The Shadows We Hide

by Allen Eskens

  I didn’t want to argue with Moody at that moment. Kathy was about to speak, and what she had to say mattered to me more than the logistics of my meeting with Moody Lynch. I sent a quick answer back to Moody―okay—telling myself that I could always change my mind later, after I had time to give it some thought.

  From below, my mother’s words, sad and quiet, climbed the stairs to where Jeremy and I sat. “Hi, everyone, I’m Kathy, and I’m an alcoholic and a meth addict.”

  Those words sent an unexpected chill through me, her cold admission putting into words the source of much of my own pain. But I shook off my reaction. They were just words, the dogma of Alcoholics Anonymous. I had no doubt that Kathy could chant a pretty convincing liturgy if she needed to. One thing I knew for certain about my mother was that she could fake it with the best of them. I gathered my skepticism back up around my shoulders and waited.

  “I…I didn’t plan to speak tonight,” she said. “I usually have time to get my head right, so please bear with me if I stumble a bit.” She paused, and I could hear her taking deep breaths. Then she began with, “I used to be the mother of two beautiful boys, Joe and Jeremy.”

  When Jeremy heard Kathy say his name, he began to stand up. I tugged at the sleeve of his shirt to pull him back to the step. He sat on the very edge and began rubbing his right thumb against the knuckles of his left hand, his eyes again locked on the wall ahead. This was a bad idea.

  “And because I chose my addiction over them, I haven’t seen either of them, or spoken to them, in a long time.”

  I fully expected my mother to whitewash our shared history, those parts of her life that I had experienced and could refute. I readied myself for a tale of how she’d been wronged by her defiant and selfish son, and how the system had it in for her. I waited for the excuses and the half-truths—and, quite frankly, the lies. She didn’t know that Jeremy and I were hiding on the steps. She could paint our past with any color she chose.

  But Kathy didn’t whitewash her story. She spoke slowly and honestly about the shipwreck that had been our lives. Sometimes she would pause to choke back her emotions as she talked about her drinking and leaving us boys alone. I could hear rawness in her words as she told those gathered that she had come to see her children as a burden. “I thought of my sons as stones around my neck,” she said. “It’s a terrible thing to admit, but I believed that if I didn’t have them in my life, I’d be happier.”

  Her words began to falter and lose their footing, so she paused again. When she was able to continue, she said, “And then it all came to a head one night when I watched a man hit my autistic son, Jeremy. It was a man that I was dating at the time. We had been doing meth and we were drinking―and when he hit Jeremy, I did nothing.”

  Her sobs cut into her words, and she stopped again to take another deep breath. “He punched my son in the face with his fist, and all I could do was make excuses for why it was okay.” She pushed ahead, her voice rising in pitch as her emotions peaked. “I was his mother. I was supposed to protect him. I should have done something. I should have called the police. But all I could think was that I didn’t want to be alone.”

  Kathy fought to hold it together, taking another pause in her story. Jeremy had stopped rubbing his hand, his eyes now cast down to the bottom of the stairs, his face pinched like he was trying to piece together a puzzle that had no picture.

  After Kathy regained her composure, she said, “That night, my son Joe came and took his brother away for good. You’d think something like that would be enough to turn your life around, but for me, it wasn’t.” An edge of anger began to grow in Kathy’s voice. “I got arrested for possessing methamphetamine—and that wasn’t enough. My son sued me for guardianship of his brother and won—and that wasn’t enough. I still thought I’d get through probation and go back to using. I knew that I could beat the system. None of those things were going to change me because the harder the world pushed at me, the harder I was going to push back.”

  Mom’s angry tone fell away. “But then one day I was walking home from an appointment with my psychologist, and I stopped at a park to rest. There, I saw these two boys playing, and one of the boys, the younger brother, had Down syndrome. It struck me how caring and protective the older brother was. I became mesmerized by them. And when it came time to leave, the older brother picked up his younger brother’s coat and helped him put it on.

