She tsks. “I can’t see that. But even if it’s true, I’ll bet you have your reasons. And I bet your mom has her reasons too, and they probably don’t have much to do with you at all. Give her a chance, honey.”
I smile and tear up at the same time. Beth is trying to fix her boys’ lives before she dies. And I get the sense she’s trying to fix mine too.
“Life isn’t black and white, Drew,” she says. “And you have to learn to live in the gray a little, accept that it can be perfect in all its imperfections.”
Because she asks me to do it—and only because of that—I meet my mother for lunch the day before I return to Europe to finish the tour.
She’s already waiting at the restaurant when I arrive.
Sometimes when I see her on a week day—her hair pulled back in a neat bun, clad in her annoyingly corporate attire—it’s hard to picture the woman my father fell in love with. Today though, I catch a glimpse of her in an unguarded moment, before she’s seen me, and there’s something wistful in her expression, something that’s gone unfulfilled—and I find the woman I remember once more. The mother of my early childhood, who made forts out of pillows and blankets with me and laughed as my father sang ridiculous songs in Russian. Before she ruined it all.
I move toward the table. She smiles and stiffens, simultaneously, as if I make her happy and she’s bracing for me to take that happiness away at the same time.
“I like your hair,” she says.
Of course she does. I could walk into her law firm now as a junior associate and no one would blink an eye. The teenage rebel in me wants me to go to the bathroom and shave it off, pronto.
“Thanks,” I say grimly, taking the seat across from hers.
“And you’re sober,” she says.
“Tell me something, Mom,” I reply, looking over the menu, “are we always going to throw our worst moments in each other’s faces? Because you’re not cheating on my father right now either, but I managed not to bring it up.”
I look at her just in time to watch a wealth of emotions pass over her face. Shock, anger, sadness, resignation.
“You’re right,” she says for the first time in her life. “I’m sorry.”
The waitress asks in a hushed voice if we’d prefer still or sparkling water. I say one and my mother says the other. We cannot even agree about water, apparently.
“How was Hawaii?” she asks once we’re alone again.
Already the trip has become a blur in my head, a few images, a snippet of conversation left to represent hours and days and weeks. Mostly, it’s now just an overall feeling of warmth, and hope, of being made new. “It was really good.” I suppose I should ask about Steven, or my asshole step-sibling, or her job, but I don’t give a shit about any of them. I give negative shits about them. And I’m so sick of doing things just to be polite or because someone expects it of me.
“They’re saying in the news that you broke up with that guitarist.”
I don’t want to tell her the truth because she hated Six the one time they met and it would thrill her. That I’ve fallen for a doctor would thrill her even more. One of many reasons she’ll never know. I sigh. “Yes.”
“Good,” she says. “I never liked him.”
“Really, Mom?” I ask with a bitter laugh. “Gosh, you were so subtle about it.”
She frowns. “He has a drinking problem,” she says. “You understand why I wouldn’t want that for you.”
“Because they’re so hard to be faithful to?” I ask. It’s a low blow, even from me.
Her mouth pinches. “I thought we weren’t going to throw things in each other’s faces?” she asks.
“Sorry,” I mutter. I return my gaze to the menu. This is the kind of place she likes. Fancy salads ruined by things like beets and quail eggs. So neither the food nor the conversation will be enjoyable.
“I was working all day,” she says, breaking the silence, “going to law school at night, trying to get us into a better neighborhood and you into a better school and then I’d come home to your father resenting me for it. I spent the last year of our marriage trying to study and work and take care of you while your father went out and got drunk. I know I made mistakes, but back then, Steven was the only one telling me I was doing okay, who was impressed at how I did it all.”
Of course he was, I think sullenly. He thought you’d wind up fucking him, and he was right.
But then I think of Josh. Josh, the only person who’s impressed with what I take on. Josh, telling me I deserve more. It’s seductive, having someone on your side for once. “We don’t have to rehash it all.”
She stares straight ahead, as if I haven’t spoken. “I will never try to tell anyone I handled it the right way. Steven won’t either. I just wish you’d try to understand that even if I’m the villain in this story you’ve created, I’m not the only one.”
So I guess we’re doing this here, over our gross lunch of water and quail egg salad.
“You could have sent Dad to rehab or something,” I say.
She gives a short, unhappy laugh. “You have forgotten some significant parts of your father’s personality if you think he was going to let anyone force him into rehab. Where do you think you got that stubborn streak of yours?”
I have over a decade of accusations inside me, the same ones I’ve been making all along, but there’s not the same vigor behind them. Something has changed in me these past few weeks. Maybe I just have some empathy now for moral gray areas, given how I’ve ventured into one. “Maybe you’re right. I guess I just wish things had been different.”
She presses her palms flat to the table and stares at her lap, swallowing hard. “I’ll never forgive myself for that day,” she says. I stiffen. This is something we do not discuss, ever, and I want to stop her but I can’t. “I was in court when the school called to say you hadn’t shown up and I let it go to voicemail. If I’d just checked, maybe—”
Her voice cracks and she stops talking.
I feel an ache in my chest, as if my lungs are squeezing tight. I didn’t know she was blaming herself for what happened all this time. Of all the things she did wrong, this isn’t one of them.
“That wasn’t your fault,” I tell her. I know in my rare honest moment that my father was no saint. He broke my nose, for God’s sake. It’s all the years afterward I blame her for. “But you took me from my home, Mom, and from my school, and from my father, and you just—” My throat clogs. “Left. You were never there. Everyone in that household treated me like I wasn’t welcome and wasn’t even human and you just looked the other way.”
I wait for her denials, her arguments. She’s a lawyer, after all. It’s what she does best. But when I look up at her, her eyes are damp. “I know,” she says, staring at her hands, her voice raspy. “And that’s harder for me to live with than anything else, because I can’t get those years back and I don’t know where we go now.”
It’s more than she’s ever said before. I swallow hard and then force a smile. “Hopefully someplace with burgers. You know I hate salad.”