“Grace?” he said, his eyes closed.
“You already know that my mother doesn’t love me, that she doesn’t want me or Hope in her life.”
“Grace?” Bradley opened his eyes and slowly sat up on bed. “What’s going on?”
“Admit it,” said Grace. “You’ve known from the very beginning that my idea to contact my mother was ridiculous.”
Bradley reached out for her, but Grace took a step backward. “Grace, sit down,” he said. “What are we talking about, and why are we talking about this now”—he looked at his phone on the table next to the bed—“at two thirty in the morning?”
Grace stood her ground. “You should have told me it wouldn’t work. But instead you let me live in a fairytale world, as if a mother who had made no effort to contact her daughter, who didn’t want her in the first place, would suddenly want to be her best friend.”
Bradley turned on the lamp on the table next to the bed. “You’re going to have to start from the beginning, Grace. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about my mother, obviously,” said Grace. “I’m talking about the fact that you and your mother encouraged me to do this and have now abandoned me, just as she has.”
“Grace, honey, sit down on the bed here.” She complied. Bradley did not try to touch her. “What brought this on?”
“I woke up with the thought that my mother hasn’t tried to contact me since I met with her in June.”
“Have you contacted her?”
“No. That’s part of the equation, I guess. That she hasn’t called me, and that I haven’t called her.”
“What do you think this means?”
Grace’s eyes grew soft. “That she doesn’t love me?” Tears quickly gathered in her lower eyelids. “That she never loved me?” Bradley scooted over closer to Grace, but kept his arms at his sides. “What do you think?” she asked.
Bradley still looked half-asleep. “What do you think?” he asked.
“I think I’ve been a fool.” This was a word her grandfather used to describe most of the people in his life. It was a pretty bad slight to be called a fool by Rick Taylor, though not quite as bad as being called a heathen.
“For getting in touch with your mother? For giving her another chance? That’s not foolish, Grace. That’s kind and loving.”
“But she’s not a kind and loving person,” said Grace. “Why did I think she had changed over the years?”
“People sometimes do change,” said Bradley. “But I guess more often they don’t.”
“So, you agree with me that she wants nothing to do with me.”
Bradley sighed and then said, “This reunion thing may just be above her pay grade, Grace. She may simply not be capable to doing this, of opening herself up, of being available to have a relationship with you.”
Grace’s eyes were tearing. Bradley now reached over and wrapped his arms around her. “Or Hope,” she managed to say. “She wants nothing to do with her daughter or her granddaughter.”
“Shhhhhh,” said Bradley. “You have me. I want everything to do with you and Hope.”
“I’m an idiot.”
“You are not an idiot,” said Bradley. “What you did by reaching out to her was incredible. If she can’t handle that, it’s her problem, not yours.”
“But it feels like my problem,” said Grace. “It feels like I’m the problem, like I’ve always been the problem.”
“You are not the problem,” said Bradley. “You are the solution.”
Grace sat up, and Bradley slowly released her from his arms. She wiped the tears from her cheeks with her fingertips. “The solution to what?”
“The solution to my happy, perfect life.”
Grace grabbed a tissue from the box on the bedside table. She wiped her eyes and then looked into his. “You are a lousy liar.”
He smiled at her, and she offered a small, subdued version in return. “Let’s talk more in the morning,” he said. “You and I both need to get back to sleep.”
Grace climbed over Bradley to her side of the bed. “Okay,” she said, “Thank you for listening.”
“I love listening to you,” he said, switching off the lamp. Grace watched him as he settled onto his back and closed his eyes. Within a minute, he was out. Grace rolled over onto her back and stared at the ceiling, repeating in her head what Bradley had said.
CHAPTER 54
It was a Thursday evening, close to the end of what had been a challenging week of work for Grace. The car dealership Grace had been wooing had, in the end, chosen to sign with another agency. And Paul, who had, just before Hope was born, taken to praising Grace’s work in team meetings, had walked into her office that afternoon, closed the door behind him, and told her he was worried about her commitment level to the agency, about whether or not she had her head back in the game after being home for four months with a new baby. Grace, who had never been spoken to in this manner because she had worked harder at school and her various jobs than any of her peers, was disconsolate. By the time she and Bradley were belted into the car, however, Grace had become frustrated and angry. Bradley offered to drive, but Grace insisted on “being in control of something in life!” Plus, the driver got to choose the radio station, and Grace could not endure another forty-minute drive filled with Bradley’s latest rap obsession, which they had listened to both ways on Monday and Tuesday and on the way to work that morning. She hit the button for the local public radio station, and pulled the car out of the lot. “What does Paul even mean by that?” she asked. “I give his agency everything I have.”
“You know Paul,” said Bradley. “Sometimes he says stuff he doesn’t mean.”
“Not to me,” said Grace, weaving around a teenage driver who was obviously texting. “He has never said anything like this to me before.”
“There’s always a first time,” said Bradley, phone in hand, flipping through images on Instagram.
“What?”
“What?” Bradley responded.
