by K. L. Kreig
As it turns out, it doesn’t take us long to get around to that conversation. My mom is the most intuitive person I know on the planet. It’s almost like she has this creepy sixth sense, and as a child, that was damn unnerving, let me tell you.
“What happened?” she asks pointedly after grabbing a bottle of diet iced tea from the fridge. The lid makes a popping noise when she twists it off. When I said that I pussied out earlier, what I actually meant is I avoided her completely last night so this is the first conversation we’ve had since I arrived yesterday afternoon. This is actually the first conversation we’ve had since I came out of hiding.
I take a seat at the six-person cherrywood kitchen table. My mom slides in right across from me so I have no choice but to look at her.
“Can you be more specific?”
She ignores my contrived confusion. “You do realize your entire family was worried sick about you, Luke. Addy was a wreck. What you did was irresponsible.”
I don’t care how old you are, your mother’s disappointment in you always cuts deep. “You talked to Addy?”
“Yes.” I wait for more, but that’s all she’ll offer.
My sigh is heavy and long. “I know, Mom. I’m sorry. It’s…complicated.”
“Life is complicated, Luke. Every single day, each of us faces challenges and we have to figure out how to handle them. This time, you chose poorly. Your family has always been here to support you. To support each other. That’s what family is. I can appreciate a sixteen-year-old not understanding what it means to handle what life throws at them with grace and maturity. A thirty-year-old man should know better.”
Ouch. That hurts in the way it was meant to, each biting word another stinging slap. My mom is kindhearted and loving, infinitely patient and understanding, but when you cross her…Watch. The. Fuck. Out. Right now she is angrier than I’ve seen her in a long, long time.
“I was trying to protect you, Mom. Protect the family. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do,” I tell her softly.
Her voice relaxes, yet still holds a sharp edge. “What is this really about, Luke? Unburden your soul, son, because I promise you I don’t sit in judgment. That’s not my job.”
I try to start saying the words several times, but they won’t budge. Fuck, this is hard. Finally, I squeak them out.
“You probably don’t remember this…I came down with the flu in the fall of my junior year and had to be sent home from school. We were supposed to play the Crusaders that night. I was mad I couldn’t go because it was a big game and I had a hundred two-degree temp.”
“I remember. You were sick with the flu for three days and could hardly get out of bed.”
Moms. They remember every hurt, every wound, every tear.
“Yeah. Well…” I take a deep breath and drop my eyes to the dark wood unable to watch her face when I destroy her world. “What you don’t know is that when I got home from school there was a woman here. With Dad.” I sweep my gaze back up to see her watching me intently, confused at where this childhood story is going, so I continue.
“I overheard them talking, Mom. She said she had pictures. Proof. And then Dad asked her how much it would take to go away.”
Her face hardens and you could have knocked me over with a feather when she speaks. “I am well aware of that situation, Luke. What I don’t understand is what that has to do with why you just disappeared two weeks ago.”
“You knew?” I ask disbelievingly.
“Of course, I knew. Your father and I didn’t keep secrets from each other.”
Standing, I start pacing, my mind reeling. “So let me get this straight. You knew your husband cheated on you, had another kid, and paid off the kid’s mother to keep them out of your lives and you were okay with that?”
I am in complete and total shock. Never in a million years would I have believed my mother would be in on a scandal like this, let alone condone it.
“Is that what you think? That this was your father’s child?”
“It’s what I know. I heard the whole thing, Mom! As soon as he saw the pictures, Dad paid her off.”
Her eyes water as she reaches for my hand. I take it and pull a chair close, sitting beside her. “Luke, my sweet boy. Is that what caused you to start skipping school and doing drugs and hanging out with delinquents?”
I don’t answer, but I don’t need to. She knows.
“Oh my. I should have known. I should have figured it out all those years ago and talked to you. Luke…Luke, that wasn’t your father’s child. It was Fred’s.”
“What?”
“Your uncle Fred. Your father’s twin.”
My shock just multiplied. My mom actually believes what she’s telling me and that makes me hate my father even more. “Is that what he told you to cover his tracks? That this was Fred’s kid?” I spit angrily.
“Luke, it’s the truth. That wasn’t the first time Fred used your father as an alias during his illicit affairs. He did it all the time in college. And that wasn’t the first time your father had to dig Fred out of a mess he’d gotten himself into because he couldn’t remain faithful to his wife.”
“I—I don’t understand, though. If this wasn’t his kid, what pictures…”
“Identical twins, remember?”
I’m speechless. None of this makes sense. My mom goes right on talking, but I’m having a hard time paying attention.
“Your dad confronted Fred and found out that he apparently had a several month-long affair with this woman, who was twelve years his junior. She was young, in law school, and he met her at some bar. I understand he even set her up in an apartment for a while. He eventually broke it off and she moved away. Then she shows up out of the blue with pictures of her and Fred and pictures of her daughter. One look at the child and your dad knew she wasn’t lying.”
I know. I saw her.
Fuck. I am so confused and still not sure I believe this soap opera twist.
“Why would he pay off Fred’s mistake? That makes no sense to me.”
