It got harder for my mother to schedule her own beatings based on when I would be home.
On one of those days when I returned to the house early, immediately after school, I meant to go right back out again. All I’d wanted to do was stop by and get a notebook I’d forgotten that morning that I needed for my activity that afternoon.
It was because of that lapse of organization that my reality was shattered.
I burst into the kitchen to find my father’s arm in the middle of a downward arc that connected to my mother’s face with a crack audible even over the show tune the radio blared. We looked at one another with equal horror — my mother because I’d discovered the ugliness she had worked for so many years to conceal, my father because he probably didn't even know he had offspring, and me because the first time I got a good, long look at my father’s face was while he was in the middle of hitting my mother’s face.
I was a smart girl. I knew that when she played the radio loudly, my mother wanted her privacy and I was to stay away. Now I knew why that privacy was so important to her. She hadn’t wanted me to see her getting hit. And she hadn’t wanted me to see my father doing the hitting.
I couldn’t explain my reaction to the bizarre scene. But all I could think of doing in the heat of the moment was flinging my backpack at my father and running for it as if I were the one getting hit. I didn’t slow down until I was out of breath, panting and sobbing at the same time, at an intersection in town that I wasn’t sure how I’d gotten to. I sat on a park bench until dark, then slowly picked my way home, my feet aching, my muscles sore from my impromptu sprint.
My mother was sitting at the kitchen table without the lights on, the radio deafening in its silence. I flipped the switch at the door and she looked up at me, the welt on her cheek from my father’s hand still visible.
“He won’t be coming back here anymore,” she told me, and I couldn’t tell whether she was happy or sad. It was probably a mixture of feelings too complex for me to understand. I still didn’t understand it, to this day.
“Good,” I’d replied, smelly and disheveled, aware that I’d missed my extracurricular activity, hadn’t had dinner, and still needed to do homework for tomorrow’s classes. I dragged myself upstairs, took a shower, pulled on my pajamas, and put myself to bed.
My mother came to me at some point during the night and woke me up. Her words still seemed like a dream to me, even today.
“Your father did the best he could,” she said in a tone that made me question whether she was actually talking to me for my benefit or hers. “He wasn’t raised by good people. He did things he was taught to be right. He provided for our home, and that’s what kept us here. We wouldn’t have had money otherwise. We wouldn’t have been able to stay in this house, or this town. You would’ve had to go to a different school. And I don’t know what I would’ve done for work.”
“Are you going to tell the police?” I asked, bleary.
“No. Absolutely not. If the police know, everyone will know. People will pity you, Gemma, and that is the worst thing of all. Pity.”
I could’ve argued that getting hit by a person who was supposed to love you and care for you was the worst thing at all, but I slipped back into slumber.
It was the only time we’d talked about what had happened — until now.
My mother had been shocked into silence by my recollections and revelations, staring straight ahead, not even at the television. All of this had happened at this very house, and yet she continued to live in it. That was perhaps what puzzled me most of all. After my father had finally stopped showing up to use her as a punching bag, she’d never even moved on with her life, never tried for a fresh start.
I’d been excited for her when she’d announced that she was dating Frank, thinking that she was finally ready to move on with her life, but I ruined that for her.
“Why didn’t you leave this place?” I asked her, waving my hand around the room. “Doesn’t this house hold all of that drama still for you?”
“Lots of happy memories, too,” she said softly.
“Like what?” I demanded. “What could’ve possibly happened in this house that made a happy memory?”
“When you lost your first tooth,” my mother said, the corners of her mouth quirking upward for a brief second. “How it just popped out that morning when you were brushing your teeth before school, no blood or pain, just surprise. You screamed, and I came running. Had to pick it out of a puddle of toothpaste foam you’d spat in the sink before it went down the drain. I let you take it to school even though it wasn’t your day for show and tell.”
“Mom…” What was I supposed to say to that? It was only a vague memory for me, but it had been the first thing that popped into her head. How could that simple occurrence outweigh all of the other heartache that had taken place here?
My mother looked at me. “All I ever wanted to do was give you a happy life.”
“And you did.” There were tears in my eyes because there were tears in hers. “I would never dispute that.”
“Then why are you telling me all this?” she asked, the television program we’d been watching long since ended, some other story now the background music to our suffering. “Why would you want to rehash such unhappiness?”
“Because it wasn’t fair to you to pretend that nothing was happening,” I said. “Because I have always felt guilty that you tried to protect me from the ugliness that was always present at home.”
“I didn’t protect you well enough,” she murmured.
“You did the best that you could,” I argued. “You went above and beyond. I never knew what was happening until I saw it with my own eyes, and then I realized that you shouldn’t have endured all of that just for me.”
My mother shook her head. “You don’t understand. You are my child. I was afraid for your safety. I would have done anything to protect your physical health, your mental health, your sense of well-being.”
“But you sacrificed your own happiness.”
“And I would do it again in a heartbeat. This is one of those things, Gemma, that you can’t understand until you have a child of your own. It might not make sense to you now, but I would’ve cut my own veins if it meant that you would be okay. I could’ve endured anything — and did — at just the thought of you.”
