by Natalie Ann
It brought back everything from when he was in the service, and his mother and Celeste were his only lines of communication back home.
His father rarely talked to him during those years and Cole was fine with it that way. The less they talked, the less they fought. He’d been fed up with disappointing his father, of never being good enough for him. He’d given up trying by then, knowing he’d never be enough.
He didn’t care he was exhausted just now, but he drove home quickly, breaking a few speed limits on the way.
He hadn’t told Rene he was on his way and was hoping to surprise her.
He pulled into the garage and saw her car, then jumped out and rushed up the stairs. She was in the kitchen stuffing her face with a sub bigger than her arm.
“Cole,” she said, her face turning red.
She put the sandwich down and ran to jump into his arms. This was what he missed all those years in the service. This was what he’d been jealous about and didn’t even know it when he came home on leave and saw his buddies with their significant others. How had he missed this for so many years of his life?
“Did you miss me?”
“That’s a stupid question,” she said, giggling.
He laughed, then picked her up and hugged her tight. “Do you think Junior missed me?”
“See, you think it’s a boy, too?”
“I’ve been staring at the ultrasound picture the whole time. I think I see a stick on it.”
“A stick,” she said laughing. “I hope it’s not a stick. Hey, what picture do you have?”
“The one I stole from your desk.”
She leaned back and eyed him, then stepped out of his arms. “I was wondering where that went. Are you hungry? Can I get you something to eat?”
“I’m hungry, but not for food.”
***
“Can I go get my sandwich now?” Rene asked him twenty minutes later when she started to get dressed again. “Junior is hungry.”
“Junior is always hungry. But yeah, let’s go eat. Are you going to share with me?”
“I suppose I can.”
“Good, then we can talk about what’s been going on the last two weeks. You feel okay? You look great to me. I even see a tiny belly on you now.”
“It’s a baby belly, not a food belly,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
Whatever it was, he only noticed it on her naked.
Once she had her monster sub cut in half and a bag of chips in front of them, he asked, “So how has my mother been?”
“She’s been good. She’s trying, I can see that. She brought me over food twice, too, so that’s even better. Between her and Celeste, I haven’t had to cook much at all. I kind of like it.”
“That’s nice. I’m glad.” He actually was. The silence from his mother was eating at him, even if he was the one imposing it on them.
“Are you going to go talk to her?”
“I will tomorrow. Tonight I just want to spend time with you.”
When they were done with dinner, he helped her clean up their plates and snatched a cookie from the jar that he knew Celeste must have filled the day before.
“I’m going to take a quick shower, then we can relax the rest of the night.”
“Sounds good. Oh, before I forget. Your mom dropped off a box the other day for you. I put it in the drawer with your socks.”
He turned and lifted his eyebrow. “Why my sock drawer?”
“Because if I had to look at it, I’d want to open it. I’m not good with surprises or gifts staring at me, even if the gift isn’t for me.”
He shook his head and walked out, glad to know that bit of information. They hadn’t had any holidays yet where he’d have to give her a gift.
Once in his room he opened the drawer, saw the small sealed box, and pulled it out. Breaking the tape, he pulled the flaps back, then pulled out a small ornate box.
He knew what was inside without looking. Celeste was given a matching box on her wedding day. His grandmother’s diamond wedding band that his mother wanted Celeste to wear as something old. Celeste hadn’t been without it on her right hand since.
He flipped the lid and saw his grandmother’s diamond engagement ring sitting there staring back at him. It was one hell of an apology from his mother.
He closed the lid and tucked the ring under his socks. As much as he appreciated the gesture, he already had something else planned.
The next morning Cole didn’t bother to call, he just climbed in his truck and drove to his mother’s house.
She was outside mowing the lawn. Actually, he was surprised to see that. He’d been taking care of her property for years for her. When he was away for two weeks a year on reserve duty, she would pay a neighborhood kid to do it.
“Mom,” he said, walking up to her as she shut off the small push mower.
“Sorry. Let me just put this away.”
“No, leave it. I’ll finish it when we’re done talking.”
“You’ve got your own property to deal with. I can mow my own lawn. I’m not incapable of it.”
Her voice was a bit terse and he was a little taken back by it. All it did was raise his own hackles.
“You’ve never done it before. Why now?”
“I’ve been lazy. Always wanting or waiting for you or your father to do things for me. Even Celeste does her own things. I guess I’ve had to take a good look in the mirror the last month.”
He didn’t want to relent on how he felt, but it was hard. She was his mother. They’d never had a fight like this before. Ever. She always backed him, she was always in his corner, even when his father turned on him and wasn’t.
“Mowing the lawn makes you feel like you can be on your own?” Someone should have told him that when he was doing it at twelve.
“No. I’m sixty-three and healthy as a horse. It’s time I stop acting like I can’t take care of myself.”
He thought it was an odd statement coming from her, but let it go. “Thank you for looking in on Rene and feeding her while I was gone.”
