Chapter 36 #2
“I don’t have a choice.” I take a swig of my water and place my napkin in my lap before realigning the silverware.
Cassie winces, and I know what’s coming. She’s about to detonate a truth bomb as only she can.
“I don’t think you’re in the right headspace to make this decision.”
“I don’t have time to wait.” I look out the window at the bright-blue sky. I wonder what it’s like in Grand Trees right now. I’ve never been there in autumn. “It could take me years to conceive. Remember how hard it was for Anh?”
“You’re thirty-five, not fifty. You have time. Give it a year or two.”
If I don’t try soon, by the time I have a baby—if I have a baby—Mom might not be well enough to be an engaged grandmother.
“I gave Jeff fifteen.” I know women can have babies into their forties, but at thirty-five, fresh out of a loveless marriage and a whirlwind love affair, I can’t envision the years ahead as an opportunity for love, partnership, and happily ever after.
Instead, I feel the batteries of my biological clock dying prematurely from wasted patience.
If I want to do this, I need to do it soon, and on my own.
“But Caleb proves you can meet someone new. You can start again—”
“I won’t meet anyone else.” When I hazard a glance, Cassie’s eyes are narrowed on me. If waiting felt like a viable option, I would have waited for Caleb, not some mystery man without a chance to make my pulse race the way he did.
“You live in extremes, you know that? Maybe you won’t feel about someone the way you felt about Caleb, but you could find someone who makes you pee yourself laughing or owns a private jet and sneaks you off to Paris.
You don’t know what the future holds. But when you can’t see it, you think there’s nothing there. ”
Ouch. “Take it easy with the harsh truths, girl. I don’t even have a drink yet.” I chuckle to stave off a cry, because, man, her tough love is rough.
She folds her hands on the table and straightens her shoulders.
“No. You need to hear this. You thought you couldn’t dance again because you wouldn’t be a prima ballerina.
So, you quit entirely. You convinced yourself that romantic love was fickle because your parents’ marriage imploded, so you married a bland man you didn’t really love.
And now that you’ve finally had your heart broken, you decide to never open up again.
But you broke your own stupid heart by clinging to absolutes.
If you truly think you will never be happy without Caleb, then be with him in whatever way you can. ”
The water I just swallowed churns in my stomach. Why is it that the people you love most always know which weapon will wound you? Cassie with the mirror in the café. It’s easy for her, though. She heals from heartbreak like a lizard regenerating its tail.
“I can’t be with him. Caleb works a bazillion hours and has his daughter to care for. And the longest I can leave Mom alone is a couple of hours—”
Cassie holds up her hand like a stop sign and closes her eyes as if I’m the most tiresome person in the world.
“Take your mom with you some weekends. I’m sure she’d love to visit when she’s feeling up to it.
Or leave her with me, or your dad, who, by the way, is clearly still in love with her and is apparently still her husband.
” Her voice cracks in a manic cackle. “Or meet in the middle for a quick hookup in a roadside motel. Or in his truck, since that seems to work for you.”
“Cassie!” I look around the restaurant and shush her, regretting ever telling her anything. “I can’t choose a part-time boyfriend over my chance to have a baby. I gave it up for Jeff, and I’m not doing it again.”
Cassie holds both palms up, tilting them like a scale.
She drops a hand. “All.” And switches them.
“Nothing.” She releases a long, dramatic sigh.
“You’re lucky I’m always on your side. Because you are your own worst enemy and need me to protect you from yourself.
Figure it out, Eden. Because this self-imposed suffering is painful to watch. ”
I contemplate Cassie’s words as I lie awake that night, waiting for Mom and Dad. When they do finally stumble in, long after the curfew I would have imposed had I taken Mom’s teasing seriously, I tune out their hushed whispers and stifled laughter.
Their social life is more active than mine these days.
The streetlights stream in through my thin curtains and splash against the far wall, where Mom has hung one of her new pieces.
She started painting again last month, not in her signature realistic style but abstract landscapes with bold bands of calming colors.
The broad piece on my wall is a watercolor.
By day, it looks like the tree line of a forest from afar.
But with the gray scale of night coloring the palette, the painting is also a cityscape in shadow.
Maybe joy and suffering are the same subjects brushed in different hues—not either or, but both and. Coexistent. They are lovers with clasped hands and entwined bodies.
Maybe in order to have one, you must embrace, accept the other. The beauty is not in the ever after but in trusting the now.
When Mom’s hands stopped cooperating, she let her talent evolve.
When one life fell apart, she found solace in another.
And now she’s come home, seeking joy out of what used to be a source of grief.
I was furious at her for moving on when our family fell apart, but perhaps I can learn something from her resilience.
She preserved her love for me, for my dad, even as she fostered a life with Sonny.
And now, she’s still mourning Sonny but refusing to miss this opportunity to reconnect with Dad and me.
She kept a candle burning for us, and it’s growing into a flame.
Mom has no guarantees—not her health, her long-term future, or her relationship status—but she’s embracing the moment. She has my dad, a medical team, new friends, her art, and a second-chance love affair with the city that raised her. She’s rebuilding her life here, and I am not her only anchor.
As hard as it was to hear, Cassie spoke some truths today.
I cut Caleb out of my life because I couldn’t have all of him.
I’m contemplating having a child alone because I can’t guarantee I’ll have a partner to share that joy with.
I avoided dance because I couldn’t perform my chosen discipline at the highest level.
I decided that if I couldn’t have Caleb in the way I wanted him, I couldn’t have him at all.
I wonder whether I’ve lived my life in black and white precisely because Mom lived hers in shades of gray.
I drift to sleep with the answer just out of reach, as my mind spins toward an elusive solution and my heart swells with possibility.