“There’s always a first time? That’s your commentary on this, Bradley, that there’s always a first time? What about Paul’s crazy, or Paul’s obviously way out of line?”
“Come on, Grace,” said Bradley. “You don’t think there’s a slight possibility that you are distracted? That you are thinking about Hope instead of thinking about work?”
Grace cut off another driver, who blasted his horn. “What kind of ludicrous question is that, Bradley? We all have our distractions in life. Do you, for example, ever catch yourself thinking about Rachel Spitzer instead of me?”
Bradley lowered his phone to his lap. “What are you talking about? We were just talking about the possibility of you, as a new mother, being distracted at work, and now we’re on to Rachel Spitzer? Jesus, talk about evasion techniques, Grace. Why don’t you just admit that you’re occasionally distracted?”
Grace sped up the ramp to the highway and immediately crossed over into the fast lane, with only the most cursory of glances in her side-view mirror. “And why don’t you just admit that you’re attracted to Rachel?” Bradley said nothing. “When I caught her at our house, wearing a bathing suit that left nothing to the imagination, I asked you about her, and you had nothing to tell me. Did you invite her there, Bradley? Did you come up with the gallant suggestion of watching Hope simply to be with Rachel?”
“No! She stopped by. It was her idea.”
“Out of the blue,” said Grace. “Just like that.”
“That’s right.”
“So, you’ve not given her any signals, any encouragement?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Grace,” said Bradley. “I’ve never seen this side of you, this jealous side. And I have to tell you, I don’t like it.”
“Let me tell you what I don’t like,” said Grace, depressing the accelerator until the car was traveling at eighty-five miles per hour. “Every time I look up from my work and through my door to your desk, Rach
el, in one tight-fitting top or another, is there, showing you something on her phone, bringing you a cup of coffee, generally hanging around with her chest hanging out.”
“Grace, slow down!”
“I’ll slow down as soon as you start telling me the story about you and Rachel,” said Grace. The car was now traveling at ninety miles per hour.
“There’s no story!” Bradley shouted.
“I don’t believe you!” yelled Grace, depressing the accelerator.
“Shit, Grace, slow the car down or let me out!” Grace took her foot off the gas and eased into the middle lane. “Jesus, what’s wrong with you?”
“Let’s see. I’ve got a boss who’s lost faith in me and an unfaithful boyfriend, who is also the father of my child. Am I overreacting?” Grace’s voice was laced with the sarcasm she heard in her childhood.
“Yes, you are,” said Bradley calmly. “I think Paul is right. I think you are distracted. But, as I just mentioned, this is natural, Grace. I think all mothers are distracted by anything that takes them away from their child. And yes, I think you are overreacting about Rachel. She has a crush on me, Grace. That’s all it is.”
“A crush?”
“Yes,” said Bradley. “She’s got a crush on me. It’s harmless. It means nothing.”
“Oh, I disagree,” said Grace. “Because if I’m not mistaken, you once had a crush on me. That harmless feeling led to sex in the backseat of my car. We now live together with the consequences of that crush.”
“What we have is different.”
“Why? Why is what we have different when it started out the same way that Rachel is feeling about you?” asked Grace. “And I haven’t even asked yet how you feel about her.” Bradley said nothing. “Are you silent because you have no feelings for her, or are you cooking up a lie that will placate me?”
“That’s not fair,” said Bradley. “You’re not being fair.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Grace. The sarcasm had returned. “Tell me what I need to do, how I need to ask, to fairly assess your relationship with Rachel?”
“It’s a stupid crush, Grace.”
“We’ve established that. What we haven’t established is how you feel about her?”
“Okay, okay,” said Bradley. “I admit that I’m flattered by it. I’m flattered by her attention.”
“Flattered, as in the sensation felt when on the receiving end of a compliment? Or flattered in that you’d like to proceed to the next step? Perhaps you have already.”
“We have not!”
“Oh, so now you’re a we?”
“This is bullshit, Grace,” said Bradley. “You’re pissed off because you haven’t been giving a hundred percent at the office, and you got called on it. Why don’t you just admit it, find your focus, and move on? Your line of questioning is unwarranted and unjustified. And I resent it.”
Grace laughed aloud. “Did you hear that line on one of the insipid television shows you watch on your laptop? This is real life, Bradley, with real-life issues and real-life accountability. And you, my young friend, are accountable for whatever actions you have taken or are thinking about taking with Rachel. If you want to have a relationship with her, then go ahead and do it. But you need to get out of your relationship with me—and with Hope, if one can even call that a relationship—before you start waving your dick at someone else.”
Bradley crossed his arms over his chest. “I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you,” he said. “I’ve never heard you talk like this, Grace.”
“Yeah? Well, get used to it,” she said. “Because the older woman stupid enough to get involved with a younger man who likes to have sex but wants nothing to do with the offspring it produced talks this way to this younger man who thinks there’s nothing wrong with fantasizing about a coworker when he’s sleeping with her boss.”
“You’re beyond crazy.”
