Chapter 6 #3
All these years I’ve never let myself look him up and now here he is, a few hours’ drive and a single state away. The same city as the dad who doesn’t know about me. Irony is a down and dirty bitch.
She hands me the most recent postcard, note-side up, my eyes instantly all over the words:
Eight years this summer. What do you think, Rue Conway? I’m still in Charleston. Same address. Same job. Is it time I give you up?
—N
“I know why you did what you did,” Mom says as I poke myself—literally poke myself—to make sure this isn’t some twisted dream. “But I also know you spent years waiting for him to come back. This was the only thing I could think of doing. He was good for you, and you’re still married. To him.”
“Good for me?” I shuffle through the postcards again, my annoyance skyrocketing with each picturesque skyline and scribble of letters.
Every note showcases how incapable of taking things seriously he still is.
Every cityscape of the many cities he told me that very first day he wanted to live in a reminder of the fact he told me who he was, and I refused to listen.
“He was the furthest from good.” I slap the postcards on the desk. “He was arrogant. He was-was-was unpredictable. A slob.”
“But he would have been,” she challenges. Like she has any idea what he would have been ready for. “He would have stepped up.”
“Would ha—” I cut myself off, forcing myself to breathe. “Did Jeane Dixon’s crystal ball tell you that?”
“You need to face this or you’ll never be happy.”
“I need to forget this to be happy,” I say through gritted teeth, back pedaling with, “which I already have. And already am.”
She ignores me. “Well, you can’t get married if you’re already married.”
I massage my temples. “Please stop talking.”
This is bad.
This is so, so bad.
“And Bennie deserves to know.”
“No.”
“Because I see now how the choices I made impacted you. The same way all mothers impact their daughters. Telling Bennie he’s dead. Marrying Jonathan.” I open my mouth only to find no words available. “You’re playing it safe.”
She’s not wrong, not entirely. I barely survived that loss of Nash and I never ever wanted to put myself through that again. And I love Jonathan—I do—but a big part of what drew me to him was that he’s the antithesis of the first man I married.
“I don’t care what you think. I’m happy.”
“Whether you are or aren’t,” she says, “it doesn’t change the truth. You’re still married. To Nash.”
I’m.
Still.
Married.
To.
Nash.
I know it’s sunk in because I want to pass out, and in an abrupt and frantic motion, I’m standing and shoving all the papers in the box.
How will I tell Jonathan?
Or Bennie?
Oh, God.
They’ll never forgive me. Either of them.
“Why would you do this?” I struggle to get the lid on the box. “Meddle in my own life because-because you think I’m—what? What the hell is this?”
She says nothing.
“I—God, Mom,” I say through a groan. “Do you know what you’ve done?”
“I wanted to help.” She slips her glasses back on as she stands across from me.
“I lived through missing Rueben, and I didn’t want that for you.
Thought if you gave it time, you’d want to—I don’t know—find him.
Let him grow up. But then you never talked about it and the postcards kept coming and I didn’t want to upset you, so—”
“For eight years?” I shriek. A clatter from the store reminds me Bennie is out there. I think of her random mentions of him over the last days—there’s no possible reality that this ends well. In a harsh whisper: “This will crush Bennie.”
“She’s a smart girl, Rue.”
“Smart?” I repeat. “You think smart is enough to handle the fact your mother has lied to you about your father being dead?”
She says nothing.
“Were you going to let me marry Jonathan without telling me?”
“I was waiting for the right time. But you’ve been so stressed about the money and—”
“We’re getting married next month!”
Her mouth snaps shut.
“And, what? I’m supposed to go find Nash and say, ‘Hey, Nash, thought we were divorced. Sign here. Oh, by the way, you have a kid’?” My knuckles go white around the box as bile rises in my throat. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Maybe if you meet your own father, it will help you make a different choice. Maybe it’s fate them being in the same city. Maybe you and Nash still—”
“And maybe you should have brain surgery.”
It lands so heavily between us I swear the walls tremble.
“Mom.” I blow out the longest exhale of my life.
“I love you. But even if I wanted to go to Charleston—even if I wanted to meet this dad who doesn’t know me or go tell Nash everything, I’m not leaving you—not knowing you have a tumor that has you acting insane and needs to be operated on.
I don’t care if the doctor says you’re fine, I won’t do it.
And we need money. Fast. This isn’t the time for—” I look at the box holding the mess of my life. “Any of this.”
“I’m not insane,” she says simply. “But maybe—” She looks at the box. “Bennie’s been asking questions and maybe you need to have better answers. And Nash hasn’t sent a postcard in a while, and this one is different—like maybe he’s done.”
At this, I laugh. Fully psychotic. “Mother, he was done the day he drove away.”
“He only did that because you told him to.”
I clamp my teeth together so hard I’m surprised my teeth don’t turn to dust. I may have told him to leave, but all he had to do was fight harder than he did to stay. He left because it was what he wanted to do.
“There’s nothing wrong with playing it safe and not buying every crystal ball you want to buy.” I march toward the door. “Just because you aren’t happy with your life, doesn’t mean I can’t be happy with mine.”
I’m done here. With her and this conversation.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to go have a nervous breakdown.” I pause in the doorway. “And then I’m going to come up with a plan to fix all this.”
Before she can respond, I’m down the hall, stomping out of the store and racing down the road without telling Bennie goodbye.