Chapter 37 #2
I cross my arms over my chest, trying to hide that my hands are shaking. “I think it’s a bit late for that.”
But she is undeterred. “An explanation, then.” Her voice is lower than I remember, but perhaps I’ve created the memory of her out of nothing. A fiction, like the rest of my life. “I didn’t handle it well, last week. I was caught off guard and—”
“Should I have waited for an invitation?”
She holds up her hands in a gesture of ceasefire. “I should have handled it better.”
“Okay.”
“I’d like to explain, if that’s something you’re open to.” She shifts her purse higher on her shoulder and pulls her cardigan taut as if bracing herself from the cold. But it’s a warm night, almost too warm.
“Now?” I say with incredulity, because apparently, I think she deserves the worst version of me—petulant adolescent—as punishment for her absence.
Her words come out rapid-fire. “Or anytime. Whenever you’re ready. I can come back. Here to San Diego. Or wherever you’re going to be.” She waves to the Pending Realtor’s sign perched like a countdown clock in front of the house.
I release an exhausted sigh and relent. Rock bottom is the best place to have this conversation.
I finally feel like I’ll know what to ask and how to respond, because I’ve lost all hope that the answers will address my pain.
My anticipation has settled into resignation.
She left me, and when I found her, she didn’t weep in relief or beg my forgiveness.
She sent me away. I’ll let her talk because she owes me answers, even if it feels academic. “Now is fine.”
She nods once, then again, and puts her weight on the step before drawing it back down, unsure where to go.
“I’d invite you in, but there’s no furniture. Or lamps. Or anything, really.”
“Here is good,” she says quickly.
I sink onto the top step and wave her up.
The porch creaks under her feet, and she crouches until she’s seated on the other side.
I have a pang—a flashbulb memory of Dad and me here in these same spots.
Sometimes we’d start a conversation on a drive and pause here to finish, as if the house would swallow up the magic of the impromptu heart-to-heart.
“Okay.” I swallow. “I’m listening.”
“How much do you know?” she asks.
“Almost nothing,” I say. “I found a portion of the parental termination document after Dad died.”
She exhales. “Okay, I guess I’ll start at the beginning.” She dips her metaphorical toe in the truth, testing the waters.
I’ve seen this pattern. I think of our interview subjects: their fear, hesitation, expectation of condemnation.
I channel my professional distance, but it’s out of reach.
I feel a momentary ache that Beau isn’t here as a buffer, that I’ll have to gather this most personal truth on my own. “It’s usually the best place to start.”
“I was a troubled kid—never got along well with my family. I was moody, impulsive, and often a bit erratic, I guess.”
I blink, trying to focus. I anticipated “the beginning” might give me more immediate answers—and the spindles of the porch railing are jammed in my spine, the hard wooden steps uncomfortable on my tailbone. I shift, and Mary watches me before quickening the pace of her words.
“I left home when I was seventeen, and I met Henry, fell in love, and I was stable for a while. I was young and foolish and thought he was all I needed to be okay.” She stops, looks across the lawn, toward the other side of the street, before stealing a glance my way.
“Illness doesn’t work like that, though.
And when I had you—well, I got worse. I had postpartum psychosis, which no one understood all that well then.
And I honestly don’t remember much about that time.
But I left you alone in the bath when you were a few months old.
” She drops her head in her hands, and her shoulders are hunched, her spine casting a thin shadow through her cardigan before she straightens to an unnatural posture—as if donning armor.
“Henry came home, and ... thank goodness. You were okay. But that’s when I was hospitalized the first time.
“Henry did all the parenting from then on. When I got out, you two had this bond I couldn’t penetrate.
He tried to care for me, too. He did. But I was in and out of the hospital those first few years.
That’s when they said it wasn’t just postpartum, it was triggered by undiagnosed bipolar disorder, and there was no cure. ”
She’s silent for a few moments. But I don’t have it in me to fill it. I search her mannerisms, voice, and face for evidence of me—like a scavenger hunt for belonging.
“I would come home with a plan. But I’d stop taking my meds and launch into another manic episode, followed by a depressive episode, and we’d be right back to where we started. In the end, your dad and I both chose to save you.”