Grace made no reply. She was not sorry for what she’d said because it needed to be said; Bradley’s obvious interest in Rachel needed to be aired. And the car was a good place for a discussion that has the potential to carry some heat. No one can walk away. And those involved don’t need to look at each other. What she was sorry about was the anger. It had shot to the surface with her mother, and here it was again. Rick Taylor had been an angry man, and Grace had been on the receiving end of his frequent rantings. And in her accusations against Bradley, she had sounded just like him.
CHAPTER 55
The letter from her mother arrived the next day.
Dear Grace,
This is not an easy letter to write.
Grace got up from the couch, where she had sat with the pile of catalogs and bills she retrieved from the mailbox, and walked into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. As the water boiled, she looked out at the beach, busy with people walking the shoreline and sitting in colorful sand chairs. As soon as Hope awoke from her nap, Grace would slide her into her new backpack carrier and head out for a walk. The fresh air would help soothe the unsettled feeling already building in Grace’s stomach from reading the first line of Robin’s letter. Mug of Constant Comment in hand, she returned to the couch, the other hand holding two of the almond cookies Shannon had dropped off that morning on her way to work. Grace and Shannon had talked on the phone after Bradley had gone to bed, Grace telling her good friend about her outburst in the car with Bradley and about Bradley admitting to being flattered by Rachel’s attention. Grace took a sip of the tea and picked up the letter she had laid down on the couch cushion.
You are so brave to contact me. And to make an effort to include me in your life, especially considering the way I’ve treated you, the way I’ve ignored you.
When I had you, I was not ready to be a mother. I was not a strong person, or mature enough to stand up to my parents. I needed them. I needed their financial support. And I needed their emotional support, as warped as it must have seemed to you at times. In spite of my ineptitude, you thrived, Grace. You excelled at school and you earned a college scholarship. You were everything I wanted to be. And then you left. I did not blame you for leaving the house after you graduated from high school. In fact, I silently cheered your departure. You were off to make your way in the world—which you’ve done quite nicely!
Your departure also gave me an opportunity to make my way in the world. And I have done this for twenty-five years without you. I thought about you. I wondered about you. But I had to live my life. And now that I have done this, I think it’s best if I continue to do this, without you. I feel guilty every day about the pain I know I caused you, but there is not enough time in the universe for me to make up for the way I mishandled motherhood. And it’s simply too hard for me to revisit this awful period in both of our lives.
I am finally happy in life. And I can see that you are happy. I wish you the very best in everything that you do. And, in my own way, I do love you. I just think it’s better if our lives are lived separately.
Love,
Robin
Grace set the letter back down, ate the cookies, and finished her tea, all the while trying to figure out why she felt so hurt by a woman who had abandoned her a long time ago. She reached for her cell phone and called Dorrie, who had just finished an appointment and had almost thirty minutes of free time until the next one. Grace read her the letter.
“She’s being honest with you, Grace,” said Dorrie. “And as hard as her thoughts may be for you to hear, they are, nonetheless, her thoughts.”
“I understand that,” said Grace. “What I don’t understand is why I feel so terribly sad reading them.”
“Because you were hopeful,” said Dorrie. “You were hopeful that you could have a connection with your mother, even though the chances of having a meaningful relationship with her after all this time were not good.”
“It was stupid to contact her.”
“Not in my opinion,” said Dorrie. “I agree with Robin that you were very brave to contact her. And I love your optimism; everyone is
so damned skeptical these days. You did what you could do, Grace. But you can only control your side of the equation. And your mother, for what she must consider good reasons, is opting out of letting you back into her life.”
“Because I let her down somehow?”
“No,” said Dorrie. “Not at all. From what you and Bradley have told me, I know you had a very challenging childhood home environment, with very little love, empathy, or trust. And, in spite of this, you have grown into a competent and compassionate woman. If one of you has let the other one down in this relationship, it has not been you.”
“But I let other people down, or I won’t let them in. Interacting with my mother again has made me realize the depth of my trust issues, Dorrie.”
“This is something we can talk about, Grace, something we can work on.”
“Talking with me wouldn’t present a conflict of interest for you?”
“Because you are living with my son?”
“Well, yes,” said Grace.
“No,” said Dorrie. “It’s okay to talk, woman to woman, about whatever is on our minds. I have issues, too, you know.”
“I’ve never seen them,” said Grace.
“You’re being kind,” said Dorrie. “Here’s my suggestion for the afternoon. Get Hope into one of your fancy chest or back carriers and get outside. I know you’re working today, but a little bit of sunshine does wonders in chasing away dark thoughts.”
“I agree,” said Grace. “Thank you for talking with me.”
“It always is and always will be my pleasure,” said Dorrie.
CHAPTER 56
The following Wednesday, Grace called Dorrie “just to chat,” she said. She talked mostly about Hope, and Dorrie shared a few stories about being a working mother. This was something, other than Bradley, that Grace and Dorrie had in common. Grace drank in every anecdote, grateful to know that Dorrie, too, had work/life balance struggles.
It Started in June Page 27