“Jesus Christ,” my father said finally, his voice cold with disgust. “You sound just like that uppity bitch. She really did a number on you, didn’t she?”
“She didn’t do anything to me,” I shot back. “She just expected to be treated with respect.”
“And that’s exactly why she’s gone,” he sneered.
“She was too good for me,” I said, the truth hitting me like a freight train. I ran my hands through my hair, suddenly exhausted by the weight of the realization. “This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come here.” I turned to leave, but my mother’s voice stopped me.
“Jacob, wait.”
I looked back to find her standing in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, her hands clasped in front of her like she was praying. “Your father,” she said quietly, “is going to take his afternoon nap now.”
It wasn’t a suggestion. It was a statement of fact delivered in a tone that brooked no argument. My father looked like he wanted to protest, but something in my mother’s expression made him think better of it.
“Fine,” he muttered. “But when I wake up, we’re finishing this conversation.”
He stomped out of the room, and I heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs. My mother waited until she heard the bedroom door slam before she spoke again.
“Sit down,” she said, and this time there was steel in her voice I’d never heard before.
I sat.
My mother poured herself a cup of coffee and joined me at the table. For a long moment, she just stared into her mug like it held the answers to life’s mysteries.
“You want to know if I’m happy,” she said finally.
“Mom—”
“No, let me talk. You asked if I felt like I had it made, and your father answered for me. He always answers for me.” Shelooked up, and I saw tears in her eyes. “But you deserve the real answer.”
I waited, afraid to breathe.
“I haven’t been happy for thirty years,” she said simply. “Not since the first time I caught your father with another woman, a club girl, and he told me it was just club business.”
The words hit me like a punch to the gut. “Mom...”
“I stayed because he convinced me that his cheating was normal, that I was the problem for being upset about it.” She was crying now, silent tears that she wiped away with the back of her hand. “I stayed because I thought I had to. Because I thought that was what old ladies did. They put up with whatever their husbands dished out and pretended to be grateful for it.”
“But you could leave now,” I said desperately. “You could—”
“Could I?” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I’m sixty-three years old, Jacob. I haven’t worked in forty-three years. I have no friends, no hobbies, no life outside of this house and your father’s needs. Where would I go? What would I do?”
The hopelessness in her voice was devastating. This was my mother—the woman who’d raised me, who’d bandaged my skinned knees and celebrated my victories—and she’d been miserable for most of my life. How the fuck had I missed this?
“I used to pray,” she continued, “that you’d be different. That you’d find a good woman and treat her the way she deserved to be treated. That you’d break the cycle.”
“I tried—”
“No, you didn’t.” The words were gentle but firm. “You did exactly what your father did. You found a wonderful woman and you treated her like she was disposable.”
The truth of it was like a knife between my ribs. “I love her.”
“I know you do. I could see it.” She looked down at her coffee, turning the mug in her hands. When she spoke again, her voicewas tired. “But love isn’t enough. I’ve been telling myself that for forty odd years.”
We sat in silence for a while, the weight of decades of unspoken truths settling between us.
“So she left you,” my mother said finally.
“Yeah.”
