My dad comes to stand beside his wife but doesn’t touch her, not even a reassuring hand on her back. Just a twin pillar of solidarity as they face my latest indiscretion.
Mom takes a seat on the barstool on her side of the counter, laying folded hands on the clean marble. Keeping her back ramrod straight, she looks like she belongs in a boardroom not a kitchen.
My dad takes the seat beside her looking equally put-out by this inconvenience and curious about how this will go down.
“Alright, Mara, let’s start with never feeling good enough. Am I to understand we’ve made you feel like you haven’t been successful?”
“It’s not about my success, Mom, it’s about feeling important.” I wasn’t mentally prepared to have this conversation. Nita has been encouraging me to confront my parents about how I’ve felt through the years but I’ve been too chicken. I guess the universe decided it was time to have this talk.
“Nothing I ever did warranted attention from either of you. Unless we were in front of your friends and you had the chance to brag about me like I wasyouraccomplishment, I didn’t get any recognition for my achievements.”
“When was the last time you were in my office?” It’s my dad who speaks up much to my astonishment. He usually takes a backseat during serious conversations that don’t involve work.
“Umm,” I draw out the M while trying to think back. I don’t go to his office unless I have to. “I don’t know, a few years.”
“Did you know I have a picture of you at the cross country state championship on my desk?”I went to state my sophomore year of high school. “Before you assume it’s just for show, I keep it facing me on my desk, but any time a client asks if I have kids, I’m more than eager to show them the photo of my daughter placing at the state championship.”
This is a side of him I haven’t seen before, not to mention the most I’ve heard him speak in this house without twenty guests. “I—I didn’t know you cared.” Maybe I’m a bitch for letting it cross my mind, but a small part ofme wonders if he’s just telling me what I want to hear. Like when he tells Mom her favorite skirt doesn’t make her look fat.
“I’m very proud of you, Mara. I apologize for not telling you enough.” Although his voice carries a tone of professionalism, he sounds sincere.
Dumbfounded doesn’t even come close to how I’m feeling. Never in a million years did I expect my dad to be the one to tell me he’s proud of me, let alone for this conversation to be so productive. I thought they’d put up a fight, tell me I’m imagining things, whatever takes the blame off their shoulders. And Dad proved me wrong in two minutes flat.
“Now, Mara,” Mom grabs my attention again, “is that boy cheating on you why you moved home?” I gave them as many vague answers as I could when I left college and moved back. My go-to was “I’m trying to figure out what I want to do with my life.” That didn’t earn me any brownie points in their eyes.
“The main reason, yeah,” I’m not ready to tell them how much of a failure I was in college. One battle at a time. “It was more like the straw that broke the camel’s back. I caught him cheating on me and made a rash decision. Felt like I didn’t have anything else to stay in California for.”
“Honey,” I’ve never heard her use a term of endearment with me before. Paired with the sad look she’s giving me, I want to break down and cry under the motherly concern I’ve craved for so long. “I’m so sorry. I wish I’d known.”
“What would you have done?” I twist the lid back on the pickle jar that was forgotten on the counter and return it to its designated place in the fridge.
“Come see you, help you move if you needed me to. I don’t know. But having been in your shoes, I just would have wanted to be with you, I suppose.”
“Mom, I had no idea.” Mom was cheated on? She’s never told me about her life before marriage. “I wish you’d told me more about your life before you married Dad. This is part of the problem, I feel like I don’t know much about you both aside from what I’ve observed.” The two of them share a look and I swear this is the most they’ve ever seemed like an actual teaminstead of separate entities in the same space.
“Fair enough,” she nods her head. “Maybe we need to start having more mother-daughter time. Would Wednesday afternoons work for a weekly lunch? I recall you don’t work that day.”
I’m both impressed she knows my schedule by heart and taken aback by how formal her offer is at the same time. But I agree. As daunting as weekly lunches with my mom seem, it is what I asked for, essentially.
My dad’s voice chimes in. “Well, if those are the days you don’t work, perhaps Wednesday evenings would be good for a family dinner instead, time for all of us to be together.”
“Good idea.” Mom rubs his shoulder affectionately and I swear it’s like I’m having a conversation with two completely different people than the parents who’ve raised me thus far.
“What is this?” I blurt out, gesturing between them with my index finger. “You’ve never touched each other in front of me before. You don’t have productive heart-to-hearts in the kitchen after golf. What is happening?”
“Mara,” Mom scowls at me incredulously. “Just because your father and I aren’t affectionate in front of you very often doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. We’ve been together for twenty-five years. And many more to come. We just try to keep our private life private, including from our daughter. As for heart-to-hearts in the kitchen, our daughter has never brought up anything so serious before. If you want more of this, all you have to do is ask.”
She makes it sound so simple. I guess I can shoulder some of the blame as well. As stand-offish as they’ve been most of my life, I haven’t exactly made my feelings known or made an effort to connect with them on a different level.
“Now, Mara,” Dad’s voice lowers to a scary quiet decibel I usually only hear when he’s made a decision the rest of the world has to adhere to. “I won’t force you to talk about what happened the night you disappeared, that’s what you have Dr. Riley for. But I am asking you to promise that if you ever feel that way again, you’ll tell someone. It doesn’t have to be us, it could be Dr. Riley, it could be a stranger on the street. But please don’t follow through without finding help first.”
Promise.Coming from a lawyer, that’s a pretty strong word choice. I nod, not feeling strong enough to acknowledge what he’s asking. He gives me a single, curt nod, then stands bracing both hands on the countertop.
“This has been a productive conversation, ladies. If you’ll excuse me, I would like to freshen up after my game from this afternoon.” With that, he strides toward the staircase and disappears out of sight.
What an oddly official end to this unofficial family intervention.
Chapter Thirty-Three
