“What’s wrong?” Gray asked, out of breath. “Are you okay?”
Before I could answer, Charles tore in through the back door, into Gray’s kitchen. “Diana, I wasn’t trying to spring her on you.”
“Then what the hell were you trying to do, Charles? Did you think I’d laugh and squeal and hug her neck? She’s dead, Charles,” I screamed. “Dead!”
Gray was white as a sheet. “Who’s dead?”
“No one,” Charles said. “No one is dead. Everything is fine.”
They looked at each other like they thought it would be nice to introduce themselves but knowing this maybe wasn’t the time.
“Should I leave?” Gray asked.
I said, “No,” as Charles said, “Yes.”
I could feel myself getting kind of hysterical, and it was like all those years were just flooding back to me. The getting left, the being alone, Charles trying to raise us, all those hellacious foster families, Charles trying to get me again, that not happening. The only way I could make it right in my mind, the only way I could move on even a little, was telling myself that my momma was dead, and she couldn’t help it, and if she could have, she’d have traveled to the ends of the earth for me. She couldn’t be alive. She just couldn’t.
Gray was trying to calm me down, but I couldn’t even hear what she was saying. She pulled me into the living room and sat me down on the couch and rubbed my back in these long, slow, even strokes. I guess it must’ve worked, because I caught my breath, and I was still crying hard, but I could hear again.
“Diana,” Charles said. “I wasn’t trying to upset you. Let me explain.”
“Diana,” Gray whispered. “You have to calm down. It isn’t good for the baby.”
“The baby?” Charles asked.
Shit.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, covering her mouth. “But, seriously. This is bigger than that. You have to calm down.”
“What baby?” Charles asked.
Gray, she got up, and she said, “Look, I don’t know who you are, but you’re upsetting Diana. Yes, she’s pregnant. I’m sorry you found out that way, but I think it’s best that you go now. Being this upset is dangerous for her.”
She led him to the door, and I felt torn. Because, on the one side, I wanted my brother. I wanted him here to comfort me. On the other side, he’d brought her back into my life with no warning, no preparation at all, and I wasn’t ready for that. So that part of me was pissed. Did he really think I was going to be happy to see her? I’ve never understood men, and I never will.
Gray closed the door behind Charles, and my mind was spinning, and the room was spinning, and she helped me lie down on the couch. She sat on the floor beside me and said, “You don’t have to talk about it unless you want to. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
“I can get Marcy if that would help.”
I was starting to see clearly again, the room coming back into focus, my mind getting right. And I knew I didn’t need therapy. I just needed a friend. As good a one as I’d ever had in my whole life was sitting right beside me all wide-eyed.
“My mom,” I said. “I opened the door and my brother Charles was there with this woman, and she said my name, and I realized it was my mom.”
“And you thought she was dead?”
I put my hand up over my eyes. “Yes.” I threw both hands up in the air. “I don’t know what I thought. I mean, yeah, I had to think she was dead. Because if she was dead, she couldn’t help it. It wasn’t like she could control her death. If she’d died, she hadn’t meant to abandon us. But she’s not dead, and that’s so much worse.”
Gray nodded. “I get that. I totally get that.” She paused. “That would have to be the worst feeling in the world, for the one person who is supposed to love you more than herself to abandon you like that. But maybe she had a reason, you know?” I heard her voice catch in her throat as she said, “Maybe she just couldn’t help it.”
I realized that a little part of this wasn’t about my momma. It was about Gray’s. Her mom dying, and her thinking her mom wanted to die. In some small way, even though, I’ll be honest, it seemed a hell of a lot better than what happened to me, she felt like her momma’d abandoned her. It explained a lot about her, really.
I was calmer now. Nothing had changed, had it? I still had Frank. I still had this baby. I knew my momma was alive, but, hell, way deep down hadn’t I known that all along? It was going to be okay. I had a family now. Nothing was going to change. Feeling right better and feeling that need I always got to protect the girl sitting on the floor beside me, I patted her hand and said, “Honey, maybe your momma just couldn’t help it either.” I paused. “And Charles,” I continued. “I mean, he’s my brother. Shouldn’t he have known better than this?”
Gray shook her head. “I have crazy-ass Quinn as a sister. Trust me, I can relate.”
“And you just forgave her for all her crap? Just like that?”
She scrunched her nose, and I could tell she was debating what she would say. “Well…” She shrugged. “She’s my sister, Di.”
I sighed. Damn it. I hated when she was right. He was my brother. Even if I wanted to be mad at him, it felt biologically impossible. He had fought for me his entire life. I knew, deep down, that he meant well. But I wasn’t ready to move forward. Not yet.
“What are you going to do?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly.
“I’m here,” she said.
“I know.”
For now, that was enough.
CHAPTER 22
gray: leaving
What almost-thirty-five-year-old woman in her right mind blames her dead brother for taking her mother away from her? I knew it was insane; I knew it was irrational. But I knew now that it was true. Diana had been right. I was mad at my mother. I felt like she had just left me here to sort out all these problems.
