Chapter 14 #2
"You want to become a good mother quickly right now. And I can't be grateful for the fact that you stopped pressing on my throat a day after the blow."
"I'm not asking for gratitude."
"Then what?"
"Permission to be near. Not in place of your decision. Not with advice. Not with 'endure.' Just near—if you ever can."
I started shaking. Tears rose again, angry, hot, exposing the daughter inside me—even though I'd tried so hard today to be only a woman with a knife.
"I don't know if I can."
"I'll wait."
"Don't turn waiting into a feat. Everyone in our family loves to suffer beautifully after behaving ugly."
Mom nodded. Accepted.
"You're right."
"I'm so tired of being right," I whispered. "It doesn't heal. I'm right, but I still have no sister. I'm right, but my husband was still with her. I'm right, but yesterday you still chose silence. What am I supposed to do with all this rightness, Mom?"
She sank into the chair. Didn't come over. Didn't hug without asking. Just sat across from me and cried so quietly, as if afraid to fill my pain with herself.
"Live," she said. "However it comes. And choose yourself even when we're all afraid of your choice."
I closed my eyes.
There it was. Late. Uneven. But real. Not "save the family.
" Not "children are little." Not "Lara's suffering too.
" Choose yourself. The sentence was small, almost simple, but it broke me harder than any scream.
I sat on the edge of the chair, covered my face with my hands, and everything that had held since morning came apart at the seams. Mom didn't rush to me. She only asked, quietly:
"May I?"
I didn't answer right away. Inside me the girl who wanted her mother and the woman who already knew that a mother's arms could be dangerous too—if they carried an old lie—struggled with each other.
"You may," I exhaled.
She hugged me carefully. Not tightly. Not "I'll put you back together.
" Just placed her hands on my shoulders, and I sobbed so hard my ribs hurt.
It wrung me to the bone: Lara, Damien, the buckwheat after giving birth, the dress, Mom's voicemail, love that doesn't automatically protect if the person has spent a lifetime confusing protection with silence.
"I don't know what to do about Damien," I said into her shoulder.
"You don't have to know today."
"I hate him."
"You have the right."
"I still..." I choked on the word, because it was more frightening than hatred. "I still hear him."
Mom stroked my hair. Very slowly.
"That happens too."
"Don't say he's my husband."
"I won't."
"Don't say he's the father of my children."
"He is the father of your children. But that's not a reason to bear pain. It's a reason to demand adulthood from him."
I pulled back and looked at her.
"Are you really on my side right now?"
Mom went pale at the very question.
"Yes. And I'm ashamed that you have to ask."
I wiped my face with my palms.
"I need you to say that to him."
She froze.
"To Damien?"
"Yes."
Mom stood immediately. No graceful pause. No "maybe later." She threw on a cardigan, grabbed her keys.
"Let's go."
We went downstairs in silence. The lower I went, the harder my heart pounded. Damien stood by the car—not inside. Of course. He couldn't just sit. Jacket unzipped, hands in his pockets, eyes on the entrance. When he saw us, he straightened. His face went to stone.
Mom walked up to him first. I stopped on the step so I could see them both.
"Damien," she said.
"Helen."
"Yesterday I treated Niki badly."
He was silent.
"And you treated her badly."
"Yes."
"I'm not finished."
His eyebrows rose slightly. Almost respect. Almost irritation.
"I'm listening."
"If she decides to leave, she'll come to me.
With the children or without—however she decides.
I will not talk her into saving the marriage for the sake of appearances.
I will not tell her that men make mistakes.
I will not pretend your guilt got smaller because you're standing by the car today being patient. "
Damien looked at me. I didn't look away.
"I have no intention of making her a refugee from her own home," he said.
His voice was hard. There he was. My Damien. Even in guilt—steel.
"Then make the home stop being a place where she gets broken," Mom answered.
He shifted his gaze to her.
"I'm doing that."
"No. You're starting."
