The Optimist's Guide to Letting Go

by Amy E. Reichert

  “That’s what I’m here for. Besides, at her age, I’d already graduated to amaretto sours and tequila shots.”

  Gina raised an eyebrow. “That’s less helpful.”

  “You’re a good mom, just follow your instincts,” Vicky said as they both sat down at the table. “You know, I’ve always been a little jealous of you.” Gina rolled her eyes. “No, really. You married the man of your dreams no matter what Mom said. You loved each other to the point of stupid. I can barely imagine the pain you’ve experienced, and I’m sure that still isn’t even close to the reality, but you had perfection once. That’s amazing. I followed the Mom-approved route of marrying for financial security. It’s . . . a less optimal plan.”

  Vicky picked up one of the wineglasses and took a sip, made a face, then drained the glass into the sink. “That’s awful.” She set the empty glass next to the sink. “FYI, Jeff called. He’s bringing the kids up tomorrow morning. Apparently being in charge of them for thirty-six hours is too much for him. He said he didn’t marry me so he could manage the kids and make all the money. Charming, right?”

  Gina’s heart clenched for Vicky. Jeff could be a real dick. She stood and hugged Vicky, who was staring out the kitchen window, then left her alone with her thoughts. Making a mental note to pull out the air mattresses after she spoke to May, Gina took a deep breath and walked down the hall toward her daughter’s room. She tapped lightly on her bedroom door, then opened it, knowing she wasn’t going to get a response. May sat on the one spot of open floor, her clothes pushed back to form a ridge, like a crater after a bomb detonation. Gina nudged an edge to expand the area and sat down in front of her, grabbing one of her hands. May didn’t pull back, which Gina took as a good sign.

  “I’m sorry I said you were my problem. You have never, ever been a problem, and I’m sick over you thinking I feel that way. You believing that, even for a second, is my problem. I love you, May, more than you even know. I know I don’t always say or do the right things, but I am trying. Do you believe me?”

  May shrugged her shoulders, her cheeks red and her lashes wet. This was going better than expected—maybe Drew was helping her somehow.

  “Drinking and getting naked—”

  “We weren’t naked. Or getting naked.” May’s head popped up and she tried to pull her hand back, but Gina held tight.

  “Fine. Drinking and making out. Is that better?”

  She shrugged again.

  “That is a problem,” Gina continued. “You are fourteen and much too young to be drinking.”

  “I hardly had any. It was gross. Besides, you drink all the time.”

  Gina didn’t reveal that the wine had soured. Let her daughter believe wine always tasted that bad.

  “I drive a car, too. And work all day. Does that mean you’re going to do those things, too?”

  “I’ve had to deal with a lot of stuff that most grown-ups don’t deal with.”

  “I know, baby. But you don’t have to anymore. You’re a kid. Enjoy being a kid.” There, that was a good, parentally sound message. “And besides the wine, I’m not okay with shirtless making out either. I believe you that you didn’t intend for it to go further, but you’re my little girl and I’m not ready.” Gina reached over and rubbed May’s leg. “For the rest of break, you are with me all day. You’re helping me on the food truck, you’re coming to visit Grandma in the hospital—”

  “But—” May started to say.

  Gina put her hand up.

  “Let me finish. I’ve been letting you do what you want, not demanding anything of you, and that’s not what a good mother does. You’re a teen, so it’s normal for you to have days like today. But the consequences of those choices are that I’m going to try to teach you why those weren’t the right decisions. It’s time we spent a lot more time together. I don’t know you anymore, and that’s on me. You have never been, nor ever will be, a problem to me. You are what I get out of bed for. So while this might feel like torture to you, I’m really looking forward to spending more time with you. Maybe hearing a bit more about Connor . . .”

  May scrunched her face. “Grandma will probably yell at me because I haven’t been to see her yet.”

  “Actually, with the stroke, she can’t say much of anything. It makes her a little more pleasant to be around.”

  “Mom! I can’t believe you said that.” Gina skootched around so they were leaning against the bed, side by side.

