36
LUKE
Thankfully, my week is full of gigs and obligations. I’m able to forget myself in the work. As long as I’m busy, I can’t think about my dad, Claire, Diane, or Eleanor.
In the slower moments, the ones I dread, it’s no longer Eleanor who comes to me for comfort. It’s thoughts of my mom and dad. The relationship that I thought they had. The one that, I guess, is a total lie.
Poor Eleanor doesn’t deserve my silence. She texts me every day, hoping I’m well, wishing to see me. And I never give her anything in return. I can’t. I’ve already hurt her so deeply. And now that I know the stock I come from, I keep having visions of hurting her even worse. It’s only been a few months. Maybe we should call it quits now before we get in too deep; before we’re married, and I get restless and have an affair with a family friend.
I don’t see that for myself. But I would never have expected that from my dad either.
Mom has been nagging me about what’s going on with my girlfriend, and when she’ll come out to meet the family. And I don’t have the heart to tell her that I don’t know when or if Eleanor will ever meet her.
I love her. Still love her with every fiber of my being.
I always thought that was enough.
According to the way my dad lived his life, apparently it wasn’t. Apparently, it was a lie.
So, when my mom calls on Saturday to invite Eleanor down for Sunday lunch, I break.
“Mom, I have some questions about dad.”
She laughs into the phone. “Why are you sounding so serious?”
“Because I want to know what happened with Aunt Diane.”
The line goes quiet for a long time. I half expect her to hang up on me. She’s always been the type to suggest there are some conversations parents should never have with their children, and I could see her deciding that this isn’t something I have a right to know about.
Mom surprises me with one word. “Alright.”
* * *
We sit out in the backyard on a bench. It looks the same as it did when I was a child, with the same tire swing swaying in the breeze. It’s worn, but still just the same.
I guess we’re all a little worn.
Not the same, though. Not now that I know.
“We all went to school together,” Mom says. “College.”
Her finger circles the rim of her glass of iced tea.
“She was in my wedding. You saw the pictures.” She laughs. Laughs . “She hated the dress I made my bridesmaids wear.”
I have to rein in my impatience. I want to know the truth, the answers. Not the long winding story.
It’s only fair I give her the space to tell it, though. It’s her hardship.
“Anyway, she was as close as family. You know that.”
I don’t know anything anymore.
Mom looks out at the yard. Her expression is even. Not necessarily pained, but intent. “As far as I know, there was never anything between them before . . .” She clears her throat. “Well, Dad got laid off. You remember that.”
“Vaguely.”
“That’s when I started picking up shifts at the library. Put my degree to use for once,” she chuckles. “You remember that, too.”
The way she keeps pointing out what I know and remember confuses my brain. Are these memories I’m having real, or are they put there by her trying to make this story easier to hear?
Mom laughs out of nowhere. “Idle hands, you know?”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
Her laugh retreats into a sad smile. “The devil’s playthings. That’s what happened to your father. He had too much time on his hands. He was trying to find a new job, doing what he could here and there to provide. But he was stressed, and he didn’t like to talk about it too much. So, he would just explode all at once instead of just expressing what was going on.”
Sounds familiar. And not in a good way. My brain flashes to the moment I told Eleanor to shut up, and I want to curl up in a hole and die.
“We almost got divorced,” she says almost as easily as she’d say the sky is blue. “But I didn’t want that for you kids. And he didn’t want that either.”
Mom inhales, narrowing her eyes. “It didn’t feel like we were married. At least to me. I would have never considered doing what he did, though. That’s not how my brain works.”
I extend my arm over the back of the bench behind her. “You knew?”
“More or less. I mean, when Diane started dodging my calls, I knew something was going on with her. I thought she was busy with the whole music thing.” Mom laughs. “She was such a free spirit. I could never have done that. You know, I wanted to be married after college and feel secure. Happily ever after.”
I smile. “Not that easy.”
“No, not at all. Not at all.” She picks at a thread on her navy dress. “Make no mistake, it was painful when I found out they were . . . behind my back . . .”
I swallow. “Mom?”
“Yes, baby.”
“Do you know about . . . about the—”
“Their daughter?”
She’s smiling.
“Yes, I know about that.”
She should be angry. Furious. Threatening to burn the world down.
“Your dad, for all his faults, told me everything when they realized she was pregnant.”
“Oh my god, how did you—how did you . . .”
Mom lifts her chin proudly. “I made him do what a man in that position should do. I made him step up. If he was going to make a bed like that, he was going to sleep in it.”
“But didn’t that feel awful? Your friend and Dad?”
She nods. “Yes and no. You see, honey, people don’t do things with other people in mind. We’re all a little bit selfish. I didn’t think any of it really had anything to do with me. Your dad was having a weird life crisis, and I wasn’t going to entertain it. Diane did. Until it was too much.”
I don’t press her with questions, though I have many.
We don’t say anything for a while. Birds cry out in the distance. Tree leaves shuffle together in the breeze.
“He came back on his hands and knees begging, and he remained there the rest of his life. The begging just turned into a kind of worship. And let me tell you, there’s nothing better than that.”
I snort. “ Mom .”
“What? It’s the truth.”
“You’re a maneater.”
“Just the one.”
I’m amazed by how proud she remains. Not the bad kind of pride. The kind of pride you have when you can see the things you might regret and say, “Oh well.”
“So, anyway, your dad was going to have to cough up the money to support Diane and the baby, and I wasn’t going to prevent him from doing that. And that kicked his sorry-for-himself ass into gear. Anyway, she broke off contact before she gave birth.”
I chew on the inside of my cheek. “Did you know she passed away?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me I had a half-sister?”
My mom finally looks at me, hard in the eye. “That’s love. It’s not always simple.”
I wrap my arm around her and bring her to my chest. I hold her the way Dad used to when they’d sit here and watch us playing in the yard.
I am an echo of him in so many ways. My mother was a saint for staying with him after all that bullshit.
I’m grateful my folks stayed together, and that Mom can be happy despite the pain. I’m not going to put someone through that, though. I won’t make Eleanor the long-suffering wife who has to deal with my bullshit.
I’ve already filled my bullshit quota with her. She deserves someone bullshit-free.
I’m not ready to let her go. I’m not sure I can make her stay with me either.
Love might not be simple. But it doesn’t have to be hard.