Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Simon
“Why did you stay with Mom?”
He stared at me for a moment before answering.
“You’ve asked me that before.”
“And you never really answered me.”
“Yes, I did, son.”
“No. You told me you loved her.”
“I did love her.”
“I know that. But that doesn’t answer the question,” I said.
He stared at me without saying a word longer than he should have. My father wasn’t stupid. He knew damn well there was a reason I was bringing this up again. I could see the questions forming in his head. Thankfully, he didn’t ask.
“You want a different answer this time?” he asked.
“All I want is the truth, Dad.”
I watched as he inhaled a breath. “The truth is complicated, son.”
“Dad.” I cocked my head.
“All right.” He picked up his drink. “I stayed because I kept believing she’d get better.”
His answer caught me off guard.
“Even after all those years?”
“Especially after all those years. Your mother wasn’t always the woman you remember. She wasn’t always drinking, and she wasn’t always angry. There was a time when she was happy. She was even funny.”
“Mom?” I frowned.
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” He smiled. “She could walk into a room and make everyone look at her. She had something about her. I fell in love with that woman.”
“Then explain to me what happened?”
“I wish I knew, son.” He tipped his drink to his lips. “The drinking didn’t happen all at once. That’s what people don’t understand. It crept in. A glass of wine every night became two. Those two glasses became a bottle. Then she started drinking hard liquor. That’s when she hid it.”
“I remember,” I said.
“I know you do. I should have protected you from more of it than I did.”
“This isn’t about me, Dad.”
“It will always be about you for me, son. Every time things got bad enough to the point I thought I couldn’t do it anymore, she’d stop. Sometimes for a week. Sometimes for a month. But she always went back to it.”
“I don’t remember her ever quitting for a day.”
“You were very young then. She’d apologize and promise me she was done. She’d start acting like herself again, and I’d think, there she is. The woman I married was still in there somewhere.”
“Then she’d start drinking again?” I asked.
He nodded and set his glass down. The server walked over and set our plates in front of us.
“You thought you could save her, didn’t you?” I asked.
“For a long time, yes.”
“And you couldn’t.”
“No.” He shook his head and picked up his fork.
“So what about later?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“When you knew she would never change and stop drinking?”
“You want the honest-to-God truth?” he asked.
“That’s all I want, Dad.”
“Because by then, leaving felt like abandoning a sick person. And I wasn’t sure if I could live with that guilt.”
“But she was making us miserable,” I said.
“She made everyone miserable, son.”
“Then why was her happiness more important than yours?”
“It wasn’t,” he said. “There’s a difference between putting someone’s happiness before your own and feeling responsible for keeping them alive.
By the end, I wasn’t staying because I believed we were going to have a great marriage again.
I wasn’t even entirely sure the woman I’d married was ever coming back.
I stayed because I was terrified of what would happen to her if I left. ”
“So you wasted years of your life,” I said.
“I wouldn’t say that. I would say I was loving someone I couldn’t help.”
That shut me up quickly. I’d watched their marriage deteriorate year after year.
I watched my mother drink herself into someone I didn’t recognize.
And I watched my father make excuses for her, cover for her, and clean up after her.
At first I thought he was to blame for her drinking problem. But now, I knew better.
“Were you relieved when she died?” The words flew out of my mouth without thinking.
He set his fork down, picked up his drink, and stared at me.
“Yes. I was devastated but relieved.”
“How can you be both?” My brows furrowed.
“I loved your mother, Simon. Her death didn’t erase that. But it ended something that had been hurting all of us for a very long time. Why are you bringing this up again? Does it have anything to do with Bella?”
“Why does everything suddenly have to do with Bella?” I asked.
“Because I saw the way you looked at her when she was in your office. And I saw the look in your eyes when you talk about her. You’ve spent your life hiding from relationships, and I know it has to do with the marriage your mother and I had.”
“I don’t want to become you,” I finally said.
“I know that, son.”
“I don’t want to wake up one day and realize I’ve spent twenty years making someone else happy while I’m fucking miserable.”
“Then don’t,” he said.
“That’s your advice?” I frowned.
“Yes. That’s my advice. Listen, son. You’re making the same mistake you’ve always made.”
“And what mistake is that?”
“You think my marriage to your mother is what marriage is. It isn’t. It was our marriage. Two people with their own problems who made some terrible decisions and lived with the consequences.”
“And I’m supposed to believe my relationship would be any different?”
“If you choose someone different. Don’t use my mistakes as an excuse to never give yourself the chance to make your own. You’ve been around Mary and me enough over the last five years to see what a healthy relationship looks like. Use that, son. Not the marriage I had with your mother.”