Chapter 43
W hen I came to from the scene, I was somehow outside my mother’s bedroom door, fire burning inside me, blind with unspent rage and emotion. Without thinking, I burst in, turned on the light, and screamed, “IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT.”
Mom scrambled to sit up in the bed, taken aback. I was at boiling point, ready to blow like a bomb.
“What’s going on?” Mom asked. “Is everything okay?”
“No,” I said, teeth clenched. “No, nothing is okay.”
“Charlie, what happened?”
There was only bellowing alarms in my head. Nothing but the final explosion in a long drawn-out fight to keep my emotions on a simmer.
“It’s YOUR fault, Mom! It’s your fault that I’m like this!
All broken and messed up! I should have been cautious.
You never let me be realistic! You never let me protect myself!
You gave me hope! I should have never let go of control!
Hope is the most destructive thing in the whole fucking world, and you convinced me to have it! ”
“Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Back up, Charlie,” Mom said, now alert and sitting upright. “I don’t understand what you’re saying. Let’s go have some tea and talk.”
“I don’t want to have any tea with you .”
She sat back on the pillow as if I’d slapped her.
“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”
“I don’t need your help.” I scoffed, laughing bitterly. “I never did.”
“I’m going downstairs,” was all she said in lieu of a reply. “If you want to talk to me, you can come, too.”
She wrapped herself up in a multicolored silk robe and walked past me quickly. My breathing was labored, body vibrating with fury. I waited sixty long seconds before I followed, making some childish and futile point.
The kettle was starting to whistle when I stepped into the kitchen. Mom had two mugs with tea bags hanging out of them on the island, and it enraged me—that she knew I’d come down here. I sat on one of the stools and crossed my arms, like a defiant teenager.
“You know what, Charlie?” Mom said after thirty seconds of tense silence.
“I gave you a good childhood. I wasn’t perfect, but who was?
I tried to steer you as best I could. I tried to be there for you while also not sacrificing all of myself like I’d seen from many women before me.
You went to college as my Charlie and by the time you came back, you were someone different, someone I couldn’t connect to or even recognize sometimes.
I’ve given you a lot of space to tell me why.
I’ve tried to honor your process. I’ve stayed away when maybe I should have pushed.
But it’s time. Tell me what happened to my baby. ”
Suddenly and violently, I didn’t want to have this conversation.
If I had spent even one second thinking about it before I burst into her room, I would have left LA without looking back.
I didn’t want to let her into this part of me.
Or, maybe I didn’t want what happened to be real, like if I kept it locked up like a little movie I avoided, then maybe I could keep the pain locked up, too.
If this part of my past was never witnessed by anyone else, if I could keep Benny from speaking about it to me forever, then maybe I could convince myself it hadn’t happened. Maybe I would never have to face it.
But then again, wasn’t I facing it all the time? Wasn’t it coloring every interaction? Wasn’t it acting like a wall keeping me from my life?
I’d been holding my emotions off like tigers in a cage when, actually, I realized, I didn’t want to push them back in. Whatever was about to come to blows was maybe too many years too late, but it had to happen.
“I met someone,” I whispered. Mom had been patiently waiting, filled the teacups, poured a splash of milk and a bit of honey in mine the way I used to take it.
That little act of love made me continue.
“A few months before I graduated. His name was—” I stopped, bit back the emotion that was bubbling right on the surface.
“Go on, Charlie,” Mom said. “Please.” I didn’t deserve this much grace, but I took it.
“Noah,” I said. “His name was Noah Hawthorne.”
“Noah,” Mom echoed.
I took a deep breath, knowing this was it. No turning back. Besides telling Benny about it the day I found out and commanding her to never speak of Noah again, this story had been locked up. My voice shook, but I squared my shoulders and pressed on.
“I tried to resist him. But I heard your voice in my head, encouraging me to let go, to experience life, to get out of my comfort zone. He had harsh parents with old family money. His dad wanted him to follow in his footsteps and threatened him, saying if he didn’t, then he would be cut out of his own family, disowned, and without his inheritance.
