“Well, he had a lot of experiences before he met you. Nearly two decades of them before you were even born.” There it is. Don’t feel sorry for him. He had his life.
“Why don’t you just tell me what you really want to say?”
“I have nothing to say that you’ll listen to.”
She’s not wrong. I can’t remember the last piece of advice I took from her. When I was a teenager, she once told me that indigo was my color and I’ve never worn it since. “Go for it. It’s your birthday. I promise I won’t fight back.”
There is a long pause, and I know she’s considering it. “I just wish you had listened to your father and me. You wouldn’t be alone right now. You could be happily married to someone closer to your own age, probably with a few kids.”
I screw up my face and clench my teeth together to suppress the scream inside me. Then I take a deep breath and force my voice to be calm. “Young men die too, Mom. Life offers no guarantees.”
“Well, the older they get, the closer they are to death. That’s just a fact.”
“Yup. You got me there. You win.”
“It’s not a game, Abigail, and if it were, it’s not one I ever would’ve agreed to play.”
“I just meant you were right. I thought Isaac and I would grow old together, but it didn’t work out.” I close my eyes while I talk. “He loved me, Mom. He was an amazingly supportive and encouraging partner to me for over fifteen years, and I would never have given any of it up, even if I had known how things would end. It was the best part of my life.”
“You say that like you’re never going to have anything good again.”
“That’s because I won’t.”
“You don’t know that. You’re still young. You can move on.”
I close my eyes and slump down in my chair. “Oh, God, Mom, can you stop?”
“What happened to listening and not fighting back?” Her tone is clipped.
“Sorry, I tried.” I let out a long sigh. “I’ll let you go. I’m just upsetting you, which is the last thing I wanted to do today.”
“This conversation isn’t what’s got me upset, Abigail.” Her voice becomes quiet as she speaks. “It’s the distance between us. And I’m not talking about the miles of land.”
My heart aches at her words. No matter how crazy we drive each other, she’ll always be the only mom I’ll ever have. I try to look out the window, but my sight has grown blurry. “I love you. You know that.”
“But?”
“But I wish you could accept my choices. It’s not like I moved to the big city and became a stripper or something. I got my masters, found a wonderful husband, and became a reasonably successful writer. Maybe my dreams weren’t the ones you and Dad had for me when I was a little girl, but I wish you could be proud of me anyway. For being strong enough to go against the tide and do what I was meant to.”
She’s crying now, and I know I’ve done it. She’ll probably spend the rest of the day in bed, and tomorrow, my brother, the perfect son with the perfect family, will send me an angry text about upsetting her on her birthday.
She sniffles, then she finally speaks. “Of course I’m proud of you. I just wish I still knew you. I used to know everything about you, and now you’re like a stranger to me. Do you know how hard that is? To be a stranger to your own child?”
It’s her birthday. Let her win today. “Okay, Mom,” I say with a sigh. “You’re right. I need to make a better effort. I’ll come home for a visit as soon as I can.”
“Promise?”
I resent the doubt in her voice until I realize who put it there. “Promise.”
After I hang up, my skin crawls as swirls of guilt and anger course through me. I go outside, letting the screen door slam behind me. I stand on the wood deck for a moment, breathing in long, deep breaths. Then I walk over to the still-untouched, overgrown garden and start yanking weeds, not bothering to get my hat or gloves first. Frustration fuels my body as I choose the tallest, toughest weeds to tug on, tossing them into a pile behind me as I go. The sun grows hot and my hands hurt but I continue, working furiously until I hear the screen door creak.
I straighten up, slapping my dirty hands on my jeans and turn in time to see Liam settling himself on the steps with his lunch pail and a thermos of coffee. Walt has come out with Liam and is sitting next to him, watching me intently.
Liam surveys the garden, then says, “You look like a woman on a mission.”
“Impromptu weeding session brought on by an irritating phone call,” I say, wiping the sweat off my forehead with the back of my arm.
Nodding, he says, “Anything you want to talk about?”
