My Biggest Mistake

by Leddy Harper

  Tears fell from her wide, dark eyes, and her bottom lip began to quiver. The euphoria I’d felt after my speech quickly vanished at the broken sight before me. “You have never called me by my name,” she whispered in shock, covering her mouth with her soft hand.

  “You’ve made it very clear you don’t want me to be part of this family anymore after what I did. So I figured you didn’t want to be my mom anymore, either.” That admission choked me up, causing the words to tighten in my throat and burn on the way out. The strength I had felt from standing up for myself disappeared as the regret and pain took over once more. I barely had a mother growing up, and therefore, Dorothy had taken that role in my life. Feeling as if I no longer had her left a hole in my heart that I knew would never be healed. I knew nothing would ever be able to take away the pain of losing her love.

  She moved from her chair and sat down on the cushion next to me before enveloping me in her embrace. Her tears seeped through the fabric of my shirt on my shoulder and that’s when I gave up the fight. I allowed the sobs to come and didn’t hold back from wrapping my own arms around this woman that had been such an important person in my life.

  I couldn’t tell which were her sobs and which were mine. They blended together into one devastating, heart aching sound that encompassed us on her back patio. The only thing that broke it up was the sound of Livvy’s voice. “What’s the matter Mommy? Why are you and Gammy crying?”

  I slowly pulled, but couldn’t bear to look my daughter in the eye. My emotions had been on a never-ending rollercoaster over the last couple of days and all I wanted was for the ride to end. I knew that if I looked at Livvy, it never would. The emotions would never settle, and my heart would only break more.

  “Your mommy and I are crying because we missed each other so much. Just like she missed you so much,” Dorothy explained, and I felt so grateful to her for that. “Why don’t you go inside and give us a few moments alone, okay?”

  Livvy nodded and went inside, leaving the two of us alone.

  “You will always be my daughter, you hear me? It doesn’t matter how upset you make me or how disappointed I am in something you do…you will always be my child. Same goes for Donovan. And I know that you’re aware of what your actions caused this family, but that doesn’t negate my need to voice it. You hurt me so badly, Idelette. When you vanished, you broke my heart, and I have a right to tell you. I know you had your reasons, and at the time, you couldn’t help yourself, but that doesn’t take away the hurt I felt for the last two years. I felt like my daughter literally cut me out of her life.”

  “You always made me feel like I couldn’t do anything right.”

  She sighed and gently touched my face, cupping her hand on my cheek and keeping it there while she looked me in my eyes and spoke. “I never meant to make you feel that way because it couldn’t be further from the truth. I have always been so proud of you for everything. I watched you struggle with things from the moment Donovan brought you home that very first time. My only intention was to give you guidance and help you. You were so young when you became a wife, and then a mother of three small children…I was only trying to help you.”

  I understood where she came from, and I even understood it way back then, but the one thing she would never understand is that I had spent my entire life with the feeling of being imperfect. I hadn’t been good enough for my father to stick around, I wasn’t enough to make my own mother want to be a part of my life, and to have her correct every move I made only amplified that thought in my head. Of course, I could never voice these things to her. She finally understood to some degree that I needed to be handled differently than Donnie. Just like with my own kids, I couldn’t treat Gavin the same as Mikey. But to lecture her on her own past mistakes would be no different than her lectures on mine.

  “And I appreciate it, Mom. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me and for my family. But I really need the support right now. I know you have this obligation to Donnie—”

  “Stop right there,” she said, interrupting me with her sharp, motherly tone. “I have just as much of an obligation to you and those children as I do to Donovan. I am happy your home. I am thankful that you’re okay after all this time of not knowing. But I can’t ignore what’s happened in your absence. Donovan needed you…this family needed you. And you weren’t here. You left to deal with your own issues—fine, you didn’t need our support. But your family needed yours and you weren’t here to offer it. I can’t just sit back and ignore the pain we’ve all faced, and the hole in our lives that you left. I love you, Idelette. I love you as if you are my very own, and because of that, I won’t pretend that nothing happened. I won’t act as if everything over the last two years never happened. It’s not that easy.”

  I had no words. Her refusal to forgive wouldn’t change no matter what I said. It didn’t matter to her that I had suffered severe depression after the birth of the twins, and that leaving had been a direct result of that. She was a wonderful woman, loving and kind, always put her family above herself, but one thing I knew to be true about her is that she was blind when it came to certain diseases. To her, post-partum depression was nothing more than baby blues. She viewed depression as a lack of confidence. And she believed low self-esteem could be cured by looking in the mirror and chanting, “I love myself.” She would never understand where my head was at or how I’d felt during those years.

  And so there was nothing I could say to her.

  I stood up after giving her a weak smile and turned to head inside to join my family. Coming here had been a mistake. Donnie may have found it in his heart to forgive me and give me a chance to make my wrongs right, but his mother never would. Only time would remedy that. At least I had plenty of that.

