She gasps at the sight of my pizza—minus one slice—and beer on the coffee table.
“Riley John Dempsey, don’t tell me this is your Thanksgiving dinner.”
Oh, how she loves to full-name me. I look at my dad for help, but he’s conveniently distracted by the plain walls of my mostly bare house.
“Mom, I had a game this morning, and I live alone. Besides, you know I can’t cook.”
“Jeff, go get the stuff we got. I told you we were going to need it,” she says to my dad, who knows the drill ingrained by almost fifty years of marriage.
She takes her coat off and drapes it over the couch.
“Where’s your kitchen?”
She walks to the hallway leading to the bedroom, and that’s a room I really don’t want her to see. If she’s disappointed with my choice of dinner, I’ll never hear the end of it when she sees my bedroom has nothing but a bed and a dresser. Not to mention a pile of laundry on the floor that I was supposed to work through this weekend.
“Mom. Stop.”
She comes to a halt.
“What the hell is going on? You don’t exactly live around the corner, so you can just drop by. Why didn’t you say you were coming?” I ask, guiding her toward the kitchen.
The sadness on her face gets to me, and I pull her into my arms. “I’m sorry, Mom. I don’t mean it that way. I’m glad you’re here. It’s just a surprise, you know? I didn’t even get a turkey or anything.”
Dad comes back, holding a few shopping bags.
“We didn’t get turkey either, but at least we can have a proper meal,” Mom says. “Now take me to your kitchen so I can prepare our dinner while we catch up.”
I give up on watching any football and give a passing glance at my now sad-looking pizza, but despite the shock of having my parents turn up unannounced, I’m glad they’re here.
Dad follows us to the kitchen with the bags and grabs a beer from the fridge before going out to the living room, leaving me with my mom. At least one of us gets to watch the game.
“This is a nice kitchen, Riley. Mel would have liked it.”
“Mom…”
“Sorry, honey. Force of habit.”
I try not to take it to heart and leave her to find everything she needs to prepare whatever dinner she’s cooking for us. I stand on the side, waiting to be told what to do.
“She still drops by every week and asks about you,” Mom says.
“I’m glad you’re still getting along, Mom. You’ve always been close, and I’d hate for her to lose you, but there’s no way back for us. You need to know that.”
Mom hands me the chopping board, the knife, and a bunch of vegetables. No need for instructions. We’ve done this plenty of times before.
“I know, honey. I just think that after all these years, it’s such a shame. You were so good together. Did you really fall out of love?”
“I love you for asking that, but it was a lot of things, not just that we grew apart.”
She puts the knife she’s using to cut the chicken on the chopping board and faces me.
“You know you’re not an only child out of choice, don’t you?”
I nod. We’ve had this conversation before when my and Mel’s struggle to conceive came up. They shared how they tried to give me a sibling, but it never happened.
“I know how hard it is to want that child so much, and it becomes everything. Sometimes you can lose yourself a little,” she says. “I could see it in Mel’s eyes.”
I take a deep, steady breath. “Mom, can we not talk about this? Nothing is going to change things. Mel and I are divorced.”
