Chapter 35
My last call with my mom had been the night the statements were released.
I’d wanted her to hear about the dreadful situation from me.
I explained what happened with Max, Bronwyn, and the internet conspiracy theories.
All of it. Multiple times, until she’d finally wrapped her logical mind around my incredibly illogical behavior.
The call had been a doozy, but I knew it would be nothing compared to the conversation Dr. Field wanted me to have with her.
I couldn’t imagine doing this over the phone.
But my mom’s idea of traveling was to go from her downtown Berkeley condo to the UC Berkeley math department and back again.
After a few cursory texts, it was determined that the professor had some free time during the coming weekend and would be open to a visit.
Although it was a six-hour drive to Berkeley, I decided I would only be staying one night.
I couldn’t bear to be away from Lucy for longer, and I wasn’t sure how long I’d be welcome after I sprang my therapist-assigned homework on my mom.
When she opened the door, her signature scent since my early childhood, CK One by Calvin Klein, wafted over me. “Thea, honey, you’re just in time,” she said and hugged me. “I’m on my way to yoga. You should come.”
I returned a couple of hours later to find my mom in the kitchen making a giant green salad, with only a squeeze of lemon as dressing, for a late lunch.
Her life as a single professor in Berkeley had transformed her from a relatively flexible omnivore into a gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free vegan freakazoid who was convinced she’d live longer by eating like a giraffe.
I often wondered what the point was—as in, why would someone want to live longer if they could only eat plants—but whatever.
“Oh, hi, honey,” my mom said. “Want some lunch?”
“I’m good, thanks,” I said, my stomach gurgling. That third cheese Danish might have been a mistake.
“Suit yourself,” she said and stabbed a dinosaur leaf. “It’s good fiber.”
I plopped down next to her at the small kitchen island so I wouldn’t have to look straight at her. It was go time. “So.” I paused. “I started seeing a therapist recently.”
“Oh?” My mom turned to look at me. She had a kale tree stuck in her teeth. “That’s good, right?”
“Yeah. It’s why I came up this weekend without Lucy. I have to ask you about the divorce. Doctor’s orders.”
That got her attention. She glanced at me warily before returning to her salad. Anything involving my dad was number two on her list of taboo topics, right behind Callie.
Screw it. I plucked a fork from the flatware drawer and stabbed a piece of kale from her bowl. Maybe the nutrients would fortify me for this conversation. Or at least balance out all the sugar and gluten.
“What, specifically, do you want to know?” she asked. “We were unhappy, we grew apart. We decided to split. A plus B equals C.”
“Jeez, Mom, we’re not solving an algebraic equation here,” I scoffed. Was this hopeless?
I tried for a reset. “Sorry, this is hard for me, too.” I peeked up and watched her put disproportionate effort into rearranging her face from extremely wary to a few hundredths of a decimal point less wary.
With a deep inhale, I went for broke. “I need to understand why you decided to get divorced in the first place. Specifically,” I said, emphasizing the word, “was it my short story that gave you and Dad the idea to split up?”
“Oh, Thea, of course not,” she said without hesitation. “The die was cast long before that.”
I let out half a breath. “Then was it because of Callie dying? Because that would also make it my fault.”
“In what world would that possibly have been your fault? It was my idea to take you girls to the mall that day. And I was the one who gave her permission to meet us later, and money to buy the candy . . .” She trailed off.
“I made a series of terrible decisions because I was so focused on trying to buy your understanding.”
My mom was normally all hard edges and firm beliefs. Everything could be assigned a number or a probability. Emotions didn’t fit into that paradigm. But now, I realized with a start, her eyes were filled with tears.
“Buy our understanding for what?” I asked.
“Your father and I had filed separation papers that morning. We were planning to tell you girls over dinner that we were getting a divorce.” She rolled her eyes a little, which seemed weird, but as usual her mind was spinning ahead of her mouth.
