That was the first thing I said to Roderick when I walked into his room at the hospital. His eyes bulged. “What the fuck are you talking about, man? Gimme a mirror or something!”
“I don’t have one,” I shrugged. “But your shit is messed up.”
I fought hard not to laugh as he glanced around frantically for something he could use to see his reflection. “Dude, where the fuck is my phone?!”
“Rod, relax, man. Nothing’s wrong with your face, pretty boy. How you managed to knock your own damned head in, but not mess up your face, I don’t understand.”
“Cause I’m the handsome brother, Carter. Ugly dudes like you don’t have those sort of problems.”
I laughed as I approached the bed to fist bump Rod. “I see a mild concussion doesn’t keep you from talking shit.”
“Nothing will keep me from talking shit. Where you been, man?” He asked as I took a seat in the empty chair beside the bed. “When I saw Mom here but not you… I thought you had maybe bailed on me.”
Rod had his eyes trained on me, intense as he waited for my response. I slid to the edge of the chair, reaching out to bump his fist again. “I told you this shit already man. Never again.”
When our gazes met, he nodded, then seemed to relax. “So… you didn’t say where you were, so you must have gotten caught up with something. Or somebody.” He grinned as he wiggled his eyebrows, then cringed when his movements aggravated the laceration on his head.
“That’s what you get for being in grown folks business,” I ragged him. “Where did Mom and Bria go? I didn’t see them in the hall.”
“Breakfast. Yo, Moms actually likes Bria. It’s blowing my mind.”
I chuckled. “What, you’re gonna dump her now since the parents approve?”
Rod turned up his lip, scowling at me like I’d said something outrageous. “Man, hell nah. Bria is fly. And not just fly, like the chicks my age back home. She’s like… smart and shit too.”
“So you came up here and fell in puppy love with a city girl,” I teased, reclining against the back of my chair.
He grinned. “Just like my brother.”
I shrugged it off with a smile, but the thought of that made me feel like somebody had turned the heat up a little too high. He was right, obviously, but it was a little unnerving that he could see that about me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about man.”
“Okay,” he said, sucking his teeth. “So that five million word essay you read about Viv at Urban Grind was just for fun, right?”
I cocked an eyebrow. “You must be forgetting I still owe you an ass-whipping for the shit you pulled, lying to get me up on stage that night.”
“You should be thanking me. You put it all out there on the table now.”
“To everybody except her, genius.”
He gave me a sheepish smile. “I did invite her, just couldn’t get her to take me up on it. My heart was in the right place, that’s what matters.
I snorted with laughter, and was about to respond when the door swung open, revealing my mom and Bria on the other side. Rod lost interest in me as Bria rushed up to the bed. Smiling wide, my mother grabbed me by the arm and led me out of the room.
“Let’s let them have their privacy,” she said, leading me to an empty, quiet corner of the waiting room just outside.
Sitting alone with my mom, I didn’t really feel any of the things one would expect. I loved her, obviously, because she was my mom, but this felt more like sitting down to catch up with a neighbor who had watched me grow up than the kind of warm familiarity that should exist between mother and son. That… was gone.
“So tell me what’s going on with you, son.” She was smiling so big, looking so excited, like this — admittedly rare — occurrence of me and her alone was just making her day.
I shrugged. “Not much.”
A flash of hurt crossed her face at my short answer, and inwardly, I cringed. I really wasn’t trying to be rude to her, didn’t want to make her feel bad. She pulled a smile to her face anyway. “Well, you’re looking good, at least. I bet you have all kinds of women after you, a handsome man like you.”
I tried to force a grin, but the muscles in my face wouldn’t cooperate for anything more than a grimace. “Um… I guess.”
She perked up a little, raising an eyebrow at me. “Ohh. Must be just one then. The pretty chocolatier Rod has been telling me about, maybe?” She gave me an encouraging nod, but it seemed like my brain shut down further, like it was locking down, protecting my thoughts about Viv.
