Chapter 14 Now #3
After Jen steps outside, I follow her and shove the door shut behind me. As it lands with a thud, Jen bursts into tears.
For a second, I freeze, rooted to the ground.
She’s curled in on herself, shoulders rounded, hands covering her face.
I spring into action, stepping close, setting a hand on her back. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
She shakes her head. I glance around, spotting the pair of wrought iron chairs chained to the trunks of two twin willows Fern planted behind the store when she opened it, and tell Jen, “Come on, sit down.”
Jen lets me guide her to the chairs, dropping onto the edge of one. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers. Her hands fall from her face to her lap. Tears stream down her cheeks.
I set a hand on her knee, gentle, tentative. “You don’t need to be sorry.”
She shakes her head, sucking in a breath as she sits up, composing herself. I watch her wipe her cheeks, dab beneath her eyes. “I’m okay.”
I’m quiet for a moment, hesitating, before I tell her, “You don’t have to be.”
Her chin wobbles as she glances my way. “You were really good tonight.”
I’m a bit thrown by the turn in conversation. “Oh. Um, thank you.”
“I know I was quiet, but I was just… really impressed. I was taking it all in—how well you moderated the discussion, encouraged curiosity, engaged people’s perspectives.
And when things got heated, you reined it in, moved everyone forward, guided the topic into less amped-up territory.
” She smiles tearily. “Command of the classroom is what we call it in teaching circles.”
“I’m familiar,” I tell her. “My mom was a public high school teacher for thirty-five years.” For the first time I make the connection—both Jen and my mother are high school teachers, both mothers to exuberant daughters.
I wonder if, at some subliminal level, that’s why I’ve kept my distance from Jen the past two years. Because I was afraid I’d see my dynamic with my mother played out again and hurt for Mia, or I’d see something better, something kinder and hurt for myself.
“Really?” Jen’s smile deepens. “Me, too.”
I nod. “I know.”
“Not for thirty-five years, of course,” she says quietly. She peers down at Mia’s sweater in her hands, then opens it up from the ball she’d crumpled it into and folds it neatly. “That’s a long time.”
“Especially given she taught math.” I shudder.
Jen laughs faintly. “I could never.”
“Me neither, but she loved it. I think she would have kept teaching until she kicked the bucket, if they let her.”
Jen swallows thickly, smoothing her hands along Mia’s now-folded sweater.
“Maybe I’ll feel that way one day. But right now, I feel like I can barely manage it.
Being a mom and a teacher is… a lot harder than I expected.
” She dabs beneath her eyes again. “Teaching took a lot out of me before I had Mia, and I figured it would be more demanding after she was born, but I had no idea…” She huffs a breathy, sad laugh. “I had no idea.”
It feels like raging inside me is one of those tornado warnings that was a staple of my life growing up in the Midwest, one that built in volume as it slid up in pitch, a harsh, wailing siren.
Jen glances over at me. “Maybe your mom’s told you that, too?”
I shake my head slowly. “My mom and I… don’t talk much. And when we do, we don’t talk about the past.”
“Why?”
I almost tell Jen that’s none of her business. But something stops me.
“Because the past wasn’t great. Because I was a handful; and she was drained after pouring so much into her teaching, her students; and my dad wasn’t very present, so she basically had to raise me on her own, and that made for a not-so-fun first eighteen years of life with Thea Meyer.”
A pinched sound catches in Jen’s throat. “That’s what I was afraid you’d say.”
I tip my head. “What do you mean?”
She peers up at the darkening sky, her chin trembling again. “I feel like I’m getting it all wrong. Like I’m failing Mia. Like I don’t have enough for her. I don’t know how to do my job other than how I did it for fourteen years before I had her, and how I’m doing my job is… demanding.
“I have so many students who are dealing with so much at home, in their communities. They need me to teach them, but they also need me to listen to their feelings, to be patient with them when they’re dysregulated, to believe in them, to push them toward their potential, to comfort them—”
“To be a mother to them,” I say softly.
I’ve only ever read about riptides, but this feels like one that just yanked me out to sea. A minute ago, I was safe at shore, water up to my waist, feet firm in the sand. And now I’m half a mile out in the ocean, disoriented. Floating in a vast, terrifying possibility.
Jen is doing a daunting, overwhelming job because she’s doing it with her whole heart, the only way I could ever stomach doing my work—pouring myself into it, giving it my best. And I have no idea what it looks like to be torn between giving my work my best and somehow safeguarding, preserving enough best for my child.
That wave of sympathy submerges me in the truth, then wrenches me back up to the surface, and now I see it, feel it.