When I put it in perspective, my mom dying when I was already a mom, after she had loved me and raised me and brought me up day in and day out forever, that wasn’t leaving me. Leaving was when you did something like Diana’s mom. Leaving was when you left your kids there by themselves to rot. But, as I’d told Diana earlier, she must have had a reason.
I felt my stomach clench, and I closed my eyes and took three deep breaths. Wagner was fine. Wagner was going to be fine. Nothing was going to happen to my son. I wondered if this was every mother’s most common fear, if every mother pictured her child being ripped away from her, or if this was my fear because of my brother.
Everything is fine. Well, everything except Andrew. And it was all my fault. I had pushed him away. I had let him go. I deserved what I was getting now. Even worse, I had let Price, a man I could have really loved and made a life with, go too. What the hell was wrong with me? Was this what divorce did to women, made them terminally insane and bad with men?
Even still, I knew that what Diana was going through was so much worse than all of that put together. My problems were temporary. Hers was something that had haunted her for a lifetime and, no matter the outcome, would continue to. I had come outside because she’d asked for some time alone and, even though I was more of the smothering kind, I let her have that.
I knew as well as anyone who had grown up coming to this little part of the coast that warm September air didn’t equal warm water, but I couldn’t shake this overwhelming need to go for a swim. I almost wanted the cold, the pins-and-needles burning, the shock of it all pulling the breath right out of my lungs. It was the closest thing to a lobotomy that I knew of.
I slipped on my smallest bikini and checked out the now pointless progress of all those squats I’d been doing. Walking across the yard into the setting sun, I dropped my towel on the dock and dove in. It was like that day in the British Virgin Islands, the day when Greg told me he didn’t love me anymore, all over again.
The tears I’d been pushing away finally came. I could see Diana watching me from the glass French door
s of the living room. I composed myself because I didn’t want her to know that I was upset, especially because if anyone had a right to be upset, it was her.
But she knew anyway. She opened the door and came out. “What’s wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, the late afternoon swim in freezing-ass water is not necessarily your normal behavior.”
I shrugged, walking up the sand until I was about waist-deep. “I’m just worried about you.” That was true.
She looked at me sideways. “I know, and thank you. But what?”
“I think you’re having a real problem right now. I’m not going to bore you with my absurdly trivial one.”
I smiled at her expanding belly. She looked so cute it almost made me want to do it again. Via in vitro, I thought, because I am going to be alone forever. Wagner had turned out pretty good. Maybe I could have some of Greg’s sperm.… I shook my head. Now I really was going off the rails.
“Yeah,” Diana said, “but I think your trivial problem might help take my mind off my real one.”
I wrung my hair out, my bangles tinkling on my wrist, and said, “I was too late.”
“Whoa!” I heard his voice before I could see him. “Is that Bo Derek?”
“Maybe you weren’t too late after all.” Diana winked at me, then turned and walked back into the house.
I managed a small smile. “Andrew, I’m sorry. I know I put you in a bad spot. Please go back to your girlfriend.”
He pulled his shirt over his head. “Good Lord,” he said as he waded into the cold water, clutching his arms and shivering. Then he wrapped his arms around me. “Sorry. There’s no way I’ll survive this temperature without a little body heat.” He looked at me earnestly. “The girl is not a girlfriend. She was a date to an oyster roast that my parents insisted I go to.”
I nodded. “So, do you like her?”
He shrugged. “Do you like me?”
I started to answer, but he put his finger over my lips. “Wait. I need to talk for a minute.”
I nodded.
“I have two job offers on the table right now for after graduation, one at the Straits Club and one at the Lowcountry Club.”
“Well, I—” I said through his finger.
“I’m not finished.” He grinned at me. “Obviously, the Lowcountry Club is sort of my dream job, and I can stay in Charleston with my friends.”
My eyes locked on his, and I found myself searching his face as if it were for the first time.
“But I’ve already accepted the one at the Straits Club, making way less money. Would you like to know why?”
I smiled, his finger still on my lips, and nodded.
“Because I love you, and I want to see if we can make this thing work despite your very stupid reservations about it. Would that be okay with you?” He finally dropped his hand.
I nodded again. “I shouldn’t have underestimated you, Andrew. And I do see you. I see how extraordinary you are, and I promise I will never take you for granted again. I am ready to put you first, to try this for real, to give you what you deserve and what you want.”
“Gray?”
“What?”
He took my hand in his, and we walked toward the shore.
“Do you know what I want more than anything?”
I shook my head and smiled.
“To take this relationship out on dry land.”
diana: come hell or high water
I couldn’t avoid Charles and Momma forever. But I wasn’t going back to Frank’s house until I was good and sure the coast was clear. I wasn’t sure how I was going to know the coast was clear, so I sat in the guesthouse that used to be mine, and I waited—and sort of half-heartedly tried to straighten up some of the mess that was Quinn. Lord. It must’ve been genetic.
