“Hi, Mama Nadine,” Ezra said, waving into the phone.
“Stop calling my mama ‘mama,’” Miles said.
“Someone’s in a bad mood,” his mother teased. Her voice was pitched to the kind of mild rebuke that was her signature and had always been enough to keep Miles on the straight and narrow.
“I’m fine,” Miles said.
“He’s not,” Ezra added.
Miles glared at him.
“Where is my daughter?”
“Mom,” Miles sighed, using his free hand to scrub at his face. It had been three years and Miles still couldn’t get his mother to stop calling Mei her daughter. He wasn’t interested in dating anyone else, but he couldn’t imagine how his mother would have behaved if he’d tried to bring someone else home.
“Mom what? Where is Mei? What did you go there for if not to get Mei back?”
“Ezra and Candace are together now, mama. I’m here to celebrate them.”
“Of course, they’re together. Do you think I don’t know just because you refuse to tell me things?”
“I’m not refusing to tell you anything. How do you know?”
“Me,” Ezra said.
“Yes, Ezra calls me every other week,” his mother said. “Unlike my son, who seems to want to work himself to death.”
“He needs a vacation,” Ezra said.
“This is a vacation,” Miles corrected.
“Doesn’t feel like one,” Ezra whispered.
“Take a vacation after you get back with your wife.”
There was a reason Miles had called his mother. Surely, there had been. He just couldn’t remember what it was. “We’re not getting back together, mama.”
“And why? Neither of you are dating other people and neither of you are coping well with being apart. You’re living in that cardboard condo and Mei’s about to be homeless.”
“What?” Miles dropped his hand and repositioned his phone so he could look at his mother as close to in the eye as possible. “What do you mean, Mei’s going to be homeless? Is something wrong with her parents’ apartment?”
“Why don’t you ask Mei? Or call your former in-laws?” His mother shook her head and sucked her teeth. “I know I raised you better than that.”
His stomach clenched in the worst way because this was a sore spot on his soul, which was full of sore spots. Miles felt backed into a corner, and he hated it.
“Would you have stayed with daddy if you knew?”
His mother froze on the phone screen. Ezra silently slunk away while Miles and his mother stared at one another through all these thousands of miles separating them.
“Excuse me?” It was rare, but whenever she was really mad, his mother lowered her voice. It made the hair on Miles’s arms stand up even now.
He couldn’t go back now, not with Mei and not with his mother. “If you knew that daddy was gonna die—” His mother flinched at that word, and Miles flinched that he was the person who’d done this to someone who’d only ever loved him. But that was the point. “If you knew he was going to die when you were so young, would you have broken up with him and gotten with someone else?”
Most of the time when he talked to his mother on the phone, she was doing three or four other things. Even when he dropped by her house, she would be talking to him, cooking, and organizing a trip to the casino with her old Black lady walking group. His mother didn’t sit still. But he could remember her paralysis in those first couple of years after his dad died. Sometimes, he wondered if she moved so much now because her husband’s death had brought her to a standstill for so long.
So when she focused on Miles and gave him her full attention over FaceTime, he felt a tiny bit of dread at that. “Is there something you want to tell me, Miles Antwan?”
“Mama, answer the question. Please.”
“No,” she said.
He sighed.
“No, I would not have chosen another man. If I had known he had a weak heart, I would have loved him harder. I maybe would have started having babies a little earlier because you definitely needed a little friend sometimes. But you had Nitra, and then you met Ezra,” she said, then frowned. “And there was that little peanut-headed ass boy I couldn’t stand.”
Miles sighed. “Mama, leave Dean alone. We haven’t been friends since sixth grade.”
“Dean, that’s his name.” She shook her head. “I just know his ass is a Republican now.”
Miles covered his smile with his free hand because Dean was actually a Republican, but his mama hadn’t liked him long before that.
“Anyway, the point is, I loved your daddy when he was too broke to afford a dream and when he was working himself to the bone to make sure you had everything you needed. We lived a full life together, so full that I still feel his love today. And he left me the best parts of him in you. Now what does this have to do with you and Mei?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Miles asked.
His mother scowled at him. “If it was obvious, I wouldn’t have asked.”
Miles sighed and shook his head. “Heart disease runs in the family, mama. I didn’t… I couldn’t let Mei—”
“End up like me?” she asked.