But Noah wanted to travel. He was so charismatic and full of life, I felt like I’d follow him anywhere.
We fell in love. It happened so fast. One day he was a stranger and the next I wanted to wake up next to him every morning for the rest of my life.
I didn’t even know I was capable of that kind of love.
“We decided to travel together after graduation. I’d delay looking for a job.
It sounded like something you’d tell me to do, something that would mean I was truly living my life and not just going through the motions.
But I was scared Noah was going to leave me, just like Dad did.
That he was going to choose something else that was more important than me.
I thought at the last moment he’d go back to his parents and realize he couldn’t live without the money. ”
I paused and took a shaky sip of my tea, trying to gather myself before continuing. Mom sat in stillness, listening.
“He went home to Connecticut to tell his parents about us, to try to convince his dad to relent on his demands. His dad wouldn’t.
And I gave Noah the out, told him we didn’t know each other long enough for him to risk everything.
I thought it was over. I was even a little relieved it was over, so that my heart was no longer outside my body.
I didn’t have to love him anymore. But really, it was just because I loved him so much and I wanted the life we were planning.
It was terrifying how much I wanted it.”
My hands were trembling, and I inhaled deeply, steadying myself before this next part.
“And then he called me and told me he was coming home, that he’d chosen me, and.
.. God, I was so happy. I couldn’t wait to tell you.
I couldn’t wait for you to meet him. I thought you’d be so proud of me, risking my heart for love, taking an adventure and traveling.
It was maybe the first time I felt alive.
Not worried or scared or overly responsible or super realistic, but really, truly alive .
It felt like Noah had handed me the keys to a life I never thought I could inhabit.
Not because of money, which of course we wouldn’t have.
But a life where I wasn’t on the sidelines, afraid of everything. ”
My voice was shaking and I was talking so fast. Before I lost my nerve, I had to get this all out.
“I waited for him at the airport, Mom,” I whimpered. “But he didn’t show up. I waited for so long.”
Mom was clutching her chest, eyebrows pinched together. “What happened, honey? Did he change his mind?”
“No,” I cried. “He was on his way to me. He was coming.”
“Oh, no,” Mom whispered.
“Car accident,” I told her. “Died on impact. He never made it on the plane. Never even returned the rental car. One minute he was alive and vibrant and making plans for our future and the next he was gone.”
“Oh, God.” Mom’s voice felt far away. “I’m so sorry, Charlie. No. Oh, no.”
For a flicker of a moment, I thought maybe I could rush toward her, hug her, and everything would be okay.
But I didn’t, and instead I felt an ugly onslaught of tears that rolled down my cheeks.
The grief I never let myself feel gripped me like a vise.
My breathing turned shallow and the force of a primal scream nearly ripped through my throat.
Then, in an instant, when I saw what seemed to be a look of pity on Mom’s face, I could do nothing but feel the rush of blood between my ears.
“You. Did. This,” I bellowed, through brutal sobs. “If you hadn’t been telling me my whole life to let go, to believe in love, to believe in good things—I would have never let Noah in. I would have never been left at an airport, heart shattered beyond repair!”
“Charlie,” she said. There were tears in her eyes and she tried to come to me, but I stood up quickly, crossed my arms across my chest, and got away.
“You were brave,” she whispered. “It’s better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all.”
“Don’t spit stupid clichés at me! Don’t fucking do that. Nothing happens for a reason. I should have never listened to you.”
She lifted her arms in the air like she was surrendering in battle. She sighed deeply, and when I finally looked at her, she seemed so tired and worn down.
“Charlie,” she said, shaking her head. “I bet holding on to this anger against me for all these years was a lot easier than feeling the grief, facing this trauma. This was a trauma, Charlie.” Mom’s voice was eerily calm.