The air between them stretched taut. I could almost physically feel Damien wanting to put a period on it. But he didn't.
"Starting," he said.
Mom nodded.
"I love my daughter. Yesterday I told her not to destroy the family. Today I'm telling you: if you use the children, the money, the house, the name, or your strength to keep her through fear one more time, I will be the first person to help her close the door behind you."
Something flashed in his face.
"I will never use the children against her."
"Good."
I involuntarily twitched. Mom noticed and corrected herself:
"Right. That's how it should be."
Damien suddenly smirked briefly.
"It runs in the family."
"What does?"
"Precision."
Mom didn't smile.
"We were taught for a long time to aim at ourselves. Niki, I think, was the first to turn around."
Right there my eyes stung again. I hated this day for constantly squeezing tears out of me like water from a wet cloth.
Damien looked at me. Not gently. Not pleadingly. Restrained, heavy, as if every word had to be dragged through his throat.
"Shall we go home?"
Mom turned to me.
"Or stay with me. Whatever you want."
Two gazes. Two doors. One woman who'd said "don't destroy" yesterday. One man who'd destroyed. And I between them, for the first time not obligated to choose fast so everyone else would feel better.
"Home," I said.
Damien couldn't quite hide the way his face flinched.
"But not because I've forgiven you," I added. "And not because I've changed my mind about divorce. The children come home this evening. I want to be where they're used to falling asleep."
"I understand," he said.
"Don't understand. Just open the car."
He opened it.
Mom hugged me goodbye—not right away. She asked with her eyes. I nodded. Her arms were warm, trembling.
"And don't call Damien behind my back."
"I won't."
"And don't pass anything from me to Lara."
"I won't."
I got into the car. Damien closed the door, walked around the hood, sat behind the wheel. We didn't pull away immediately. Mom stood by the entrance, small, gray, stripped of her usual correctness. Inside, a new wound ached. Cleaner than yesterday's. But still a wound.
"You did well," Damien said quietly.
I turned my head.
"Don't award me."
"It's not an award."
"Then what?"
"A statement. Today you did what I would have bulldozed through crudely, and you held it straight."
"I yelled."
"Straight doesn't mean quiet."
I looked out the window. My lips trembled.
"I don't want to like you right now."
He was silent a moment.
"And I don't want to be glad you're riding home after a day like this. Because I know: you're not riding to me."
"And you're glad anyway?"
"Yes."
"An honest bastard."
"Working on the first part. The second's harder—it's earned."
I almost smiled. Almost. And then cried, because that almost was more unbearable than any hatred.
Damien didn't reach for me. Didn't take my hand.
Only slowed down, as if giving my tears more room in the car, and said that tonight he'd talk to Tim in simple words: Mom and Dad are having a hard grown-up conversation, the children don't have to fix it, it's okay to be angry and okay to be silent.
Marta he'd promised to put the bunny to bed himself, if she allowed it, and I laughed through my tears: she'd allow it but she'd be in charge.
I looked at him, and the air between us was suddenly different.
Not light. Our lightness had died somewhere under the rubble.
But after my mother, after Lara, after all the knives—for the first time a quiet appeared in which I didn't want to flee immediately.
And that scared me more than any scream.
"Don't think this means something," I said.
"I think it does."
"Damien."
"For now, only that. I'm not an idiot, Niki. Though you have plenty of evidence to the contrary."
"Plenty."
"I'll work on shortening the list."
"It's long."
"I know how to handle volume."
I closed my eyes and suddenly saw not Lara, not Mom, not the red dress—but Damien by my bedroom door, when he'd stepped back because I'd asked. A small episode. Insignificant next to the betrayal. And still, for some reason, alive.
I closed my eyes and suddenly saw not Lara, not Mom, not the red dress—but Damien by my bedroom door, when he'd stepped back because I'd asked. A small episode. Insignificant next to the betrayal. And still, for some reason, alive.