“It was my pleasure. Please, come in so we can talk. We have a lot to say to each other.”
He hated how they seemed like strangers at the moment. He followed her into the house and wondered what he was supposed to say now.
She didn’t give him a chance before she turned and started. “There are things you need to know, Cole. Things I need to confess before we can move forward.”
This wasn’t what he expected would happen today. “I saw Grandma’s ring. I figured that was your way of apologizing and trying to make amends. And I guess…giving your approval?”
“It was. It is. In order to do that, though, I need to come completely clean. Not just for you and Rene, even your child, but for me.”
“Clean about what?”
“Have a seat. Let me get us something to drink, first.”
He wanted to tell her not to bother, but she wasn’t acting like he was used to, so he let her go. When she came back out with two glasses of tea, he said, “Sit and talk now.”
“Your father was so hard on you because of me.”
“I don’t understand. He always wanted me to step up and watch out for you and Celeste when he was gone. He’d been like that my whole life.”
“He did. He wanted to make sure we were taken care of. That’s one of the things I loved the most about him. How he always put me first.”
“You had a funny way of showing that,” he said sarcastically.
Most of his teen years, he didn’t remember much about his parents’ relationship other than his mother never seemed to get what she needed from his father and she made a point of getting her digs in about it.
“I know. I liked that he took care of me, that he always put me first and watched out for me. I liked that he loved you kids so much and did the same for you. Under it all, your father was a good man.”
“He was. He just wasn’t very affectionate.”
“After Celeste got sick,
no. It was a hard time in our lives. A hard time for your father. In his mind, it was his job to protect his family. His hands were tied when Celeste got sick. He felt helpless. Some of her treatments were experimental and weren’t covered by insurance.”
Things were making more sense now. “So he worked more to pay for everything.”
“He did. We didn’t want you kids to know that. I don’t resent him for doing that. It was hard being alone, but we had to do what we could to help her.”
“So why were you so bothered when he worked all the time? It wasn’t a secret to us you didn’t like it.”
“I was selfish. Jealous, even. Everyone got put on the back burner. Me, you, the family as a whole. I understand why and how it happened, but it didn’t make me feel any better, either. There were times I felt so alone and just wished he was there more for me.”
“So you just added more stress to his life and mine. You made him feel even guiltier than he already did?”
If Cole knew one thing about his father, it was that he took his responsibilities to heart.
“I did. I’m ashamed of that. When that didn’t work, I told him you weren’t pulling your weight around the house. I thought that would force him to stay home more. To help me out.”
“Only it caused him to take it out on me,” Cole said, finishing for her, his voice hard.
His mother was crying now and he couldn’t seem to drum up any sympathy for her. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. I didn’t know it would. Then when I saw what happened, I tried to make it right with you.”
“But you never told him the truth? He continued to think I wasn’t holding my weight around our home? That I wasn’t doing the one thing he asked of me?”
It was all making sense, and yet it wasn’t at all. He’d spent years hating his father’s treatment of him. Years, with the two of them barely speaking and Cole never understanding what he’d done wrong. Why his father was always so mad at him.
“I couldn’t tell him the truth. Then you enlisted in the Air Force and he was so proud of you and I thought things would be fine again, and they were for a while, but then only got worse. I don’t know what happened.”
“You want to know what happened? Before I went back after leave one time, that last time before he died, I told him to step up and be a man while I was gone. To start paying attention to you again. To stop being selfish and leaving you home alone. That with you on your own and me in the service, you’d be lonely.”
“Oh,” she said. “He wouldn’t have appreciated that.”
“He didn’t.” Cole didn’t bother to add that his father had grabbed him by the collar and slammed him against the wall. Or the horrified look on his father’s face when he realized what he’d done. How he backed off and said he was sorry. His father rarely said he was sorry.
Things had never been the same between them after that. They’d talk now and again, but not often, and nothing in depth. Cordial was more like it.
All this time, he thought he’d done something wrong. That he’d never been good enough for his father, when it was really a little white lie his mother had said in hopes of getting her husband’s attention.
He looked at his mother now. He always knew she was needier than most women, but he’d never expected this.
“I never thought things would get this out of hand. Your father never told me you said that to him. If he had, I would have admitted what I did.”
“Just like he never said you told him I wasn’t stepping up, either.”
His father wouldn’t have. He would have tried to take care of things on his own. He wouldn’t have wanted to admit to anyone his son wasn’t doing what he was told or that his wife wasn’t happy. It would have been a bitter pill for a man like Tom McGuire.
“Cole,” his mother said, moving toward him.
He stood up and walked a few steps away. “Don’t. I don’t know what to think right now. I don’t know what to feel. You did a lot of damage over the years. A lot of things could have been prevented if you’d just told Dad the truth.”
“I know that now. I didn’t then and I regret it so much.”
“You should have known. You should have realized how he would feel about the lies you told him about me.”
