“We just broke up.” I make a face. “Until he dumped me, he found it all so easy.”
“Found what easy?”
“Love. Sharing. Giving. All that stuff.”
She starts to cry. “I’m sorry. I screwed that up big-time. I wasn’t any good at love. I was in a lot of pain back then.”
The longer I listen to her cry, the more I truly feel for her. Because she really didn’t know how. And that means somebody must not have showed her, either.
“It’s okay, Mom.”
“Really?” she says.
“I’m not sure. But I don’t want to keep hating you for this.”
Because staying angry with her is doing me no good anymore. Whatever sort of self-survival and self-protection hating my mother afforded me in years past, I realize in this moment that it’s doing me shit right now.
“I’m glad.” She smiles at me and finally looks down at the envelope, which has migrated with her to the kitchen table. “So what’s this about?”
I swallow. “Why don’t you open it and find out?”
She takes forever to cut open the top of the envelope and even longer to pull out the check.
Her face is unreadable as she looks at it. Finally, she furrows her brows and looks up at me.
“My name is on this.”
I nod. “Yes. It’s for you. Twenty-five thousand dollars. What you need to pay off your gambling debts so you can keep this house and start fresh.”
She was already weepy; now she’s downright sobbing.
Scared she’s going to soak the check, I reach over and gently take it out of her hands, placing it at the other end of the table.
“You’ll pay off the debts with this?” I say. “If not, I’ll write it out to the people you owe the money to instead.”
She shakes her head. “Not necessary. I went to gamblers’ anonymous and quit the habit.” Her wet eyes focus on me. “But why? Why would you want to help me out after the way I treated you?”
I fidget with my hands in my lap. “Like I said to you earlier, I want to break the cycle. I want you to feel empowered again or maybe for the first time in your life. And I would like a place to call home, somewhere I can come to visit. Not to live,” I add firmly. “But to visit. My apartment is in L.A.”
Twenty minutes later, my mother has stopped crying, and she’s even placed a call to the casino and set up an appointment for tomorrow morning so she can make the payment in person.
“You’re a generous person with a huge heart,” she says to me, and I catch the pride in her voice.
And yes, that means something. Having my mother approve of me means more than I’d like to admit.
“I hope that man you care about so much appreciates you,” she says.
“He did once,” I say, wanting to kick myself for the slight tremble in my voice. “Far more than I deserved. But we’re finished.”
She rests her chin on her hand. “I thought I loved your father. But really, I barely knew Cort.”
I stare at her. “You know his name?”
“Of course I know his name. He’s the father of my only child.”
She grabs a pen and pad of paper and starts to write. “He lives in Los Angeles now. Works for an insurance company.”
“Does he know I exist?”