  “When he did that, a memory came to me, something I had forgotten a long time ago. Joey had to be maybe eight, and Jeremy six. I was taking them to my father’s house so he could watch them while I went out drinking. I remember that I was in a rush, and I was yelling at the boys to hurry up.

  “We walked out of the house, and I was holding both their hands, but Joey pulled free and ran back into the house. It was cold that day, and I yelled at Joey, I mean I really laid into him, for making me wait in the chill. When Joey came back out, he carried…he carried Jeremy’s winter coat.” My mother’s voice shook with emotion as she struggled to keep going. “I…had dragged Jeremy out into the cold without his coat. Joe brought it out and helped Jeremy put it on.

  “That day in the park, when that memory came back to me, I started to cry. I ran home, my eyes so full of tears that I could barely see. I ran to my bedroom and sat on the floor in the corner—and I cried and cried and cried. It was as if all the mistakes I’d made came flooding back to me. I saw what I had done and what I had missed out on for all those years. I couldn’t stop crying, because for the first time in my life I was able to see who I really was―and it hurt.”

  Jeremy leaned forward, like he wanted to stand up. I think he was waiting to see if I would pull him back. I didn’t.

  “I lost my boys,” my mother said, her words breaking under the weight of our history. “I loved alcohol more than I loved them. I loved meth more. I had everything I needed to be happy. They were right in front of me the whole time. All I had to do was open my eyes and see them.”

  I stood and walked with Jeremy down the stairs.

  “My addiction robbed me of—” Kathy stopped mid-sentence, her mouth frozen open. She stared at us as if she were unable to understand what she was seeing. She brought her fingers to her mouth, a muffled wail escaping her lips. Her knees buckled beneath her, and Terry rushed forward to help her to the floor.

  Others in the room turned around to see what had caused their speaker to collapse. Many of them had already been crying, moved by Kathy’s story. When they saw us, they quickly put two and two together, and pretty soon, it seemed like no one in the room had a dry eye—except for Jeremy.

  Chapter 30

  Jeremy and I, materializing in the back of the AA meeting the way we did, brought the whole proceeding to a screeching halt. Jeremy walked up to Kathy and said hello as though he’d just seen her yesterday. Mom then gave Jeremy a light hug, keeping it short because Jeremy doesn’t like hugs. I stayed in the back of the room and waited as Bremer led Kathy and Jeremy out.

  We headed up the stairs and out of the church, none of us having any idea what to do next. Once outside, the evening became thick with unspoken conversations as we stood next to one another making awkward small talk. Finally, it was Bremer who suggested that Jeremy and I accompany our mother back to her apartment.

  Walking into my old home, the apartment where I last shared a meal with my mother and my brother so many years ago, made my knees a little shaky―like that feeling you get as adrenaline starts to leave the fibers of your muscles. It looked the same, yet it looked different. Gone were the dishes stacked high in the sink, the clothing hanging over the backs of chairs, the subtle aroma of decay born of a want of vacuuming. Kathy now owned a couch devoid of drink stains, and all around were items that seemed out of place: fragile China figurines, porcelain vases, glass bowls of potpourri—things that would never have survived in our old world.

  Mom looked different too. She had cut her hair short, the flowing locks of her youth replaced by a simple bob that gave he
r face a soft frame. In that one simple act, it was as if she had signaled to the world that she was done seeking attention, and instead wanted to be taken seriously.

  Mom turned on the television for Jeremy, and put an old movie into her DVD player—The Lion King. “I bet you haven’t watched this in a while,” she said to him.

  Jeremy pulled his chin into his chest as he considered her question and then said, “Maybe it has been a long time.” He sat on the couch to watch the movie, his back straight and his hands on his knees.

  Kathy nodded toward the kitchen table. I followed her there, and we sat and stared at each other for an uncomfortable few moments. I wanted to say something nice, but the only thing that came to mind was to compliment her on cleaning up her act, and that sounded more like an insult when I practiced it in my head. I’m sure she was having a similar struggle. Finally, it was Kathy who spoke.