  I went inside and found everyone in the living room. My nerves amped up once I saw the back of Allen’s head. Donnie glanced up at me from his seat on the couch and something passed through his eyes. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was…worry maybe? It wasn’t until I made it around the sectional before I realized exactly what emotion his eyes held. One look at Allen, Donnie’s father, and everything became clear.

  What Beth had tried to tell me.

  The pain Dorothy had spoken of.

  The thing that no one wanted to say out loud.

  All of it became clear as soon as I faced the man I had viewed as my own father since I was fifteen years old. The man that walked me down the aisle. The man that called me his little girl.

  And I suddenly hated myself all over again.

  My eyes moved back to Donnie as I silently asked the obvious question. He didn’t answer me, though. He only watched in silence as I figured it out myself. It didn’t take a genius to put the pieces together, but some part of me still hoped it wasn’t true.

  I turned back to my father-in-law and took in a deep breath. The entire right side of his face dropped, his right arm lay limp in his lap, and a wheelchair sat next to his chair. His eyes met mine just before the left side of his mouth turned up in a weak smile.

  “About six months after you left,” Dorothy said from behind me, “he suffered a stroke. Couldn’t work anymore and had to hand the entire business over to Donovan. He didn’t have any other choice. Not only did that leave Donovan the sole owner and manager of the company, but he was also a single father to three young children. He had to do everything on his own.”

  Allen’s half-smile never waivered, nor did his eyes ever leave mine. “He’s a big boy. He handled it fine,” he said, the words almost too hard to make out with only half of his mouth working correctly.

  “He’s had to handle it. He didn’t have a choice,” his mother said, interjecting herself into our conversation once again.

  I wanted to say something, yell. I wanted to cry and beg for all this to stop. But I couldn’t do anything other than stare at the man that I called “Dad” for eleven years. His eyes were still kind as they took me in. It was as if I had never left, never hurt his family with the dec
isions I made.

  “Dorothy,” Allen mumbled in a surprising boom of a voice. “Take the kids into the dining room and get the table ready. Give me some time with my girl. I’ve missed her.”

  And again, I lost the fight against the tears. Except these weren’t tears of frustration that I experienced with Dorothy, or even tears of sadness that Donnie had given me after returning. The saltwater that leaked from my eyes and rolled down my cheeks were from a love so deeply rooted inside of me I can’t remember it not being there. I may not have had my own father in my life, but I had Allen, and I didn’t need anyone else.

  I heard Dorothy huff from behind where I stood, but Donnie stood up and mumbled something under his breath at her, something I couldn’t make out, and then walked her out of the room.

  “Ignore her. You know how she is,” he said to me as soon as we were the only two left in the room. “She’s taken my stroke really hard and feels the need to baby me all the time. I don’t argue, I just let her do what makes her feel good. She needs someone to blame, and that someone happens to be you. For some reason, she’s convinced things would’ve been different if you were here when all of this happened. I think she just feels lonely, being the only woman to tend to everyone. I’m not saying it’s right, all I’m saying is she missed you for many different reasons. And some of those reasons has made her a little bitter. But she’s not the one you should concern yourself with. Donnie is the one you should worry about. That boy has held in so many things over the last couple years that no one really knows where his head is at. If there is anyone that can get him out of his shell, it’s you, darlin’. Don’t put too much stock into what your mother says.”

  I fell to the couch next to where he sat and held his good hand. I had been home for a week, and yet it wasn’t until that very instant, sitting with Allen, did I finally feel that all could be okay. He had a way of calming me unlike anyone else. Donnie had gotten some of that from him, but he also had the inability to let go of his emotions from his mother.

  “I messed up, Dad. I know I should’ve talked to someone first. I should’ve gone to Donnie and told him how I felt. I know all of this now, but I didn’t know it then. I was just too overwhelmed and thought no one would understand. And now Mom hates me.”

  “Hush, child. Your mother doesn’t hate you. I remember when Donnie was little, had to’ve been under a year because he wasn’t walking yet. She was a mess, never wore normal clothes, stayed at home all the time because she said it was too much work to get out of the house. Donnie cried non-stop and kept her up half the night when he was a baby. I worked all the time so I wasn’t much help to her and she refused to take her mother’s help. She said that woman micromanaged everything and didn’t want to deal with it. Well, one day, I was at work and got a frantic call from her. She was crying so hard I couldn’t understand a single word other than Donovan and hospital. Come to find out, she’d put him in his crib, closed the door, and turned off the monitor because she just needed an hour of sleep she says. Somehow, she awoke to him screaming in his room and just knew it wasn’t his normal cries. She found him dangling from the crib with his arm caught in one of the slats.”

  I gasped at his story of a tiny Donnie in pain. I had never heard this before and became engrossed in what he said, vividly imagining it happening in front of me. I covered my mouth and continued to listen.