Emotions are pinballing in my chest faster than I can process them. Loss. Grief. Sorrow—that Dad spent a lifetime carrying the weight of our forged family lore on his shoulders. But mostly anger. At myself for being so gullible. At her for giving me up. At Dad for letting her.
“A mother doesn’t leave because she’s sick, because she refuses to take medication.” My throat is constricted with an ache I can’t clear, tight and scalding.
She looks away, folds her arms across her chest, and inhales, as if she’s about to speak, but stalls out. On her third attempt, she speaks slowly. “I did a lot of dangerous things, Ophelia. During a manic episode, I pulled you out of preschool and drove all the way to Cannon Beach.”
A memory appears—the sun on my face, the biting Pacific on my toes, my mom’s laugh singing in the wind. “I remember that.”
A smile passes across her face, but it’s gone before she speaks again. “I didn’t tell your dad we were going, or where we were. And before I could get back, the depression set in. We ended up in a dirty motel. Henry tracked the credit card and found us two days later.”
I try to find that piece of the memory, but it’s out of reach. Maybe it’s for the best—that I only remember the high. I count my memories of her. I have a handful, but I always wondered how many were real and not conjured up by imagination and implanted by years of yearning.
“Henry gave me an ultimatum then. I’d get help, take my meds, or he’d leave and take you with him. But the illness—and mania especially—makes you think you’re invincible, and the medicine is the enemy. So, eventually, I stopped the meds. And he left.”
I’ve been listening, trying to collect her story like an impartial interviewer and pretend she’s another Natalia, Jeremiah, or Alexander.
But anger crashes over me like a tidal wave.
How simple it would have been for her to take her meds and stay, swallow a pill and spare me a life without a mother.
Mary fidgets, picking at the cuticle on her thumb, and clears her throat before saying more.
“It got ugly after he left. I’d show up at your apartment in the middle of the night.
By that time, social services had been called in, and there was a case against me.
It was clear I might even lose visitation.
” She falters. “When the courts threatened to come after my parental rights entirely, I showed up at your preschool, snuck onto the playground. By that time, Henry had told them I couldn’t pick you up, couldn’t see you.
But you came to me, hugged me with your little chubby arms, and said ‘Mama’ in my ear.
I took you and drove out of town. I kept driving for hours, through the night—until I lost control on black ice.
I broke my leg in three places, had a collapsed lung, and a bad concussion.
You got that scar. Ten stitches.” She brings a fingertip to my forehead, and I jolt. She sighs and drops her hand.
“But telling me you were dead? Why? How could he?” Of all the choices he could make, he chose the nuclear option. Permanent. Agonizing. A hole he tried to fill with shifting sand. I reach for my necklace but flex my hand when I remember I’d taken it off two days ago. I drop my fist to my side.
“I was facing a lot of legal consequences and knew I was going to lose you. When Henry came to see me in the hospital, I wasn’t in a good place.
I told him that I was better off dead to both of you.
I thought if there was a possibility that you were waiting for me, wondering about me, I’d keep coming back and eventually ruin you.
I told Henry that I would rather you think I was dead than a deadbeat.
” She can barely get the last words out; her voice is frail and breathy.
She takes in a gulp of air. “By the time I got out of the hospital, you and Henry were gone. Soon after, I found out I was legally dead to you. According to the law, I was no longer your mother.”
I fight back the tears I’m not sure she deserves and let anger march out ahead. “That was such a permanent decision,” I whisper. “And you’re better now. You have a business. You’re married. After you got well—”
“You were already grown by the time I got it under control with the right diet, meds, and therapy.”
As if I ever stopped needing my mother. Missing her. Dreaming of her. My throat feels swollen—there is no way to get these next words out and still hold back the well of tears. “Did you ever think to come look for me?”
She shifts on the step, turning to face me fully, and takes a deep, steadying breath.
“Those early years, I was in such a state that I was barely functioning. I tried to self-medicate. I was so ill.” She pauses again.
“I’m scared to tell you this, but I think you need to know.
When I got into the treatment center, the one that finally worked—”
“In Redding?” I ask.