I wanted to scream. “You’ve been nursing this grudge for so long I don’t think you even know who you’d be without it. ”
“NO!” I shouted. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t know me, Mom. You were wrong. You should have taught me to be cautious.”
“It’s okay if you need to hate me until you’re ready to feel the sadness, Charlie.
I know I made mistakes with you. I could have done better.
Life is messy, though. You get hurt, you get back up again.
You find yourself broken only to figure out how to put yourself back together.
How could I have shielded you from the very nature of being alive?
Why would I have wanted to? You wanted me to confirm your worst fears, tell you to hide from life?
You wanted me to make you afraid of all the many ways life could wound you and knock you down?
Well, I could never do that. I wouldn’t be a good mother if I did.
I will never apologize for encouraging you to live your life, heart wide open. That’s something I won’t do.”
The fury seemed to evaporate from my body in an instant and, where I was rigidly standing upright before, I sank.
“But you can get really hurt that way,” I said, voice quivering and faint. “Hope hurts.”
“You can and it can, honey. But that’s life. Without hope, what do you have left? You’re hiding all that love you have inside you from the world.”
“I don’t have love inside me to give.”
“Then why do you try to protect yourself so much?” Mom asked. “What are you so afraid of? If you had no love inside you to give, then you wouldn’t be trying to keep it all in. You’re afraid of how much you want to love.”
“I tried, Mom. I loved him. I loved him so much. And then he was gone. And then everything hit me. I went numb. Dad leaving because of me. Your pain. Your losses. Me growing up too fast. Everything. It was just one thing after another. I couldn’t catch my breath. So I shut down.”
“Back up.” Mom threw up her hand, confusion etched on her face. “Your dad didn’t leave because of you. Is that what you thought all these years?”
“Why else would he leave? You guys weren’t together anymore. He just stopped being my dad.”
“Charlie,” Mom said, stilling me. “I made your father leave and never come back.”
“What?”
“You never saw your face when he left,” Mom replied.
“You would be despondent. He wasn’t going to come back for your birthday party, Charlie.
The party we planned around his schedule.
I lost it. I told him if he couldn’t be a real father, to never come back.
I didn’t expect him to actually leave, but I guess that was my answer.
He was never going to show up for you or Benny or even me and I couldn’t take it anymore.
I needed him, too, don’t you understand that?
I needed him to be around, to stay with me, to actually be a partner.
But, he couldn’t do that. When he left, I could finally raise you two the way I wanted, instead of waiting to see if he’d ever come through for us. ”
“What?” I stood up, that fury returning. “Why would you send him away like that?”
“I did it to protect you. I didn’t want you thinking that’s what you deserve from a man, someone who just shows up once in a while, demanding you love him as if he were here all the time.”
“That wasn’t your choice to make!”
“I am your mother,” she said, her voice rising.
“Whose choice was it? Who was going to protect you? We just spent this entire conversation with you telling me I should have protected you from the harm of this world and I did just that. Your father was breaking your damn heart all the time. I couldn’t keep it up.
I had to protect my babies from getting their hopes up.
I gave him a chance, Charlie. I told him if he could be a real father, I’d never keep him from you and Benny.
But he couldn’t. He told me himself that he couldn’t.
I needed to spare you the pain of his inconsistency and now you blame me for that, too? ”
“I can’t believe you never told me,” I cried. “You let me believe he left me. You let me feel abandoned.”
“How in the world could I have ever known that’s how you felt when all you’ve ever done is close the most vulnerable parts of yourself off from me?”
“You should have known! You should have been honest with me!”
“I tried my hardest to do what I thought was right. Being a mom means making a thousand difficult decisions, not knowing if they’re the good ones, or if you’re going to irrevocably mess your child up.” Tears streamed down her face. “I did my best,” she rasped out.
“Well, your best didn’t cut it,” I leveled at her, and she winced, and I wanted to take the words back the moment I said them.
But just then, the door flew open at that exact moment and Benny—hair wild, eyes unblinking—screamed, “THAT’S ENOUGH!”