Chapter 12 #2
But she needs to know, not only because it’s context for Immigration, they won’t ask, not at this level. It’s that Grams will assume she does, and the gap between what Grams assumes and what Louisa knows will be visible to both of them immediately.
So here I go, knowing the conversation is timeboxed to the rest of this drive, which has exactly nine minutes left.
“You know my parents divorced when I was seven.” I keep my eyes on the road.
“My father left first, technically. New city, new life, new family. Even though I think the new family actually preceded any real departure. My mother stayed for a period, but staying physically isn’t the same thing as being there.
” Louisa’s body shifts slightly as if to indicate her attention is on me, while I am focused on this drive.
Even though I could do this drive with my eyes closed.
“She was so burned by him that I think I became the part of her life she couldn’t look at without seeing him in it.
” I slow at a yellow light. “She went on a lot of ‘journeys of self discovery,’ which was just an excuse to run away. Each time leaving me with Grams.” She lets out the smallest ‘mmm,’ and it sounds sympathetic, which is not the goal of this.
“She remarried when I was eleven. Moved out of state. And made it clear that she had found the journey that was right for her, and I wasn’t a part of it.” Louisa is quiet. I can feel her eyes on me, if I were to turn my head, they would find each other and we would be locked in a stare.
“Grams took me in. I don't think she was given a choice, exactly, but she never made me feel that way. I had stayed with her every school break before that, every summer and weekend, and then just permanently. I lived with her until I went to college.”
“What was that like?” she prompts. Not aggressively to dive deeper into the ugly details as much as a soft nudge to learn more about my childhood.
“She made breakfast every morning, came to every debate tournament, was in the front row at every graduation; at every meaningful event in my life, she’s had a front row seat,” I say, and realize there is a significant one coming up, that when we make our way to City Hall for our appointment, will be notably absent from the list. But I don't say that out loud.
“She taught me bridge,” I say, because this is safer ground. “Said it would teach me to pay attention to what people weren’t saying. To communicate with a partner without words. We still play weekly.”
“Did it?”
“I’d say yes. Past relationships would probably disagree.
” Claire said something close to this verbatim in the one of the last conversations we had.
She wasn’t wrong. Knowing what someone isn’t saying and doing something useful with it are different skills, and I’ve historically only been good at one of them.
Louisa makes a small sound that isn't quite a laugh. “I don't know how to play bridge,” she says. And from my peripheral vision I can see her picking at the edge of her purple nail polish, which she does when she’s nervous, maybe nostalgic for something she can’t put her finger on. “Maybe she'll teach me.”
“Yeah, maybe.” The thing I don't say, that I have no business thinking, let alone breathing into this small space between us so it can buzz around this car like a trapped bee, is that I would like that.
The image of Grams teaching Louisa bridge is something I want to exist in the world, in my world.
“What about your father?” she asks. “After.” It's the follow-up question that on any given day would have said there’s a fifty-fifty chance of answering, and I find that with her, today, in this specific twelve minutes, the odds shift.
“I spent a lot of time waiting for him,” I say.
“What does that mean?”
“He was always elsewhere,” I say. “Even before.” The resentment I’ve processed.
Mostly. What remains is cleaner, flat disappointment in two people who could have chosen differently and didn't, abandoning me out of spite for each other. “I waited for him to be proud of me, or choose me, in any way for a long time. No matter how much Grams hated him, or how disappointed she was in her own daughter, she never let it affect me. She made sure I got his birthday card every year. Always waiting with my pile of birthday presents with twenty dollars in it. Eventually I realized they were never from him at all. That’s when I stopped waiting. My mom was at least there when I was growing up, until I became the memory of all she didn’t want to be around.
At least her birthday cards were really from her. ”
“That’s a lot.” She says it and it’s validating. She’s not using it as justification to explain anything about me away, just acknowledging this part of who I am.
“When I stopped waiting,” I continue, because there’s no reason to stop now, “things got easier. You can’t be let down by someone you've stopped expecting things from.” I say it the way I've learned to tell myself doesn’t have the weight of old resentment dragging at its edges.
It took longer to achieve than I'll tell anyone.
But it's true now, or true enough. “Grams is the reason anything about me works,” I say.
We're a block away, meaning I get to conclude this dive into my childhood. “Everything that functions. Everything I’ve built. It maybe started because I wanted to impress them, to be the thing so undeniably successful they would be proud and regret leaving. But then it became about her. She was the only person who pushed me without an agenda. The only one whose investment in me had nothing to do with what I'd eventually be able to do for her.” I pause as I follow the traffic lights, each red stop light gives me a minute to pause, and decide if I should continue. “I'll never be able to do enough in return. I know that. But she’s close, and she’s taken care of, and I show up every Friday for breakfast.”
She doesn’t try to fill the space with noise, or fix it, or reflect it back at me with therapeutic phrasing. She just holds it with me for the last half block.
“Hudson.”
“Mm.”
“You're enough.”
Two words, quietly delivered. I don’t respond. Not outside my own brain. They are words I never admit to myself and certainly have never heard spoken out loud, only ever received from Grams in the form of action. But there’s something different to hearing something spoken.
I pull into the small lot and cut the engine off.
“Ready?” I ask.
“Since the second you said Grams,” she says. And she’s out of the car before I am.