The Mothers

by Brit Bennett

  There was no alcohol at the reception. She hadn’t expected the Sheppards to fund an open bar but she’d hoped for at least champagne. After an hour, she excused herself to the bathroom and stepped outside the reception hall for a breath of air. She slipped out the back door, surprised to see Luke outside, leaning against a planter, the silver tie around his neck already loosened.

  “What’re you doing out here?” she said.

  “I needed a break,” he said.

  “From your own wedding?”

  He shrugged. She hated when he did that, shrugged instead of actually responding. At least Shadi wanted to talk about things.

  “Want a drink?” Luke said. He pulled a flask out of his pocket.

  She laughed. “Here? Are you crazy?”

  He grinned, shrugging again as he unscrewed the flask and tipped it to her. She felt like they were kids, sneaking out to meet up in the park while their parents were sleeping. She took a small sip and then another, the whiskey burning her throat.

  “I met your dude,” Luke said. “He’s nice.”

  “I like nice boys now,” she said.

  He smirked. “He don’t seem like your type.”

  “I don’t have a type.”

  “Bullshit. Everyone does.”

  “And Aubrey’s your type?”

  It came out meaner than she’d meant. She just didn’t understand the attraction, and maybe she never would understand all the things that had changed since she’d been gone. He took the flask from her, tilting it back.

  “No,” he said. “But that’s why I love her.”

  She had hoped for a release. She would go to this wedding and when she watched the two of them kiss at the altar, the part of her that was still hooked into Luke would finally give. A click, then the latch would open and she would finally be free. Instead, she felt him burrowing deeper into her. She felt the dull burn of an old hunger, all the times she had wanted him, the times she had hoped he might hold her hand in public, the nights she had dreamed about when he might finally tell her he loved her. He’d made her feel like love was something she had to claw her way into, but look at how easily he loved Aubrey. Well, of course he did. Aubrey was easy to love.

  He passed the flask back to her. Behind the reception hall, near pipes and silver towers, away from the romance and lights, the crowds of well-wishers snapping photographs and dancing to oldies, they drank together, growing tipsy and warm, passing the flask until it lightened and emptied. Luke tucked the flask back into his pocket, and silently, as if following some unspoken cue, they both headed back into the hall. In the lobby, Mrs. Sheppard was standing in the doorway, her hands on her hips. She wore a pink skirt suit with a floral brooch that made her look like she’d been plucked off a rosebush, thorns and all.

  “There you are!” she said. “Everyone’s looking for you.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I just needed a minute.”

  “Well, come on. You can’t just go running off.”

  She grabbed his arm, tugging him back into the hall. Nadia began to follow but Mrs. Sheppard blocked the doorway.

  “This,” she said in a low voice, “needs to stop.”

  Nadia felt twelve again, caught kissing and shamed behind the church building, and in her surprise, she said what she wished she would have said then.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said.

  “Girl, who you think you’re fooling? You know how many girls like you I’ve seen? Always hungry for what’s not yours. Well, I’m telling you now this needs to stop. You already caused enough trouble.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know what I mean,” Mrs. Sheppard said. “Who you think gave you that money? You think Luke just had six hundred dollars laying around? I helped you do that vile thing and now you need to leave my son alone.”

  Mrs. Sheppard shook her head a little, daring Nadia to say something, and when she didn’t, the first lady straightened her brooch and returned inside the reception hall. Nadia stood alone in the lobby so long that Shadi came looking for her, and she nodded when he asked if she was okay. But later she would wonder how she hadn’t questioned where Luke had found the money so quickly. She’d been so desperate, she’d imagined him capable of anything. Now she knew that he was.

  —

  IN THE MORNING, the newlyweds would be on a plane to France, two days in Nice, two in Paris. Luke’s parents had paid for their honeymoon as a wedding gift with help from the congregation. One of their biggest collections ever, his father had told him, and Luke felt honored by the well-wishers, the members who could not even pronounce Nice and still donated to send them there. He would’ve been happy with a more local honeymoon. A Mexican cruise, a trip to Hawaii—he imagined spotting Cherry at the Aloha Café and ordering the Strawberry Sunrise—but Aubrey had her heart set on France. And even though he knew she only wanted to go there because Nadia Turner had been, he’d agreed.

  But that was tomorrow. Tonight, in their hotel room, he eased up behind her, tugging the zipper on her dress, amazed, as always, by how delicately women’s clothes were made, the tiny hooks, the slender buttons. The first time he unhooked a girl’s bra, he’d fumbled around the clasps and he felt a similar nervousness now, giddiness even. He was scared he’d be disappointed and even more, he worried that he’d somehow disappoint her. But maybe it was the soft hotel lighting or the champagne room service had brought or the romance of the wedding, the silk flowers, the music, the decorations his mother had obsessed over. He’d always separated sex and love but now the two were intertwining and he felt as blustery as he had when he was fourteen. He slowly pulled down Aubrey’s zipper until he saw skin and more skin. But she reached back and stopped his hand.

  “I know about you and Nadia,” she said. “I know you slept with her.”

