The night after my high school play, I’d gotten up for a drink of water. Mom was talking on the phone. Best I could tell, she was chewing Daddy a new one for not showing up to see me perform. At one point, Mom said, “Stop giving me your damn excuses. You’re a selfish man with a surplus of pride, that’s what you are. You can hate me all you want, but you need to stop taking it out on your daughter ... Oh, you’re going to make it up to her, are you? How? ... That’s a crazy idea. You can’t just throw money at the problem ... You know what? Fuck you.”
Mom slammed down the receiver of the old rotary phone and stalked into the kitchen, her face blanching at the sight of me. “I suppose you heard that conversation?”
“Yeah.”
Mom muttered an assortment of curse words, including a repeat of the f-word, which I had never once heard her utter before. She ran ahand through her short hair and then turned to me. “I’m sorry, Vivian. I’m really sorry.”
Sorry for what? Sorry for the divorce? For Daddy never being around? For beingyou?
She opened her arms. I leaned toward her for a second, but my teenage bravado won out. Instead of stepping into her hug, I headed for the stairs with a bitter, “Yeah, Mom. I’m sorry, too.”
The next day, my father sent me a brand-new cherry-red convertible Mustang as a belated birthday gift. Mom pitched a hissy fit because she would be stuck paying for the insurance. Also, it was a stick shift, and I was still learning to drive on her automatic. Mom wouldn’t let me drive my own car for three months until she was sure I’d be able to do so without stripping the gears.
I loved that car almost as much as she hated it. I sure as heck hadn’t looked my father in the eye—it would’ve been difficult to do since he’dsentthe car rather than delivered it personally—and told him to take it back.
I banged my head against the shower wall.
Why hadn’t I at least hugged my mother that night? Now I could see she had been doing her best to protect me, walking that tightrope of trying to get my father to do right without running him down within my earshot.
All these years I’ve thought she was on my case, but she was trying to protect me. How did I pay her back? By shamelessly loving the car he bought me and then by rubbing my supposedly perfect marriage in her face.
Shame burned down my throat and pooled in my belly.
How did one even apologize for that?Couldone?
My betrayal stood out stark against my son’s loyalty.
The cold water of the shower finally forced me out of my thoughts and back into reality.
Chapter 22
Freshly showered, I emerged from my bedroom to the honeyed tones of my only child saying, “Mom, it smells like ass in the hallway. What the heck?”
“Language!” I sang automatically.
Well, that and I needed to buy a little time to answer that particular question.
How would Erma Bombeck explain to her son that she’d placed rapidly rotting potatoes in the guest room closet to get rid of his father?
She wouldn’t.
“A mouse must’ve crawled into the wall and died,” I said with a shrug that hopefully hid the tic I got from lying.
“Ugh. That’s disgusting.”
“Well, you’re leaving tomorrow, so you don’t have to worry about it,” I said. Quickly adding, “Not that I want you to leave.”
“And what is Grandma cooking? It smells worse than dead mouse.”
I took a deep breath. Might as well come partially clean even if it made me seem like a schoolyard bully. “Your father doesn’t like the smell of cooking cabbage.”
“Oh,” Dylan said.
“Sorry you’re caught in the crosshairs,” I said.
“Yeah, I think I’ll meet some friends for pizza. Text me when the smell has dissipated.”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “We’ll miss you at supper, but that seems like a solid plan.”
