I stand up and start pacing.I wish I’d let the phone ring a thousand more times, because I don’t want to have this conversation with my mom right now.
“Okay,” I say.“What does that change?”
There’s silence on the other end of the line.
“Don’t you think the timing works out?”she says, sounding taken aback.She doesn’t answer my question, because the correct answer is that it doesn’t change anything.
“They moved here in October, hedemandeda divorce in February, and I haven’t seen them once since April!”
“Maybe they’re summering somewhere else,” I say.“That’s their second home, isn’t it?”
“I know I’m right,” she says.“An affair with theneighbor.Right under my nose, Clem, how could he?”
I walk up to a wall and lean my forehead against it without answering her.Ever since my dad presented her with the request, she’s been bound and determined that he’s been having an affair.Sometimes, in her mind, it’s a torrid one-night stand, sometimes it’s been going on for decades, but she’s got a different suspect every single time.
Thenshe calls me and tells me the awful things that my dad is doing, the women she sees him with, how he’sdemandinghalf of their assets after hedid this to her.
I hate it.
She’s trying to turn me against my dad.I know what she’s doing, and even though I feel terrible for her — after twenty-five years of marriage, a divorce?— I don’t want to hear any of this.
I’m almost certain he didn’t have an affair.He says he didn’t, and there’s no evidence otherwise.Besides, for most of my life, they’ve alternated between fighting constantly and almost never speaking, so it’s not like they had a great relationship to ruin.
I’m almost relieved that they’re divorcing, to be honest.They both deserve to be happy, and they sure weren’t when they were together.
I just wish they could do it without putting me in the middle.
I open my eyes, staring into the blank white wall, and realize my mom is talking.
“—And he wants the quilt, Clem, after I birthed and raised his children, he wants thequiltwe slept under?—”
“His mother made that quilt,” I say, then immediately bite my lip, because Iknowbetter than to let myself get sucked into an argument.It’s completely pointless, because she’s not really upset about the quilt, she’s upset abouteverything.
And I get it.I’d be upset.But there’s a limit to how much of this I can take, for my own sanity, no matter how terrible I feel for my parents.
“But wesleptunder it,” she says, sounding taken aback.
“Mom, I gotta go,” I say.
“What are you doing?”
Nothing, actually.
“I’ve gotta go to a thing.I’ll talk to you later, okay?”I say.
“Clem, I just don’t know why you?—”
“See you this weekend,” I say, and hang up the phone, even though I know she’s still talking.
It’s unkind of me, and Iknowthat.But I also know that I need my sanity, and frankly, I need my sanity more than I need to be nice right now.
Almost immediately, the phone starts ringing again.I ball my hand into a fist again and answer.
“Mom, I really don’t want to talk about this right now, okay?”I say, sounding more pissy than I mean to.
There’s a pause on the other end.
“Clem?”Hunter’s voice says.