I gave a half shrug in response, and the smile slid from my mother’s face, replaced by a look of dejection.
“Carter… son, can you at least meet me a quarter of the way? I’m trying here, and you won’t even budge.”
I snorted. “Yeah, I’ve noticed that now you try.”
“What is that supposed to mean? “Now” I try.”
“Mom… don’t do this, okay? I don’t feel like having this conversation right now.”
She huffed, sitting back in her chair. “Of course you don’t. You get that from your father, wanting to shut down and push back the moment the conversation gets tough.”
“Don’t talk about my dad like that. At least he was there, but you don’t know anything about that, do you?” I sucked my teeth, shaking my head as I stood to leave. I wasn’t about to do this shit, not here in a suffocating hospital, where I didn’t even want to be.
“You sit your butt down, young man,” my mother said, raising her voice.
My face turned up in a scowl, but… that was still my mom. I didn’t look at her as I sat back down.
“You don’t throw a jab like that and walk away from me, Carter. That’s not how you solve things. If you’ve got something you need to say — and you obviously do, you’re obviously angry, can barely even look at me — then let’s talk about it.”
I turned my eyes up toward the ceiling as I shook my head. “Oh, you wanna talk about it,” I muttered.
“Yes, I do, actually. We’re adults, Carter. Let’s talk about it.”
“Okay,” I said, nostrils flaring as I sat up, resting my elbows on my knees. “Let’s talk about how for 18 damned years Mom, I only ever heard from you once a week, and saw Christmas come around more times than I saw you. Can we talk about that? Can we talk about how as soon as Rod turns 16 and starts acting a clown, all of a sudden you’re calling me two, three times a week, pretending like you gave a shit about what was happening with me, when you really just needed me to try to talk some sense into him. Let’s talk about how since Rod has been up here with me, your ass has been on a plane damn near weekly to see him. Come on, mom. Talk.”
For a long time, she just stared at me, eyes glossy with tears before she nodded. “Okay.” She cleared her throat, then nodded again. “We can talk about how I only called once a week, because that’s how long it took me to gather up enough strength to spend that hour talking to you without having a breakdown over the phone. We can absolutely discuss that every time I came to see you, knowing that I couldn’t take you home, it killed me, so I took the coward’s way out, and stayed away. And yes, once Rod started getting in trouble, I did turn to you because his dad was gone. He needed a strong male bond with someone, and I didn’t want to lose him, have him resent me… like you. And we can certainly talk about how my visits up here have not been just to see your brother. I wanted to see you too.”
I scoffed. “So that’s it, huh? You have all your answers wrapped up in a neat little box for me, ready to go.”
“Oh it’s not neat at all, son. It’s messy. It’s very, very messy, but you left to be with your father when you were ten years old, Carter. I’ve had twenty years to figure out how to put it concisely.”
“Left to be with my fa— do you even hear yourself? Left to be with my father, like it was some extended sleepover. Nah, mom. You abandoned me,” I said, struggling to keep my voice down as heat built in my chest.
Her eyes went wide.
“Abandoned, Carter? Do you think I had a choice? I got arrested. Because I was driving home tipsy from work and smacked my car into a mailbox. I spent the night in jail, praying that you were okay because I was in too much of a damned slump to even remember a phone number to call somebody to go see about you, and I was terrified to tell the police you were home by yourself, because I knew they would take you. And guess what? When I finally broke down and said something because they were about to keep me another day, they did exactly that. Carter it broke my heart for that social worker to come and tell me you were being detained for fighting the officers that came to the apartment, telling them you couldn’t go anywhere cause you were waiting for your mom. I made a mess.”
“But they didn’t keep me,” I said, shaking my head to clear away that memory. “Mrs. White, the lady from the apartment next door told them I was staying with her, and she was just letting me go back to sleep in my own bed at night. They let me go, and you had a chance once you got out, but you still didn’t fight.”
