Chapter 9 #2
“You know,” he said as my mother cleared the plates, “I heard through the grapevine that you and that girl broke up.”
I stiffened. “Where did you hear that?”
“Word travels fast in our world. Can’t say I’m surprised, though. Civilians never last long once they figure out what the life is really like.”
“She wasn’t just some civilian,” I said, though even as the words came out, I realized how weak they sounded.
“She sure as hell wasn’t one of us,” my father replied. “Too uppity. Too educated. Women like that think they’re too good for men like us.”
“Maybe she was too good for me.”
My father laughed, but there was no humor in it. “No woman is too good for a Van Der Berg. That’s your problem, son. You put her on a pedestal instead of keeping her in line.”
“Keeping her in line?”
“Exactly. You let her think she had a say in how you lived your life. You let her think her opinion mattered when it came to club business.”
I thought about Indira’s face when I’d told her that what I did with club girls wasn’t her business. The hurt and disbelief in her eyes when I’d explained that’s just how things worked in my world. “What if her opinion should have mattered?” I asked quietly.
My father’s face went dark. “What the fuck?”
“What if I should have listened to her? What if she was right?”
“Right about what?”
“About everything.” The words came out in a rush. “About fidelity. About respect. About what it means to be in a relationship with someone.”
“Jesus Christ.” My father shook his head in disgust. “She really did a number on you, didn’t she? Got you thinking like some kind of pussy-whipped—”
“Don’t.” The word came out sharp enough to cut glass. “Don’t talk about her like that.”
“Like what? Like she’s some feminist bitch who convinced you to throw away everything your family built?”
I stood up so fast my chair fell over backward. “She didn’t convince me of anything. She just expected me to treat her like she mattered.”
“And that’s exactly the problem!” My father was on his feet now too, his face red with anger. “The moment you start treating women like equals, you lose all your power. They start thinking they can tell you what to do, who you can fuck, how you can live your life.”
“Maybe she should have had a say in who else I fucked.” The words exploded out of me before I could stop them. My father stared at me like I’d grown a second head, while my mother had gone completely still by the sink.
“Jesus Christ,” my father said finally, his voice cold with disgust. “You sound just like that uppity bitch. She really did a number on you, didn’t she?”
“She didn’t do anything to me,” I shot back. “She just expected to be treated with respect.”
“And that’s exactly why she’s gone,” he sneered.
“She was too good for me,” I said, the truth hitting me like a freight train. I ran my hands through my hair, suddenly exhausted by the weight of the realization. “This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come here.” I turned to leave, but my mother’s voice stopped me.
“Jacob, wait.”
I looked back to find her standing in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, her hands clasped in front of her like she was praying. “Your father,” she said quietly, “is going to take his afternoon nap now.”
It wasn’t a suggestion. It was a statement of fact delivered in a tone that brooked no argument. My father looked like he wanted to protest, but something in my mother’s expression made him think better of it.
“Fine,” he muttered. “But when I wake up, we’re finishing this conversation.”
He stomped out of the room, and I heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs. My mother waited until she heard the bedroom door slam before she spoke again.
“Sit down,” she said, and this time there was steel in her voice I’d never heard before.
I sat.
My mother poured herself a cup of coffee and joined me at the table. For a long moment, she just stared into her mug like it held the answers to life’s mysteries.
“You want to know if I’m happy,” she said finally.
“Mom—”
“No, let me talk. You asked if I felt like I had it made, and your father answered for me. He always answers for me.” She looked up, and I saw tears in her eyes. “But you deserve the real answer.”
I waited, afraid to breathe.
“I haven’t been happy for thirty years,” she said simply. “Not since the first time I caught your father with another woman, a club girl, and he told me it was just club business.”
The words hit me like a punch to the gut. “Mom...”
“I stayed because he convinced me that his cheating was normal, that I was the problem for being upset about it.” She was crying now, silent tears that she wiped away with the back of her hand.
“I stayed because I thought I had to. Because I thought that was what old ladies did. They put up with whatever their husbands dished out and pretended to be grateful for it.”
“But you could leave now,” I said desperately. “You could—”
“Could I?” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I’m sixty-three years old, Jacob. I haven’t worked in forty-three years. I have no friends, no hobbies, no life outside of this house and your father’s needs. Where would I go? What would I do?”
The hopelessness in her voice was devastating. This was my mother—the woman who’d raised me, who’d bandaged my skinned knees and celebrated my victories—and she’d been miserable for most of my life. How the fuck had I missed this?
