Chapter 34
MARK
There’s a knock at my bedroom door before it opens, Mom inviting herself in. Not that I would have wanted to get up to get it.
I’ve been lying in bed for the past two hours, waiting for her to get back from a lunch with some of her bigwig friends.
I just messaged her to let her know we have to discuss something important.
If I’d said what it was about, she would have come running, but this isn’t something I can drop on her through a text or over the phone.
I’m ashamed. Embarrassed.
Dad’s still working with clients at the office, but as much as he might be bothered by the news, it’s not going to destroy his image the way it will Mom’s.
“Mark, is everything all right?” she asks, and even though I can hear the love in her voice, I can also sense her uneasiness. Like she doesn’t want to deal with the hassle of any trouble I’ve gotten myself into.
I just need be honest so she can get her lawyers and PR people working on figuring this out.
I sit up, and she sits beside me on the mattress.
“Come on, baby,” she says.
She must see how upset I am—how this is eating at me on the inside.
She hugs me the way I remember her hugging me after Becky died.
“You’re going to be so fucking mad,” I say, my voice squeaking as tears race down my face.
My thoughts race back to the day she told me that I needed to stay in the closet.
This is the very reason she didn’t want me being out—because she feared something like this would happen.
In some ways, I know I secretly wanted vengeance against her, but now that it’s happened, I realize it was just a fantasy—and the realization of it is a nightmare.
“Tell me what’s going on,” she says. “Is it about that guy you’re seeing?”
I nod.
“What happened?”
“He hurt me, Mom. Really fucking bad.”
I manage to find the words to tell her about what we did with the camera on his phone and about where we did it since she’s likely to find out anyway. I tell her how I trusted Tim. How much I cared about him, and how much he hurt me.
She strokes her hand down my back as I talk, and it’s the most comforting she’s been in a long time.
I miss this.
I miss having a mom who I felt cared about me. Who I felt was there for me.
“I’m so sorry, Mom. I trusted him.” I’m trembling in her arms, my face wet from how much I cried through telling her. “And I can’t believe he could let that happen.”
“We’re going to get through this. Together.
That’s how we’ve always done things, and it’s how we’ll keep doing them.
We need to get the video pulled and then craft a statement about everything that happened.
We’ll blame him. We’ll tell them that this guy took advantage of you. People will understand that.”
I pull away from her, and I can’t hide how horrified I am by her words.
She seems surprised by the expression I’m making.
“People will understand?” I ask. “I don’t need people to understand. I need my mother to understand.”
“Mark, I am understanding. You know I’m here to help.”
“It is how you feel, though. You and your fucking PR. You don’t care that I’m fucking wrecked inside. You just care about how this affects your life? Mom, I’m in pain.”
“I know.”
“Then why can’t you be here for me right now?”
“I am here for you, but we have to think about how to handle this publicly.”
“Like when I came out?” I say as a jab.
“Oh, come on, Mark. A lot of parents have problems with that. It took me off guard. I’m fine—”
“Fine now that you realize it won’t hurt your career.”
“Do you think that’s what that was about?” she asks.
“It’s always about your career.”
I rise to my feet, my breath quickening as rage swells within me.
I don’t want to be sitting next to her right now.
“That’s not true, and you know that. I’m trying to think of a way—”
“To keep me from getting in your way and hurting your precious career. Like you did with Becky? Like the way you fucking kept her a fucking secret from the world. Your daughter. Your filthy little secret. Do you remember how she used to smile whenever we went out for milkshakes at Dairy Queen? Or when she would ask you to read her a story again, and you couldn’t say no because she just had those bright blue eyes and all that love on her face?
I didn’t even play with half my toys because if she wanted it, it was hers from then on.
Because she was the most beautiful thing in the world.
And as soon as she was hurt…when she needed you the most, you hid her away from the world because you didn’t want to deal with it publicly. ”
“How dare you?” Mom says, pushing to her feet.
“I’m not finished. You did all that. You hid her away.
Kept her this secret, and then you had the fucking audacity to parade her around after she was gone, when her death turned into a good PR strategy.
And you hauled around her memory, walked all over her grave as soon as it benefited you and this career that you worked so hard to craft…
because everything’s always about how everything benefits your career. ”
Her face is rigid, her jaw tense, and for the first time in a long time, I don’t give a fuck that she’s mad at me. I’m not backing down. I’ve held on to this for too long. And after the heartless thing she said to me about something that’s killing me, I won’t let her get away with it.
Not anymore.
“You took one of the hardest and most painful moments in my life and turned it into a fucking carnival show,” I say.
“You know I loved her. I was there, and you saw that every fucking day.”
Now she’s tearing up.
“I know you were there, and that’s why I can’t understand how you were able to go out there every day while she was fucking dying and act like nothing was wrong. And then later, to use her for your own personal gain!”
“That is not what I did!”
“Yes, it is, Mom. I was there in the beginning, and I’ve seen how it’s all played out.”
Now the tears are rolling down her face. Real tears. I know the real tears because I saw them back then when she wept over Becky’s death. I saw them in moments when I’d catch her off guard, away from anyone else. When she was really hurting. Not putting on a show for everyone.
“I’ve done the best I can to keep this family together,” she says, “and you might think I don’t care about these causes, but you’re wrong. Because the only reason I am out there, is because of her.”
“Then why do you sound so dead inside when you talk about it?”
“Because it’s the only way I can talk about it!
” she shouts. She wipes the back of her hand across her face, smearing some of her mascara.
“You think I hid her all that time because I was ashamed? I loved her with every part of my being, and I didn’t want my daughter to become that carnival show that everyone was talking about.
I know how they are. And you do, too. They want to hear about these kinds of things, not because it has anything to do with them, but because it’s interesting.
It’s something people can talk about. But is it awful that I didn’t want the media talking about my baby, who was dying?
Is that so horrible that I wanted to protect her from that? ”
Considering how impassioned she is right now—so filled with conviction—I don’t doubt she believes it. It makes sense, but even though I can buy that she loved Becky, there’s one thing I can’t get past.
“So why did you start using her?” I ask, and now that we’re being honest and that she’s being open with me, I just want an answer. I want to know that my mother isn’t this terrible monster I’ve been thinking of her as all these years.
“I’m not using her, Mark,” she says. “I’m keeping her alive.
This is the only way I know how to do that.
By talking about her. And being involved in causes that matter.
You think it’s easy to go out there and talk about watching the light dull in my hopeful daughter’s eyes so effortlessly?
No. And I know how the speeches must sound to you.
I know they sound cold, but I have to distance myself from the memories…
to work hard to keep it together so that I don’t completely fall apart thinking about the moment when I watched the light in my bright, beautiful girl’s eyes fade.
When I saw that she just couldn’t fight anymore.
And I’m sorry that it’s hard to watch me do that on stage, but you have no idea how much harder it is to make it through this without falling apart.
Acting like a hero when all I feel like is someone who failed her child.
Because I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t… ”
She tries to keep going, but it’s too hard.
And if she only knew how relieved I am right now. Knowing that I’ve been wrong all this time. That she has a heart and that she hasn’t forgotten about Becky.
“I miss her, too, Mark.”
She approaches and wraps her arms around me, her body shaking violently against me.
I cry against her. About everything. About Tim’s betrayal. About the loss of my sister. And about having my mother back.
I feel, for the first time in so long, that she cares, and the release of some of the pain of a heartache we’ve both been holding in for far too long.