  He couldn’t see her face. She was still bent away, one hand holding her hair out of the zipper’s track. He froze, unsure whether to deny it or apologize.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I just want you to know that I know.”

  How did she know? What had Nadia told her? Or maybe Aubrey had sensed it on her own, like spotting paint clinging to their fingertips that neither had been careful enough to wash off. Only hours into their marriage and he’d already hurt her. But he would be smarter now. He ran his hands along the smooth cups of Aubrey’s shoulders and kissed the back of her neck. She was better than him but that would make him better. He would be good to her.

  —

  ON THE FLIGHT back to Detroit, Nadia dreamed about Baby. Baby, no longer a baby, now a toddler, reaching and grabbing. Pulling at her earrings until she unhooks his chubby fingers. Baby hungry always for her face. Baby growing into a child, learning words, rhyming -at words from a car seat on the way to school, writing his name in green crayon in the front of all his picture books. Baby running with friends at the park, pushing girls he likes on the swing. Baby digging for Indian clay in the sandbox and coming home smelling like pressed grass. Baby flying planes in the backyard with Grandpa. Baby searching for hidden photos of Grandma. Baby learning how to fight. Baby learning how to kiss. Baby, now a man, stepping on an airplane and slinging his bag into the overhead bin. He helps an older woman with hers. When he lands, wherever he’s headed, he gets his shoes shined and stares into the black mirror, sees his face, sees his father’s, sees hers.

  TEN

  Scripps Mercy Hospital called at midnight, and Nadia knew before answering the phone that her father was dead.

  She had been half dreaming and she might have slept through the shrill ringing altogether if Zach hadn’t jabbed her in the back. As soon as she’d cracked open an eye and seen her phone screen light up with an unknown number, she knew that something terrible had happened to her father. A car wreck. A heart attack. He’d left the earth while she was sleeping, slipped away as silently as her mother had. But
when she’d answered, a nurse told her that her father had dropped a barbell on his chest while lifting weights in the backyard. A crushed diaphragm, two broken ribs, and a punctured lung. He was in critical but stable condition.

  She hung up. Beside her, Zach groaned into his pillow. She’d met him in Civil Procedure I when they were both 1Ls. He was the golden boy from Maine, skin tanned from summers spent boating, blond hair ruffled like a Kennedy. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all been attorneys. She was the first-generation student who checked out textbooks from the library because she couldn’t afford to buy them, whose stress about her mounting student loans only offset her fear of flunking. When he’d first asked her out at a party after their first-semester finals, she told him she doubted they had anything in common.

  “Why?” he said. “Because I’m white?”

  He liked to refer to his whiteness the way all white liberals did: only acknowledging it when he felt oppressed by it, otherwise pretending it didn’t exist. She had been wrong after all—they did have a few things in common. They both wanted to practice civil rights law. They both knew what it was like to grow up in towns hugged by the ocean. And they both liked to text each other at the end of long nights studying, inevitably ending up together in bed. She didn’t expect much from him, which was liberating. He was a good time and she needed one. Breaking up with Shadi had drained her and law school had turned her into a stressed-out wreck. She drank so many pots of coffee while she studied that the smell of coffee made her feel anxious. Zach’s good humor, his easy looks, his expectation that life open itself to him were a comfort. She’d never asked him for emotional support before, but later, she felt grateful that she hadn’t been alone when she received the phone call about her father. Zach drove to her apartment and helped her pack a bag. She was moving numbly, grabbing handfuls of clothes out of drawers and stuffing them in a suitcase.

  “You know I haven’t visited my dad in three years?” she said.

  She hadn’t flown home since Aubrey and Luke’s wedding, since Mrs. Sheppard had cornered her in the lobby of the reception hall. In the years that followed, she’d reexamined everything about that summer before college: the pastor’s tentative visit, when he’d seemed unusually invested in her well-being, as if surveying damage he’d caused; Mrs. Sheppard’s coldness at work, how surprisingly kind she’d seemed right before Nadia left. Had she thought that Nadia might tell? Was that the real reason she gave Luke the money for the abortion? Not to help a girl in need but to make her go away? Nadia imagined the pastor’s wife in line at the bank sliding her withdrawal slip to the teller, how quickly she must have stuffed the cash in an envelope, paranoid that she might encounter a congregation member who would see the stack of money and somehow know what it would purchase. For years, Mrs. Sheppard had known her secret. For years, Nadia had thought she was hiding, when hiding had been impossible all along.

  Her secret had unraveled, and Luke had never planned to tell her that his parents knew. He could’ve warned her when he’d brought her the money. She would’ve been upset with him for telling them, of course, but she had been too desperate to complain about where the money had come from. Now she only felt angry. She imagined her father settling in his pew each Sunday, sedate and unaware as the Sheppards eyed him. Poor Robert, too busy carting loads in his truck to know what had happened in his own household, blind to everything but his grief. And when was the last time she’d even spoken to her father? Really talked to him, not just called on Christmas or left a voice mail for his birthday. He didn’t like talking on the phone much and she’d been so wrapped up in her own life. She sat on the edge of her bed, suddenly exhausted. She hated hospitals and didn’t want to see her father in one.

