7. Emily
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Emily
I sit on the edge of my bunk and stare at my mother’s name on the screen for a full minute before I make myself call.
I have to. That’s the miserable truth of it. After this weekend I’ve got nowhere to go but Tara’s couch, and a couch is a kindness, not a plan. My mother is my mother. Surely once she hears what Henry did, what he actually did, she’ll come down on my side. She has to. Doesn’t she?
It’s a stupid hope, and I know it’s stupid even as I hold onto it.
Twenty-five years of evidence says Daphne Anderson does not come down on my side, not over a scraped knee, not over anything.
But there’s a part of me, the small kid part that never quite gave up, that keeps thinking maybe this time.
This is too big to wave off. Her son-in-law, a baby, a betrayal you could see from space. This time she’ll have to pick me.
I press call.
It rings twice. Then, “Hello?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“Emily! Finally. I still haven’t gotten that money.”
No hello back, no how are you, just the money. Of course. “Yeah, Mom, I’ll send it. But I need to talk to you about...”
“Send it soon, please. The yard looks an absolute state, the Hendersons next door just had theirs redone, and I cannot have people thinking we’ve gone broke.”
“Mom.” I press two fingers between my eyebrows. “Please. This is important.”
Something in my voice finally gets through, because she pauses. “What? What is it?”
“I’m at the reunion right now. I’ll be home in a couple days.” I drag in a breath that doesn’t go down right. “Mom, I’m getting a divorce. I need to know if I can stay with you for a while.”
Silence.
Not the silence I expected. I braced for the shriek, the lecture, the immediate noise of Daphne Anderson being scandalized. Instead there’s this careful, dead quiet, and the bad feeling that’s been crawling around my gut all week sits up and pays attention.
“A divorce,” she says slowly. “Why on earth would you do that?”
“I found something out.” My throat tries to close and I shove the words through anyway. “Henry. He’s been seeing Carmen. For over a year. They have a baby, Mom. A baby.”
More silence. Still no shriek, no gasp, none of the theatrics I braced for.
And God help me, for one stupid second, hope surges up so fast it makes me dizzy.
She’s quiet because she’s horrified. She’s quiet because this is finally the thing, the unforgivable thing, the one that makes her furious on my behalf instead of someone else’s.
Maybe this is the time she picks me. Maybe she’s just gathering herself to tell me to come home, that she’s so sorry, that we’ll get me a lawyer and burn Henry’s life to the ground together.
“Mom?” The hope is right there in my voice and I hate it, hate that I still want her to surprise me.
When she finally speaks, her voice has slid into the soothing, reasonable register she only ever uses when she’s about to say something monstrous.
“Now, let’s not do anything rash. Carmen just had the baby, sweetheart.
That’s why she needs so much of Henry’s attention right now.
Once it’s a bit older, things will settle down, you’ll see.
Especially now that you know. There’s no sense blowing up a marriage over it.
Divorce is such a shameful, messy thing.
You could just think of the baby as a little niece or something. ”
The hope doesn’t curdle slowly. It drops straight through the floor, because there is no version of being told this for the first time that sounds like that. Settle down. Now that you know. Think of the baby as a niece. She isn’t shocked. She isn’t even surprised. She’s managing me.
“You knew.” It comes out low and shaking, every word scraped raw. “Oh my God. You knew, didn’t you?”
“Emily...”
“How long have you known my husband has a goddamn baby with Carmen?”
“Don’t get hysterical.” Her voice doesn’t change. “Carmen came to me when she found out she was expecting. The poor thing was beside herself. She asked me not to say anything, and I thought, well, these things have a way of sorting themselves out...”
“The poor thing?” I’m on my feet without deciding to be. “Carmen is the poor thing in this story to you? My husband’s mistress? The woman carrying his secret baby? She’s who you felt sorry for?”
“You don’t understand the position she was in...”
“The position she was in? She fucked my husband, Mom!”
“And these things happen, Emily, they do, especially when a man feels neglected at home. I’m only saying a marriage takes work on both sides, and a man has needs, and if you’d been paying a little more attention...”