  “Maybe I need to be a little more honest about things. Grandma and I never got along well when I was your age. I never could live up to her standards—always a disappointment to her. I don’t want that to happen to us.” She held out her hand. “One last thing: I’m going to need your phone. You’ll get it back when winter break is over.”

  May winced, started to protest, obviously thought better of it, and plopped it in her open hand. Gina knew this would be the worst part of May’s punishment—but a little tech-free time would be good for her. For them. She put her arm around May, who leaned her head on Gina’s shoulder. It was a start.

  After the day they all had, it was definitely a pizza delivery kind of night. A half bacon and half pepperoni was on its way, and May mixed up a batch of brownies with chunks of peanut butter cup. Gina was so proud of her flare for baking and loved sampling her fun creations. Plus, as the mom, she got first dibs on the corner pieces.

  As Gina hung up the phone after a status report from the nurse on Lorraine’s floor, Vicky ran into the kitchen, her hair wrapped in a towel, and she flung open the back door.

  “Look who’s sneaking up on us,” Vicky said.

  Roza stood on the back stoop, holding a large foil-covered pan.

  “Are those what I think they are, Aunt Roza?” May asked, swiping the pan, plopping it on the counter, and tearing off the foil to reveal the mountain of brown-speckled pierogis.

  Before May could get the plates on the table, Gina and Vicky had each grabbed one straight from the pan, like they were still teenagers themselves. The dumplings were still warm. Gina had closed her eyes to savor the onion and potato goodness in her mouth when the doorbell chimed. The pizza guy. She paid him without a word, unable to speak with her mouth full, and put it straight in the fridge for tomorrow. With Roza’s pierogis around, who could want pizza?

  The four women all gathered around the table, eating and wiping their buttery fingers on paper towels. Most families were more civilized and ate pierogis with a plate and fork, but they were always such a treat, formality would have only gotten in the way.

  “No one would ever accuse you three of being ladies.” Roza stepped out of their way. “A person could lose a limb in the stampede. Is no one feeding you all properly? Gina, what sort of house are you running?” She went to the fridge and poured them each a glass of milk, not able to turn off her caretaking, even at another person’s house.

  “Your pierogis are the best, Aunt Roza.” May leaned into her side for a hug and kiss, then walked around to sit next to Vicky, the farthest chair from Gina.

  “I’m not questioning this wonderful surprise, but what brings you over bearing our favorite food?”

  Roza wiped her already pristine hands on a paper towel, not meeting Gina’s and Vicky’s eyes.

  “Do you still have that picture and birth certificate you brought to my house?”

  “Yes.” Gina wiped her hands carefully and leaned over to pull them from her purse and hand them to Roza.

  She pointed to the uniformed man in the photo. “This is your father.” No nonsense, as ever.

  “I knew you were a love child!” Vicky said.

  “Both of yours.”

  She pointed at both Vicky and Gina, and Vicky stopped crowing to let the truth hit her, too.

  Gina shook her head forcefully, resisting this blunt fact. “You said you didn’t know who this was—and that guy looks nothing like our dad.”

  “I lied to you earlier. I was protecting your mother, but she and I came to an agreement this aftern
oon. The man in this photo is your biological father. This is Joseph Sandowski. Joe.” She tapped the birth certificate where his name was. May leaned in to look, but Gina picked up the photo, trying to find the words to respond. What Roza was saying was like two puzzle pieces that wouldn't connect. No matter which way she moved them, they wouldn’t go together. Floyd Price. Joe Sandowski. Father. The picture. The baby in the picture.

  Her dad had never been father of the year, sure, but she had never doubted that the man she grew up with was her father. She’d always taken her family at face value. Now, everything about their family had imploded. Or exploded, she didn’t know which. She didn’t doubt Roza—she’d known the older woman had been hiding something earlier. Now she couldn’t find the questions to ask, because suddenly there was an entirely new history she had never known about. The room wavered, and she grabbed the table.

  “How? Why?” She went with the basics. Vicky nodded in agreement at these simple questions.