I wasn’t real clear on what I was even waiting for. Just waiting, I guess, like an old preacher for the deliverance day. When a pair of lights shone through the darkness and onto the driveway, I felt that deep, internal sigh, like maybe I was finally getting saved too.
He got out of the car, all tall and strong, and I’d been sitting in here blaming him just a little, though Lord knows it wasn’t his fault. I guess the part of me that had been really scared that he wasn’t coming was so relieved that when he walked through the door I ran to him and he held me tight. He hadn’t left me. I wasn’t alone.
Neither of us said anything for a long time, just letting that love sink in, letting it wash over us and cleanse us deep into even our very worst parts.
When Frank spoke, I wished he hadn’t, because I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to have to care about her. I wanted to be with him and our baby. We would have our own little family. Only, way deep down, even I knew that wasn’t how this stuff works.
“She’s an addict,” Frank said.
“Who?”
“Your mom.”
“Okay,” I said, my voice noncommittal but my blood running cold. “Sure. That’s fine. Whatever. I don’t really care. I’ve been twenty-nine years without a momma, and I don’t need one now.”
“But it doesn’t change the fact that your mother has been fighting this disease for your entire life.” He took a deep breath and said, very calmly, “I don’t want you to be upset, but she got into some trouble and was in jail. That’s why she never came home.”
I was pissed because I could feel myself starting to care just a little bit, not even really as her daughter but more as like an innocent bystander who was finding this story interesting. “So how’s she out now?”
“Well, that’s the tough part.” He bit his lip. “She was only in jail for five years, but then it took her a few years to get the right help, and then she figured y’all wouldn’t even want her back.”
I felt it again, that thing that I was trying to distance myself from—hot and intense and piercing—pure, unadulterated anger.
He just kept on yammering. “She started looking for you a few months ago. For all of you. She just happened to find Charles first. She’s doing really well now. She’s been clean for almost ten years.”
I could still feel it, that bubbling anger, mixed with probably the worst pain of my life. Well, maybe not as bad as when she left, but pretty bad all the same. My mother had been out of jail since the time I was sixteen years old, and she never even cared enough to look for me. And now she wanted us back? I don’t think so. But I wasn’t going to cry over any of it. Nope. So I yawned. “You know, Frank, she was dead this morning. She’ll be dead again in a few years. I don’t really have the energy for all this. I don’t need a mom now. Don’t want her either.”
He didn’t say anything, but I could tell he didn’t approve. And I got that. Because I’d seen people I’d really loved go through that shit, and I knew they couldn’t help it. I knew it wasn’t their fault. But when it’s your own mother, it feels different. Frank didn’t understand. He hadn’t lived through the mess I’d lived through.
I swore inside, like this little baby could hear me, that it didn’t matter what happened, come hell or high water or something we didn’t even know about yet, I’d do everything in my power to never leave it. Frank and I had been debating our wedding date, whether we should take a long time and plan a big wedding or put the pedal to the metal and do it as soon as possible. It all seemed really clear now.
“Frank,” I said, “can we get married now?”
“Darling,” he said, “I thought you’d never ask.”
* * *
“I can’t wait for you to see him,” I said to Frank for about the millionth time.
He squeezed my hand. “Me too, babe.”
I walked up to the window where I normally checked in.
“Hello there, Miss Diana,” Karen said. “You’ve got that glow. When’s that baby coming?”
“Thanks,” I said, looking down at my ever-expanding belly. I looked at Frank, and you would have thought his son had just pitched the winning game of the Wor
ld Series for how tickled he was over all of it.
“You here to get the rest of Phillip’s things?” she added.
I cocked my head to the side. “The rest of his things? What do you mean?”
Karen furrowed her brow. “Well, it says right here that somebody checked him out.”
I felt myself starting to panic, my breath getting short. “What do you mean, somebody checked him out?” I could hear my voice getting louder and sterner.
She looked real worried. “I wasn’t here, but it says that somebody checked him out. All his discharge paperwork’s been filled out.”
I looked at Frank and could see my panic mirrored in his eyes. “I’m sure there’s an explanation, babe,” he said. “Let’s calm down.”
Sure. Right. An explanation. “Charles,” I said. “Charles got him.”
Frank took my hands in his. “I’m sure he did. Let’s try not to get so worked up. This has been a very stressful couple of weeks for you, and we need to remember what’s important here, okay?”
I was pretty damn tired of everyone treating me like some sort of terminal cancer patient. I was pregnant. People were pregnant all day, every day without everyone all up in their grille about it.
I marched back to the car, Frank following right behind. I slid into his convertible and was barely in the seat before I had my hand on the phone and was dialing Charles.
“Hello,” he answered. He sounded miffed. But I was thinking that if anybody should be miffed, it was me. Springing her on me like that. What was he thinking?
“I went to see Phillip, and he is gone.” I was trying not to get hysterical again.
“Yeah,” he said. “I got him.”
“Well, thanks for telling me,” I said, “the one who actually goes and sees him all the time.” My voice was strained. “Did it occur to you that maybe I would be worried when I went to see my brother and he was gone? Did you think about that, Charles?”
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