”

“Don’t you? I don’t know why I wouldn’t.”

I heard the breath through her nose. The simmer on the other end. My ability to sense her mood was still completely intact, even over a decade later and on the phone. Only now I didn’t care if I poked the bear.

“I was hoping we could have a polite conversation,” she said tightly.

“This doesn’t sound like an apology to me.”

She made an impatient noise. “You know, we weren’t all to blame, Xavier. You weren’t a saint yourself—”

“I was a kid.”

“You punched your father in the face! He lost two teeth!”

“He was hitting me with a belt!” I snapped.

“And? We weren’t supposed to discipline you? When you were failing every class?”

The laugh I let out was incredulous. “What you put me through was nothing short of abuse.”

She huffed on the other line. “Abu—You have got to be kidding me. We were strict. My parents were strict, your dad’s parents were strict. We had every right to parent you as we saw fit.”

“By beating the shit out of me? Calling me stupid? Drowning Winnie’s puppies?”

“The puppies—Oh, grow up. It’s no different than what you probably do every day at your fancy office. You don’t put dogs down?”

“What I do is humane. What I do is mercy. He was a drunken, violent asshole,” I said carefully. “And you allowed it.”

“Oh, so you’re going to be the perfect parent? You think the job is easy? You turned out fine. Better than fine from what I can tell.”

I gritted my teeth. “No thanks to you. You left me to fend for myself at seventeen.”

“So? At six months older than that your dad was already enlisted and living in a foreign country. You obviously didn’t want to live by the rules of our household so when you wanted to go run the streets with Jesse, that was fine with us. You wanted to be a grown-up and tell us to go to hell and you did. And frankly the fact that you haven’t bothered to reach out to us, knowing that we both have health issues, says a lot about the kind of man you are.”

I was shaking too much to speak.

“I knew this was a mistake calling you.” I pictured her throwing up her hands. “A waste of my time. I just thought maybe you had changed, but I see you haven’t. I don’t need this, I have enough stress in my life, your dad’s getting audited, not that you care what happens to us.”