Chapter 45
Greta
This week’s group therapy session was intense.
Adrian told us he finally agreed to hang out with the woman from the parking lot.
Their date was wonderful. Faith clapped, Donna laughed, and Jane and Matilda wept.
There were lots of hugs, and we finished off the lemonade and the strawberry coconut macaroons.
It was weirdly beautiful and sad at the same time.
When we left, Mom got in the car, and instead of getting on the highway back, she took a different road to this place we’re at now, a neighborhood on the edge of town with rows of identical half-built houses.
The windows, the trim, and the porch lights are missing, and most of the facades are covered in graffiti.
“What do you think?” she asks after telling me how far along the project is and what exactly her role will be.
“They’re nice. It’s a shame they’ve been abandoned.”
“That’s what I thought when I saw them.”
I watch her as she looks around and I wonder if she realizes what a victory it is for her to be here, looking hopeful and collected, in those khaki pants I haven’t seen her wear in so long.
Not even I, who yearned for my mother to be my mother, to be a mother like the ones you read about in books or see on TV, would ever have guessed that this could happen. And I feel lucky to witness it now.
“Everyone says you were the best.”
“I mean…” She looks down at me and pauses, but then her expression changes. “Yeah. I was, damn it. I was!”
“There you go then.”
We laugh on our way back to the car.
It’s late, but I ask her to drop me off at the library.
She nods and turns the corner to take me there.
I tell her I’m planning my trip and I want some guidebooks that I can sit back and read at my leisure.
I don’t want to surf the net and just end up on guided tours or seeing the most famous sites.
I want to map it out myself, but I want to know what I’m doing too.
When she stops, she asks me if I can get back on my own.
“Yeah, it’s just a short walk. Don’t worry about it.”
I get out and go inside. The building isn’t that big.
The books are on the second floor and the meeting rooms downstairs.
I climb the stairs, say hi to the librarian, and walk straight to the travel section, running my finger across the spines of the books.
I do that anytime I see a packed shelf—I love it, it’s like saying hi, I’m here, I’m ready to discover everything the pages hide.
I look, take one out, open it, close it, take out another one, read, put it back.
An hour later, the library’s about to close, and I have seven books that I miraculously manage to cram into my bag. I count the stairs as I go down, even though I don’t know why, and on the last one, I freeze as I hear a familiar voice.
“You too, Allison.”
Just that. Three words that might mean nothing, that could be the response to a simple goodbye, like when someone tells you to take care or have a good day, but I know that isn’t it.
I know it isn’t because the person saying it is my dad, and he’s down there by one of the meeting rooms, and his hand, that hand I’ve held my entire life, is holding Allison’s with a tenderness and lust that destroys me.
She sees me first. Her eyes get big.
Then he turns to see what’s bothering her and finds me watching them, frozen on the last step as if I were standing for a portrait, squinting, unable to believe my eyes. The scene unsettles me, and I can feel my stomach start to turn.
“What are you doing?” It’s my voice doing the shouting, but it doesn’t feel like it. Perhaps my voice has ceased to belong to me.
“Greta, I can explain. It’s not what it…”
“Damn you. Don’t you even dare say that to me.”
I take the last step. Angry. Disappointed. Exasperated. How can this be happening when it seemed everything was finally working out, we were getting somewhere, my parents were growing close again?
“Grasshopper, wait, please.”
“Don’t call me that. I’m serious. Don’t you dare.”
I throw open the door and walk out. It’s dark.
I hurry down the street fast. I know he’s following me.
I try to breathe deep, to calm down, but all I can see is their hands touching and all I can think about is my mother, about how unfair it is that she sacrificed so much for us, for him.
Half her life. Half her life and her whole heart.
And this is what she gets? It’s as if fate were playing a joke on her.
“Greta!” he shouts. “Stop! Talk to me!”
I turn around. “What? You want to go get a coffee so you can tell me how you were fooling around with that woman while we were living through the worst moments of our lives? Or are you planning on giving me the usual line about how she doesn’t mean anything to you?”
He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t deny it, fight back, or insist. He just stands there in the middle of the road until I turn and start putting one foot in front of the other.
I can feel my backpack weighing down on me.
My lungs are burning, my nose stings. It’s not me I’m sad for—it’s her.
Because it hurts to have to tell her all this and I’m scared she’ll break down again and I know how hard it was for her to finally pick herself back up.
When I get home, Dad’s car is in the garage. He beat me here. My heart’s pounding as I slide the key into the lock.
I don’t hear anything. It surprises me.
I go to the living room. Mom’s on the couch with a book in her hands. She closes it when I walk in. Dad’s in his armchair rubbing his temples. He looks up when he hears me. I drop my keys on the mantel. “What’s going on?”
“Listen, about before…”
She cuts him off: “Your father and I are getting a divorce.” Her tone is dry and unwavering. “We filed a few weeks ago.”
I don’t get it. My mind is still back in the library, frozen on the steps, watching their hands touch, hearing his voice say, You too, Allison.
“Does Mom know everything, or were you too much of a coward to tell her?” I ask.
“I…” he murmurs, his voice wavering.
