Chapter 34 #2
Julia wasn’t clear whether she was referring to Dad’s death or Julia having discovered her here now.
She looked into Meredith’s face, searching for any signs of familiarity or compassion or love.
This was her mother. Was she really an actress, like Nora?
Julia had gathered as much from the letters she’d read, but Nora had the most expressive face Julia had ever seen.
Meredith’s face was a blank slate on a stranger.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have come,” Julia said, hoping, looking for any reaction.
But Meredith simply nodded in response.
Julia continued staring at her, realizing what she had been feeling these last few days, months, really, was the deep ache of loneliness in her chest that came from being left by her family.
And seeing Meredith, here, like this, was only making that ache stronger.
What Julia really wanted to know was what was so wrong with her that made everyone who was supposed to love her keep on leaving?
Meredith had left her too; Meredith had left her first.
Meredith’s hands were rocking the wheels of her chair steadily back and forth, and Julia realized now she was a minute away from wheeling herself off.
“I want to know why.” The question burst out of her, the words feeling heavy, an ache that could never subside. “Why did you leave? Why did you let us believe you were dead all this time?” Julia asked.
“I couldn’t do it,” Meredith said quietly. Her stony exterior crumbled for the first time, and now Julia wondered whether her eyes weren’t so much cold as they were terribly sad. “I was never cut out to be a mother. And I was trying to avoid… this.”
That last part stung. Julia had held on to Veronica so tightly her whole life, perhaps too tightly. How had Meredith just let go… walked away from them and never even looked back? “But you had three kids!” Julia exclaimed. “If you weren’t cut out to be a mother… how did you let that happen?”
“I was only nineteen when I fell in love with Bob,” Meredith said. “And you know, I thought being in love with someone meant you were supposed to want everything he wanted.”
Nineteen? That was close to Veronica’s age now. Julia shook her head, unable to imagine V being mature enough to fall in love with anyone.
“When I got pregnant with you a few years later, Bob was so excited. And then, a few years after that, he really thought you should have a sibling, and that seemed like what I was supposed to want too. And then… the third time was an accident, and I just, I couldn’t do it anymore.
I was suffocating in that life. I felt like if I stayed, I really was going to die.
” She chewed on her bottom lip, the same way Julia did when she was upset.
“So you were depressed,” Julia said matter-of-factly. “You could’ve gone to therapy. Or… taken medication.”
Meredith shook her head. “In the seventies no one talked about things like that. I just knew… I just knew… I couldn’t stay there anymore. It was soul-crushing. I didn’t want to be a mother, I wanted to be an actress.”
“Plenty of moms work at what they love and don’t abandon their children,” Julia said.
But she felt the smallest flutter of understanding in her chest. She knew all too well the precarious balance, between being good at a job you loved and being a good mother.
She had spent years feeling like she was failing at everything all at once.
Still, she couldn’t have ever imagined leaving V. Pretending she was dead?
“I had no choice,” Meredith said. “I left to save myself. And to save the three of you from me.”
“You always have a choice,” Julia said firmly.
It felt like she was talking to four-year-old Veronica again, trying to teach her about acceptable behavior.
Good choices. Bad choices. There were always choices.
Every mother knew that. Every woman knew that.
But then she wondered what it might’ve been like growing up with Meredith there, miserable.
Their childhood had largely been filled with happiness, laughter, and normalcy in spite of being raised by their single dad.
Maybe, though, it wasn’t in spite of. Maybe it was because of that.
“You sound just like my mother,” Meredith said.
“Grandma Vera.” Julia said her name softly.
Meredith nodded. “Bob and I made her promise she would never tell you girls the truth. She wasn’t happy about it, but she kept her promise.” She paused. “I mean, she didn’t tell you before she died, right?”
Julia thought about the way Grandma Vera had accidentally led her to the wrong drawer in her armoire once, when Julia was still a teenager.
And now she wondered if maybe that hadn’t been an accident at all.
Technically, Vera had kept her promise and had never told Julia anything.
But if she’d led Julia to the truth by accident, then was that her loophole?
Had she actually wanted Julia to find out about Meredith years ago?
Julia looked up at the wall of windows just behind Meredith, hoping to see a bird hovering there now, confirming her instincts. But all she saw was an empty palm tree, the bright blue, cloudless sky above it. “No,” Julia finally said. “Grandma Vera never broke her promise.”
“I need you to promise the same now. Go home and keep pretending I really am dead.”
“What if I don’t want to?” Julia hated the way she sounded petulant, even though Meredith was the one in the wrong.
“I can’t do this.” Meredith’s hands rocked on the wheels and this time, she slowly pushed herself back from the table.
“Wait… you’re leaving?” Julia asked. “Just like that?”
“Take care,” Meredith said, the way you might say it in passing, to a stranger.
And then she wheeled herself out of the decorated common room, back down the hallway toward her room.
Julia felt somewhere outside of herself as she stood to leave. Her hands were shaking, and she realized she might not have eaten all day. (Did she eat yesterday?)
“It’s nice to see her have a visitor,” the nurse said to Julia with a smile as she walked out. “You’re her first one in three years.”
Julia went back to her room, took a sleeping pill, willing it to calm her, to lull her into an easy sleep, but instead she started to cry and pace the room.
Ted left her. Veronica didn’t need her. Was she bound to end up in assisted living, with no one to care or notice or visit her for three years?
She thought about what her dad said once: The only thing certain in life is death.
Is that all she would have to look forward to now?
Then the tiredness hit her, swept a calming sort of exhaustion over and through her, and she lay down in the big, empty bed.
For such a long time, she had just wanted to ask her mother one question. How did you have everything and then walk away from it all? Not one daughter but three?
But when, all those years ago, she had seen through the window how happy Meredith looked without them, how at ease, Julia hadn’t been able to face her.
And then, later that night, when she had woken up in Nate’s arms, here, in this very hotel, in the pitch-dark of night, the only thought in her head was: Veronica, Veronica, Veronica.
Oh God, she’d been in such a daze since the miscarriage, she’d unintentionally done what Meredith had. She’d left her child.
She’d run home, and for so many years after that she’d held on to Veronica tightly, vowing she would never leave her again.
Never let her go. She refused to let go of Ted and their marriage, believing that she had to do everything in her power to keep her family together.
She had worked so hard to be everything her own mother wasn’t: the reliable mother, the reliable wife.
“And now Veronica resents me,” she said to no one, into the empty room. “And Ted wants someone else.”
She had done the exact opposite as her mother, but still, somehow, had done it all wrong?
And that was the last thought she had as she finally drifted off to sleep.