Everyone raised a glass, except for my dad, who was wrangling Piper and Will out the door. In the ensuing calm, I was even more aware of my mother beside me, silent and observant as always.
“Catherine?” Leigh asked her. “Would you like to say something?”
It was an awkward moment, although I appreciated what Colin’s mom was trying to do. Between the kids and my mom’s natural reticence, it was unlikely I’d get my own mention otherwise.
“Yes, thank you.” My mom lifted her drink, red manicured nails against the glass. Then she turned to me, and I felt a jolt of nerves, like I might not be prepared for what she would say. Which was stupid, because my mother was the opposite of impulsive. Anything she wanted to express had already been written, edited, and learned by heart.
“To Finley,” she began, and I took in her dark hair, straight to my wavy, and the green eyes we shared. “I am so proud to be your mother. Here’s to an incredible future for you and Colin both.”
“Hear, hear,” Mr. Frisbee bellowed, as Leigh dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. “To the kids!”
More clanking, more pouring of drinks. Colin’s dad reached over, grabbing him for a hug, while Leigh kissed his cheek. Meanwhile, my mom and I sat there, side by side, nottouching. She’d eaten exactly half of everything on her plate, just like always.
“Idaho,” Colin said from my other side. “You okay?”
I nodded, returning his smile so he could go back to his parents. As for mine, they were split, as always. My dad outside with Marisol and the kids, my mom here out of obligation. It was nice, and I appreciated it. I mean, I had come from her, once, and this was what I always made a point to remember when it felt like she was a figure labeledMomand not much more. It had to mean something, that she’d carried me in her belly and then raised me for those first four years. I just didn’t know what it was.
My baby album is white, and small, with a picture of me as an infant showing through the cutout on the front cover. It’s only when you open it that the full picture is revealed: my mom at twenty-three, in a ponytail and jeans, sitting on a couch, holding me in her lap. She’s leaning into my ear, saying something, her own mouth half open as the shutter clicks. One picture, both together and broken apart. Just like us.
My parents got together their sophomore year at the U. She was studying econ, and he was an English major with dreams of writing a novel. While he’d grown up in Lakeview, a faculty brat with both parents professors, her family lived an hour and a half east in a small town. They moved in together after commencement, both picking up jobs until the fall when my dad would start his graduate degree and she would attend law school. But then, that summer, my mom got pregnant withme. She did her fall classes, intending fully to start again after I was born. But she didn’t.
Not the next spring. Not the following semester, either. In fact, four years would pass—during which my dad got a master’s and began his PhD—with my mom and me together all the time, day after day, before she’d jump ship to start her life over.
I often wondered, when Marisol had the twins and then Leo, what it was that finally tipped my mom to the side of leaving. All the crying? Diapers and potty training? The endless snacks required? It could have been any of these, a combination, or something entirely different. All I knew for sure was that one day she was there. Then she was gone.
Of course, at four I didn’t remember her going, the way she did it, or really any details. I just had this sense of things being one way, then another. Just like the cover of that album. Open and close, and everything changes.
After, my dad regrouped. Enrolled me in preschool, which I loved, the loss of my mom always tinged with a new world of friends and teachers. He took a teaching job at Fountain, intending to finish his dissertation. Instead, he met Marisol and started a new family, steadily filling our quiet world with noise and the momentum of, well, life. We’d been moving at breakneck pace ever since. Like what was before was just a photo, but this was a GIF, the frames on repeat, again and again.
This was probably why, with my mom, the first thing I always noticed was her stillness. Her deliberate movements, learned corporate calm. Her careful, measured words. Whenwe spent time alone, I would literally find my right foot pressing down on an imaginary gas pedal, as if I could somehow rev her up to my speed. I talked too much, moved too fast, and was always waiting for our time together to be over.
It wasn’t our time, though. It was hers. That was how we always referred to it: “Catherine’s time” or “your mom’s time.” It wasn’t much: a week at Christmas, two in the summer, plus a handful of weekends she always claimed in January. I was never sure if she really wanted to see me or if this was just another thing to check off her list, along with money and job titles. Or maybe it went deeper. But that was the thing about my mom. She was all surface, gliding. Whereas I was always aware of my feet churning beneath me.
This year, she’d specifically requested the week after graduation for us to take a trip together to New York. She’d lived there for a few years when I was younger, but I’d never gotten to visit, and she wanted to give me the full experience: Broadway show, shopping on Fifth Avenue, MoMA, and all her favorite restaurants. It sounded great, until the spring, when Colin’s grandparents invited me on the Disney cruise they’d booked ashisbig gift. I really wanted to go, thinking my mom could be flexible and reschedule. My dad warned me she wouldn’t. And he was right.
“I’ve already made the reservations,” she reminded me after gently saying no. “And this is my time.”
Her time, again. I was just an object to fill it.
So the next day, I’d say goodbye to Colin and we’d head our separate ways. Him to the water with Ariel and Rapunzel; methe city, with the parent I barely knew. I appreciated that I was beyond lucky to even have these options. But I wondered what it would be like if I made my own choice when it came to my mom, just this once.
When I had thoughts like this, I’d realize I did recall something about her leaving: sitting there as absolute sadness washed over me like a wave. It wasn’t even a memory as much as a feeling. Like I was hollowed out, with no idea of what had once filled me.
“Hey,” Colin said, pulling me more tightly against him. “Idaho. Don’t cry.”
“I’m sorry,” I told him. Normally I was not one for Big Feelings, so I wasn’t sure what it was that had me suddenly teary only a few hours after all the celebrations. Maybe the champagne we’d smuggled to his family’s guesthouse after Nalini’s party, where we’d planned to soak up the last of our time together. Or the New York trip I now didn’t even want to take, which was creeping ever closer, second by second. I just had a bad feeling, uneasy, like my balance was off. I couldn’t explain it. All I could do was cry.
When we’d gotten onto the couch earlier, kissing wildly as we ditched our graduation gowns, it had felt like we still had so much time. Now my phone said one thirty. I had to be home by two, and she was picking me up in a hired car at seven sharp. Another constant of our relationship: the big, clean cars she sent for me. Always driven by a quiet man in a suit who I avoided talking to until we were at our destination.Now thinking ofthismade me cry. I was a mess.
“I love you,” I told Colin now, my voice breaking. More tears. This was not how I wanted to leave him, us, for a second, much less a full week. “We’ll be okay, right?”
I had my cheek to his chest as I said this, one of his hands stroking my hair. Beneath me, I felt him take a big breath.
I lifted my head. “What?”
He looked at me for a second. Again, I felt that weird clench. But then there it was, that grin. My world. “Idaho. How could I ever give up the girl who told me about Seymour the Goat?”
I laughed, snotty and despite myself. Then I curled in tighter, taking note of every detail of this place beside him until I was back here again.