“What? That there’s another woman?” She gets up and walks toward me to stroke my cheek, and I see pain in her eyes but also relief. “Yeah, I know. I’ve known for a long time, Greta. Don’t worry.”
“How can this be possible? After all we’ve been through?”
She shakes her head and says, “Everything’s okay.”
He stands, looking lost, eyes glimmering from the tears.
He looks smaller, older, weaker. Or maybe I’m just seeing that because the man I thought I knew, the man I thought was coming back slowly, has just vanished.
I don’t know who he is right now and it’s hard for me to look at him because the mere sight of him disappoints me.
“I should go. I’ll come back tomorrow morning.”
“I appreciate it, Jacob.” Mom’s look is affectionate, and I don’t get it. I stand there, listening to the door close.
“I don’t understand,” I whisper.
“Come on, Greta, let’s have some tea.” Mom wraps an arm around my shoulders, and we walk to the kitchen. She microwaves some water and steeps two bags of chamomile tea. After putting a cup in front of me, she sits down and stirs hers slowly.
“When did you find out?”
“Months ago. But I guess I suspected it from the beginning. He didn’t dare tell me back then. He needed time to accept his feelings, and he needed more time to find the courage to be sincere, and it could be that I just didn’t care enough to look any deeper.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Your father and I have been taking different roads for a while now. He apparently wanted to end things before, but when Lucy died, you know, that made things harder. He thought I couldn’t take another blow.”
“That wasn’t fair.”
“I’m strong, though. I always have been, and I’ll make it without him. It’s best for the two of us. Our relationship has actually gotten better since we decided to divorce.”
So that was it. I thought they were better than ever, that they were sharing moments of togetherness, understanding each other, rediscovering each other, when actually they’d decided it was over and that was what gave them peace of mind.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“We were going to. Soon. But you seemed so happy and we didn’t want to worry you after all that’s happened this past year.
And you just started going out with that guy.
And you’re about to travel. You’re going so far away!
My little girl.” She reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. “So I asked him to wait.”
My throat is so swollen, I can’t drink my tea. “When do you just stop loving someone?”
“I don’t know. Your father and I never have.”
“But this…” I raise my hands in the air. They freeze there for a moment, and I let them drop. “How can you defend it?”
“You’re so young, Greta. I know you can’t understand it now.
And I know when you fall in love, everything seems so perfect that you think to yourself no one else has ever experienced this before and what you’re feeling is absolutely unique.
But then that fleeting love passes, and what’s left are two people of flesh and blood with their strengths and weaknesses.
Your father and I have been through a lot.
A lot, Greta. Only we know what’s still there. And what isn’t. Understand?”
I nod, but I’m not sure that I do. “What about you? Are you okay?” I whisper.
“Honestly, yes. It’s been hard.” Her eyes fill with tears and she wipes them away with the back of her hand. “I lived for Lucy for so many years that it’s hard for me to live for me now. She was my whole world…”
I get up and come around beside her and sit in her lap the way I did when I was a little girl.
And I feel like a little girl in this moment.
I need her. If I ever said I didn’t, I was lying.
I need my mother, and she needs me. I hug her, and the meaning of this hug is: Stay with me forever, and I promise I’ll stay with you.
“I’m scared to go away and leave you here.”
“Don’t say that. I’ll be fine. I have the therapy group, they’re fantastic, and Grandpa’s here, and he’s never let me down. And Anne. We’re going to dinner at a new restaurant on Friday.”
“But—”
“You need to live your own life, Greta. Who knows when you’ll get the chance again? Next year you might go off to art school. Or you and Will might be too busy to do something like this.”
I tell her she’s right, but for days now, there’s been something bothering me, almost like a pebble in my shoe. It’s about Will, but I don’t know what it is exactly.
“You should eat something,” she tells me.
“Later, maybe. I don’t feel like it now.”
Back in my room, I take out the guidebooks and spread them out on the bed.
I put on my pajamas and close the window.
September’s in the offing, and it’s starting to cool off at night.
I read and walk through the streets of Amsterdam in my mind, but soon I give up because I can’t concentrate.
I keep thinking about my father’s hand touching Allison, how sweetly they looked at each other when they thought they were alone, her face—beginnings.
How can time’s passing change everything?
There was a time when, for a few years, Lucy barely had any relapses, and we were happy.
In the photo album in the living room, you can see the four of us in our Halloween costumes, standing around the Christmas tree, at Sunken Gardens.
Lucy’s smiling so wide, you can almost count her teeth.
I’m making faces. Mom is hugging us from behind, and Dad is looking at her and not at some other woman I don’t even know. On paper, everything’s perfect.
I wonder if everyone feels that same uncomfortable longing when they look at old photos and tally up their profits and losses.
Lucy’s dead now. Mom’s still Mom, but she’s changed. And Dad’s far away.
I’m opening my eyes. They still have sleep dust in them. I don’t know which way to turn, and I’m going to have to learn on the fly, but I sense that I’ll find the right road, and I’m determined to keep going forward.
And that makes me think of what Will said days ago: You have to close some doors to open new ones. And to do that, I need to finish the Map of Longing. I need it. Yes.