52. ABRAHAM
AbrAHAM
ICASTED THE LINE, watching it disappear into a sky that matched the color of my mood before the bait dropped into the water.
Overcast, the air thick with moisture, the day corresponded with my bullshit as I sat on the dock and replayed every conversation of the last five years with a woman who wasn’t just a liar, but was everything else, too and that was the problem.
I didn’t trust my own damn instincts anymore, and it was that part of me that didn’t want to be anywhere fucking near her.
Every time I found her contact, I couldn’t bring myself to hit dial but it was the fact that I wanted to that was depressing.
I’d always love her.
I could even admit that I’d miss her every day because I already did. But the facts remained— I couldn’t live under the same roof with someone I couldn’t predict, because if I were honest with myself, I’d never operated on trust and I didn’t know if I could start.
Picking up my beer, watching the water, I felt the air shift a third of a second before the weight transferred to the back of the dock.
My piece sitting by the cooler, I didn’t bother reaching for it or drawing.
I knew someone would eventually come for me, I just didn’t know who until they strode up the dock with light footsteps and sat down beside me.
“Sorry, I didn’t call first,” I apologized. “I was halfway here before I even knew where I was.”
Looping her arm through mine, my mother rested her head on my bicep. “You don’t ever need an invitation to come home.”
“How long were you watching me?”
“Not long. Your Daddy and I were busy.”
I grimaced.
“Oh, he was helping me put in a new shelf,” she said, swatting me. “Though, I do like to watch him when he’s playing handy man. Sometimes I just find stuff for him to fix while I pretend to read.”
“As much as I didn’t need to know that, whatever you’re going to say next, I need to know even less.”
She snorted, shaking out her fresh, salon-treated curls. “Funny how all of my boys who subjected me to phases of crusty magazines and silly little girls I refuse to call fast so I call them silly, shrivel up into purists the second they realize their momma is a woman first, and a mother last.”
I tore my gaze away from the still lake where the fish were either dead or uninterested, and looked at her. “How are you?”
My mother, like most in my family, didn’t look like a woman in her early sixties, but these days she went to bed earlier.
Danced slower. Ate differently. The military had pretty much prepared me for every aspect of adulthood, save for one thing—watching my parents grow older.
And I was more aware of it with every passing year.
My mother smiled. “I’m alright. All things considered.”
“What things?”
“Hm. How about realizing that no matter how old my children get, I’ll always feel it when they’re hurting,” she murmured. “Especially, my first born.”
“I’m squared away.”
She snorted. “God, I hope not. Because that would mean one of two things—I gave birth to a psychopath, or you’ve made the concession that lying to yourself is an option. So which one is it?”
“He told you.”
Days ago, in a vulnerable moment, I’d confided in my father about everything from the sanitized version of what’d happened in Lithuania to Nineah’s confession, even her visit the other day where she’d dropped the bomb that she was going to be making her new life in our marital home with a kid. Her kid. Not ours.
“My husband tells me everything,” my mother said. “Maybe not on my time like I’d like, but I like to think I enjoy being married to someone who concerns himself with the wellbeing of others, especially his children.”
“That constructive criticism?”
“That’s my truth,” she corrected. “Don’t mean it’s gotta be yours. You and I are two different people, Abraham. Who am I to tell you what you need out of a marriage?”
I didn’t have a response for that, so I watched the floater in the water until she spoke again.
“Is it the child?”
I frowned. “Excuse me?”
“Parenthood is a lot of responsibility and I know how you feel about that so I’m not judging, it’s just… well, you’ve been sitting on this dock since before the sun came up. I only do that when I’m mad at your daddy, or I need the quiet to work some things out.”
Jesus.
“It’s not the child,” I said, irritated.
“Son, I love you and I like to think that I know you, so I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but… well, sometimes I can’t help but think you’ve always treated marriage like a project management position.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means spouses aren’t employees you get to just fire when their efficiency declines one quarter,” she continued.
“And sometimes, they’re going to make questionable decisions because that’s what being a human means.
And if they’re a good human, they’re going to make them often because that’s what it means to think with the heart.
Now, I’m in no way trying to downplay the impact.
I think everyone has to reap the consequences of their actions and when it’s you that done wrong, you don’t get to dictate those consequences.
But what I am saying is, you have to be honest with yourself about what truly bothers you.
If it’s the deceit you can’t get past, well then it is what it is.
But if it’s that you were expecting to be able to manipulate life when she decides to life, then I’m sorry to tell you that it doesn’t matter if you choose to be alone forever.
You will always be disappointed with the fact that you cannot be both God and a man. ”
“What if it’s both?” Grabbing the handle, I reeled the line back in and stowed the rod.
“Maybe it is,” she relented. “And in two years’ time, you might regret trying to fix something that can’t be saved. But trust me when I say, you will never forgive yourself if you train your wife to no longer need you only to find out that it was a mistake.”
She grabbed my hand and looked at me with a fierceness I’d seen few times over the years. “Trust me.”