She gave a dry laugh. “With what strength, Carter? Fight with what? When your father found out about that, he wanted you with him, and what could I do to stop him? I was a drunk, and on depression medicines for a chemical imbalance that left me like a zombie half the time. What kind of life was I giving you?”
“We were good, mom,” I insisted, swallowing the lump in my throat. You were taking care of me, and when you couldn’t I took care of you. We… we were a team. That’s what you said.”
She shook her head, clapping a hand over her mouth to choke back a sob. “No, baby. That wasn’t healthy, son. You were a little boy, not a man, not yet.”
“But I did the best I could.”
“You did, baby,” she nodded. “You absolutely did. You cooked for me, and you had your little paper route, you… you were the best son a mommy could want, Carter, but it doesn’t change the fact that it wasn’t okay for you to feel like you had to take care of me. That wasn’t your job, Carter. I had it in my head that I would fight for you, that I would fight for custody, but every time I thought about you getting pulled outta that apartment by the police…. you needed to be with your dad, and I needed to clean myself up.”
I scowled, ignoring the headache that was brewing from me clenching my jaw. “Yeah, you did that, and then still didn’t come back for me, since you had your new husband, and your new kid. No need to go back for the one that’s already fucked up, right?”
She cocked her head to the side, then stood, coming to sit on the table in front of me. “Wrong,” she said, cupping my face in her hands. I tried to pull away, but she held tight, forcing me to look at her. “Son, I think you’re forgetting the way those early conversations went. The tears over the phone, the tantrums, acting out. There was already so much damage done. Your father and stepmother insisted on no more than once a week, and pushed for less than that, but I wouldn’t let them take that away. I wasn’t even supposed to call on your birthday, because they didn’t want you to get all upset. Those conversations were just as hard on you as they were on me, and I felt you drifting away. You were growing up. And once you got old enough to decide if you wanted to talk to me or not… you chose not. And I don’t blame you, so I didn’t push. By that point, I was just some lady you had to talk to. Your father and Denise were your parents by then, and you were thriving.”
“They didn’t even “get” me though. Yeah, they took good care of me, but I needed the person who understood that I’d rather figure out how to make a robot throw a football than learn how to do it myself. I needed you. I was angry, Mom. And I was hurt because the one person who “got” me, didn’t want me. It still feels fucked up now. Do you have any idea how fucked up it is to feel like that when you’re a kid?”
She nodded, then pulled me into an embrace. To my own surprise, I didn’t resist. “I can imagine, sweetheart,” she said, clutching me tight against her. “I am so, so sorry.”
Being this close to her was awkward at first, but after a moment, I gave in to the urge to return her embrace. She stiffened in surprised, then burst into noisy tears, and before long, my eyes were burning too. My mother looked up, chin trembling as she tried to smile. She gave a heavy sigh, then brought her hand to my face.
“Carter, I don’t expect to heal twenty years of hurt in a single conversation. I understand this isn’t Iyanla,” she said, then laughed at her joke. “But… baby, I want you to know, it was not Mommy’s intention to abandon you. Depression is a very dark place Carter, that I couldn’t get out of on my own, not without major help. I still struggle sometimes, to this day. Your assessment that I “replaced” you and your father… honestly, it’s fair.” She nodded as her eyes welled with fresh tears. “I think I was trying to have a do-over. Fix what I didn’t get right the first time, and it was absolutely not fair to you. Not at all, Carter. But I need you to understand that it was not because I somehow loved Roderick more than you. There was so much damage done already that I really thought it was better to leave you be.”
I shook my head. “You thought wrong, mom. I was praying that I would see you show some effort, and it didn’t seem like that happened until you wanted me to step in for you with Rod. But I guess that’s what happens when you wait twenty years to have a conversation.”
“It wasn’t your responsibility. It was mine. It was the other adults’. We should have behaved better, and maybe things would be different now. I think about the things your stepmother used to say to me, and… whew. I could still choke her now.”
