“Well, then I’m not coming to your party tomorrow.”
That catches her attention. Mom hates to miss an opportunity to show me off, me with my great grades and my Jason and myeverything. Her voice is quiet. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because it’s unfair!” I yell. “Because Dad is gone, and all he ever felt the whole time he was here was that he wasn’t good enough.”
Mom shakes her head. “That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is! You hated everything about him. He was too messy, too impractical.”
“Iknewyour father was a mess when I married him,” Mom insists. “I loved him in spite of it.”
Bullshit, I think.
“And yes, I may have demanded the highest standards for youand him, but I demand that of myself too. Absolutely,” she says.
“I just thought you’d care that you had come so close to destroying everything we built.”
“And what would that look like if I cared? Self-flagellating? Cursing myself? What exactly would be good enough to you?” she asks. “I made a mistake. Sometimes people make mistakes.”
“Dad’s mistakes were never okay.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“He died alone!” I shout. “He died alone because of you. Because he didn’t fit into this image you had of who he should be.”
Mom blinks like she’s stunned. “What do you think caused my and your father’s divorce?”
“You weren’t happy,” I say with a shrug.
She is quiet a moment and then she says, “Your father ended it. He thought we just didn’t fit together anymore like we once did, and at first, I didn’t agree. But over time, I saw it.”
My turn to look shell-shocked. “Heended it?” I repeat. “But he…he couldn’t write and that frustrated you.”
“Because it frustratedhim.”
“He was disorganized.”
“Oh, Zadie,” Mom says. “He was the most disorganized man I’ve ever met, but if I didn’t leave him when he made us miss the flight to our honeymoon, then no amount of disorganization would have done it.”
“So he…wantedto be alone?”
“I don’t know if he wanted to be alone, but he liked the life he had. He was happy. Happier than he’d been with us,” Mom says. “And don’t take that to mean he loved you any less than he did, but being free was important to him. And he was free.”
A giant lump sits directly in the base of my throat, making it impossible to speak.
“About the…other things you’ve said, I know I haven’t always been the best mother, that sometimes I’ve let you down, but you have to know that your opinion of me has always mattered the most to me. Not some stranger or acquaintance,yours. And if you don’t know that, I must have failed you in a big way, because it’s always been true.”
Her eyes get fierce. “Everything in me wants to fight back against the council, to point out that, despite my mistake, I’ve served this town well and don’t deserve to be shunned. But I don’t want to make things worse than they have to be for you. That’s another reason why I took the deal.”
Mom leans over to me and extends her arms. “I love you, Zadie.”
I swat a tear from under my bottom eyelashes and close the distance between us. “I love you too.”
I’m still hugging her when I speak into her shoulder. “Mom? I really am taking a gap year.”
I hear Mom take a big breath before she gently lets me out of her hold. “Okay,” she says cautiously.
It is not an agreement; she is simply open to the discussion. So, we discuss. We talk about Princeton and majors and the future, and I tell her about wanting to have things I love. Choosing things because I love them and not because I should.
