***
“Brody, Drea.”Evelyn sat up in bed.“I’m so glad you came back.”
There was a look of hope on her face and it irritated him.He’d slept in fits, tied up in knots as to how to broach the conversation with her, but nothing seemed right.He remembered Drea’s words.That he had a right to be angry.
“Why did you leave us?”There it was.The question that had plagued him for twenty-four years was finally in the open.
The eight-year-old child trapped inside him panicked.Please don’t let it be me.Please don’t let it be me.
The monotone beeps and unintelligible pages of the hospital made an appropriate B-movie soundtrack.Drea led them to plastic chairs, but Cujo didn’t take his eyes off Evelyn.
The silence dragged as he waited for his mother to answer his question.
“I didn’t leave you.”Her voice was stronger today.“Not in the way you think.”
“Really?’Cos I could swear you weren’t there for the last twenty-four years.”Coming here to get answers was a mistake.He was still too raw.
“I was so young.So… unfulfilled.I was suffocating.”
His stomach tightened.“So, you didn’t want us?”
She let out a bitter laugh.“No, Brody.That’s not it.I made a monumental mistake.”She sighed.“I knew this day would come, but I am no more prepared for it.Did your dad tell you how we met?”
Cujo shook his head.“He never really said much.Just you met on your way home from a rally.”
“I turned seventeen the day before.He was twenty.Funny.Charming.”She smiled, her eyes distant as she recalled the memory.
“I was desperate to become an activist of some kind.I dreamed of chaining myself to a tractor or the fence of the White House.Such an idealist.I’d have joined the Plowshare Movement in a heartbeat.”
She looked at Cujo, his facial features obviously reflecting the fact he had no idea what she was talking about.“Daniel Berrigan?Philip?King of Prussia, Pennsylvania nuclear plant break-in?”
He shook his head.“Sorry, no.”
“Fascinating story about… never mind.I digress.All of a sudden, I was pregnant.”His mom shrugged hopelessly.She sniffed, reached for a tissue.
Cujo rested his elbows on his knees.“Did you want me?”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t want you.I was excited by the possibility of being a mom.I just dreamed of so much more happening before I had you.Your dad was a good man.So when he promised we could make it work, I believed him.”
“Did you ever think of getting rid of me?Of having an abortion?”If they’d not had him, how different would his mom and dad’s lives have been?
“Never.Alec tried to do right by us.And I tried to pretend that I was happy, building a family.You were the cutest little thing with those big blue eyes that could melt my heart.”Evelyn smoothed the hospital bed sheet over her lap.
“But I needed more,” she continued.“I wanted it so badly I became blinded by it.I resented Alec for making me stay home.I resented the very things I should have adored as a mother.Bathing the three of you, putting on Band-Aids.”She started to weep softly.“Loving you.”
Eyes burning with tears, he looked up at the ceiling and studied the silver framework holding up crappy-looking polystyrene ceiling tiles.Gradually, the tears receded, but the lump was still firmly lodged in the back of his throat.
“I was going through the motions,” she continued.“I loved you with a passion, Brody.I just couldn’t be there for you and remain whole.I was terrified my life would never amount to anything.”
He understood that feeling.After his surgery, he’d felt the same way.“Why didn’t you keep in touch with us?”
“At first, it was too damn painful.I hitched a ride to Charlotte that night.Made my way to Boston over the next few days.I knew I had to be away from you because it would be too easy to run back.”Evelyn poured a glass of water from the pitcher on the table next to the bed.She sipped slowly, lost in her own thoughts.
“Was it worth it?Being away from us?Because it sure didn’t feel worth it when I had my first round of chemo in my last year of high school.”
“Brody,” she exclaimed.“No.”
He watched the color drain from her face, yet got no satisfaction from it.
