107 Rhys
107
Rhys
Nothing had changed, and yet everything had. At least when I looked harder and noticed the details. The rosebush was no longer in front of the window, the garden seemed neglected, the paint on the columns out front had faded, and the wind had blown the leaves across the porch steps. Nobody had bothered to rake them on the random Wednesday I decided to go home.
I still had the keys my mom had given me the last time I visited, but I didn’t dare use them. Maybe I didn’t think I deserved to. I rang the doorbell and waited until she opened up and greeted me with a fragile smile and a warm hug. She smelled the same as always. That comforted me. Still recognizing that scent.
“My little boy…” she took my arm.
“Where is he?” I asked nervously.
“He’s sleeping. He usually tries to rest before lunch. Come to the kitchen. You must be starving. I’ll make you something.”
I nodded, but before I could step forward, she hugged me again, and we stayed like that in silence for a few seconds. Later, she opened the refrigerator with shaking hands, and I noticed new wrinkles on her face, a dullness in her eyes. They were tired, her body was thin and shrunken, and yet she still seemed full of strength and energy. Not the kind someone’s born with, but the kind a person finds because they have to.
“You want chicken? Vegetable soup?”
“Mom, maybe we should…”
“Or something sweet?”
I took a deep breath and shut the fridge. We looked at each other.
“I’m not hungry. And we need to talk.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
She started wringing her hands, and I grabbed them and felt her tremble. Looking down at her, seeing her so short beneath me, her misty eyes looking up into mine, I started to see everything differently. From her perspective, as someone who had been beside me for so many days, even before I learned to walk, someone who had cared for me when I was sick, who had celebrated all those birthdays with me…
She tried to get past me, but I stopped her.
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“Rhys, it’s fine.”
“I shouldn’t have left. Forgive me.” I felt the words turning to mush, like always, but I forced myself to let them out: “When I found out, I was just… I was lost at the moment, and I didn’t know how to take it. I’m glad Dad didn’t tell you why I left. You didn’t deserve that.”
“I should have told you before.”
“It doesn’t matter. Nothing would have changed.”
“You had a right to know.” She wiped her cheeks. “But I never found the right time. When you were little, I thought you wouldn’t understand. And then you grew up and got older, and you were lost, and I was scared to give you another reason to distance yourself from us.”
“Mom, everything’s okay.”
Her eyes were shining, full of tears that she must have been holding back for years. She took a deep breath and brought her hand shakily to her lips. “I used to look at you and think you were like a grenade on the verge of exploding. I was scared that anything I did would be catastrophic. And I didn’t know what to do to help you.”
“I did feel on the verge of exploding a lot of the time.”
“Still, I messed up.”
“We both did.”
She reached out and stroked my cheek. “You’re my son, Rhys. You are.”
“I know I am,” I whispered.
She was thinking over what she had to say. “Your father told me what he said to you before he asked me to tell you to come see him. I don’t know how he managed to keep it to himself for so long, to live with that secret, but you know how proud he is. You’re the same way. You’re alike in that sense. It’s just something inside you. You don’t know how many times I used to tell you when you were a kid that you needed to express your feelings, that crying was liberating… You know he didn’t regret it, right?”
I felt as if I was struggling to breathe. “I’ll talk to him…” Already I wanted to leave.
“It broke his heart when he found out you had left because you learned you were adopted. When I was in the hospital, you were the only person he had to lean on, and when you came back, he was so angry, so disappointed… He’s never been one to just swallow his anger or his pain. But your father loves you more than anyone, Rhys…”
Attacking before he could get hurt too badly. I knew that tactic well. But it had only brought me problems, disappointment, and mistakes.
I tried to put the pain aside, the discomfort weighing on my chest when I remembered the words he’d uttered about what runs in the blood. The rage that filled me that day that now seemed so distant. I felt like a plant that had grown somewhere for years, sometimes straighter, sometimes more tangled, that someone had torn out by the roots and thrown aside. And that pain remained there in a place I refused to look at because I felt weak, small. Like a nobody. Like someone who had no place in the world that was his.
