The phone vibrated with an incoming video call in my hand. I sat down on a chair and picked it up.
“Will, sweetie!”
“Hey, Mom. Where are you?” He noticed the setting around me. “June’s?”
“Yes.” My heart picked up its rhythm. Fight or flight. Tell the truth or lie. “How are you, sweetie?” I asked instead.
“So happy. Things couldn’t have gone better! And before you say anything—”
“Hey, Will.” June bent her head from behind me and waved at him, cutting into his sentence. In this small space, it was better that she made her presence known. It was strange to see how different, cheerful, and un-June she appeared when talking with my sons.
“Hey! You two are having a sisters’ night?”
I was still trying to figure out how to reply to this when June said, “Sure.”
I smiled at her. We weren’t in the habit of having sisters’ nights, and that white lie had just saved me.
“Mom showed you the ring?”
“Oh yes,” June said.
I thought about my sister, who at forty had never married or lived with anyone. She and I were probably Will’s example as to whatnotto do.
“Stephanie and I, it’s notthatnew, Mom,” Will addressed my comment from before. “But tell you what—you’ll meet her on spring break.”
“Oh, Will,” I muttered out loud, my stomach dropping. June had moved to wash the dishes instead of me, and we turned to look at each other at this.
“We’ll only be stopping by for one day. Lennox and I can sleep in the living room, and she’ll take our room, we’ll have lunch the next day and be off to meet her parents. Don’t worry; I won’t pop any question or anything like that before I meet her family and before you get to meet her and fall in love with her yourself. I want to do this right; meet her dad and, you know, ask him for her hand.”
“Aww … Will!” Both June and I exclaimed together. I had definitely done something right with these boys.
I held back the tears of pride and love, along with the bitter tears of hearing my son speaking of our apartment, not knowing that there was no more his and Lennox’s room.
What have I done?
Spring break was right around the corner.
“Will, to tell you the truth—” I opened, feeling the tears I’d been holding back making their sure way to my eyes.
“Your mom is moving from that place, but don’t worry; by the time you get here, it will all be settled,” June butted in again, sticking her head into the camera view from over my shoulder.
“Okay, great,” Will said, turning his head toward something or someone who was calling for his attention in his dorm room.
“I have to tell them the truth,” I told June when I hung up the call. She sat next to me now. “How the fuck did I fuck up their lives like that?”
“You were trying to do the right thing.”
“You have no idea what it feels like to be always dropping the ball.”
“At least you came out to play,” she muttered.
“You’d never drop the ball, June.”
“How do you know I haven’t?” June turned red then pale.
“What are you not telling me, June?”
“Nothing this big. Listen, that’s not what I would have advised before, but this ring shows how serious he is about this girl. Even if he doesn’t end up proposing to her now, you can’t let him know the truth. You can’t have the first impression she has of his family is that they’re hom—that they don’t have a sound housing solution.”