“Because your Aunt Carole had just been diagnosed with stage-four breast cancer only a couple months before that. She was dying and we all knew it. He did it to protect Carole so she could be at peace when she died. He did it to protect their kids. They were losing their mother. The last thing they all needed to deal with was a scandal like that. It may not have been the right thing to do, but your father thought the easiest way to handle it was just pretend he was who she thought he was and pay her off so she’d go away.”
“But I heard her say she loved him.”
“I have little doubt she was just here after money, Luke. If she really loved Fred, why would we never have heard from her again after that? And most of all, why would she just take the money and run?”
I stare into the thick woods behind our house. The leaves have started to fill in the sparse area that deadens each winter. Spring is one of my favorite seasons when everything comes to life again. It’s kinda how I felt when I first saw Addy. Everything inside me just bloomed. Now, for so many reasons, I feel dead again. My beasts are threatening to take over completely and the visceral need I have to hold Addy in my arms so she can drive them away is excruciating.
“I saw them,” I mumble.
“Who?”
“Both of them. The daughter, I guess she would be my cousin. Landyn is her name. And her mother is Samantha.”
My mother’s silence finally causes me to tilt my head her way. She’s staring at me with as much bewilderment as I feel.
“What do you mean you saw them? How do you even know them?”
So I tell her the entire story. I catch her up on the details of what happened that day I came home from school early. I tell her what happened when Addy and I got back from the hospital to our apartment and how I spent the next several days in a drunken stupor. I confess how Addy won’t talk to me and how I may have completely fucked things up with her and when I’m done, we fall quiet for what seems like forever.
My entire
adult life was built on a misunderstanding. An assumption based on overhearing a partial conversation. I made decisions based on false truths and half the facts. I’ve thought the worst of my father for the last fourteen years. I abandoned him, my family and completely changed the course of my future because I didn’t have the courage to just talk to him about what I thought I saw. What I thought I heard.
I ran from a lie.
And I hate myself for it.
“Your father forgave you, you know,” she says quietly, breaking our silence.
I laugh bitterly. “How could he possibly?”
I’ll never forgive myself.
Never.
“Because your father was a good man, Luke. He was selfless, giving, and loyal. His family always came first. I know when you were gone and didn’t come back all those years, you were putting us first in a different way—you wanted to protect us from your life, your choices.
“You are so much like your father it’s uncanny sometimes. He constantly worried about you, your life, your safety. He hated the separation between you two and not knowing what put it there, but he knew eventually you would find the light. He always believed in you, Luke, even when you didn’t believe in yourself. He just couldn’t watch you destroy yourself until you found your way home. Even though it was hard for him, he would want you to forgive yourself. He did just that a very long time ago.”
I left home at eighteen. My father was forty-two at the time and fifty-six when he died. I saw him approximately one time in those fourteen years. Twice, if you count the time I passed him on the road, me on my bike, him driving his fancy BMW. I attended his funeral, but at a distance. No one, except my mother, knew I was there.
I have carried unfounded hatred in my heart for nearly half my life and it’s simply unbearable to think I’ll never have a chance to make it right. My emotions swell until there’s no place else for them to go.
I am wrecked.
“Mom,” I choke on a ragged sob. Unable to keep my anguish at bay any longer, I hang my head and sob. My mom cradles me in her arms, comforting me like a mother will always do for her child, no matter how old or how big they get.
Chapter 46
I’m sitting outside the house, my car running. I’m nervous. I haven’t been here in over five years and the house definitely looks worse for the wear. The peeling white paint is faded to almost a dull, flat yellow. The gutter hangs down on the left side about a foot. The bushes are unruly and overgrown and the cracks in the sidewalk and driveway have grown larger. A large tree branch from the hundred-year oak in the front yard lies on the too-long grass. It would have to be moved before the grass could be trimmed.
Sam’s expecting me; my mother isn’t. I told Sam not to say anything in case I changed my mind. It’s not too late. I could turn around and drive back to Chicago. Forget I was ever here. I could tell Sam something came up at the studio and I couldn’t make it. But just as I decide to leave, I remember Luke’s words in his note about fixing things.
Fixing himself. For me.
And I know I need to do the same for him. I’ve not acknowledged it before, but there are parts of me that are cracked. Parts only I can mend. Seeing my mom is one of those steps I need to take and it’s something I need to do on my own. I think my bad relationship with my mother has affected all the others in my life more than I ever wanted to admit.
Steeling myself, I shut off the engine and step out into the cool spring air, making my way to the front door. Sam answers almost immediately, hugging me.
“I’m glad you came. She’s lucid right now, so hurry,” she whispers as she ushers me into the small, three-bedroom ranch house I used to call home.
Everything on the inside is exactly as I remember. The shag carpet is green and dirty white, matted in most places so you wouldn’t even know it was supposed to be shag at some point twenty years ago. The walls match the outside; dingy off-white that’s yellowing. When we pass the kitchen, I notice the peeling brown-and-gold vinyl floor and the same puke-green refrigerator that hums too loudly.
As we wind through the small house, memories assail me from everywhere, but the thing I notice now that I never did before is there are pictures of me everywhere. Baby pictures. School pictures. Recent candids that my mom must have gotten from Eric or Landyn. They didn’t come from me.