  Roza folded the paper towel in half, then in half again, smoothing it out with her fingers.

  “This was a long time ago, girls, and things were different. Lorraine and Joe—your father—used to live in the apartment underneath me. We would have Sunday dinners on the lawn during the summer, and cozy meals upstairs in the winter. Your mom would help clean up after. Joe, bless him, would fix broken screens and squeaky doors, tasks that my husband didn’t have a chance to do because he was working long hours at the store. They were young and in love, and alone. Your grandparents had cut your mother off for marrying someone they deemed unworthy.”

  That sounded like them, from Gina’s scant memories of her grandparents—but it also sounded like Lorraine herself: judgmental, quick to issue edicts.

  “Joe went off to the Vietnam War. So many like him did—young, hardworking, poor. They thought, naively, he would do his tour then be back before you girls even knew he’d been gone. I took this picture the day he left. He never came home.”

  “But I don’t understand why Mom wouldn’t . . .” Vicky started.

  “Your mom was unskilled, with a small baby, a second on the way, and no way to earn a living. Your dad was killed in combat, so she was entitled to a little money from the government, but it wasn’t enough to live on, especially since he was an enlisted man and not an officer.”

  Gina opened her mouth to protest, but nothing came out. There were so many options. She could have worked at a restaurant, gotten government assistance, what about Joe’s Social Security benefits?

  “Why didn’t she get a job?” May asked the question Gina was thinking.

  “Think about it,” Roza continued. “Can you really envision Lorraine working as a receptionist or in a restaurant, living paycheck to paycheck and sweating through her days? She would have been happy with Joe by her side, but without him—well, she wasn’t raised like that. And if you ask me, she was scared to be on her own, especially with two little ones—or, one little one and one on the way. So she went home to what she did know. Within a few days, her father had found Floyd, the man who raised you. He was a solution to her problems. Floyd agreed to the marriage, though, only as long as no one knew you and Vicky weren’t his biological children.”

  “If you knew Mom before she married my dad, I mean Floyd, then why were you our nanny?” Vicky asked.

  “Your mom needed help, and she asked me.”

  Still wordless, Gina bit into another pierogi, letting the familiar ease her into this new information. Should she be angry? Hurt? Relieved? She had so many emotions and questions competing for attention in her brain. What was Joe like? Who really was her mother, to keep such a big secret from them their whole lives? There was so much to ask her mother she didn’t know—so much that she should know.

  “Your mom wasn’t unhappy, but those early years shaped her. If she wasn’t going to have Joe as her husband, she had to put you first. Never forget that she loved you girls and wanted the best for you. Marrying Floyd let her give you the most promising upbringing, great schools, and social connections.”

  “You,” Gina said.

  “Yes, me. Being a part of your lives has been one of my life’s greatest joys. You girls were a second family for me, and you can never have a big enough family. She gave you the best she could.”

  “But she married someone she didn’t love. And don’t tell me she and Dad loved each other. I’m not stupid. I could almost hear her sigh with relief at his funeral,” Vicky said.

  “Theirs was a . . . complicated marriage.”

  Roza didn’t say another word, but Gina had questions about that, too. She’d always known her parents had never shared a bedroom. It had seemed normal until she started visiting friends and saw that their parents all shared the one room. Her mom had always claimed it was because Dad snored and she was a light sleeper. As Gina got older, though, she wondered if there wasn’t a simpler explanation.

  “Well, now the pierogis make sense,” Vicky said, swiping another one in the butter before popping it into her mouth. “Shocking news is always better with your cooking.”

  After they finished the pierogis, Gina washed the plate and Roza left, quickly followed by May heading off to her room. At least she and May seemed to be in a better place. One less relationship to worry over. Vicky pulled a bottle of wine from her purse, unscrewed the cap, and poured wine into two coffee mugs she retrieved from the clean dishwasher. She slid the white chipped mug across the table to Gina.

  “Well, cheers to our expanded family tree.”

  Gina picked up her mug and clinked it against Vicky’s.

