Chapter 26 Liz #2
“Sometimes,” Angela admitted. “I got some things right, but not all of them. I gave you the kind of life I wanted, but you always preferred to color inside the lines, and I should have held more space for that. I’m sorry for everything I got wrong. I’m sorry I was less than what you deserved.”
Liz looked at her mother, shocked that Angela had admitted fault and regret. Liz had been waiting her whole life for her mother to say this, and now that it had happened, she didn’t know what to do. Angela looked at Liz and smiled knowingly.
“I know. I’m not great at saying I was wrong,” Angela said. “But I’ve been thinking about it since the last time you were here. I guess you’re bound to get reflective when your kid tells you that you’re a piece of shit.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“In so many words.”
Angela looked off and Charlie kept gulping milk and Liz wondered if that was the end of it, but then Angela returned her gaze to Liz.
“You have every right to be angry. I told myself we were better off so much I think I really believed it. I wanted us to be free to have adventures and I didn’t want you to have a father who played the part out of obligation.
Both of those things were true. But I was probably punishing your dad too.
I resented how he got to pick and choose when he wanted to show up.
Men have that privilege. They choose when it’s convenient for them to be a father.
Women don’t have that option. The second you have a baby, you’re a mother every second of the day, every day, for the rest of your life. ”
Liz let her mother’s words sink in and thought about telling Angela what had happened to Ace, but it wasn’t the right time.
“I don’t want to be angry anymore,” she said.
“I can’t.” Liz looked at Charlie as Angela picked him up, placed him over her shoulder, and firmly tapped his back to produce a burp.
She thought about all the ways she might inevitably fail him, and all the ways she would make sure she wouldn’t.
“I don’t want to live in the past,” Liz told Angela.
“I’m an adult now, and you and I can be different people to each other. ”
“Out of the two of us, you were always the adult,” Angela said. “And it wasn’t fair that I was growing up too, right alongside you. And it definitely wasn’t fair that you were better at it.”
“We both made it out okay. That’s what’s important.”
“Sure,” Angela said. “But I’m going to try, Liz, to hear you. To really hear you and show up as the kind of mother you want and need. I don’t want to lose you again. Especially now that it’s you and Charlie. I get it wrong a lot, but I really do love you.”
“I know you do,” Liz said, looking into her mother’s eyes.
Angela would always be Angela and she would probably frustrate and challenge and maybe even madden her in the years to come, but she was also Liz’s mother, and you only got one mother in life, and here she was, trying.
“I love you too.” Charlie let out a belch disproportionately loud for his size.
“You’re going to be an amazing grandma.”
Angela shuddered, jostling Charlie. “We can’t call me that.”
Liz chuckled. “You can decide what you want to be called.”
Angela pursed her lips in thought and then, instead of suggesting Glamma Moonbeam or Nana Aphrodite as Liz feared, she said, “How about we let Charlie decide?”
“Sure,” Liz said nonchalantly, although she was aware of the significance that they were mapping out a new and different kind of future. “Just don’t break into the house again with that spanking paddle or whatever that thing was. Deal?”
“Liz!” Angela laughed. “Good to know you have some kink in you, but that was a sacred Peruvian chakapa, not a sex toy.”
“Actually, definitely don’t break in again, because I don’t live there anymore. Preston and I broke up.”
Angela’s eyebrows bounced upwards like they were on a trampoline.
Liz braced herself for Angela to ask what Liz had done wrong, or for her mother to say it wasn’t surprising but it was a shame because she adored Preston so much.
Instead, Angela asked, “How are you doing?” with what appeared to be the genuine article of maternal concern.
“I’m…okay,” Liz said. “We’re going to raise Charlie together and be friends, and even though part of me already feels guilty that Charlie is going to grow up in a broken home, I think that’s better than having a broken person as a mother.”
“You’re strong, Liz. You shape your reality. Only you have that power.”
