Chapter 25 #3
“Sweetheart, sometimes the timing just isn’t right. Ben was mature enough, even at seventeen, to realize he needed to walk away and take care of himself before he could be with you.”
My heart is a worn-out battery on its last leg, my core a hollow, desolate cave. My eyes are swollen from all the tears shed over the past two weeks, but I think I’ve finally cried them all.
Mom must notice I’m barely managing to stay upright, because she puts her arm around me and pulls me to her, letting me relax against her shoulder as we sit in silence.
I take in her floral perfume scent. The soft warmth of her embrace.
And I think about how different things could have been fourteen years ago if I would have let her in when I was hurting.
Maybe she would have sat with me while I cried on the bathroom floor.
Or stayed up with me during all the sleepless nights.
Maybe she would have demanded that I eat something or talked to my teachers when my grades plummeted that fall.
Maybe it would have been easier, if only just a little bit.
“I went to Charlotte’s graveside service a couple of years ago,” she eventually says as she strokes my hair. “It was the first time I’d seen Ben in years.”
“I thought you said it was private. Family only.”
“Sweetie, Ben is our family.” I close my eyes, exhausted and spent.
“Do you want to know the first thing he said to me after the service? He walked straight up to me and asked, ‘How’s Mona?’ After all those years, his first thought was you.
Not me. Not your brothers. You. And I said to him, ‘Don’t you think it’s finally time you find out for yourself? ’ ”
I straighten and turn to her, and she takes my hand and squeezes, her palm soft and warm, yet strong enough to carry the weight of battles I never knew she was fighting, battles fought on my behalf. I have underestimated my mother for a very long time.
“He smiled a sad little smile and said, ‘Maybe it is.’ He asked where you worked and all about your life, and I’ve been hoping this entire time he would finally reach out.
I guess it took him a couple years before he felt ready.
” She pauses. “I obviously don’t know what happened between the two of you in Iceland, but I do know a couple things. I know Ben has a good heart.”
My own heart burns as if it’s been scrubbed with sandpaper. I press my palm there as if that could possibly soothe the hurt.
“And I also know that Ben has loved you his entire life. I know that in my soul. When it comes to you, he’s never been willing to drag you into a messy situation, so if he’s come back into your life now, it’s only because he believes he’s really ready.”
I have to go to him.
The urge swells so big inside of me that I’m on my feet in an instant.
“I need to talk to him,” I say. “I need to talk to him now. He’s in Hudson Springs, and I need to find him.
” But my body isn’t cooperating. All I’m doing is rocking back and forth, my pulse jumping and my mind reeling.
I have no idea what I’ll say when I see him, but I know I can’t wait any longer to have this conversation.
Ben may have messed up, but I messed up, too, and I’m not willing to lose him from my life again.
“I’m ruining the twins’ birthday dinner. I’m sorry.”
My mom grasps my arm, stilling me. “Don’t worry about that.
It’s about time you let your guard down.
Mona, I know you’ve always felt distant from this family, or maybe not distant…
maybe just different. And you are different.
Different from your brothers. Different from your father.
But you know what? I’ve always thought, in this family, you were the most like me. ”
“Really?” I think back to all the times I felt like the last priority on my mother’s list.
“Really,” she says, standing and taking my shoulders in her hands. “There were a lot of times I was overwhelmed as a young mom, a lot of times I messed up.” Her soft brown eyes meet mine. “But I swear, me and you, we had our mother-daughter moments, too. Maybe we just didn’t get enough of them.”
Something inside me softens, but before I can react, she pulls me toward the door.
“Come with me, I want to show you something.”
Moving on autopilot, I let her lead me to the end of the hall and into my father’s home office.
She flips on a small lamp on the corner of his oversize desk, casting the sterile gray room in a soft yellow glow.
I’m not sure what’s going on here, but my mother looks to be on a mission as she opens the closet door in the corner and stretches her petite frame up on her tiptoes to pull a paisley fabric memory box from the very back of the highest shelf.
Pulling the lid off as she walks back to me, a nervous grin plays over her mouth. But in her eyes, there’s an earnestness that tells me whatever is in that box is important to her.
She holds the box out to me with no explanation.
Taking it from her, I glance down at a stack of old newspaper clippings yellowed with age.
I place the fabric box on my father’s desk, scooping up the first few clippings from the top of the pile.
The headlines cover an assortment of topics.
Hudson Springs Citizen Sets Record with Six-Pound Tomato, String of Car Thefts Ends after Suspect Arrested, and Quadruplets Born at Hudson Springs Memorial the First in City History.
“I don’t understand what I’m looking at here.”
She reaches over the current clipping I hold and points her index finger at the byline. That’s when I see it.
Mary Ellen Miller.
“You wrote these?” I ask, thrown for the umpteenth time tonight. “You worked for the newspaper?”
She laughs, but it comes out as more of a sigh.
“I did. For a couple years when your father and I were first married anyway. I stopped during my pregnancy with the twins. Tried to return once you all started kindergarten, but they didn’t hire me back.
They didn’t say it explicitly, but I don’t think they wanted to hire a mother with three kids to take care of. ”
I swear it’s as if everything I ever thought I knew about my mother was wrong. “Is that why you wanted me to start kindergarten early with Marcus and Mason? So you could go back to work?”
Her expression takes on a guilty grimace. “Not that it ended up mattering in the end. Sorry about that.”
My mind rewinds back to my first day of school when she looked so relieved to drop us off, not sticking around for tearful goodbyes like the other parents.
She had her own dreams she wanted to get back to, but it never worked out for her.
“Why didn’t you make Dad work less so you had more time for yourself?
” I ask, livid on her behalf. “You could have insisted the newspaper take you back. Or found a job writing for someone else.”
She smiles and shakes her head, collects the articles and returns them to the box. “Believe it or not,” she says wryly, “a local newspaper writer doesn’t make quite the same income as an ER physician. And these are mostly just fluff pieces, it’s not like I was up for a Pulitzer or anything.”
“Fluff pieces still matter!” I protest. “They really matter to people. That mom of the Hudson Springs quadruplets probably still has that article you wrote tucked away in a baby book somewhere, and I bet that tomato person had that clipping hanging on their fridge for months so they could brag to anyone who came over, and—okay maybe the carjacker didn’t keep your piece, but you get what I’m saying.
It’s like the festivals I cover, they bring a lot of happiness and joy to people, and that’s really hard to find these days—”
I stop, suddenly reexamining my career as well. I was so dismissive of the pieces I’d written for Around the Globe because they weren’t the pieces I’d always envisioned writing. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t equally worthy and important in their own way.
Mom returns the box to the top of the closet and closes the door, shutting away her own past, then walks back to me and smoothes a hand over my hair.
“I didn’t tell you this for you to feel bad for me.
I love being a mother to all three of you, and I wouldn’t change a day of it for anything in the world.
I just wanted you to know that you and I are a lot alike.
Mother to daughter. Writer to writer. You do have an ally in this family, Mona. You always have.”
The tears I thought I’d run out of return with a vengeance, and I throw my arms around her and hug her tight for the second time tonight.
She returns my embrace for a moment, then pulls back and firmly tells me, “Now, go find Ben and make things right. You two owe that to each other after all this time.”
She’s right. I can’t wait another second. I make my way to the door but hesitate and turn back. “Thanks, Mom.”
Smiling, she wipes away a tear of her own. “You’re welcome, sweetheart. Now go already!”