  “I don’t even know how to feel,” Gina said.

  “Oh, I’m pissed. All those years of playing the perfect society matriarch and our mother had run off with a man who also happens to be our real father. We’re a bad soap opera plot. She has lost all credibility.”

  Gina took a long gulp of the red wine. It was tart and burned down her throat. She took another swallow and it went down easier. Like this new information, the longer she tasted it, the more she accepted it, but it still wasn’t good.

  “I’m hurt, but I’m relieved, too. Dad always seemed so distant and I was jealous of friends whose dads doted on them. At least now there’s an explanation.”

  “I don’t care. We should have grown up knowing he was a stepfather.”

  “If what Roza said is right, Mom was making these decisions right after Joe died. I can’t imagine having to make life-altering choices during that immediate wave of loss. I could barely get out of bed, and she did what she had to do to put us first. She’s tougher than I thought.”

  “Stop trying to put a positive spin on this. You aren’t going to convince me not to be angry. And I don’t understand why you aren’t, too. She made things so difficult when you decided to marry a Polish boy and she had done exactly the same thing. Hell, we’re both half-Polish.”

  Gina hadn’t thought of that. Her eyes strayed to the Wianki on the wall and she briefly smiled at the memory, but it quickly turned back to a frown. It was true. Her mother had done exactly as she had once, but instead of understanding, her mother had criticized and rejected her for it.

  “Why did you have to say that? Now I’m pissed, too. I can understand why she did it, but now I don’t want to forgive her. But I’m also really curious about Joe, and what he was like.”

  Eager for some alone time, Gina drank the last of her wine, rinsed the mug out in the sink, and kissed her sister on the top of her head. “Night.”

  “Night.” Her sister dumped the rest of the bottle into her mug and disappeared into the guest bedroom.

  After such a day, Gina sat down looking forward to writing her end-of-day list. She found it cleared her mind before sleep, giving her a plan to wake up to the next day. The smooth pen and the way it whispered as it flew over the paper was better than any meditation: the sound of order and productivity and control. It kept her focused on moving forward rather than risking moving backward, or dwelling on the past. Gina r
eally needed to feel in control of something.

  Tonight’s list started with the usual items:

  1. Shower.

  2. Costco—supplies for G’s (cheddar, Brie, white bread, onions, pork, bacon, napkins, aluminum foil squares) with May!!!!

  3. City hall, with May.

  4. Visit Mom, with May.

  She smiled at getting to spend so much time with her daughter, even though it was technically a punishment.

  As she turned the notebook page, all the blank holes in the story Roza had told cluttered her thoughts, and her list evolved into questions—questions she hoped would help her sort out her muddled emotions. It was so hard to know where to start. But if Dr. Patel was right, there was a possibility her mom might have another, more lethal stroke, and there was so much she still didn’t know. She settled back into the fluffy pillows of her bed, her notebook propped up on her knees and opened to a fresh page.

  1. What is one fact you know to be true?

  2. Have I lived up to your expectations?

  3. How did you meet my father?

  4. How are we alike? Different?

  5. What’s been your greatest joy?

  6. Have you ever felt overwhelmed and wanted to give up?

  7. What is your greatest heartbreak?

  8. What is your biggest regret?

  9. What is the best part of being my mom?

  10. What do you need me to know?

  All Gina’s life, Lorraine had been the wall she needed to get around before she could live. Her mom was a jailer, an enforcer, a life-ruiner. She was a job description, never a person. Even when Gina had called crying in the night because May had colic as a baby, talking to Lorraine had been less helpful than reading Dr. Spock.

  Looking over the list of questions she’d scrawled, she realized she really knew nothing about her mom—she didn’t understand the complicated person hiding behind the persona. She wasn’t merely someone who kept Gina’s freedom at bay during her teen years, or the fussy older woman who ran guilt on an open tap when she became an adult. She had always viewed her mother as someone to placate, keep happy, try to please. She never thought of her as someone she wanted to know. But for the first time, she did want to know her mother. It was time to ask some questions.