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“I was ashamed,” my mother says, her gaze faraway and directed at the ominous cloud cover. “I was ashamed so I ran away. I should’ve been strong enough to take you with me, but I wasn’t. I felt like a caged animal given a taste of freedom and I had to protect that at all cost…unfortunately the cost was my children.”
The silence lasts a good long time. It takes me that long to gather my thoughts and not lash out indiscriminately.
“I was mad at dad for a long time. I said terrible things to him because I thought you couldn’t be the person everyone said you were. I defended you for years.”
Everyday at school, I would wait at the curb, convinced that would be the day Zelda would return. My mother was famous for forgetting. Absentminded, my father called it. She would forget all the time to pick me up from ballet, from piano lessons, from day camp during the summer. I just accepted it.
So I thought it was only a matter of time before Zelda would drive up in her red Subaru Forrester, smiling her bright smile, take me in her arms and apologize. Then everyone would see that she didn’t run away from us. That it was all a mistake. I would be vindicated and I would have my mom back.
Until one day my father got tired of getting calls from the school that I had once again missed the bus. That I was the last kid standing outside, waiting to be claimed like lost luggage.
He drove up that day and parked the car, waited for me to get in and buckle my seatbelt. Then he told me what I was probably way too young to understand at the time. That every time my mom had forgotten to pick me up. It wasn’t because I had slipped her mind. It was because she was with one of her lovers and I was the furthest thing from her thoughts. I never missed the bus again.
My mother wipes her own cheeks, no makeup to outline the tracks of tears falling down her face. “I can’t change the past. I can’t erase what I did. I can only apologize and do better now.”
Something keeps needling me though. “Why now? We didn’t hear from you for years. What’s with the clothes and why are you suddenly changing everything about the life you say you loved.”
“Life isn’t a straight line, Carrie. People are entitled to change their minds. I needed a change...It was time for a change.”
“Why now?”
The woman that gave birth to me turns to look me squarely in the eyes. “I have cancer.”
Multiple Myeloma is a cancer of the bones. Life expectancy––four years. Though some live up to twenty.
I leave my mother’s place under the pretext that I have plans with Jake. I tell her I’ll be back and we can talk then. I’ve processed all that I can for today.
I don’t know how to feel about her being ill and being back in town for good––according to her. But I know there’s still a lot to resolve, a ton of hurt and mistrust on my end, and her being sick doesn’t absolve her of any of that.
As I’m walking home, the heaven’s decide to unleash hell. A carpet of anthracite grey clouds breaks open over me. And as if the pelting rain isn’t bad enough, the lighting starts soon after that. In seconds my Helmut Lang overall shorts and tank top are soaked, my red Pumas are squishy, and my buns are falling apart.
I’m halfway home when a set of headlights racing downhill pass me and stop. The barely distinguishable SUV pulls over to the side of the road and Jake gets out. “Carrie!” he yells from the other side as cars zip back and forth between us.
I keep walking because fuck him.
“Carrie! The hell are you doing!”
Picking up the pace, I glance over my shoulder to find him crossing the street and jogging after me. Naturally, I start to run. It takes all of a two seconds for him to catch up and throw me over his shoulder.
The screaming and pounding on his back do nothing to slow him down. He hauls me to the car and places me in the passenger seat. “Don’t even think about getting out of this car,” he barks, anger in his demeanor that no sane person would ever want to face down.
I wait until he gets in the driver’s seat and pulls a U-turn to drive us back to the cottage.
“Have you lost your mind!” I’m so mad I can’t even reply. Then the anger turns cold and the fight leaves me. “Why didn’t you answer when I called?” he continues to hammer me.
“I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to,” I calmly reply, staring out ahead.
