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I spend the rest of Christmas break with a nasty cough and a low-grade fever. Mom makes chicken noodle soup from a can and brings it to me where I sit huddled on the sofa in the living room. I watch her, studying her, in a way that I never have before. I wonder about what her life really is and who she is inside. She is still a very pretty woman, thin and busty, her dyed auburn hair thick, falling to her shoulders.
She nurses her drink while I nurse my soup. We sit in silence. I would like to ask her questions, but I don’t know how to start, so we sit, isolated and alone together, the low-level hum from the TV filling the air.
The news is on, a picture of a young, blond-haired girl comes on the screen. She’s been missing since Christmas Eve, and I strain to see if this is just the same report or if there has been a change. She is five years old.
“You were such a pretty little girl,” Mom says, her hand lazily reaching toward me. I see her hand and reach out to touch her fingers, without fully looking at her.
“Do you remember when I was in kindergarten?” I ask. I can see her nodding and go on. “I loved Mrs. Kimball. She was so kind.”
“Was it Kimball?” I nod. “I don’t really remember her,” she says.
“Do you remember,” I blow out a low laugh, “how on Fridays we could bring in our favorite thing for show and tell?” I look straight at her, for maybe the first time all afternoon. Her mouth spreads wide, and she laughs. She knows what I am thinking. She is still a beautiful woman when she smiles, when she is at peace. It is so nice to see that I almost forget what I was telling.
She picks up my story where I left off. “I remember you took me one day.”
“I was so proud of you,” I say. And I was. She was so good and kind, so beautiful. All of my friends had little crushes on her back then. Everybody wanted to hold my mom’s hand when we walked down the hall. Everybody was jealous that I had the most beautiful mom.
“What happened, huh?” she asks, her voice full of irony. A wistful expression in her eyes. This is the closest we have been in months, years maybe. She looks suddenly into her drink, which is empty, and gets up to get another. Yep, I think, that’s exactly what happened. She continues talking as the bottle clinks on her glass. “Do you remember Ed?”
I nod, then answer out loud because she is not looking at me. “I do.”
“I always wonder how much you remember about earlier. I don’t really have any solid memories before I was ten or so.”
“Really?” I’ve heard the story of my mother’s life in stuttered starts and stops, and this is new. I want to draw her out, I want to learn who she was, to maybe understand what has made her so private, so broken.
“Almost nothing. I remember my grandmother’s funeral, and that would have been when I was seven maybe, but almost nothing other than that.”
“I remember living in the white house where we had the big garden. You remember the ledge going up the stairs that I used to sit in and color?”
“You hid all over the place in that house.”
“I remember that.” I do not say that most of the time I was hiding from Ed. That would be saying too much. I do glance quickly at her, gauging whether she realizes that or not. She is not looking at me, but down into her glass, the clear liquid heaving over the ice, melding.
“I kind of loved that house.” She heaves a deep sigh. “Too bad Ed was such a dick.” She laughs self-consciously, and her eyes catch mine. Does she know?
“Yeah. I didn’t like him a whole lot myself.” What difference does it make? He’s been gone for so long he barely exists in my memory, except for the touch of his hands, his hairy body. I close my eyes and crack my neck. Just the thought of him makes my stomach crawl up against my backbone to hide.
She takes a long drink, and I say quickly, “Well, I guess that’s enough about that.” I stand up and change the channel to America’s Funniest Videos. Seriously, who doesn’t feel better after watching complete strangers getting minor injuries because of their own stupid choices? It makes the rest of us feel somewhat less idiotic. “I sure did love that year when you were room mom, though.”
***
She is sobbing. I can hear her down the hall in her room. The TV has gone to static, and I think she must have just left the living room. Is that what woke me up? I lurch off of the sofa and rocket down the hall and nearly smack into her as she’s coming back out of her room. Her face is sloppy and tear stained, all the many drinks of her day showing in the fluid under her skin.
“Are you okay?” I ask. I was feeling so close to her this afternoon. Talking about the time before we moved here, remembering her before, thinking about how her choices were robbed from her by a pregnancy she wasn’t prepared for, me. I wonder why she didn’t get rid of me or give me up for adoption. She had options. I didn’t have to be the thing that stole her dreams. She could have given me away. I could have had a family, with a mom and a dad and maybe even brothers or sisters. She could have found her dreams. It could have been so much better.
“Ohh.” It’s a long shuddering sound. “I was just missing him.”
I’m confused. “Cal?”
“No.” She shudders, much as I do when he crosses my mind. “Mitch. He was such a good man.” She smiles a soggy smile at me and leans into my shoulder. I stroke her hair. “What is wrong me? Why can’t anybody ever just love me?” she asks, and I can’t answer. “Why am I never enough?” Is this it, the feeling of incompetence, that has broken her? Is it the failure in love that has destroyed the person she could have been, or is she just one more person suffering the consequences of stupid choices?
“You’re enough,” I say.
“Then why won’t anybody ever stay?” She slides right down the wall, and I slide down to join her on the floor. Pity party for one, or two. “I still look good, don’t I?”
“Mom, you’re beautiful.” Not right now of course, but how could I say otherwise.
“I wish he had stayed.” Her accent has grown long-voweled and slow, very Southern, and I wonder where she grew up. All the little things I don’t know about my mother.
“I do, too.” I hold her hand. “But we don’t need him.”
“You know he married that bitch.” The word “married” takes her nearly thirty seconds to complete, and she spits the last word out and onto the floor. “He should have married me. I could have made him happy.” But she couldn’t have, she can’t even be happy herself. I know better than to comment but just say small encouraging things while she rants about Mitch leaving her and how unfair it all is and that bitch, spit, out onto the floor. When her rant subsides and she leans against me, I am surprised to realize she has fallen asleep, right here on the floor of the hall. I maneuver myself out from under her and head toward my own room, turning off the static-ridden TV as I go.
***
On the last day before returning to school, I get my period.
Hallelujah.