I looked at my mother. So patient. So solid.
“That’s not all he said,” I told her. “He also said he had never wanted to adopt, that he did it for you, because he didn’t want to see you unhappy.”
“It’s true. He was against the idea at first. He had doubts. But they all disappeared when he took you in his arms, Rhys. He just said what he said to hurt you. It’s horrible, but it’s true… You hurt him, and he wanted to hurt you back. He should have realized that you were young and unstable. The conditions weren’t the same.”
I rubbed my chin and tried to calm myself down.
“How is he?” I asked.
“He’s got his good days and his bad days.”
“Has he gotten better at all?”
“No, Rhys. He’s not going to get better.”
“What about his medication?”
“They’re painkillers, that’s all.” She cut me off. “Eat something and take a shower. You look tired. I’ll clean your father up when he wakes up. You know how vain he is.”
She said this with a smile, as if she no longer cared to struggle against the situation, as if she wasn’t even upset that the person she’d shared her whole life with would die soon. I couldn’t help asking, “How do you do it, Mom?”
She shook her head and sighed. “I needed a few months, but once you accept reality, you start seeing things in different ways. I have two options: crawl in bed and cry, or get up and try to enjoy the time we have together, even if the conditions aren’t ideal.”
She left the kitchen with her head held high. For the next few hours, I thought about what she said. As I took my hot shower, as I unpacked my bags, as I tried to get comfortable in my old room with all the memories those four walls had preserved.
I left my laptop on the bed, thinking I’d write Ginger to let her know I’d made it home, but I was too upset…
I rubbed my face and fell on the mattress.
It didn’t seem real that I had been a little child in this bed, which was now almost too small for me—my feet scraped the wooden frame at the bottom. It was funny to realize that places didn’t change, memory didn’t change, even events didn’t change—it was just us who did, molding ourselves, rising up, falling, turning into different people inside and out.
I lay there until my mother knocked to let me know I could go see him. Even then, I needed a moment to get up. Three minutes, maybe more. I didn’t think about anything as I moved through the house I knew so well, toward his office, where he was waiting for me. I guess he chose it because it was where he felt most powerful, most secure, his best version of himself. When I was little, he used to always tell me not to go in there, and I never listened; I’d scuttle through the door, sit on the floor under the dark-wood desk, and wait in silence for him to come and find me. He’d click his tongue, shake his head, decide he’d lost that battle, and let me stay, playing on the burgundy carpet while he tried to finish whatever work he’d brought home with him.
But now I didn’t want to go in.
I did though. I pushed the door, which was already half-open, and stepped inside. I thought at first the office was empty, but then I saw his slim, slouching figure in the wing chair next to the bookshelf.
It felt like a slap in the face to see him there.
To see…what looked like another person, but with his stare. His face was aged, his body weak and haggard, his hands trembling as they pushed onto the arms of his leather chair to try to stand.
I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t even move.
Not, at least, until I saw that he couldn’t stand. Then I walked toward him with my heart in my throat and my eyes burning, and I grabbed him around the waist to help him up. He weighed nothing. I let him go when I realized he could hold himself there, and we looked at each other. Just a few inches apart. For the first time in more than seven long years. An eternity. Or perhaps just the blink of an eye, depending on your perspective.
I had imagined that moment thousands of times. But it was always the same. We met, we talked, I threw back in his face what he’d said to me, told him how much he’d hurt me, told him he’d never loved me, and we ended up shouting.
But nothing like that happened.
We just looked at each other.
And then the words emerged with no effort, as if I’d been meditating on them for years, as if they’d been there, caught in my throat, so deeply anchored inside me that they didn’t even surprise me when they emerged. And they were sincere.
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
His eyes were gleaming.
“I’m sorry too.”