The room tilts. I’m gripping the edge of the bunk so hard my knuckles ache. “Are you seriously blaming me right now? He has a baby with another woman and you’re telling me I didn’t pay enough attention? Jesus, Mom.”
“I didn’t say that. I said these situations are complicated. You always want everything black and white, Emily, you always have, even as a little girl. Carmen was never like that. Carmen understands that life takes a little give and take.”
“Do not.” My voice shakes. “Do not hold Carmen up to me. Not about this. Not ever again.”
“I’m only pointing out she’s handled an impossible thing with grace. She didn’t ask for any of it. She was lonely, Henry was kind to her, one thing led to another, and now there’s a baby who needs his father. You’d tear that apart out of pride?”
“He has a baby with another woman.” My voice cracks down the middle. “What attention was I supposed to be paying that fixes that?”
“There’s no need to be dramatic about it.
Marriages survive far worse than this. You’d just need to come to an arrangement, be the bigger person.
Honestly, you should be grateful Henry didn’t leave you when it all came out.
Carmen’s the one who talked him into staying, you know. She didn’t want to break your heart.”
“Stop saying her name!” My hand is shaking around the phone. “Stop talking about her like she’s some saint who did me a favor. She’s been laughing at me, Mom. For a year. Her and Henry, both of them, laughing at how stupid I was.”
“Nobody was laughing at you.”
“You were all in on it. You just sat there and let me play house with a man who already had a whole other family. Do you have any idea how that feels?”
I actually laugh, this wild, scraped-raw sound that doesn’t feel like it comes from me. “Carmen didn’t want to break my heart. Carmen. That’s the story you’re telling yourself.”
“What I’m telling you is that divorce is shameful and unnecessary and you will regret throwing your whole life away over one mistake.
People have arrangements all the time, quiet ones, and nobody has to be the wiser.
And anyway, the two of them aren’t even together anymore. It’s only about the baby now.”
“It is not just about the baby.” My voice climbs and I let it.
“I saw them, Mom. I followed Henry. I stood outside that apartment and watched the three of them playing house together, one big happy family. He kissed her on the doorstep. So do not sit there and feed me her bullshit, because I was there. I have eyes and I used them.”
A pause on her end. A small, careful cough. Then, like I didn’t say a word, “Still. You should try to work things out. A marriage isn’t something you throw away over a rough patch.”
“Stop.” The word comes out hard enough that she actually does. “Just stop. I’m not pretending anything. I’m not coming to an arrangement. I’m getting a divorce, and I am never, ever going to be in a room with Henry again if I can help it.”
“Emily, you are being absolutely ridiculous, and I won’t have it...”
“Here’s the thing, Mom.” Something in me that’s been bent double for twenty-five years quietly stands up straight.
“I’m done waiting for you to pick me. My whole life I’ve been good, quiet, easy, never any trouble, and for what?
You still love her more. You always have.
And now you’d rather I stay with a guy who cheated on me than have your friends find out. That’s who you are.”
“That is not...”
“So we’re done. I mean it. You don’t have a daughter anymore. Or, you know what, maybe you should just make it official and adopt Carmen, since you’ve clearly preferred her since we were in diapers. I have never hated anyone as much as I hate you right now.”
She starts to yell, finally, the shriek I’d been braced for at the beginning, but it’s too late and I’m too far gone to care. I hang up.
My hands are shaking so hard I nearly drop the phone. Before I can talk myself out of it, I go into my contacts and I block her. Then Carmen. Then Henry. Three taps, three locks slamming shut, and the quiet that comes after is enormous.
It’s strange. I keep waiting to feel guilty, to feel that old reflex pull telling me I’ve gone too far, I should call back, I should apologize and smooth it over like I always do.
The pull doesn’t come. What comes instead is this clean, scoured-out emptiness, like a room after the furniture’s been hauled away.
Bare and echoing and, weirdly, mine. For the first time in my whole life there’s nobody on the other end of the line keeping score of what I owe them.
No money to send. No yard to be ashamed of.
No mother left to disappoint. Just me, and a phone gone quiet, and a future with a hole in the middle of it shaped exactly like the family I thought I had.