“Why else would I have volunteered to buy you new jeans you didn’t need.
Consumerism at its worst. And when had I ever given either of you money for candy?
But I was hoping the jeans and the candy would soften the blow for you and your sister. ”
My lungs constricted as her words ricocheted inside me, making me feel lightheaded. I gripped the counter. “Wait, does that mean you stayed together for the next five years for me?”
“The next six years, but yes.”
Ever the mathematician. Or maybe she wanted full credit for time served with my dad. Which, given how quickly he’d moved on after the divorce, was not wholly unfair.
“Mom, I never told you this, but I texted Callie from the store to ask her to buy jawbreakers, and then I told her I’d kill her if she was late and I didn’t get my jeans. So you see, it really was my fault,” I said, my voice trembling.
My mom looked at me sideways, and I was suddenly afraid she was about to send me packing.
“Thea, you don’t think I knew about the text already?
You cried about how Callie dying was your fault every night for months.
Don’t you remember me telling you over and over that it wasn’t?
I thought you finally believed me when you stopped bringing it up. ”
“I don’t remember any of that,” I whispered. “I never told you I texted her, did I?”
“Maybe not directly, but I thought we both understood that’s what we were talking about. You knew I had her phone.”
All this time, I thought I’d been keeping a secret when all I’d been keeping was the corrosive shame. I could hardly breathe. “So you forgive me?”
“There’s nothing to forgive, Thea,” she said firmly.
“It wasn’t your fault. It was never your fault.
It was always my fault. I was practically catatonic with stress about the conversation that was coming.
It was my permissive parenting that day that caused everything. I was the mother. You were a child.”
Was it wrong that I was relieved by my mom’s assumption of all the blame? I reached over and covered her hand with mine. “Mom, if it wasn’t my fault, then it wasn’t your fault, either. Maybe we both need to try to accept that it was a bizarre accident that neither of us could have prevented.”
“Rationally, I understand that. But it’s still hard to reconcile.”
“I get that,” I said. And I truly did. Though my homework assignment was complete, I had one more question. “You never say Callie’s name out loud. If you ever refer to her, it’s always ‘your sister’ or ‘you girls.’ Why?”
She paused for several seconds before turning to face me. “Because maybe if I don’t say her name, a small part of me can believe the worst moment of my life never happened.”
“Magical thinking,” I murmured. It made sense.
To keep herself safe from her emotions, she, not unlike Rebecca, lived in a suspended state of denial.
My mom had built herself a fortress out of her students and her office hours and her algorithms. While part of me was angry with her for failing to model healthy self-care, I also saw her pain laid bare.
I leaned over and gave her a hug. At first she stiffened, but then she gave in and went limp in my arms.
We sat like that for several minutes, neither of us speaking, while my mind integrated these new insights into the previously etched-in-stone plotlines of my life story.
Because if I was not to blame for Callie’s death or my parents’ divorce, then what did that mean with regard to Sam’s death?
Was it possible his death, too, was a horrible coincidence and not life imitating my written words?
Because of what that lawyer said to me after Sam’s death, my mind always went back to that damned run.
It felt like the key to this unknowable puzzle.
Had he gone running because he was upset with my birth control fail and was angry on the inside despite how happy he seemed on the outside that day?
Had I not known him as well as I thought I did?
Unfortunately, there was no one in the world who could explain Sam’s decision in the way my mom had just shed light on the two pivotal points of my youth.
Maybe in time I would be able to come to terms with the fact that I would never know why Sam had veered from his training regimen, and from the well-worn path of his life.
And sent mine hurtling down another. But I wasn’t there yet.
My mom retreated to her bedroom and I could hear her muffled cries.
While the space between us was no more than twenty feet from where I sat on her couch to where she was probably curled up on her bed, it felt like all that truth-telling had shaken something loose, but maybe not in a good way.
What I wanted was for this new openness to bring us closer.
Instead, I worried it was cleaving us further apart.