Miles pursed his lips. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Yeah, you did. You meant it so much you torched your life with the loveliest woman you’ve ever met. Someone who was so perfect for you, I couldn’t have prayed for better. Someone who loved you with her entire self, even when I wished she would let you go. You didn’t want Mei to be me so much, you’ve been making yourself miserable. Even though you didn’t know if that would be her fate. And I want to ask you, what’s so wrong with being me? What’s so wrong with Mei loving you the way I loved your daddy? Because that’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.”
Miles wiped his tears away as he listened, but he didn’t have answers to any of her questions.
“You’re a grown man, my love. I raised you well if I do say so myself.” His mother’s smile was infectious, and he smiled back through his tears. “I raised you to be yourself, which means you get to decide for yourself the life you want to live. So does Mei. Do you want to live your life alone or with Mei, however much time you have left?”
Miles started to open his mouth, but his mother shook her head.
“Don’t tell me, tell Mei. I’m your mama, not your wife.”
“Neither is she,” Miles said.
His mother shrugged. “You can fix that if you want to. Anyway, I’ve got to go.”
“Where?”
She sighed. “To have dinner with Yu Ming.”
“Mama,” Miles said, shocked.
“What? Just ‘cause you and Mei divorced doesn’t mean the rest of us did. We’re family. Tell Ezra and Candace we’d prefer a summer wedding. Send Mei my love. And do not forget your Uncle Herbert’s keychain.”
She hung up before he could reply. Miles sighed and put his phone back in his pocket. Ezra appeared by his side.
“So…what’s up?”
“My mom said they want you and Candace to get married in the summer. I don’t know who ‘they’ is, though.”
“Probably all of our parents. Do you know our moms get together all the time and hang out?”
Miles laughed softly. “My mom hung up on me to go have brunch with my mother-in-law. Former mother-in-law,” he added quickly.
“Makes sense. My mom talks to Candace’s mom literally every day. For years. They’re friends.”
“That’s great, actually,” Miles said. “It made it really easy for Mei and I that our families got along. They did ask about kids a lot, though.”
Ezra sighed. “Already started. I’m fine with that, though, bec—”
“Change the topic, Ezra,” Miles warned.
He sighed. “So, are you and Mei getting back together?”
Miles sighed. “I don’t think that’s up to me now. Besides, I still think she deserves better.”
“Oh, definitely,” Ezra said. “But she wants you, just like Candace apparently wanted me.”
Miles could hear the smile and wonder in his voice, but he kept looking straight ahead. He didn’t think he had it in him to see his friend so happy when he felt so goddamn empty.
They sat in silence until they heard a loud collective gasp. To their right, a man was down on one knee, proposing to his boyfriend. It made Miles’s heart ache.
The other man nodded, his face wet with tears. They hugged as the crowd clapped. Miles joined the chorus clapping, but that hollowness felt all-encompassing.
“Wait,” Ezra said. “Is that how cheesy I’m going to look?”
“Yeah, probably,” Miles said.
“Shit. Candace is gonna hate it,” he said. He dropped his head into his hands.
“Nah, she loves you. She’ll get over it.”
Ezra looked at him with sheer disbelief and disdain. “Bullshit.”
Miles laughed. “In time,” he added. “She’ll get over how cheesy and cliché that looks in time.”
Ezra shook his head and stood up. “Nope. I need to rethink this. Let’s go.”
Miles looked up at him. “Where are we going?”
“To that Senegalese restaurant for lunch. We can eat and plan. We have a few hours until you need to get to the airport, let’s get to work.”
“Ezra, it doesn’t matter. Candace won’t care, and apparently, neither will our parents as long as you get married in the summer.”
He shook his head. “No, it needs to be perfect. Get up.” He pulled Miles to his feet. “There’s still time to fix this. Unless you want to go after Mei.”
Want to? Yes.
Should? He still wasn’t sure.
He understood what his mother had told them. He understood what Mei said. But he just…couldn’t. He was stubborn, and at the end of the day, he wanted Mei to have a life that wasn’t bisected by losing him.
“Fine,” Miles said. “But then we have to go back to the hotel. I think I’m gonna head to the airport a little early.”
Ezra frowned at him, and the two friends stood, staring at one another. Finally, Ezra pursed his lips shut, shook his head, and threw his arm around Miles’s shoulder as they walked through the crowd.