Chapter 47
47
Natalie
T he morning after my dip in the hot springs with Sonya, Ivy, and Reggie, I go out for a bagel and coffee and come back to find my mother’s car parked next to mine. I get out of my car, hoping it’s a hallucination, but she gets out of hers, too, and walks around to greet me.
Or, really, scowl at me.
“You might have mentioned that you and Lloyd are no longer a couple.”
I bite my lip and say, “Hi, Mom.”
She rubs her fingertips over her forehead. She’s wearing a knee-length gray skirt and a seafoam blouse, and my eye catches on a small bleach stain on the skirt. I wonder if she knows it’s there. I bet she doesn’t. She wouldn’t have worn it if she did.
“It was awkward, finding out the way I did. I ran into him at Target, and I started toward him with the intention of giving him a big hug. He got an uncomfortable look on his face. And then a woman stepped around the corner and cozied up to him, someone named—” She searches her memory.
“Susie,” I finish, wincing. As frustrating as my mother is, she didn’t deserve to be blindsided. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you a heads-up.”
“I’m sure you had your reasons,” she says in a tone that suggests exactly the opposite.
“I didn’t want to tell you about it the other night at dinner, with everyone around.”
“You could have called me and told me.”
I could have. But I knew how much she liked him. I knew how disappointed she’d be.
And I knew she’d make it my fault.
“I liked him for you,” she says. “This is what I worried about. That he would get tired of waiting for you to pull your life together.”
Wait a second.
Wait a fucking second.
How did Lloyd’s being an asshole become about me and whether I, quote, unquote, “have my life together?”
“That’s not what happened.” My voice surprises me. It’s firm and sure. The way I feel when I’m running an activity. “He was seeing someone else. I caught him holding hands with her in a coffee shop.”
She flinches at that. “That’s…unfortunate,” she says, as though Lloyd’s betrayal was an accident of fate and not a decision he made. “He was good for you.”
“No,” I say. “He wasn’t. He didn’t know me. Or want to know me. He didn’t understand what makes me tick.”
“What does make you tick, Natalie? Because I’m not sure I know, either. And to be honest, I’m not sure you know.”
Two weeks ago, those words would have crawled into my chest and burrowed in, a dark knot of self-doubt, like rot in fruit. Right now, though, it’s like I’m wearing a face guard and the chest plate and swinging a baseball bat at an old VCR: the sharp, bright clarity of anger. And something else. Confidence.
“You’re wrong,” I say. “I do know.” I’m thinking of Preston again. Thinking of how it felt to make him smile. To make him laugh. To watch him flip himself into the foam pit. “I know exactly what makes me tick.”
She’s visibly startled, and so am I because surely, this can’t be the first time I’ve pushed back. Stood up to her.
Except her expression suggests it is. Have I always just accepted whatever she wants me to believe about myself?
Well, I think, enough of that .
I don’t stomp my foot or even cross my arms, but I do straighten up a little. I point. I say, “You have a little something on your skirt. Right there.”
Her gaze dips to the smudge, then comes back up again, steely, to fix on me. “You’re awfully smug for someone who’s been unemployed for months?—”
“I’m employed now.”
“—who’s lost the relationship you were in?—”
Nope. “I didn’t lose it. He ruined it.”
She refuses to acknowledge that. “—who’s living in a hotel room?—”
I cross my arms. Plant my feet. It feels good. “I have company housing.”
“You have a temporary job.”
“I have a great job.” Each time I push back, I feel a little stronger.
“A job isn’t a career.”
It’s a thing my mother has said to me a hundred times since I bailed out of communications.
“No, but it could be,” I tell her.
She frowns. The lines at the sides of her mouth are deep. “There’s a difference between stringing jobs together and having a career.”
“There is a difference,” I agree. “The difference is your attitude toward what you’re doing. Any job can become a career if you’re good at it and love it. Activities coordinator is my job.” I take a deep breath and echo what Preston said to her outside my room the other day. “ Bringing people joy is my career.”
For a second I think I’ve gotten through to her. She hesitates. She looks, just a little, thoughtful. Then her frown deepens. “Please tell me you’re not losing focus on going back to school.”
I think about all the brochures stuffed into a pocket of my suitcase. All the websites she sent me links to.
I think about the Wilder brothers with nail polish on their fingers. I think about Preston Hott in a pit of purple Jell-O. I think about the Wilder and Hott kids blasting Nerf darts at each other.
“I’m not going back to school.”
I didn’t know for sure it was true until I said it out loud, but I should have.
What I wanted, all this time, was to be who she wanted me to be.
What I want now is to be me.
I guess Preston isn’t the only one who needed permission to let go of who they thought they were.
“Natalie,” she warns.
“Mom,” I say back.
We stare each other down. I don’t look away. Not this time.
I think about Ivy and Sonya and Reggie, who told me that I’m welcome in their world regardless of whether Preston and I end up together.
I think of Preston, who told me that my mother wasn’t fair to me. Who told my mother that I brought people joy and then told me that I was funny and generous and giving and fun .
Preston knows exactly who I am.
Even if he’s never said the words, he loves me for it.
I know what that feels like.
I don’t have to settle for less.
“I have a job I love that I’m good at,” I tell my mother. “I know it’s not what you want to do with your life, and you’ve made it abundantly clear that it’s not what you want me to do with my life. But I’m the only person who knows what makes me happy.”
I hear my own words then, and everything shifts into sharp relief.
“I gotta go,” I say, and then I’m running toward the lodge.