The Breakaway(109)

But, instead of screaming or crying or asking Abby what she’d been thinking, or declaring that Abby was dead to her, instead of any of that, Eileen simply nodded. She went to the sink, washed off her knife, and calmly began rinsing a colander full of heirloom tomatoes. “Are you okay?”

Abby stared at her mother, momentarily speechless. “Yes. I mean, I’m sad. I hate that I hurt him. And I’m a little lonely these days.” As much as she knew that she and Mark were not right for each other, it had still been a comfort to have someone in her life, in her bed; someone who knew her. Someone who was familiar with her history and would listen to her stories.

Eileen sniffed, before picking up a tomato and slicing it in half. She stared down at the cutting board, then looked up.

“I owe you an apology, too.”

“For what?”

“I need to show you something.” When her mother reached for her phone, Abby wondered if it was going to be something about Sebastian—something new, something even worse than everything she’d already seen. A way to warn Abby off; a way to make her feel more terrible about breaking up with Mark.

Eileen scrolled for a moment, then passed her phone across the counter. Abby looked at the screen. It was a photograph. Abby thought, at first, that she was looking at a picture of herself: a little girl with curly hair standing in front of a swimming pool, squinting in the glaring light of a summer afternoon. The girl wore a sleeveless sundress, and Abby could see familiar contours: solid arms and thighs, a softly rounded belly. Thick wrists and ankles, big hands and chubby fingers, the proportions that had so dismayed her mother for as long as Abby could remember. The expression, too, was familiar. The little girl was smiling, but her expression was tense and guarded, and her shoulders were hunched. Abby recognized the body, and the expression… but Abby didn’t recognize the sundress or the setting, and the girl’s hair was a few shades darker than she remembered hers being at that age.

“Where is this?” Abby asked. “When was it taken?”

“Wrong questions,” said Eileen. “Look again.”

Abby looked again. And, when she did, she could also see subtle differences in the shape of the girl’s face and features. The lips were a little too thin, the brows a little too dark. The question, she realized, wasn’t when, but who.

“Is that…” Abby’s heart was beating very hard.

“Me,” said Eileen. “When I was six years old.”

Abby stared at the photograph, shocked into speechlessness. Eileen could have confessed to being an alien, sent to live among the humans, or told Abby that she had a secret life and another family, or that she was considering running for president, and Abby would have been less stunned. Each of those scenarios felt more plausible than imagining her mother as a former fat girl, a girl who’d looked like Abby’s almost-identical twin. “I don’t understand.” She looked up. “I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t tell you.” Eileen sat her hands flat on the counter. “I was ashamed, I guess. And I was trying to help you.” She looked down, staring at the tomato, which was spilling seeds and juice into the cutting board’s gutter. “I remember how hard things were for me. How my mother would criticize. How awful the other kids were. The names they called me…” Eileen paused. “I was lonely,” she said quietly, looking off into the distance, not meeting her daughter’s eyes. “I was very lonely for a very long time. And I thought that losing weight would fix it.”

Abby’s tongue felt thick and heavy. Her brain felt waterlogged and slow; her emotions a tangle. She wasn’t sure whether she was angry, or sad, or disappointed, or something else entirely. “How long were you…” Don’t say fat, she reminded herself. Abby might have gotten comfortable with the word, but Eileen still thought it was a horrible insult, a borderline slur.

“For a long, long time. Until after I was married and became a mother.” Abby felt her mouth fall open. Eileen shrugged. “I’d show you pictures from when I was a teenager and a young woman, but there weren’t many of those to begin with, and I think I burned the ones that were left.” She pursed her lips. “I always wondered if you’d ask to see the wedding album, from when your father and I got married. Or pictures from when you were a baby.”

“You’re overestimating my interest in weddings and babies,” Abby said.

Eileen pressed her hands together. Abby saw her mother’s wedding band and diamond engagement ring—a significant upgrade from the one she’d worn while married to Abby’s dad—hanging loosely on one finger. There were a few age spots on her mother’s hands; a few veins, prominent under the skin. Her mother’s fingers and wrists were precisely the same shape as her own. Why hadn’t she noticed that before?

“When I was a girl, I was lonely,” Eileen said. “And then, when other girls started dating, I didn’t have as many options as they did. I think there were boys who didn’t mind the way I looked. They just didn’t like the way their friends would treat them if they asked me out.”

Abby, who’d experienced this phenomenon herself, found that she was nodding. It took an effort to make herself stop.

Eileen picked up her knife and began cutting her tomatoes again. “There were places like Camp Golden Hills when I was growing up. They advertised in the back of Seventeen magazine. These tiny little ads, like they were secrets. I begged my parents to send me. I thought, if I could just lose weight, it would fix everything.” She made a face, shaking her head. “And they told me if I wanted it badly enough, I’d do it myself. That all I needed was some discipline. ‘Eat less, exercise more,’?” she recited. “Like that ever works.”