I knew Charles only had Phillip’s best interest at heart, but I was the one who had been there day in and day out. It was hard to let go of the control.
All of that floated away when we drove up to a plain yellow house, and Charles and Phillip were sitting in rockers on the porch, just like old times, just like regular brothers and nothing had changed.
Maybe it was all the pregnancy hormones, but I could feel my eyes filling up right off. I didn’t even think he’d seen me, but as soon as I got to the top step, Phillip said, “Diana,” and then I started crying for real. There was something about seeing him living his life like he should have been all this time that killed me—and made me the happiest I’d ever been at the same time. He stood up, and I wanted to hug him so bad, but I knew I couldn’t; I knew it would make him agitated. This moment was too perfect for that.
“Phillip.” I said it quiet like I couldn’t believe it was really him. I reached up real slow and so careful and held his cheeks in my hands. He didn’t even flinch too bad. “Phillip, you’re here.”
“Yeah,” he said, giving me that goofy grin of his that I loved so much. “Diana, you always come and see me. I love you. You’re the best sister.” He said it in his slow, stilted way, but to me it was music.
And I was all crying and a wreck again because I hadn’t seen my brother out in the real world in so long.
He was rubbing his fingers together, and I knew I was making him nervous, so I pulled myself together. “I love when you come see me,” he said.
I looked at Charles, and he looked at me, and it was one of those moments that I think can only happen between siblings or lovers or best friends. We just looked at each other, and in that look was the happiness that our brother was back and doing good and the sadness for all the years we’d lost.
“We met with a new doctor a couple days ago,” Charles said, standing up, “and she’s got him on something that’s reallyhelped his anger and outbursts, something that helps him with being scared of people touching him, and another drug that’s even helping the way his hands do. And they’re getting him into occupational therapy, and there’s a bunch of stuff we can do to help with his talking and stuff.” He shrugged. “I mean, he can’t take care of himself or nothing, but as long as he’s got somebody to help him out, this might work.”
Now I was confused. A new doctor. Occupational therapy. “Are you taking him back with you to Asheville?”
“Actually—” Charles started.
I heard the glass door swing open before I saw it. And there she was, that sorry excuse for a mother. She made me sick, even having to look at her. Her cheeks were sort of saggy and sallow, deep lines around her eyes and mouth. Her eyes, they looked tired but also hopeful all at once, world-weary like she’d seen too much for one life. Her hair was dark like mine with gray at the roots, tucked behind ears that stuck out a little too far. She was my same height but thin. I mean, I’m thin when I’m not pregnant, but she was too thin.
“Phillip is going to come live with me,” she said. She hugged him sideways, and he laid his head on hers like she’d never left him, like she didn’t disappear, like she didn’t just throw him out to the wolves or the social service people, and I wasn’t sure which one was worse. I was shocked. Absolutely shocked. Normally that much physical contact would be a trigger for Phillip. But I guessed even all these years later, she was his momma. She was still the only one who could really comfort him.
“Oh yeah. That’s a great idea,” I said as sarcastically as I could manage, grateful that Phillip didn’t catch on to sarcasm. “Who do you think you are?” I could feel myself getting worked up again, but before I was all the way down that steamed-up road, Phillip in his simple, stilted way said, “Diana, this is our mom. She takes good care of us, remember?”
I felt those tears coming again, and I did remember. I did. That’s why it was so hard. I remembered laughing with her. I remembered having fun with her. I remembered building pillow and blanket forts that nobody cared if we cleaned up and turning cardboard boxes into spaceships and sitting around that pitiful cast-off Christmas tree feeling happy together, feeling like a family. We didn’t have a daddy, but we didn’t need one. Momma, she maybe couldn’t keep food on the table for us all the time, but she loved us.
“Diana,” Mom said softly, “I know you’re angry, and I know you’re hurt, and being left alone as a child is the most unspeakable thing. I never in a million years would have left you on purpose. I went out of my mind, but I’ve cleaned myself up. It was a battle every single day, but every time I wanted to go back to that life of drugs and drinking and emptiness, I thought about you. I did it for you, for all of you. It has taken me until now to be totally sure that I will never go back to where I was again, to even hope that maybe I could be a part of your lives. I know I don’t deserve it, but…” Her voice broke.
I guess, if I really got to thinking about it, I started to feel sorry for her then. A little—not much. Because I already loved this baby so much. And I knew, way deep in my heart, even allthis time later, that my momma, she loved us something fierce. But I didn’t care about her excuses or nothing else. I was done with her.
I glared at Charles. “When this all goes down the tubes and she forgets to feed Phillip for three days, you just call me instead of dumping him back in that institution. You hear?” And I guess really what was going on inside me was fear. A whole lot of fear. Taking care of Phillip the way he needed and deserved to be taken care of was going to be a full-time job. Could Momma handle that?
Frank put his arm around my shoulders, and it was like I could hear him saying,Calm down.
I turned to walk away again, but Phillip said, in that childlike way of his that was so innocent and so profound, “Diana, our mom loves you. Don’t you love her too?”
The tears were spilling over on my cheeks now. I loved her so much that I couldn’t bear to have her back. The only way for me to deal with the pain of losing her the first time was to think that she was dead.
I thought about Gray and what she wouldn’t give if she’d thought her mom was dead and she came back. Maybe if I could just be a little more like Charles or a little more like Phillip, a little more forgiving and a little simpler, maybe I could just let myself be happy and maybe we could be a family, all of us.
I didn’t really want to, but it was like something outside me made me start walking right then, and I kept walking until I was back in the arms of my momma, and I was crying, and shewas crying, and Charles was looking like his pig just won Best in Show at the fair. Everybody was happy, so I figured there wasn’t much else to do but be happy too.
For a minute, I was that little girl again, the little girl whose momma left her, that eleven-year-old clinging to anybody who would even think about loving her or trying to fill up that huge, gaping hole that her momma leaving had put there. Frank coming back had helped, and that baby being in there had helped. But now my momma was here. She was back. It might have been twenty-nine years too late, but if this year had taught me something, it was that, in reality, it was never too late for anything.
gray: wicked spin serve
My strategic growth team on my old website (i.e. two of my college roommates and some guy that sold Greg weed) used to studyBaby CenterandWhat to Expect When You’re Expectingwhen we were planning our marketing. They were masters of getting people to sign up for an email list and stick with it long-term, and in studying them, trying to gain some insight from their massive success, I’d read a whole lot of their articles.
Today, I wished I still had my App because, in my eight years of parenting, I’d rarely been this nervous. I needed some guidance.
I’d gone over and over and over it in my head. Andrew thought that maybe he should come too. But I knew this wassomething that should come from your mom. It didn’t matter that Wagner loved Andrew, that he thought he was cool and enjoyed playing tennis with him. No one wants his mom to date anyone new. That’s normal. But I rationalized that when he was all grown up with a family of his own, he would appreciate that I had found my own life and didn’t spend every waking minute trying to control his. So, really, I could convince myself, I was doing this for him.
But when he walked through the back door, I lost my nerve. Completely. “Hi, cutie pie!” I hugged him and planted a big kiss on his cheek.
He rolled his eyes and said, “M-o-o-om.”