I swiped at a stray tear that slipped down my cheek. “I wish you hadn’t had to. I wish you could’ve gotten out of it sooner.”
“It was nothing,” my mother said dismissively. “Not when the goal was to make sure you believed that life was good. That life is always supposed to be good. You’re not supposed to struggle and struggle. Good things are supposed to happen to good people.”
“But life doesn’t really work like that,” I said.
“No, it doesn’t.” My mother dabbed at her own eyes. “You should’ve been able to talk to me about it when you were struggling in New York City.”
“I didn’t want you to worry about me,” I said. “Not after everything you did for me.”
“Gemma, you are my life. It is my job to worry about you.”
“I wanted you to believe that my life was good, too.” I sucked in a breath and let it out again. “And you told me, that night, that the reason you couldn’t leave my father was because you didn’t have the money to.” She flinched, but I persisted. “And I knew how important that point was for you to make — that if you don’t have enough money to be independent, you might become dependent on a bad situation.”
“I never wanted to make you feel like you had to lie about your life,” she said. “I know just as well as anyone that there can be some low spots.”
I had to smile inwardly at that. Trust my proud mother to refer to the years-long span of her life in which her husband beat her as a “low spot.”
“Well, it was all high spots for a New York minute,” I mused. “My dreams came true. And then I ruined it for everyone.”
My mother looked crestfallen. “I
f it wasn’t meant to be, we just have to let it be. We can’t do anything about it now.”
“I’m so sorry it happened like this. You seemed like you were really happy with Frank, and he seemed like he cared about you a lot.”
My mother waved her hand at me as if to dispel further conversation on the matter. She opened her mouth to say something that was probably going to be pithy, but the doorbell rang.
“Who could that be?” she wondered. “Gemma, if you ordered us pizza again, we are going to blow up to irreversible proportions.”
“Pizza helps heal broken hearts,” I said, pushing myself up from the couch and stretching my legs. How long had I been sitting there? I was used to city life, used to walking around everywhere every single day. It was too easy to be sedentary in the suburbs. Maybe there was wisdom to my mother’s words. Without exercise, our scorned women’s diets of pizza and ice cream with a smattering of wine was going to devastate our waistlines.
I threw open the door, reaching for my purse on the coat rack in the entrance, when I realized it wasn’t the pizza delivery at all.
It was Frank.
Chapter 15
I opened my mouth and closed it again. Frank said nothing, seeming not to know what to do or why he was there. He took a step backward, then stood firm, and cleared his throat.
“Is Lydia — that is, to say, your mother — here?” he asked. For all his billions of dollars, he didn’t seem very sure of himself. Maybe that was one of those things money couldn’t buy.
“She is here,” I said carefully, “but I’m not sure that she is available to see any visitors.”
I watched Frank’s Adam’s apple bob in his throat as he swallowed hard. He was nervous. What could he be doing here? I wouldn’t allow him to see my mother if he was only going to make her more upset. Neither of us needed that.
I turned as I heard a noise behind me and saw my mother stop in her way across the foyer to the kitchen, probably going to get some napkins and drinks for the pizza that should’ve been here by now. The pizza that should’ve been here instead of her former fiancé.
“Lydia…” Her name left his mouth choked, as if the sound of her couldn’t quite make it past that bobbing Adam’s apple.
My mother had been shocked into stillness. She gaped at Frank standing in the open door for so long I worried that she’d lost her power of speech entirely.
“Excuse me? Did someone order pizza?”
Unnoticed by the three of us, a delivery person stepped around Frank bearing a couple of boxes of the thing we’d expected. The pizza jolted us all into movement: Frank stepped aside, my mother continued to the kitchen, and I settled up with the delivery person and stood holding the cardboard boxes whose contents were supposed to lick our wounds for us.
Frank was utterly unexpected. I heard my mother rattling around in the kitchen, and Frank and I both watched the delivery person drive away.
He turned back toward me. “Is it good pizza?”
I shrugged. “It’s pizza.”
“That’s all pizza’s meant to be, really. I don’t like the restaurants that have started reimagining pizza with the vegetable of the moment. Pizza’s meant to be chewy dough with tomato sauce, cheese, and pepperonis. Nothing more, nothing less. None of this cauliflower and kale buggery.”
I smiled and jumped as my mother cleared her throat at my shoulder. “Frank, would you like to join us for lunch?”
“Are you only just now having lunch?” he asked, checking his watch. “Lydia, it’s nearly six o’clock.”
“We’ve had a busy day,” she said. “Are you saying you don’t want to have pizza with us?”
“Have you ever known me to turn down a meal?” he asked, beaming as he slapped his ample stomach. “Pizza it is — as long as it’s got the right toppings.”
“Pepperoni only, apparently,” I informed my mother as she raised her eyebrows in question.
We all busied ourselves with ordinary tasks designed to bring normalcy to an abnormal situation. Frank set plates out while my mother poured drinks. I got some napkins and forks, in case anyone was going to try to be fancy about their pizza. It was funny. My mother and I would’ve just found another television show to watch and eaten the pizza straight from the boxes in the other room.