“I just wasn’t thinking about anyone but myself back then. I felt sorry for myself, and it was wrong. I tried to make it up to you. I tried to run interference.”
“And it only caused a lot of fights between you and Dad.”
“It did, but I felt I had it coming.”
“Then why not just tell him the truth back then?”
“I thought it would only make things worse. I thought he’d be livid with me, then he’d be upset with how he treated you unfairly because of that.”
“It probably would have been worse. But in the end, he wouldn’t have died thinking what he did about me. You wouldn’t have resented him as much as you have. You wouldn’t have had to carry this guilt around for years. And I wouldn’t have felt guilty that I never got to say I was sorry before he died.”
“Cole, wait.”
He heard the distress in his mother’s voice, but didn’t care. He pushed the door open, hearing it slam behind him, and walked to his truck, then sped out of the driveway.
Who You Are
Cole just started driving around town, making turns at random, not thinking and trying to push away the moisture filling his eyes.
How could that have happened? How could his mother have let it? Or better yet, why?
Sure, she was always dependent on him and his father, but she’d never shown signs of what she’d just confessed to. Celeste was probably the most independent woman he knew, besides his grandmother, Minnie, his mother’s mom. So where did his mother get that trait from?
He needed to think, and in order to think he needed to fly. To spread his wings and get in the air.
Turning another corner, he started to head home. To his chopper.
Catching sight of the cemetery out of the corner of his eye, he made a sharp turn in and parked.
He was shaking right now, not with nerves and not with anger, but with fear.
Fear to go and see a man’s name on a tombstone that he’d idolized most of his life. A man that made him doubt his self-worth as he got older, but he never knew why.
Now he knew, and now he had to figure out what to say. How to move beyond this day.
Rather than sit there wondering, he climbed out of his truck and made his way over, stopping in front of the gray stone. There were a few cookie crumbs at the base and he found himself smiling.
Typical Celeste, always bringing treats for people, but he hadn’t expected she would have brought them here. They’d never talked much about his father if he could avoid it, and he often did.
“I don’t even know where to start,” Cole said out loud.
He thought it’d be odd to talk to himself, but found it wasn’t so much.
“How did we never know? Why were so many years wasted? I never wanted that. I just wanted you to be proud of me.”
A bird let out a cry overhead and chills ran down his spine and arms. The eerie feeling that he was being watched caused him to turn his head and look around.
“Now I know it was never your fault. Not really. That you just believed a silly little white lie from Mom. That she just wanted more attention from you, and that was her way of getting it. Her way sucked, though,” he said.
The bird screeched. He looked up and saw it circling around in the air.
“Where do I go from here? I can’t get back all that time. I can’t take back all the anger.” His eyes filled. “I never got to say I was sorry. I never wanted the last words you heard from me to be angry ones. Hell, I don’t even remember what the last words were. We weren’t talking much at all back then, and it hurt. I never said that either. Never said that I hated the tension between us.”
He should be able to remember the exact words, but he couldn’t. They were few and far between,
short and sweet, and not complimentary in the least.
“Do I forgive Mom? How do I?”
He wanted to pace, but was afraid to walk over someone’s grave. He’d be cursed then, wouldn’t he? Now he was thinking like Celeste.
“Cole?”
He turned and saw his mother walking toward him. As far as he knew, she hadn’t been back here either since his father was laid to rest.
“What are you doing here?”
“Probably the same thing as you. Apologizing.”
He snorted. “I shouldn’t have to apologize, but he deserves it from me.”
“And me. I haven’t been able to come here. I haven’t been able to face him.”
“Do you think he knew?” Cole asked, looking down at the stone. Seeing his father’s name there made him ill, the same as it did years before.
“I don’t know. He was a smart guy. I think he figured it out after you left, but he never confronted me. Maybe he should have. Maybe if he did, things would have been different. Or maybe I’m just hoping that he knew deep down and didn’t put me on the spot about it. That maybe in his own way, he forgave me.”
“It wouldn’t have stopped him from being killed,” Cole said. He knew that wouldn’t have changed anything.
“No. I still resent him for dying.” Cole looked over sharply at her. “I know, it’s wrong, but I do. You don’t understand, Cole. I loved your father so much. He was my life, my world. The more time he spent at work, the more I saw my world crumbling.”
“He never stopped loving you. He didn’t show it often, I know that, but everything he did was for you and Celeste.”
“And you, Cole. You too. He loved us all. We were a family that had something sad happen to us and we fell apart. Rather than me being there to hold us together, I widened the crack.”
“He tried to do it. He tried to do it all.”
It was all rushing back through Cole’s head now. All the talks that his father had with him. All the lectures. It all had to do with keeping his family safe and sound. The one thing he prided himself on.
“No one can do it all,” his mother said.
“You never helped him.”
“You’re right. I didn’t. I should have. Or, I should have more. I should have done a lot of things differently. I wish I could go back and change it all.”