Liz nodded obediently. Even if she didn’t feel powerful yet, she could at least envision a world in which she could, one day.
“And you should know, I’m damn proud of you,” Angela said. “You’re brave and you’re smart and you’re weird in all the best ways.”
Liz was floored. It wasn’t only that it felt like she was starting to heal a wound; it was also like Liz had finally begun to locate the source of the bleeding in the first place. “You really don’t wish I was more…of a Sage?” she asked.
Angela laughed. “Of course not! How could you think that?”
“You told me I wasn’t living up to the name.”
“You weren’t. Because it was a dumb name. But do you remember why we really changed it?”
Liz shook her head.
“You know those personalized license plates on the rotating racks in every rest stop back then, with kids’ names on them? Sara and Jennifer and Jessica and Lauren and all those popular, generic names?”
“Yeah.”
“They never had Sage,” Angela said. “I gave you a unique name because mine was so boring, but all you wanted was one of those license plates. So we talked about it and then we changed it together. You chose Elizabeth.”
“I did?” Liz said, her mind spinning. “I don’t remember that.”
“Can you hold him a sec?” Angela asked, handing over Charlie. She went off into the shadows of the yurt.
Liz looked down at her son, caressing the creamy skin of his cheeks with her index finger, deeply relieved to feel affection rather than the need for a psych ward.
Angela returned, brandishing two objects.
She sat back down and held up the first one: a handmade sheet of metal, warped by time or crafted by a novice, which appeared to be a fledgling attempt at impersonating a license plate.
Liz saw that SAGE-143 was etched onto it.
“Metalwork was never my medium,” Angela said apologetically.
She set aside the homemade license plate, peeled the Bubble Wrap off her other offering, and held up a gleaming, store-bought license plate with ELIZABETH emblazoned across it.
Liz leaned forward, her baby tucked under one arm, and flung her other one around her mother.
Liz stepped outside Victoria and Ace’s guesthouse with Charlie in tow in his DockATot. Victoria was setting the long wood table with linen napkins and ceramic plates. She looked up at Liz, and even with the marks of fatigue evident on her face, she was still striking.
“Can I help?” Liz asked.
“All under control,” Victoria said. “I thought we’d eat outside because it’s so nice, but we can always turn on the heat lamps if we need them.”
“No, this is great,” Liz said, looking around.
They were having one of those peculiar winter heat waves in Los Angeles, which was causing an uptick in the news cycle about global warming and sending people to the beaches in droves.
The air was warm but not humid, and it had a pleasing, balmy breeze.
Tea lights were strung overhead in the backyard, which was technically now Liz’s too, at least temporarily, since she had accepted Victoria’s offer to move into the guesthouse with Charlie until she found her own place.
Liz put Charlie down next to Miles and the two infants looked at each other.
“That’s so cute it’s gross,” Victoria said, and she and Liz instantly pulled out their phones to document the moment. As they snapped pictures, Miles reached out and clenched his fingers around Charlie’s hand. Both women shrieked.
“They’re holding hands!” Liz said. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to move out.”
“I hope you never do,” Ace said, coming outside with a platter of grilled chicken and vegetables.
He was still moving more slowly than usual, but thanks to a strict diet and weekly rehab sessions following his return home, he no longer resembled an invalid.
He looked like a man who had cheated death and received a surplus of second chances he would not take for granted.
They waited to sit until Angela showed up, only twenty-five minutes late, which for her was timely.
Victoria introduced herself and welcomed Angela graciously, and Liz thought that if Victoria felt at all weird about welcoming her husband’s former fling into her home, you couldn’t detect any discomfort whatsoever.
“It’s nice to meet you, at last,” Victoria told Angela.
“Likewise!” Angela said, thrusting a dried (but really just decrepit) flower bouquet into Victoria’s hands.
“I’ll find a vase for these,” Victoria said, excusing herself so Ace and Angela could have a moment.
