AS MANY TIMES AS Olympia returned to her childhood home, she never grew acclimated to the sight of it. It seemed somehow impossible that it should still exist with the same people in it, the same furniture she remembered too. Most of her friends’ suburban parents had downsized to condos after their nests had emptied—not the Hellingers. It was midday. Lola was asleep upstairs. Olympia wandered into the kitchen. She found her mother peering into the cupboards.
“Is there any coffee?” Olympia asked her.
“Should be, but I’m actually looking for the Ovaltine,” said Carol. “Oh, here it is!”
“What is it with you and Dad and the Ovaltine?” Olympia muttered as she lifted the kettle off the stove.
After the water boiled, and Olympia poured out two hot beverages, she and Carol sat down at the kitchen table. “So, what have I missed?” Carol asked with a breezy sigh.
For the first time in ages, Olympia saw an actual person sitting across from her, as opposed to her Annoying Mother—a person who wanted to believe her life mattered and that she was indispensable to those around her. It seemed suddenly ludicrous that everyone should be lying to her. Olympia took a deep breath and announced that Gus had fallen for Mike’s brother, Jeff, while Perri, far from being at a closet conference, had walked out on Mike on her fortieth birthday and was currently in an undisclosed location.
Carol sat listening with popping eyes, her cup suspended in midair. When Olympia had finished speaking, she took a sip of her Ovaltine, and declared, “My goodness—well, I don’t know what to say. Between you and me, I never thought Mike was worthy of Perri. He’s a Republican, you know.”
“I know.”
“But they have three kids.”
“The split might not be permanent.”
“And I bet that brother of his is a Republican, too. It tends to run in families.”
“As far as I can tell, all the guy cares about is skiing. And now, I guess, Gus.”
“And is Gus in… love with him?”
“I’m not sure she’s ‘in love,’ but she clearly likes him.”
“The heart is a mysterious thing,” Carol said, sighing again, as she gazed out the window. “And here I’d finally come to accept that I was the mother of a gay person!” She turned back to Olympia. “And what about you? Who does your heart belong to these days, other than to Lola?”
The question startled Olympia in its very directness. Meeting her mother’s gaze head on, she thought of how infrequently the two of them spoke about anything meaningful—it was all quips and barbs—and how little time they’d spent together in recent years apart from Perri or Gus. Who knew when the next time would be? And who knew how many years her mother and father actually had left? Ten? Twenty? Twenty-five at the absolute most? In that moment, Olympia resolved to come clean about her own life, too. “If you want to know the truth,” she said with a trembling heart, “I’ve been in love with the same man for five, maybe even six years. We broke up before Lola was born. He runs a community center for disadvantaged kids. The problem is… he’s married and his wife is”—Olympia swallowed hard—“a paraplegic. So he can’t leave her.” She held her breath while waiting for the onslaught of disapproval that she’d always assumed her faithfully married mother would direct at her.
But to Olympia’s surprise, all Carol said was “That does sound complicated. I’m sorry.”
Carol’s reticence, in turn, spurred Olympia onward. “Complicated is one way of putting it,” she said, somehow knowing she’d live to regret what she was about to say, yet unable to stop herself. “So complicated,” she went on, “that when I wanted to have a baby four-plus years ago, and he was the only guy in my life, I decided to use”—Olympia paused—“a sperm bank instead.”
“A SPERM BANK?!” Carol cried.
Olympia was already regretting her confession. “I thought it would be less complicated,” she said. “I was wrong about that, of course. But at the time…”
Carol’s contorted face suggested horror, bewilderment, and disappointment all in one. It was the same expression she’d had when Gus had “come out” nearly twenty years ago—only a more extreme version of such. It was one thing, apparently, for a gay person to admit that she couldn’t help being gay, quite another for a heterosexual person to admit to willfully subverting reproductive norms. “But couldn’t you have waited to see if you met someone else?” she stammered.
“I was turning thirty-five. How long was I supposed to wait?” asked Olympia, her lower lip now quivering.
Carol didn’t answer.