“Why does she hate you so much?” I asked, sitting back. “She never bad-mouthed you to me, but I’d be lying if I said I never overheard her with dad.”
My mother huffed. “And I’m sure that didn’t exactly help my reputation with you.”
I grimaced. “Probably not.”
“Not surprised,” she said, laughing. “Your stepmother’s problem with me is that your father still wanted me. Once I was cleaned up, he was always making little innuendos over the phone before he handed it off to you, and that burned her up… so obviously she channeled that anger into being mad at me, instead of her husband.”
“But that was a lot of years ago. She’s still mad?”
My mother smirked. “Oh, honey… no. She’s still mad at the fact that about a year before he got sick, your daddy packed up his bags and showed up at my door talking about he was back for me. Was gonna help me raise your brother, since his father had already passed at that time.”
“Are you serious?” I asked, eyes wide.
She nodded. “Very much so. And I sent his ass packing, back on whatever train he rolled in on. Your father was a good daddy, I’ll give him that. But he never took my depression seriously, that’s why he let you stay with me. He swore it was just “womanly” moods, since it happened suddenly. It wasn’t triggered by any certain event, it just… was. But your father… he insisted that I was just being mean to him, didn’t want him around. I passed on his offer to “start anew”, and sent him back home to his wife. That’s what she’s so salty about.”
“Wow,” I said, chuckling as I shook my head.
She smiled. “So I can still make you laugh, huh?” She placed her hand over mine on my knee. “Carter… again, I know this doesn’t really fix anything, but I’m glad we got this out. I hope you feel the same.”
“I do… I… I guess I actually do feel better.”
“Good,” she said, squeezing my hand. “You think you can talk to me now? Like we used to? Remember, it wasn’t always bad, right? You had fun on the phone with me sometimes.”
That was true. My mom was the one who asked about the things I really cared about. Business, and programming, and anime, and all the shit I got teased for while living with my dad, so I pretended to be a jock instead. She kept saying she didn’t think this conversation was supposed to fix anything, but truthfully, I kinda felt like a burden was lifted. Seeing my mom cry over this, hearing her talk about it with emotion that couldn’t be faked… having h
er tell me that she never meant to disregard me… I needed that, had been needing it for twenty years.
And she looked so happy.
“Yeah, mom. We can talk.” I was able to give her a real smile that time, and she returned it with a grin of her own.
“Okay… so let’s talk about the French girl. Roderick said something about her being covered in caramel, and I’m not sure—”
“Come on, Mom.”
I didn’t go back to Viv immediately.
Once I left the hospital, after spending the next few hours with Rod, my mom, and Bria, I went back up to my usual spot on the roof of our building to clear my head, and process everything. The talk with my mother, the reunion with Viv, the restored relationship with Rod… everything was lining up a little too neatly.
But that’s that defeatist attitude again, man.
… Right. And I was sick of that holding me in the same place. I thought back to the conversation with Roman — what had he said? Something about doing something different if I wanted a different result, and that had to apply to my thoughts too, right? If shit falling apart was what I always expected, that’s what was bound to happen. So maybe a little bit of just happily going with the flow was in order.
The sun was heading down, and I glanced across the roof as I stood, noticing that Viv’s plant was still there from last night. It didn’t look to be in the best of shape after sitting in the cold overnight, but the heat from the solar powered artificial sun lamp had helped. I turned off the lamp, sending up a silent thank you to God that I’d gotten to it before the energy conservation nuts in our building had, and picked up the plant.
A couple of minutes later, I was in front of Viv’s door, raising my hand to knock. Before I could make contact, her door swung open, and there she was, dressed to head out in the cold. She startled, seeming almost surprised to see me. Her eyes went wide, and were red, like she’d been crying.
“Hey…,” I said, wracking my mind to try to figure out what was going on with her.
She swallowed, focusing her gaze on the plant before giving me a little half smile. “Hey yourself.”
Didn't Mean To Love You (Serendipitous Love Book 2) Page 18