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That familiar feeling of shame washes over me. I quickly remind myself that despite the reasons behind it, I am here, and I resolve to do better where my mom is concerned.
“What have you been up to, Mom?” I ask, giving her my best warm smile.
“Oh, you know, just all the things,” she says.
She starts in, telling me about her friend group and how she spends time with them going out shopping and to lunches. How she’s been helping my dad with the construction business he owns because she has more time on her hands now that she’s retired after twenty years of working in billing for the Aspen Lake Boating company.
I eat my burger while she talks, listening to her words, feeling grateful to be here. This challenge has done more for me in the past two weeks than I’ve done for myself in a long time. I’m going to be sad when it’s over. Hopefully my friendship with Lucy will last beyond this, because I don’t want to lose her. It’s crazy how not that long ago I was so alone, and now I don’t feel that way anymore.
I’d love for my mom to meet Lucy. She’d love her. It’s a strange thought coming from me—my mom’s never met any woman in my life. Probably because I’ve never been serious enough about someone to bring them home to meet her. I may not be serious with Lucy in that way, but I am serious about our friendship. Do friends bring friends home to meet the parents as adults?
I want to tell her about Lucy, though. The challenges we’ve been doing, how I’m currently crocheting a ... something. I’m hoping for a scarf, but it’s hard to say if it will turn out at this point. I want to tell her how I’ve learned to play pickleball, and I could read her the poem I wrote about the tree in our backyard, or how I spent the better part of yesterday learning a TikTok dance, only to lose. But mostly, how great it is to have Lucy as my friend. It’s been better than great, really.
My mom puts her fork down, and leaning her forearms on the table, she weaves her fingers together.
“You should do this with your dad,” she says. “Have lunch with him.”
I expected her to tell me to work things out with my dad—she usually does—but this time she’s more direct in her approach.
I shake my head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Graham, he’s working on things,” she says.
I raise my eyebrows, skeptically. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”
“Graham,” she says, chastising me.
I grab the napkin from my lap and wipe my mouth, stalling for time.
“We don’t need to talk about him,” I say.
She nods. “But we should, at some point.”
I look down at my hands balling up the napkin in my lap before I purposefully relax them. “Okay. Let’s talk about it. Why do you stay?” I ask.
She dips her chin, once. Her warm blue eyes are on me, and I can see her mind working, thinking, deciding. “It’s ... complicated,” she finally says.
That’s a newer one. I usually get some version of, That’s my business.
“Try me,” I tell her.
“First, it was for you,” she says, her eyes instantly beginning to shimmer.
“You didn’t need to stay for me,” I tell her.
She sighs. “That was only part of it. There were also financial reasons. But really, when it came down to it, it was the connection I have with your dad.”
My face drops. “Enough to overlook everything?”
“I know I’m not to blame for his ... indiscretions, but we didn’t have a happy marriage back then.”
I knew that. It’s why I hung out with Kyle. It’s why I’d sit under that big willow tree in the backyard. I’m thirty-four and I sometimes wish my parents still lived in that house instead of the one with the better view of the lake they live in now, so I could go back to that tree. I drove by there a couple of years ago, and whoever bought the house cut it down.
“What about now?” I ask her.
The corners of her mouth pull upward, softening her features. “We’re happy, Graham.”
“Even if he’s still—”
