“Dear, will you go get me something else to eat? Maybe banana and granola and some yogurt.”
A manic-sounding giggle escapes as I imagine the knowing face Wesley would make if he heard that my mother’s breakfast order was the same as mine.
Dad walks past me to place a kiss on her forehead, then leaves, closing the door behind him. There’s no sun on this side of the building and a washed-out painting of a ship at sea sits on the wall across from her. Nothing about this hospital room is good enough for my mother and I feel the same righteous indignation Wesley felt last night. That she doesn’t deserve this.
Any of this.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, pushing the tray away and opening her arms.
I hug her but I don’t fall into her like I want to. She’s sitting up and she sounds like herself, but she’s still too small and fragile in this bed.
“Can’t I just be happy you’re better?”
“Of course you can. But those aren’t happy tears, pot roast. They’re heartbreak tears. What happened?”
I open my hand and Wesley’s note, a crumpled, damp mess from my sweaty palm, falls onto the bed.
“What’s this?” Mom flattens the paper down on her lap. She’s silent as she reads it. “Corrine?”
“Mom. I screwed everything up.”
Her skin feels dry as she rubs a tear from my cheek. “Impossible.”
I shake my head. I don’t deserve her unwavering faith.
“I’ve wanted to tell you for so long.”
“So tell me.”
My mom’s face, the kindness in her eyes, pulls everything to the surface. The words tumble out of me. “I quit my job. Or maybe I got fired. I don’t really know.”
“Oh?”
“Because my boss has been sexually harassing me for...for so long,” I whisper, still too ashamed to say it at full volume.
“Oh, Corrine.” Tears fill her eyes and trigger more of my own.
“And...my intern. The one that I thought...the one that I didn’t get along with...” I can’t say any more. Partially because I don’t want to say the words to my mother. But also because they hurt so damn much to say out loud. That we were together. And now we’re not.
Understanding dawns on her face. “Oh. Oh, baby.”
Her thumbs wipe away the tears streaming down my face. I can’t seem to stop crying.
“Did he break up with you?”
I shake my head. “I did. I... I told him he was a mistake. I said horrible things to him.”
His face as I said those words is etched behind my eyelids. I don’t care that he forgives me, I wish I could fix it.
Mom gathers me close to her. She still smells like her vanilla soap. The hospital scent hasn’t taken over. “Was it a mistake?” she asks. “I can’t believe it was if you’re like this now.”
I take a shuddering breath. And then another. “Maybe...maybe at first. I’d just found out about...” I gesture around the room to signify,all this. “And Richard... I thought... I thought I just had to take it, you know? In order to make it there, to be successful. I wanted to be loyal after everything he’s done for me. But nothing I ever did beyond my complete capitulation was going to be good enough for him. I just wanted to be good enough and when I couldn’t be I... I guess, yes.Imade a mistake by trying to find distraction in him.”
I’m made of the thinnest eggshells. I will crack open and spill all over the floor at the slightest pressure.
“I... I used him.” The words come out on a sob.
She pushes my hair behind my ear. “Or maybe you just turned toward someone who thought you were good enough. Who didn’t want anything from you...but you.”
