“That’s all you have to say?”
“Maybe I wanted it to all go up in flames.”
There. I said it.
And I couldn’t take words like those back.
She heard them, loud and clear.
“Why?” she asked me. “Why would you want that?”
“Because, sometimes it’s exhausting trying to live up to you.”
She stared at me, as maybe she considered that. Maybe she’d known that was the truth of it all along. Maybe she’d felt the same way, growing up in this family.
Or maybe she didn’t sympathize at all.
“You disappoint me, Dane.”
“I disappoint myself. On a pretty regular basis.”
Shehmmmed to herself, then announced, “Your grandmother doesn’t need to know about this.”
“Yes, she does, Mom. I’m human. I made mistakes. If she can’t accept that, then she shouldn’t be leaving her legacy to me.”
“Oh, fuck that. She knows you’re human. She expects you to rise above it.”
I stared at her. My mother rarely swore. “What does that even mean?”
“It means you play the part in public and you do what’s expected.”
“And when I make mistakes, I’m not allowed to own up to it?”
“Of course you are. Within reason. But more importantly, you’re expected to handle any mistakes you make in whatever way is best for the family. You put the family first. That’s what you do when you love your family.”
“And when I have a wife? Where does she fall in this hierarchy?”
“You have a wife.”
“For now.”
She studied me carefully. “It was a lie, wasn’t it?”
I didn’t answer that. How she knew that, I wasn’t sure. Maybe she only suspected.
“You weren’t in love when you married her,” she ventured.
“Yes. I was,” I admitted. Because at this point, that was the only way I could make sense of any of my own actions since Devi came back into my life. “She wasn’t.”
“And now?”
“I don’t know.”
“So, now what? You’re going to let it all fall apart around you? Lose your marriage and potentially lose your inheritance? Why? Because you made some bad decisions one night with a couple of girls… porn actresses, no less… and you’re letting them best you?”
“It’s not a competition, Mom.”
“Life is a competition, son.”