  “I guess you could tell by my reaction that I wasn’t expecting you tonight.”

  “You can thank Terry Bremer for that. I think he knew that we were listening in the back. That’s why he wanted you to tell your story.”

  “I’m glad he did it.”

  “I didn’t know you were such a good speaker,” I said.

  “I didn’t either. It’s just something you do when you go through recovery, I guess. You want to tell others how you screwed up, and maybe they can learn from your mistakes.”

  I wanted to be comforting and tell her that she wasn’t that bad of a mother, but we both would have known that to be a lie. As I watched this stranger across the table from me, I felt a need to be careful in my words; I didn’t want to say something that might cause her to unravel and revert back to the Kathy of my youth.

  “How is Lila?” Kathy asked.

  “She’s great,” I said. I didn’t see any need to go into the difficulties pressing down on Lila and me at the moment.

  “She’s a sweet girl. She called me a while back. Did you know that?”

  “Yes,” I said, doing little to hide my displeasure.

  “I hope you’re not mad at her about that.”

  I shook my head.

  “She said she’s studying to be a lawyer. I didn’t know that she wanted to be a lawyer—or if I did know it, I don’t remember. I don’t remember a lot of what I should. It’s strange how your mind really does heal once you get off everything. They used to tell me that kind of thing in treatment. They said that it took time, but I never gave it time. It probably took two years for the fog to fully lift.”

  “Well, you’re looking…healthy.”

  “Thanks. I feel healthy. I’m in therapy now.”

  Bremer told me about that, but I acted like I didn’t know.

  “They have me on lithium.”

  “Lithium? That’s…isn’t that, like a major medication?”

  “It is. I’ve been living with bipolar for most of my life, and there’s the PTSD stemming from my mom’s death.”

  I knew that Grandma Nelson died when Mom was still in high school, but in my youth, that tragedy—a car accident—never seemed to carry any weight. My grandmother’s death and her absence from our lives seemed to be little more than ammunition my mother used to show what an ungrateful wretch I was—how I had it so much better than she did because I had a mother.

  “There’s a lot about her death that I never told anyone, not even my father. I thought I left it behind, but that’s the thing I’m learning in therapy―stuff like that doesn’t go away.”

  “Can you talk about it now?” I asked as gently as I could.

  Kathy looked at the table between us, her eyes locked on a memory far away, her fingers folding together like someone about to enter into a prayer. Then she said, “I was a senior in high school, on the volleyball team, and we were playing regionals. Mom didn’t really like coming to my games. I think if she had her way, she would have stayed at home so she could watch TV and drink wine.” My mother looked at me with a wry smile. “I’m afraid this apple didn’t fall very far from that tree.”

  I didn’t let myself respond in any way.

  “I threw a fit that day,” Kathy said. “I screamed at her and told her that if she didn’t come watch me play, she could just give up on being my mom, because I was going to give up on being her daughter. We said a lot of terrible things to each other that day. Your grandpa usually refereed our arguments, kept us from going too far, but he wasn’t there that time.”

  Kathy got up, pulled some tissues from a box in the kitchen, and returned to the table, touching a tissue to the corners of her eyes.

  “My mother came to the tournament, but not before drinking enough wine to get her through the evening. I was standing outside the gym, warming up, practicing my bumps and sets with some other girls, when we heard this terrible screeching sound and a crash.”

  She paused to take a few breaths to calm herself.

  “I saw the smoke and ran toward it. When I got there, one of the cars was already on fire. That’s when I saw my mother, slumped over in the driver’s seat of the burning car. I screamed and ran toward her door, but before I could get there, the car erupted in flames.”

  Lost in her story, my mother stopped dabbing at the tears that now flowed down her cheeks. “I watched my mother die—burn to death. I know she was unconscious, and all I could do was pray that she didn’t feel the flames. Her autopsy showed that she was drunk when she blew the stop sign. Thank God the other woman lived.”