Curiosity simmered just under the surface as we dug in to the steaming pies. What was Frank doing here? Why had my mother let him in the house in the first place? What was going to happen?
“You know, I think the two of you have some things to talk about,” I said, standing up abruptly and taking my plate.
“Gemma,” my mother hissed. She raised her eyebrows at me meaningfully, like she was trying to convey some message to me telepathically. It was probably something along the lines of “don’t you dare leave me alone with him and this pizza.”
I grabbed another slice and beat a retreat. “I think I’ll eat this upstairs.”
It was a strange and sad realization I had just moments later, on the landing right in front of my room, when I understood that this was exactly what I would do to her when I was a child. I would leave her to deal with my father, to absorb his punches, while I escaped elsewhere. I paused and sat down at the top of the stairs, munching on my pizza, ready to intervene if things got ugly and, let’s be honest, playing the voyeur, because I could hardly stand the suspense of Frank’s visit.
Why had he decided to come all the way out here? If he had something he wanted to add to the breakup, couldn’t he have more easily called my mother? Maybe she’d turned her phone off, just like I had, to avoid any unwanted contact.
“Lydia…” Frank spoke in that same choked voice, the one he’d used while he’d still been standing on our front porch, looking for all the world like a dog with its tail between its legs. I could barely hear him. I had to stop chewing to hear his next entreaty. “Please…”
I blinked. What was he asking her for? Was he begging? I strained to listen.
“Help me to understand,” he said.
“If you had wanted to understand, you would’ve asked me,” she said, her voice quiet but calm. There was a long pause in which I imagined them to be chewing their pizza. I might’ve been able to see into the kitchen if I’d scooted a couple of steps down, but that would’ve put me at risk of being caught spying on them. I just had to be patient, I supposed, chewing resolutely on my pizza.
“You’re right,” Frank said. “I should’ve asked you. And I tried to, but only after…”
“Only after you thought you already knew everything,” my mother finished for him. I wasn’t sure that he was going to say that, but he didn’t contest the point.
“I am so sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t hang up immediately. I’m sorry that I didn’t think about how much that would hurt you.”
“Is that what you came here to do? To apologize?”
“Yes, I mean… I don’t know. I had to see you, Lydia. I…I missed you terribly. I still do. Miss you.”
“I’m sitting right here.”
“Us, I mean. I miss us.”
“We’re both here.”
“You know what I mean.”
There was another long silence. My pizza was getting cold. I was having trouble eating it, too entranced by what Frank and my mother were saying, what was still remaining unsaid. I wasn’t sure what was at play yet, or why he’d come out to the house to see her. Missing her just wasn’t a good enough excuse. If he’d said that at the door, I doubted she would’ve let him in.
“What am I supposed to say, Frank?” my mother asked. “That I forgive you? That I’m over you? That the way everything turned out is for the best?”
“I don’t know what you’re supposed to say. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to say. I just… I was in the city, and something told me to go to you. That’s all there was to it. I couldn’t resist the impulse.”
They lapsed into silence again. What was there to say when everything was over? Or maybe there was just too muc
h to say, too much left unsaid.
“I love you.”
I blinked and leaned forward, trying to discern who’d whispered those three words. I didn’t have to wait very long.
“Then why did you end things?” my mother asked. “Why did you trust the words of some stranger over the woman you were ready to marry?”
“Because it’s happened before,” Frank said. “I’ve been blinded by beauty and youth and what looked like love, and it was only through Peter’s intervention that I was saved, at the last moment, from certain ruin. He’s concerned about me. He always has been, calling me a hopeless old romantic. That’s why he sent the private investigator.”
“You are a hopeless romantic, and I’m neither beautiful nor young.”
“Stop. You’re the woman I want to be with. I don’t care. I don’t care about any of it. Do you want every cent of mine? Take it. If that’s the price I have to pay to be with you, it’s a bargain.”
“No.” My mother said nothing else for a long stretch. I was in just as much agony as I imagined Frank was downstairs. “If you truly want to be with me, you will listen.”
“I’ll listen to anything. Anything you want. Forever.”
“I want you to listen to me now.”
“I am listening.”
And my mother told him, from start to finish, the long saga of her first marriage. Of taking the beatings to protect me, to protect the idea of a perfect life she wanted me to have. Then, taking the beatings because she couldn’t escape. Nothing in this house was hers; it was all his. She was beholden to him, and he exacted payment from her blow by blow.
“So when we started dating, and you asked me to start spending money, I invested it in a savings account instead,” she said.
“I know about the savings account.”
“I know. But you don’t understand. I was still looking to protect myself after all of these years, after my marriage has been over for years. I couldn’t leave him because it would’ve made Gemma and me homeless, penniless, without a single friend in the world. I saved with the idea that you were going to do something bad to me. That you were going to raise your hand to me because I’d never be good enough for you.”
LUCI (The Naughty Ones Book 2) Page 61