  Zach peeked out of her bathroom, where he was packing her toothbrush inside a ziplock bag. He looked strange in her apartment. She always slept over at his place.

  “We should hurry if you wanna catch your flight,” he said.

  “Three years,” she said. “Jesus, what did I think was gonna happen?”

  “Look, I’m sorry about all this but we gotta get to the airport. And I have work in the morning.”

  He fidgeted a little, her toothbrush still in his hand. Of course he wanted to leave. He was helping her pack in the middle of the night, which was already more kindness than she could expect from a man who wasn’t her boyfriend. Or even, really, her friend. She nodded, zipping her suitcase shut. Not until she glanced out the airplane window at the neon lights outlining O’Hare Airport did she realize that she had no idea when she would be back.

  —

  HER FATHER CRIED when she stepped inside his hospital room. Because of the pain or because he was glad to see her, or maybe even because he was ashamed for her to see him like this, in the hospital bed, his side bandaged, a tube sprouting out of his chest. She paused in the doorway, rocked by the sight of him. She hadn’t seen him cry since her mother’s funeral but that was different. Hunched over a church pew in his black suit, he had seemed dignified. Stately, even. But in a mint green hospital gown, plugged into beeping machines, he just looked fragile.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Got you flying all the way out here—”

  “Daddy, it’s fine,” she said. “It’s fine. I wanted to see you.”

  She hadn’t called him Daddy in years. She’d tried it out when he first came home from overseas, rolling the word around in her mouth, wondering how he might react to it. She’d been so desperate for him then, following him around the kitchen, climbing on his lap while he watched television, patting his face as soon as he’d shaved to feel his smooth cheeks. But then he’d settled back home and she’d grown up and found Dad fit him better—a curt word, a little removed. The nurse rolled in a cot but she stayed in her chair, holding his hand while he slept. His palm felt rough and worn. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done something as simple as hold her father’s hand and she was afraid to let go.

  She fell into a fitful sleep, and when she awoke in the morning, she found Aubrey sleeping on the cot, covered in a thin hospital blanket. She suddenly remembered calling Aubrey from the airport—she was frantic and needed someone to talk to before the four-hour flight. Aubrey hadn’t answered. Even in California, it was late. But Nadia had left a long, rambling voice mail. She’d felt comforted hearing Aubrey’s voice, even if it was just her outgoing message.

  She knelt by the cot and stroked Aubrey’s hair.

  “What’re you doing here?” she whispered.

  Aubrey’s eyes fluttered open. She always woke slowly, returning to the world in waves. How many mornings had her face been the first thing Nadia saw?

  “I got your message,” Aubrey said. “Of course I’m here.”

  They hadn’t seen each other since the wedding. Every time they talked on the phone, Nadia tried to convince Aubrey to visit her in Chicago. It would be easier seeing her that way. She couldn’t imagine spending the night in Aubrey and Luke’s guest room, surrounded by all the pictures from their new life. But Aubrey always gave an excuse for why she couldn’t make the trip: she was too busy, she had just started at KinderCare and couldn’t ask for time off yet, she had promised Mrs. Sheppard she would help her with the Women Who Care conference, the children’s church play, the annual picnic. Maybe she was too busy or maybe she didn’t want to leave Luke behind. Maybe she had become that type of wife, the ones who couldn’t go anywhere apart from their husband, who kept calling him to check in and spent the whole time feeling guilty and displaced, like an organ that had managed to exist outside of the body. Who wanted to be that type of wife? Afraid to leave her married home, like if she left her life for a few days, it might not remain once she returned. Or maybe it wasn’t fear, but something else. A deep satisfaction. Maybe she just didn’t want to be apart from Luke. Maybe he just made her that happy.

  “I’m sorry,” Nadia said. “I didn’t mean—”

 
“Shh.” Aubrey pulled her into a hug. “How is he?”

  “Stable. That’s what they’re saying. I don’t know, the doctor hasn’t been by yet. How long have you been here?”

  “Don’t worry about me. Do you want coffee? Let me get you coffee.”

  Aubrey returned ten minutes later holding cups from a café that Nadia didn’t recognize. She accepted it anyway, even though the smell, wafting through the lid, reminded her of libraries and textbooks and exams. She was already anxious, a cup of coffee couldn’t make her feel worse. She and Aubrey sat in the waiting room, while the doctor examined her father’s chest for any sign of infection. Her father couldn’t sit up by himself yet. He was still struggling to breathe.

  “They said—” Nadia paused. “If he hadn’t been in such good shape, he probably wouldn’t have made it.”

  “Don’t think about that,” Aubrey said. “He made it. That’s all that matters.”

  But Nadia couldn’t stop imagining her father pinned under his barbell in the backyard, trapped and alone. If one of the neighbors hadn’t been grilling in his yard, if he hadn’t heard a scream, her father might have died there. And she, so concerned with studying for the bar exam and having noncommittal sex with white boys, might not have called home for weeks. She wouldn’t even have known that her father was gone. Would anyone have? She rested her head on Aubrey’s shoulder. She smelled like Luke, like she had unwrapped herself from his arms and driven straight to the hospital, and Nadia closed her eyes, breathing in his familiar scent.