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Mom stumbled backwards a step, her face blanching deathly pale. My father caught her elbow automatically, but still she faltered. Dad’s eyes were wide, verging on panic—it had been so long since any of us had really talked back to my mother, I think he had no idea how to deal with it now that it was actually happening.
My dad’s eyes helped me rein in my rage slightly, just enough to lower the volume and keep from making more of a scene: “I went to a great college. I graduated with honors. I got a great job. I made a difference in people’s lives. I made an entire life for myself, but I’m still a failure—” my voice cracked, but I soldiered on—“in my own mother’s eyes. As if I have no worth at all, unless I can find a man to value me first. Can’t you see what you’re doing? Can’t you see how you’re making me feel? Don’t you care at all?”
There was a long, tense silence. My dad looked more thrown than a Super Bowl football. Paige looked like she expected a bomb to go off.
My mother sniffled. “I—I—”
“What?” I snapped. I could feel my shoulders going up around my ears. She was going to start in on how ungrateful I was, I just knew it. She was going to get defensive and dismissive and act like nothing I said mattered. Like always.
“I am proud of you,” my mother insisted.
I thought for several seconds that I must have misheard her.
Mom took out a delicate pink silk handkerchief, and blew her nose. Her voice shook as she continued. “I’m proud of you every single day, my dear. I thought you knew. I thought you had to know—you do so well, how could I not be proud?”
Dad placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, another on mine. The weight of it pulled me down, letting the anger start to seep out of my body.
“I just want you to be happy as well,” my mom went on. “I want you to find someone to be happy with, find someone who treasures how bright you shine. I know—I know I can’t be around forever. I know how quickly things can fall apart when—when someone who’s been a part of your life has suddenly gone.”
I remembered suddenly and with shame that Mom’s own parents had died when she was nineteen. She had been considering pursuing a career onstage before that happened and funds had become suddenly too tight to consider it.
She’d always loved ballet.
I remembered the wistful look on her face when we came across some old recital photos in the attic, talking about how Grandma and Grandpa had always supported her.
“I just want you and Paige to have someone to look after you when I’ve gone,” she finished in a quavery voice, dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief.
I took her hand as gently as I could, looked deep into her eyes. “We can look after ourselves, Mom,” I said softly.
“I know, I know,” she said with a watery laugh and a shake of her head. “I’ve seen you do so many great things on your own. But you’re such good girls—” she clasped my arm earnestly—“you shouldn’t have to. You should be able to lean on someone else, every once in awhile. If you wanted to.”
I felt an unaccustomed surge of tenderness towards my mother, warm and engulfing. “Ah, hell.” I couldn’t stay mad at her. “Come here, Mom.”
She didn’t even take me to task for my language as I enfolded her in my arms, Paige and Dad embracing us as well, our family becoming one giant hug, warm and secure and safe. My mother felt so small and fragile as I held her, bird-boned, delicate. I was so used to seeing her as an all-powerful tyrant, and yet, in this moment…my heart ached for her fragility, for her losses, for the choices she had made that had driven me so far from her.
I couldn’t promise that we would ever be close. She loved me, but she had expressed that love for so long by belittling me and my choices that there was a part of me that feared that all that damage could never be undone.
But I hoped that maybe, just maybe, this conversation was a sign of better things to come.
#
My hands danced restlessly at my side in anticipation as the crowd’s murmur quieted, their eyes focusing on Hunter as he took center stage.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Hunter began, and the crowd fell completely silent as his slow, measured, dark honey tones reverberated through the warm afternoon air. “I can’t thank you enough for coming out here today and giving me a hand. I appreciate your support more than I can say.”
The crowd gave murmuring sounds of as**sorted “you’re welcome”s and “of course”es. Looking around at all the smiling faces, you could tell that Hunter was among friends here. These were the people who loved him, who supported him, would believe in him and back him all the way.
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