The possibility that, like Jen, like me…
my mom was doing her best. And no, it wasn’t good enough, wasn’t enough for what I needed, but…
maybe that wasn’t all her fault, or even my dad’s fault; it definitely wasn’t mine, I know that the way I know Mia’s needing her mother’s presence, patience, affection, and guidance would never be Mia’s fault.
Maybe it was really very much the fault of a much bigger, broken system.
My eyes well with tears.
Jen glances my way, her expression scrunching as she sees I’m crying, too. “Thea?”
“Are you doing the best you can?” I blurt.
Jen searches my eyes for a moment, then slowly nods. “Yes.”
“Right,” I tell her, trying to steady my voice. “And you’re sitting here, crying to someone you hardly know, because you’re so torn up after reading a book about a broken world and wounded daughters and oppressed mothers, and your heart went straight to what matters most: your daughter.
“You’re worried that you’re failing her, and to me means you are absolutely not doing that, or if you are, in this moment, you’re not going to keep doing that.
You’re going to look at what you have and what you need.
So you can find a way to give your work all that you need to and give Mia what she needs as well.
I know you love her enough to figure that out. ”
Hitching yourself to my self-centered ex, I want to say, is probably not going to give you what you need.
But it’s not my place to tell her that. And maybe, just maybe, Ethan’s going to be better to her than we was to me. I pull my hand from her knee and sit back.
Jen says quietly, “I’m worried it’s too late.”
“Mia’s six,” I tell her. “And I know those first six years are pretty important ones, but so is the rest of her life.”
She nods. “True.”
“I’m not a mom. I have no idea what you’re going through, but I am a daughter whose mom made mistakes.
And that’s okay. She was human; humans do that.
That wasn’t how she failed me, Jen. She failed me because…
she never faced her mistakes. Because she taught me not to ask her to face them, either, taught me to bury my hurt and hide what I needed.
That’s what went sideways—not the mistakes, but how she handled them. How she didn’t handle them.
“Mia’s not me, and you’re not my mother, but I can tell you, if mistakes had been handled rather than avoided, even if all those mistakes still happened, I know I’d be talking to my mom a lot more.”
It sinks in, as I say it, how true that is. How much it would mean if my mom were to call me and we did talk about the past, even now. It would hurt that it had taken this long, come so late. But it wouldn’t be too late. It wouldn’t fix the past, but it could help me heal from it.
Jen peers over at me. “Thank you.”
I swallow, blinking away tears. “I probably just said way too much.”
“No. You said just the right amount.” Smiling, she reaches for my hand and squeezes. “You’re a good person, Thea. I’m really glad you’re in Mia’s life.”
With those words, Jen stands, hugging Mia’s sweater tight to her chest, and walks across the parking lot.
For a while, I sit there, my chest tight, tears blurring my vision.
And then I fumble for my phone, texting my therapist. Sue’s reminded me regularly, if I ever have a rough day and need support, to reach out; if she can give me a call, talk me through it for a few minutes, she will.
I’ve never taken her up on that offer before tonight.
I’ve wanted to a few times, but I always worried I’d be imposing; I talked myself down, told myself it wasn’t that serious, that it could wait until our next session.
This cannot wait.
After sending my text to Sue, I shove my phone away, wiping frantically at the tear tracks on my cheeks. I tell myself there’s a good chance Sue will be unavailable, that her work phone will be powered off for the night.
While I wait, I think about calling Lauren, who’s still on the West Coast. But it’s only five there, and she’ll be working for hours before she can call back. Even if I did text or call Lauren, it doesn’t feel right to bring up my mommy problems to someone who’s had to say goodbye to hers.
My phone buzzes in my lap, and my gaze snaps down to the screen. It’s Sue.
Hi, Thea. Of course. I have about 15-20 minutes now, if that works for you. I’m ready when you are. Just let me know when to call.
I stumble upright, hiking my bag onto my shoulder as I text Sue, thanking her and telling her that I’m ready to talk.
She calls a minute later, as I’m starting my walk to Alex’s, her voice warm and familiar and, I’m not ashamed to admit, comfortingly maternal. Tears fill my eyes, and my throat thickens. I don’t know that I’m going to be able to talk to my therapist so much as cry at her.
Like always, Sue asks me how I’m doing, what I need to talk about.
This time, for the first time, I tell her what I need even though I really don’t want to need it. My voice wobbles, but I don’t wait until it’s steady or hold back what might unsteady it again. I don’t keep a single thing inside.
I tell her everything.