He opened his mouth to say something more, then seemed to change his mind.
“Isn’t this what family does? Or is supposed to do, anyway?” I asked. “Take care of each other?” My husband had grown up in a big, loving Irish Catholic family from Connecticut; I looked to him to teach me how normal families ought to work. Our own marriage and family life was a beautiful but careful dance we did, with me following his lead.
“Yeah,” Mark agreed. “It is. But your family situation is… unique.”
“If byuniqueyou mean my mother was incredibly fucked-up at times, then yeah,” I agreed. I reached up over my shoulder and touched my back.
He knew what was hiding under my warm wool sweater: the tangled network of scars I kept carefully hidden, wearing T-shirts at the beach. My brother, Ben, had similar scars on his own back, likewise my mother’s handiwork. Ben, like me, had kept his scars carefully concealed. We’d never discussed it. Maybe that was our way of surviving with her: to pretend everything was normal.
When I became pregnant with Izzy, I cried and cried, told Mark I was terrified to be a mother; it was almost as if I’d been waiting my whole life for my own craziness to come creeping in.
“That’s not going to happen,” Mark had promised. “You are not your mother.”
I had nightmares about it, though. Dreams in which I went sneaking into my daughter’s room to whisper terrible things to her, to cut designs into her back with the point of a blade. I’d wake up in a cold sweat, terrified.
Whenever the girls caught glimpses of my back—I’d worked hard to avoid revealing it to them—I told them I’d been in an accident as a child.
I’m a gifted liar.
Maybe it was the reality of those scars on my back, but I felt apprehension blooming inside me like a dark flower. “It’s a terrible idea, isn’t it? I should call my mother right now and say no.”
Mark took in a deep breath and held it. Then he looked at me with such love, such understanding in those warm brown eyes that I felt my whole body relax. This man knew me better than anyone else.
“Ali, you’ve told me a lot of stories about your mother, some of them just plain horrific. But not all of them were, right? There were some happy memories too. Like the scavenger hunts? The silly riddles? The art lessons?”
“That was all before my father died, before—”
“I know. I’m just saying that the person you remember, the one who was good and kind and made you fall in love with art, she’s still in there somewhere.”
I wanted to argue, but he was right. Hadn’t I seen a trace of her in that hospital room?
“I worry that if you say no, she might die without you two resolving your issues. You’ve been given this one final chance to process everything that happened between you, to make peace with it. I don’t want you to have any regrets.”
I looked at my sweet, always glass-half-full husband. Was it really possible? To make peace?
“This isn’t one of your Hallmark movies, Mark. This woman isn’t going to come breezing in and see the true meaning of family just in time for Christmas.”
He laughed. “I know. But she’s your mother, Ali. And it’s her dying wish. She wants to make things right before she goes. Don’t you think we should give her the chance to do that?”
“What about the girls?” I asked. “What will it be like for them to have a sick old woman they hardly know dying in their house? A woman who, let’s face it, can be pretty frightening even in the best of health?”
Mark thought a minute, stared down into his mug of tea. “It’s true that the girls hardly know their grandmother. It would be a gift for them to spend this time with her. Think about it, Ali. My parents are gone. Your father died when you were young. Your mother is the only grandparent they have left. And I think having her here will not only let them get to know her, but teach them an important lesson about forgiveness. That this is what we do with the people we love—we take care of them no matter what.”
“No matter what,” I repeated, my voice sounding far away, like it was coming from someone else.
Mark took my hand. “We can make this work,” he said. “We’ve got the guest room downstairs—it needs a little tidying, but it’ll be perfect.”
I nodded. “And we’ll have help,” I added. “You know how Paul is—he’ll have the place turned into a top-notch hospice suite in a couple of days.”
Mark looked at me for a long time, then smiled. There was worry there, but it was a smile nonetheless. “It’s your decision, of course.” He squeezed my hand. “I’m with you no matter what.”
I lifted his hand, kissed it. “Forever and ever?” I asked.
“Forever and ever,” he said, repeating the wedding vows he’d written himself, and the Emily Dickinson quote he’d used, “?‘Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.’?”
I knew how lucky I was to be married to a man who would follow me anywhere, hold my hand and smile reassuringly, quoting poetry, as we stepped into a pit of vipers.
“Okay,” I said, giving him a tight hug. “Let’s do it.”