“I used to pray,” she continued, “that you’d be different. That you’d find a good woman and treat her the way she deserved to be treated. That you’d break the cycle.”
“I tried—”
“No, you didn’t.” The words were gentle but firm. “You did exactly what your father did. You found a wonderful woman and you treated her like she was disposable.”
The truth of it was like a knife between my ribs. “I love her.”
“I know you do. I could see it.” She looked down at her coffee, turning the mug in her hands. When she spoke again, her voice was tired. “But love isn’t enough. I’ve been telling myself that for forty odd years.”
We sat in silence for a while, the weight of decades of unspoken truths settling between us.
“So she left you,” my mother said finally.
“Yeah.”
“Good for her.”
I looked up in surprise. “What?”
Her voice broke on the next words. “Good for her.” She paused, pressing her lips together until she could continue. “She chose herself.”
“Mom...”
“Don’t waste this, Jacob.” She reached across the table and gripped my hand with surprising strength. “Don’t waste the lesson she taught you. Don’t become your father.”
“It’s too late. She’s gone. She blocked my number. I don’t even know where she is.”
My mother was quiet for a moment, then she stood and walked to the bedroom she shared with my father. When she came back, she was carrying an old shoebox, the cardboard soft and worn at the edges.
“Do you know why I stayed with your father?” she asked, setting the box on the table between us.
“Because you thought you had to.”
“Mostly. But there’s a little more to the story.
” She lifted the lid, and I saw what was inside—dozens of envelopes, some yellowed with age, all addressed in handwriting I recognized as my father’s.
“These are from when he was in prison. The first few times, before you were born. And then again when you were four, and when you were seven.”
I remembered that. Years of my childhood when my father was just a voice on the phone and a figure behind glass during visiting hours.
“He wrote to me every week,” my mother continued, picking up one of the envelopes and running her thumb across the familiar handwriting.
“Sometimes twice a week. And in these letters...” She paused, her voice catching.
“In these letters, he was a different man. He told me he loved me. He told me he was sorry for the way he’d treated me.
He promised things would be different when he got out. ”
“But they weren’t.”
“No. They weren’t.” She set the envelope down gently.
“But I kept waiting for the man in these letters to come back. The man who could admit he was wrong, who could be vulnerable, who could say the things he was too proud to say in person.” She looked at me with those sad eyes.
“That’s why I stayed, Jacob. I kept hoping the man who wrote these letters was the real Willem, and the man who dismissed me and cheated on me was just.. . a mask he wore for the world.”
I stared at the shoebox full of my father’s words, decades of promises he’d never kept.
“Why are you showing me this?”
“Because your father could never say these things out loud. He could only write them. Some men are like that—they can only be honest when they’re alone with a piece of paper, when there’s no one watching them be vulnerable.” She pushed the box toward me.
“Indira doesn’t want to hear from me.”
“Then write to her.” My mother’s voice was firm. “Don’t make promises you might not keep like your father did. But tell her the truth. To say the things you couldn’t say when you were too busy being president of the Venom Riders. If nothing else, it will give you closure so you can move on.”
I picked up one of the envelopes, feeling the weight of my father’s words in my hands. The paper was soft from being read and reread over the years.
“He really wrote all these?”
“Every one. And I read them whenever I need to remember that the man I married is in there somewhere, even if he’s buried too deep to reach anymore.
” She closed the box and slid it back toward herself.
“Don’t let that happen to you, Jacob. Don’t wait until it’s too late to say what needs to be said. ”
I stayed at my parents’ house for three more days, and every moment was a revelation.
I watched my father dismiss my mother’s opinions, interrupt her when she spoke, make decisions about their life without consulting her.
I watched her shrink into herself whenever he was around, only coming alive during the brief moments when he was out of the house.
On my last day, I pulled my mother aside while King was at the hardware store.
“I’m setting up a bank account for you,” I said quietly. “Just yours. I’m putting fifty thousand in it to start, and I’ll transfer five thousand every month.”
“Jacob, I can’t—”
“You can and you will. Mom?” I waited until she met my eyes. “You can call me anytime, day or night. If you need anything, if you just need someone to talk to. If you want to leave, I’ll come get you myself.”
Tears filled her eyes, but she nodded.
The morning I left, my mother stood in the doorway watching me strap my bag to the bike. My father was still asleep.
“Call me when you get home,” she said.
I nodded and pulled on my helmet. In the rearview, she looked small—smaller than I remembered. Her hand was raised in a wave.
My chest felt hollow, but my head was finally quiet.