CHAPTER 21 Maverick Jennings #2
A secure door opens, and there’s Susan. “Maverick to see Marilyn Jennings,” Susan says, and I walk over to greet her.
“How’s she doing?” I ask.
“She’s had a hard day, but seeing someone familiar might help,” she says with a smile.
I walk back with her, and my mom is in her bed when we walk into the room. “Marilyn, your son Maverick is here to see you.”
My mom’s head jerks over to us, and she studies me for a few beats before she purses her lips and looks away. “I told you I didn’t want to see Raymond again after what he did to me.”
Raymond. My father.
I blow out a breath.
It’s hard enough coming here, but to be mistaken for that asshole is a punch to the gut I wasn’t expecting.
I know we look alike. I know we share features. You know what else he shared with me? The secrets he forced me to keep when I’d catch him cheating on the poor woman in the bed mistaking me for the very man I hate.
“I’m not Raymond,” I say softly. “It’s me, Mom. Your son Maverick.”
She turns back to me and squints like she can’t piece together who I am. She shakes her head. “Did you tell that woman you won’t see her again? Because I won’t sleep in the same bed as you until it’s over with her.”
I glance at Susan for help. “Marilyn, this is Maverick. Not Raymond. Your son is here to visit with you.”
“I don’t have a son,” she says to Susan. She ignores me. “Although we’re trying. Or we were before I found out he’s been sleeping with his secretary. Raymond and I just got married a year ago, and he’s already cheating on me. Can you believe it?”
I knew he had a history of cheating on her. Those were the secrets he pressured me to keep. But I didn’t know it spanned back before I was even conceived.
What an asshole. Even now, every single piece of information I learn about him only confirms that.
But she stayed with him. She stayed married to him for over twenty years before she finally kicked him out just after I left for college.
And now she’s mentally in a time warp that happened over thirty years ago.
It’s heartbreaking. It puts this pressure on my chest that feels tight and unbearable. I suck in a breath, but it feels like I can’t take a deep enough one.
I knew things were declining with her memory, but it felt easier when she didn’t know who I was at all than this.
I glance around her room. The whiteboard says, “Today is Saturday, October 10.” The same photo I have from my wedding of her dancing with me is on her dresser, and there’s a new label that says “your son Maverick” beneath where I’m standing in the photo.
Susan walks over to the dresser and picks up the frame. She hands it to my mother. “See, Marilyn? This is Maverick, not Raymond.”
“Maverick? What a strange name. Sounds like something Ray would’ve come up with.”
I went through a phase where I hated my name. I think every kid does, though Maverick was more unusual than most back then. But I looked up my name when I was in junior high, and I learned that my name means an independent, unconventional, nonconformist.
That might’ve been the moment I decided to live up to what my name meant. That was the moment I learned to respect it rather than to hate it.
I know what she said isn’t personal. She wouldn’t have agreed to name me Maverick if she didn’t like the name. But it feels like it’s the first time she’s ever heard the name, and while it isn’t about me, it still stings.
“May I sit with you for a while?” I ask her.
She wrinkles her nose a bit, and then she seems to relent, nodding to the chair in the corner. Susan stays nearby in the doorway, watching our interactions since my mother doesn’t even know who the fuck I am.
“So you’re my son?” she asks, and she seems confused.
I nod as I walk over to her bedside rather than to the chair. I take her hand in mine. “I’m sorry you’re having a hard time, Mom. I love you very much.”
She squeezes my hand, and she starts to cry. Seeing her like this makes me want to cry, too. But I don’t. Not now. Not ever. Now is the time to keep my appearance strong for her.
“Tell me about you,” she says with a sniffle. I hand her a tissue and sit in that chair.
“I’m thirty-two. I play football professionally, and I’m here in town because my team is playing the Bengals tomorrow.”
“You should be with your team, honey,” she says.
“I’m just recovering from an injury.”
“Oh!” she cries. “No! What happened?”
“I broke a rib, but I’ll be back in the game next weekend. Promise me you’ll watch?”
“She watches every game you’ve ever played in,” Susan says from the doorway with a wide smile. “She’s very proud of you.”
Emotion pulses behind my eyes again, but I force it away.
It’s unfamiliar, and it wasn’t there last time.
I was able to get in and out, and while the visit was difficult and hurt, I didn’t leave the place crying.
I can’t understand why I’m feeling so much more of the visit this time compared to last. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Are you married?” she asks, nodding toward the photo of us. “Do I have grandchildren?”
I shake my head. “I’m not married anymore. And no. No grandchildren.” Having to tell her that sparks my own painful memories.
She should have one. She should have a daughter-in-law, too. She did have one.
But then it was all ripped away, and the aftermath is what broke me. It’s what turned me into the monster I am today.
That’s when it dawns on me.
Someone else is changing that.
I didn’t cry the last time I visited my mother even though the visit was painful as fuck.
I didn’t allow myself to feel. But someone else unlocked those feelings, and now I’m a goddamn mess as I sit here fighting back the waves of emotion plowing at me from every angle as I have to explain to my own mother who I am.
When it’s time to go, I tell my mom, “See ya later.”
She says it back, and it gives me some hope that not all is lost. It’s how we always say goodbye.
Before I leave, I talk with Susan, who gives me all the latest information, and I let her know I’ll come visit again as soon as I’m able.
And then I head back to the hotel feeling incredibly drained from the single hour of time I spent away from my teammates, knowing I need to face Everleigh after dinner.