Chapter 31
CHAPTER 31
I LAND AT NOON AND GO STRAIGHT TO MY MOM’S house. I haven’t called Clem back because I know what she’ll say about all of this. I’m not ready to come clean about just how completely I’ve fallen apart; I’d rather be in a place where I know how to pretend.
My mom’s street is Sunday quiet. I have a key, but for some reason, I knock. My mom opens the door in her yellow duck pajamas, just like any other Sunday, but today there is a man in her kitchen cooking something in a pan.
“Jane!” She takes me in her arms. “I’m so happy to see you.” She pulls me into the apartment, which feels and smells different with this man here.
“Gary,” I say as he’s walking toward us.
He extends a hand. “So nice to meet you finally.”
I shake his hand. “Thank you. Hi.”
They’re smiling at me like this isn’t the weirdest thing ever. My mom gestures to me. “So come sit. I thought you were coming in later. Didn’t you say dinner?”
“I’m making omelets,” Gary says. “I’ve just caramelized the onions. Can I make you one?”
I blink. He’s a nice-looking fifty-year-old guy. He’s Gary who caramelizes things, and my mom is as light as a feather. “No, thank you,” I say.
Gary goes back into the kitchen, and we sit on her old sofa. I have never once in my life seen a man cook something for my mother. Not in thirty-three years. I take in her apartment as if for the first time, because we are in a new reality where my mom is living in the false paradise I’ve just run out on. The missing thing is not missing. I have a feeling in my body that I know is jealousy. Feeling jealous of my mother, whose life I ruined by being too brutal for her true love, is a new low.
She makes big eyes at me. “What do you think?”
“I think he’s caramelized you.” I’m trying for a joke, but I am so angry and hurt that it comes across sarcastic.
She puts her arm around me. “Tell me about your trip.”
“Why do you look so good?” I ask her. She looks how I felt just yesterday, sort of glowy and light.
“I’m happy,” she says and looks at her hands.
“With Coffee Bean Gary.”
“You can just call him Gary,” she says. “I think I might be in love.”
“Mom, stop,” I say. It’s not the silent Mom, stop I’ve wished every time she’s thought she was in love. It’s coated in anger for how long she’s set me up to feel the way I do today. Love may be a real thing, but it’s not for us. Just stop. Gary’s going to leave. At least I was smart enough not to try.
“I feel like myself with him and I want to touch him all the time,” she says.
“Oh my God, stop,” I say.
“He’s asked me to move in with him, and I’m going to.”
“And you’re just going to do it? Give up your home and run blind into this thing and ride off on a goddamn unicorn?” My voice is jagged. My anger is razor-sharp, and I cannot reel it in.
“What? No.” She pats my hand and I pull it away. I’m just so sick of her happy stories, and I’m so sick of pretending to believe. “Why would you say that?”
I start to cry. The tears start in my chest and burn my eyes as they flow. Gary walks into the room with omelets and immediately retreats to the kitchen.
“Jane, what’s happening?”
It’s time. I know that. I can hear Dan telling me to face it and move on, and this makes me angry all over again. It’s nearly impossible to break a dynamic that’s been choreographed between two people for decades. You protect me; I protect you. We’re both liars.
“This is big for me,” she says. She thinks I’m crying about Gary. “It’s important. He’s important to me. I love him and I want to share things with him.”
“Great,” I say, wiping my eyes. “Good for you, I’m glad you can share things with somebody.”
She looks at me as if she’s been slapped but doesn’t know with what.
“What does that mean?” she asks.
I let my face fall into my hands. I don’t know how to untangle my thoughts and memories. I don’t know how to reach into the mess that I am and pull out the easy version.
“Is this about the movie? What’s happened to you?” she asks.
I felt it. I know what love is now, and I remembered that it’s not for me. “I’m just really angry.” At myself for believing I could have the fairy tale, at her for never owning up, at Dan for lifting the curtain and showing me what I can’t have.
“About Gary and me?”
“No.” I look up from my hands. “Maybe. This thing you’re feeling, it’s a daydream. I know better. And I think you know better too.”
Silence hangs between us, and the normal next step would be to reveal what I know to be the truth about my inherent unlovability. I could just open my mouth and tell her I know she’s been lying to me about who I am my entire life. But it’s too raw and I’m too angry. One more cut and I will bleed out.