Session Seventeen
Poison Apple
I spent a long time believing that loving the wrong person was a slow, painful death.
Then, I believed that love – real love, could fix you. Loving the right person, loving at all –
It could bring you back to life.
But we’re more than relationships.
We’re composed of heartbreak in so many other forms, profound loss that’s rooted in profound love. And that, within itself, is the key to remedy.
See, Jace fractured me, but I was already a step away from falling off the cliff before we locked eyes.
I’d lived a life before him, and that’s why Jace made sense.
With Cole, well…
Being with someone like Cole was the confusing part.
You learn to love from your parents. After all, you see them first and they see you. I explained this to Cole, the family history and how it’d never been complete.
While Dad fought his own demons, they bled him dry until he stopped fighting back. For a while, it felt like those demons were eating at me, too.
They got to my mom quicker. And they festered like a disease.
Mom never recovered after the loss of my dad, so I never got the chance to ask why she’d hurt so much when he died. She’d cried, but why did she weep?
Tell me, Mom. How did you love him?
And more importantly, how did he love you?
We never spoke, not about their past, their marriage, their love. So, for the majority of my life, I had to pretend I knew what it was.
What did they share? Was it any good?
Did it feel like Cole?
Or did it feel like Jace?
Dad was healthy, once. And then he wasn’t.
Could Mom’s love have saved him?
Or despite it, was he doomed to his fate regardless?
I loved Cole, purely, truthfully. But I asked him, in trust, “What if one day, I turned out like my dad?”
What if the addict in me craved the toxicity – the Poison Apple.
“He came from something, just like you.” Cole had said. “You can’t relive his experiences. You don’t know them.”
But I was addicted, once. I felt addicted. Maybe, Mom was, too.
I tried to ask her one day, take her out for breakfast because I had money to do so. She just looked at my ring, half-dazed and asked, “Where’d you get that from?”
“Cole.”
“Who?”
Patience. Patience, Beatrice. “We spoke about him on the phone, remember?”
But she shook her head. Shoveled eggs into her mouth. “No idea.”
I played with the ring, analyzing her. This woman, at some point, she birthed me. I came out of her. I was a product of Nora Genine Henderson.
And the biggest question I had was: “In what way?”
“Can I ask you something, Mom?”
She replied, “No.”
I ignored her. “Dad wasn’t toxic, was he? He loved you?”
She grumbled, took bacon off my plate. “Why’re you asking?”
I shrugged. “Curious.”
I didn’t want to tell her the truth.
That it’s been decades, and sometimes I forgot his face. Blurred contours of a father in blue –
And the daughter he left his clothes to.
I used to wear his sweaters, wrap myself up in an old, stale scent – conjuring up memories of who he was, believing Mom did the same.
But since his passing, I’d never seen her enter his room. Not once.
She left in there, closed. Sealed. Silent.
Trying to preserve his memory?
Or trying to keep the poison apple contained, so it didn’t spread to anything else.
“He was something,” Mom started. “Used to be alright, before the liquor kicked in. Remember there was a time where he kissed me silly in front of a mailman when we got married.”
I thought I’d imagined it. A little twinkle in her eye. A hint of a smile.
“He was funny, liked to laugh. Loved potato salad, made the best lasagna.”
“I remember,” and I smiled. Because I did. Mom used to chase me around with a finger dunked in ricotta.
“Yeah,” she said, leaning back. “Could never replicate the recipe.”
I swallowed, fighting back tears. “Maybe someday we can try to cook it together?”
And a fury of emotion rained down on me when she said, “Yeah. Someday let’s.”
***
That day never came.
I was her daughter, yes.
But I was never the substance she reached for.
And she forgot that conversation hours later, when the acid rolled her to a new dimension and I was nothing but a series of shapes dancing on a disco floor.
Move to the left, now, move to the right, she’d said to me, wiggling her finger in the recliner.
I did. Through tears. Because at least, she was talking to me.
And the unfortunate truth is that we learn to live with what people are willing to give us.
With Mom, inconsistency was normal.
With Jace, attachment was painful.
With Cole, I remembered his words again: I’ll take whatever is left over, and show you it’s enough.
Turning to him, I vowed, “I’ll love you with everything I have.”
But buried beneath my words, I wondered in my life, who taught me to love like that.
If it was ever a stark blessing –
Or a price I never stopped paying.