Inhale. Exhale.
One…two…
I ring the doorbell.
The door opens. And my mind goes blank.
A woman stares at me with an identical stunned and stupefied expression. I never called her, never warned her about this meeting. I was too scared that she’d shut me down. I just wanted to see her face, hear her voice, all at the same time.
She’s young, not even forty. I search her features: slender nose, thin lips, and shiny brown hair. I suddenly realize I’m looking formein her.
“I’m—”
“I know who you are.” Her voice is velvet, the kind you can close your eyes and fall asleep to. I bet she reads her kids bedtime stories. The thought knots my stomach. “I’ve seen you on the news.”
I wait for her to invite me in, but she grips the knob like she’s seconds from swinging the door in my face.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
I’m not sure what reaction I expected. My dad—he told me that she didn’t want me. I thought, maybe, he was lying. I still grasp to that futile hope that she cared for me like a mother would a son.
Inhale. “I just wanted to talk.” My voice sounds coarse compared to hers. Like an animal to an angel. It fucking sucks. And I can’t stop staring at her, like she’s moments from being ripped from my memory.
“There’s nothing to talk about.” Her eyes carry apologies even if her words don’t.
“Right,” I say and nod to myself. I could walk away. I could leave it at that. I’ve seen her. What else do I need? What the fuck am I searching for? “You’re my mom.” I want to take back the words as soon as I say them.
She cringes, the door shrinking closed, but she stays beside it, wedged between the frame. And she stares at me like I’m a mistake, a black mark on her resume that she’s been trying to scrub clean. She doesn’t say it, but I can see the phrase all over her face.You’re not my son, not really.
She didn’t raise me. I was a bad part of her life that she’s been trying to forget.
She clears her throat, uncomfortable. “Did Jonathan tell you anything?”
“Not much.”
“Well…what do you want to know?”
The open-ended question takes me aback for a second. What do I want to know?Everything.I want all the answers that have been kept from me. “What happened?”
“I was a teenager…” She glances over her shoulder for a minute and then says, “I was young and was easily drawn to a guy like Jonathan. We slept together once. That’s it. And I was careless, and that’s why you’re here.”
Something nasty sits on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow down the more spiteful retort. I sweat through my shirt, so fucking hot. I wipe my brow and say, “So that’s what I am to you then?”
Her eyes flit past my body. A neighbor across the street stares hard from his mailbox, and I wonder if he’s trying to place me—figuring out where he recognizes me from.
“You can invite me in,” I offer.
She shakes her head and clears her throat again. “No. It’s best if you stay outside.”
“Right.” That’s all I can say without yelling, without screaming everything that weighs on my chest.Why didn’t youcome back for me? Why didn’t you fucking care? I’m your goddamn son!I spent years without a mother, without that maternal figure. The most I had were the people who paraded in and out of my house in the mornings. Makeup-smeared, half-dressed women who had no words of wisdom for me, no answers to my problems, no sweet, nurturing voice to ease me to sleep.
“You have to understand…” Her eyes fall to the ground. “I didn’t want you.”
“Yeah, I got that,” I say sharply. My father was right. I shouldn’t have sought her out.
“I was in high school,” she says. “I was just a girl, and I planned to go to college, to have boyfriends and a life. You were going to take all of that from me.”
You were going to take all of that from me.The words ring in the pit of my ears.