Liz watched with naked fascination, unable to tear her eyes away.
Her parents had both said they were up for this, and Liz had verified it repeatedly over the past week, leading up to them all having dinner together: Are you sure?
I know it’s weird. Are you positive? Despite their assurances, Angela and Ace hadn’t seen each other in decades, and they shared an undeniably complicated past. Liz didn’t know how this would go.
Angela and Ace regarded each other, Ace offering a gregarious but knowing smile; no one thought this moment wasn’t loaded, or without nuance.
“Angela,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”
“Thanks for having me. It’s been a minute.”
“Since you gave me the boot,” Ace said.
Angela threw her head back and laughed, breaking the tension. “It’s good to see ya, you old deadbeat,” she said, pounding Ace on the back. “Too hard? I heard we almost lost you.”
While Ace and Angela discussed the broad strokes of his health, Victoria came back outside and Liz shot her a relieved look.
Angela turned around in time to clock it.
“What? You were worried? Liz, baby, I’ve done twenty past-life regressions.
I was a waiting woman to Cleopatra in the time of the pharaohs. I think I can handle this.”
“There is no person on earth who would deny what a force of nature you are, Angela,” Ace said. “I’m just glad I have the chance to tell you what a wonderful daughter you raised.”
Angela batted away the praise. “I brought you a pink halite,” she said, producing a light pink hunk of crystal from her satchel.
“It’s a heart opener. Put it next to your bed and sleep next to it, and don’t forget to bathe your crystals during the full moon to activate their powers,” Angela instructed.
“Thank you, Angela,” Ace said. “Very thoughtful of you.”
Angela turned to Liz and Victoria. “I use all my crystals in my sound baths. I should do one for that mommy group of yours.”
Victoria and Liz suppressed a laugh.
“Sound healing is great for babies and for new mothers,” Angela added.
“We’re actually taking a break from the class,” Liz said.
“Once all the babies arrived, the group chat went from annoying to downright insufferable,” Victoria explained.
Angela let out a little huff. “You don’t have to explain it to me,” she said. “I’m anti anything organized.”
Victoria gave Angela a kind smile, then ushered everyone to the table.
They sat down with the babies, the light softening into a deep amber through the canopy of trees.
Ace sat at the head of the table, Victoria on his left, Liz and Angela on the right.
Liz looked around at Victoria, her best friend and stepmom; and Ace, her father and her son’s grandfather; and Angela, her mother and Ace’s ex; and at the two babies resting next to each other in the idyllic setting of the Los Angeles foothills.
Liz realized she was living in a commune of sorts, which was Angela’s wet dream of a new tomorrow, and she smiled to herself at how improbable but fitting it was.
All those years railing against her unconventional childhood and bemoaning the untraditional lifestyles Angela had forced on her, only to end up here.
Ace lifted his glass. “If I can say a few words…” He smiled at each woman.
“I’ve always been a lucky son of a bitch, but that’s never been more true than right now.
I have everything I ever could have wanted right here at this table.
I am unbelievably blessed and incredibly grateful.
Cheers, to the most important women in my life and to the next generation of men who are lucky enough to know their love. ”
“Cheers,” Victoria, Liz, and Angela said, clinking their glasses with Ace and with one another.
Liz nearly laughed at the absurdity of the scene, which was something she never could have predicted and hadn’t known enough to hope for, but now, looking back, she could see that despite the route it took to get here, Liz was exactly where she was supposed to be.
With her stepmom and best friend. With her parents, who seemed willing to move on from their checkered past and coexist in the here and now, for her.
With two little boys who were the same age, but who were uncle and nephew.
Liz took a sip of the orange wine Victoria had bought because Angela was coming to dinner, and mentally said her thanks for everything that had brought her to this moment.
Victoria looked over and caught her eye, so Liz mouthed the words to her best friend. Victoria’s smile stretched across her face, and she mouthed it back to Liz.
Thanks in advance.