They’re everywhere.
On the walls.
In frames on the end tables.
Stuck with colorful magnets to the fridge.
And on the nightstand by the hospital bed that sits in the middle of the living room. It’s a picture of me, Sam, and Eric three years ago at Christmas. It was one of the few holidays when Sam actually joined us at my dad’s.
I’m speechless. And near tears.
“Adeline. My sweet Adeline. You’re here,” my mom rasps, holding out her shaky pale hand. I rush to take it.
My mother was officially put in hospice a week ago. She refused to stay in the hospital, saying she wanted to die at home, instead. Sam told me she didn’t think she’d make it more than two or three weeks before she was gone. Seeing her now, I would agree.
I didn’t plan on coming to see her, resolute in my decision that ours is a broken relationship and trying to fix it in the last few days of her life would be pointless. Yet, thinking about what Eric said weeks ago, I decided I didn’t want to risk having any more regrets.
So here I am.
“Hey, Mom.” Her hand is cold and clammy. Her skin is yellow, swollen, and stretched taut with excess fluid. She has several very dark, very prominent bruises on her arms, and it’s easy to see how weak she is. She doesn’t look at all like my mother. She looks like a woman who is close to death’s door. Sam warned me what to expect, though I have to admit, I didn’t conjure this picture at all in my head.
I pull up a chair that’s close to her bed and take a seat. Sam quietly slinks out, leaving us alone.
“How are you feeling?” Stupid, stupid question to ask a dying person, but I don’t know what else to say.
“Okay,” she rattles.
“Can I get you anything?”
“No.”
She weakly clings to my hand and we sit there in awkward silence. My mom and I were never very good at easy chitchat. We don’t have much in common beyond surface stuff and even that’s challenging most times. She never asks questions about my life, my business, my boyfriends. All of our conversations are always about her.
Except now, she starts asking questions about me. She has a hard time speaking and our conversation evolves slowly over the next half hour, yet she fires question after question. All about me, and I fight to hold myself together. Suddenly I wish I’d waited to do this until Luke was with me.
“Sam says you have a boyfriend.” Sam told her that even after the crazy she witnessed?
I give her a sad smile. “Yes.”
“Do you love him?”
“Very much, Mom.” I tear up. I miss him so much I ache everywhere.
“Does he love you?”
“More than anyone ever has.” I feel like that’s a jab to my mother, but I can’t deny the truth. I have never felt as unconditionally loved by anyone as I have Luke.
“I could have been a better mother, Adeline.”
How does one respond to that? Do you agree? Do you assure her she was the best mother she could have been? Do you tell her it’s okay when it’s not? I don’t know, so I say nothing.
We fall quiet for several minutes, the ticking of the clock the only sound in the room. The morbid thought crosses my mind that she must lay here and just listen to her life tick away, one second at a time. Suddenly, I don’t want to waste another minute away from Luke, although I know I can’t leave yet.
“I would do so many things differently given the chance.” She pauses so long I’m sure she’s fallen back to sleep. Her eyes stay shut, but she slowly continues. “I would have made sure you knew I loved you. I did, you know, even though I didn’t show it like I should have.
I should have been less selfish, seeing to your needs first like a mother ought to. I should have told you that you were wanted. I’m sorry, Addy.”
Tears stream down my face for so many reasons. This is the first time in my life she’s called me Addy. This is the first time she’s ever apologized. This is the first time she’s acknowledged she could have done better. Once again stillness reigns.
“You should rest,” I tell her quietly.
But she doesn’t listen. She squeezes my hand slightly before continuing.
“I loved your father, Adeline. Deeply. Truly. I never loved another man before or after him, but I pushed him away like I did everyone else and I lost the best thing to ever happen to me. I’ve never spoken of this to any of you kids: my childhood was rough. There was abuse, neglect.”
She pauses, gathering herself. I don’t think she’s going to say any more when she adds, “I always tried to deny the damage it really did deep within me. It’s too late for me, but now, I do have clarity. Unfortunately, I think we see things too clearly when we know our time here on earth is about up and it’s too late to fix our wrongs. I know I lived a messed-up life and I know how badly I screwed up the lives of so many of those in mine.”
“I’m sorry, Mom,” I croak through my thin airway. I have no idea what I’m even apologizing for, but suddenly I see her in a whole new light. I feel a twinge of empathy I’ve never had for her before.
“Not your place to be sorry, Addy.” She glances at the new necklace I’m wearing, my olive leaf, before asking, “Are you and your man serious?”
I hesitate in responding. “I hope so. There are some…issues we’re working through right now.”
I haven’t heard from Luke today. That worries me. Maybe he’s given up. Maybe I’m too damn stubborn and this is too much work for him. After all, I’ve done nothing other than make the man constantly chase after me. I unconsciously push people away because I’m afraid of eventually being rejected. If I’m honest with myself, I’ve always done that. I’m doing it right now to Luke.
My God…I suddenly see so many similarities between my mother and me and I don’t like them. Not one little bit. I don’t want to be lying in a hospital bed in the middle of my home without the people I love surrounding me, comforting me.