  “I guess he got tired of calling for her and tried to climb out on his own, but his arm got stuck. Luckily, nothing major was wrong with him. Something happened to his elbow and all the doctor had to do was move it around a few times and it was back to normal. But she was a wreck over it. Cried and blamed herself. I kept tellin’ her she needed to ask someone to help out since I couldn’t be there all the time, but even after all that, she refused. Said she could do it all on her own. She grew more and more tired, agitated, and our relationship suffered. There’s a reason we never had any more kids after Donnie. We both knew she couldn’t handle it. So don’t let her get to you, Edie. She could barely handle one. You had three. And what you was suffering through went beyond being tired. As long as you have your husband and your children on your side, and they understand and forgive, let the old woman suffer alone. I love that woman to death, but she has never understood when to keep her opinions to herself.” He laughed, one side of his mouth opening wide in a big grin. “She loves you with her whole heart. She wouldn’t give a damn if she didn’t. Just remember that. To her, nagging equals love. And I know this because she loves me a whole lot.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh with him. His story of when Donnie was younger helped me heal some after her words from earlier. It helped me see that I wasn’t alone. I may have gone about things differently, and not in the right way, but I wasn’t the only mother to ever suffer from the exhaustion of small children.

  “I always believed that God doesn’t give more than you can handle. Which made it hard for me to understand why He’d give me three children. I clearly couldn’t handle them. I love them all and would never go back in time to change things, but… I just don’t know.”

  His hand squeezed mine and made me look him in the eyes. “You are right. He will never give you more than you can handle. You are the one that assumed you couldn’t handle it. You just didn’t trust Him enough to believe it for yourself. He tests us, you know. Not for His amusement, but to prove things to us. You didn’t think you could handle those babies, but I bet you anything that had you stuck around and used the resources He gave you, things might’ve ended up different. But now He’s teaching you something else. He brought you back here to face the people left behind. I’m sure there are times you think to yourself that you can’t handle it. That you can’t pay the piper. But this is His test…trust Him this time.”

  Relief doesn’t begin to describe how I felt after talking to Allen. He just had this way of soothing my worries and calming my fears. I never grew up in church and never had a very strong faith in God, but Allen did. He never wasted a moment when he could work religion and God into conversation. But he was never pushy about it. In fact, it took almost three years before he openly talked about it with me, and that was only after I began to ask about it. Before then, it had only been random mentions. But he loved to give me some religious insight into things I faced when he knew I needed it the most. It made me sad that I had allowed myself to fall too far into my depression instead of seeking out Allen and listening to what he had to say. I wouldn’t let that happen again.

  * * *

  Dorothy offered to keep the kids after lunch. She said she wanted to spend some time with them, but I knew it was her way of giving Donnie and I some alone time together. She’d never admit it, since she still seemed to be upset with me, but I knew in her heart she had already forgiven me and wanted my relationship with her son to work out.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about your dad?” I asked once we were in the car and leaving his parents’ house.

  Donnie shrugged without looking my way, but he did reach over the console and held my hand. “I don’t know. There were more important things to talk about, I guess. And at the beginning, I didn’t exactly want to talk to you,” he said with a smirk. Glad he could laugh at it.

  “Tell me everything I’ve missed. I know it’s a lot, but I need to know. I don’t want to be surprised the next time.”

  “You didn’t miss anything.”

  I held my silence for a moment, unable to comprehend why he wouldn’t want to talk about the things I hadn’t been there for.

  “We’re not going back, remember, Edie? We’re moving forward. If there’s anything you missed out on, you’ll either realize it when you’re faced with it or you’ll never even know it happened. I can’t rehash the last two years with you. I’d rather spend my energy working on the rest of our lives.”

  I couldn’t fight the smile that had overtaken my face. I loved this man more than anything. He always knew exactly what to say to me. But I couldn’t just let things go. I had questio
ns that I wanted answers to. So instead of dropping it, I asked what had been on my mind since my talk with his mother. “What did your mom think of Beth? I mean, did she like you guys together?”

  Donnie groaned beside me, but answered anyway. “No. She hated it when I’d bring her around. At first, my mom felt extremely grateful that she was around to help me, especially after everything happened with my dad. She was there for me through it all, and really stepped up with the kids when I had to take over the business. But when my mom realized that our relationship had started to turn…you know…she hated it. She told me she was happy that I had someone, but she felt that I wasn’t in the relationship for the right reasons. And she thought even less of Beth for stepping in on her best friend’s husband.” He paused and then turned to me. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

  “I won’t lie, it hurts, but I do need to know. I love you, Donnie. There is no one else I will ever love like I love you, and no one could ever take your place in my heart. But I can’t lie to myself and believe that I am the only woman you’ve ever loved. And I can’t fault you for that.”

  “That’s what you think? That I loved Beth?”

  “Well, yeah…what else am I supposed to think? She broke up with you and then you looked like shit the next day. You looked like you had been crying half the night. And then you begged me to let you go so that you could move on. I’m not trying to bring up those feelings again, but what else am I supposed to believe?”

  His hand squeezed mine as he rubbed his thumb over the back of mine. Without warning, he pulled into a parking lot and threw the van into park before turning to face me in his seat. His eyes narrowed on me and left me confused as to what he was about to say. I braced myself for the worst.