Liam just shrugs, which is honestly the best anyone could expect in response to something like that.Yeah. Our dad was a piece of shit. What about it?
I should probably lay off Liam. He never did anything to me—he was always a good brother. Always there to stand between me and Dad, every chance he got.
He doesn’t deserve this.
My mother says to me, “You were just so good at it, sweet pea. Remember that chocolate chess pie you used to make? People begged me for that recipe!”
“Well, joke’s on Dad, then, since I turned out to be a guy after all,” I say.
Her flush reaches her graying hairline. “Wyatt…”
“Come on, Mom. Don’t defend him. He was an asshole. He terrified Liam out of the house two years early, remember? Liam was literally living on Manuel’s mom’s pull-out sofa until he graduated high school. I’m glad Dad’s dead. I only wish he’d died sooner.”
And of course, my mother bursts into tears.
Liam and I both stand awkwardly by, Liam probably caught in the same conundrum as I am: Comfort Mom or stand by theobvious truth? In the end it’s Ely who wraps an arm around my mother’s round shoulders and pulls her in close, murmuring some soothing words under her breath that I can’t hear.
A part of me wants to get angry about that too. Because how dare Ely suggest, even implicitly, that I should have kept my mouth shut? How dare she prioritize my mom’s bullshit grief over what Liam and I had to live through?
Only I can’t pretend not to know where Ely’s coming from. She’d probably kill to be in this position in the first place, with her mother consenting to even be in the same room as her. Here I am, taking the opportunity Ely would die for, and I’m stomping it into the ground.
The worst part of it is, none of this is even my mom’s fault. Not really. I spent my whole goddamn childhood resenting her for not stopping Dad’s abuse. But she was just as trapped as Liam and I were. She was his first victim. Aunt Cathy said when Mom was pregnant with us, our father pushed her down the stairs and hurt her bad enough that she had to go to the hospital and tell them she fell cleaning the dock.
But I can’t just keep my mouth shut entirely. If I do, all the resentment will stay trapped behind my lips and rot there. It’ll take over everything.
“You should have stood up for me,” I tell her as Ely strokes my mother’s steel-wire hair. “If not before, then when Dad kicked me out. You should have said something then.”
I don’t know what I expect her to say. She’s always had some excuse, even if it’s just some misguided need to maintain harmony and keep everybody happy no matter what. Really: to keephimhappy, because my happiness never seemed to factor into it.
But what she actually says is “You’re right.”
“I— What?”
“You’re right,” my mother says again. “I’m so sorry, Wyatt. Iwas—I was scared, but it’s no excuse. I should have been there for you. For both of you. I should have done…something. I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you?” Liam says. He’s still in his stupid fucking apron. “I’m not gonna ask why you didn’t leave him—I know it’s not as easy as that. And obviously I don’t think either of us…We aren’t asking why you didn’t stop him.”
He glances at me, looking for backup, and I nod. Jesus. I hope Mom isn’t getting the impression that I expected her to put herself between me and him. The only thing worse than how things ended would have been watching him hit her because of me.
God. I’m the stupidest person alive. I should never have opened my damn mouth.
“Of course not,” I say. “Never. We know…” I’m just digging my hole deeper. “I just wish…”
I can’t. I can’t even figure out how to say what I want to say without making everything worse. I drag one hand back through my hair, twisting my fingers around a fistful and pulling it taut enough to feel pain.
My mom slips out of Ely’s arms and moves to where Liam and I are standing. She looks so small now, smaller than she ever did when I was growing up. Her arms hug her own stomach, fingertips digging in at her sides.
“I did,” she says. “I wish I’d said more, but Ididsay something. I told him…I said how much we loved you. We both loved you. Him, too, whether you believe it or not. But…he just…He wouldn’t hear it. And maybe I could have pushed harder. I should have. But it was already late at night, and we were in bed, and I could just hear what he’d say, if I kept talking—I knew exactly where we’d end up, and I couldn’t. It was easier to just stop.”
The tears that had welled up in her eyes slip free now, cutting long tracks down her faded cheeks.
“It was easier to stop,” she echoes. “So I stopped. And I…I lost my baby. I lost…”
My heart can’t take more of this. I feel shredded inside, bloody, a mess of a person who never should have opened his mouth in the first place.
“You didn’t lose anything, Mom.” I close the distance of the last two steps between us and wrap my arms around her shaking body, pulling her in tight. My mother buries her face against my chest, and I breathe in the stale scent of her shampoo and here we are, the both of us crying in the middle of the kitchen right in front of my brother and my…my Ely, as the pot of collards boils over on the stove.
32