  Kathy’s hands remained folded together, limp, inches away from my hand. I slowly reached out and laid my fingers on hers. I think this surprised her because she gave a short inhale, and then smiled through her tears.

  “I never told my father about the argument we had that day. I didn’t want him to know that it was my fault Mom drove drunk. Her death was my fault.”

  “That’s not true, though,” I said. “You understand that, don’t you?”

  My mother wrapped her hands around mine and gave a squeeze. “I know,” she said. “But that’s how I saw it for all these years.” She gave a slight chuckle to relieve the tension. “You have no idea how messed up I was.”

  I smiled. “I have some idea.”

  She turned serious again. “I want to thank you for what you did.”

  “What I did?”

  She gave a nod toward Jeremy. “You saved Jeremy’s life. That day you took him out of here, I…well, I think deep down I was glad. I knew that things were getting out of hand with Larry. It was only a matter of time before Larry would take the abuse to another level. I knew that.”

  “I was just acting on emotion. I didn’t mean to mess his knee up,” I said, although I really didn’t believe that.

  “Good riddance to him,” Kathy said. “Except, I always thought this was a temporary thing—you taking Jeremy. I thought I’d get myself together, and we’d go back to how it was. But then you sued me for guardianship.”

  I braced for the impact.

  “If you hadn’t done that, I don’t know what might have happened to Jeremy.”

  My shoulders relaxed.

  “He needed someone to take care of him, and I couldn’t even take care of myself. I’m so proud of you, Joe, and I can’t tell you how happy I am right now. I never thought I’d see you and Jeremy again. Can you stay for a while, or are you going back to the Twin Cities tonight?”

  “Actually, Jeremy and I are staying in Buckley.”

  “Buckley?”

  “Joe Talbert Senior died there on Tuesday night. Did you know he was living in Buckley?”

  She pulled her hands back from mine. “Joe’s dead? I didn’t know. How did you…I mean, have you been in contact with him?”

  “I found out through a press release. He was…well, someone killed him.”

  Kathy picked up her tissues and wadded them together in her palm, her eyes lost in a kind of melancholy haze. “It doesn’t surprise me that he died that way,” she said. “He wasn’t a very nice man.”

  “Was he really my fat
her?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I considered telling her about the money but quickly decided to keep that information to myself. Things were complicated enough already. “I mean, is there a possibility that he’s not my biological father?”

  She didn’t answer right away, and I could see in her eyes that my question struck a nerve. “He’s your father.” She sounded less than sure.

  “Is there any chance he’s not?”

  “Joe, I wasn’t in a very good place at that point of my life. That’s no excuse. I…I did a lot of foolish things. I found my worth in the eyes of the men I was with.” Her cheeks flushed pink as she fumbled with her explanation. “It’s a hard thing to say…especially to your own son, but…there were a number of men in my life back then. It’s hard to know a hundred percent, but I’m sure that Joe was your father.”

  “But not a hundred percent sure.”

  “Joe, please don’t—”

  “Did you know his brother, Charlie?”

  Kathy grimaced, as if the name alone was enough to put a bitter taste in her mouth. “Charlie Talbert is a vile human being. I’m doing my best to see the good in people, now that I’m in recovery, but that man…”

  “I heard that Joe and Charlie didn’t get along.”

  “Joe hated Charlie.”

  “How come?”

  Mom gave me a look, as if to say, Don’t make me go down that rabbit hole. Then she wiped her nose on a tissue, licked her lips, and nodded.

  “People always thought that it was because Charlie was everything Joe wasn’t: smart, successful, polished. Back in high school, Charlie was one of those boys who seemed to come out on top, no matter what. They were both bad boys, but Charlie was the one you dated so you could brag to your girlfriends about it. Joe…well, Joe was the guy you settled for.”

  I could see a wave of regret building up in my mother’s eyes.