I shrug. “I know you met in grad school, that you traveled a bunch before you opened EyeCon. That you were happy.” My eyes drift to the pictures mounted on the walls, most of them pictures of my parents before me or pictures of me alone, growing up. We don’t have a lot of family pictures of the three of us.
“Wewerehappy,” Dad says now. “But we also overcame a lot.”
“Mom’s family?” I guess, and my mother nods.
“I told you a while ago how they felt about your father and our marriage.”
“They had a lot of outdated views,” Dad says. “I wish we’d told you about it sooner, but we thought we were making it easier for you, keeping you from the ugliness of that, letting you grow up to see that people of different colors can love each other. Because theycan.”
He looks at Mom as he says it, and for all the things I’ve doubted in my life—whether my mother loved me, whether the Cohens saw me as one of their own, whether I could ever truly belong anywhere—that was the one thing I’ve never doubted: how much they loved each other.
“Another of their outdated beliefs was about mental health,” Mom continues. “You didn’t treat depression in my family; you ignored it or rose above it.”
“I owe you an apology, too,” Dad says. “Because I let my own pride get in the way. You see, soon after your mother had you, I knew she was sick. It was like night and day how different she was. She lost her appetite, her drive, her joy.”
I swallow. This part I know all too well.
“After the first couple of months I started pushing for her to get help, but she was so resistant. I tried to get her into therapy, tried to get her to see a bunch of doctors, but she wouldn’t do it. And she started to resent me for it, to pull away from me. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her, so I ... I stopped pushing so hard. And this—the way she was—became our norm. I convinced myself that as long as she wasn’t in crisis, I didn’t need to worry. I told myself,she still makes it to work most days. She’s not suicidal. She just needs rest and time.”
The familiar refrain from my childhood makes my head spin.
“It obviously didn’t help,” I say, surprised to hear the anger in my voice.
“I know,” Dad says. “I still brought it up sometimes, tried to talk her into seeing different doctors, discussing treatment options.”
“I wasn’t ... ready,” Mom says. “Most days I could convince myself that I was just tired, just overwhelmed, but on the days when I could admit that something was wrong, I bullied myself into believing I was weak, that I should be able to snap out of it. You don’t know how much you internalize from the family you’re born into.”
It reminds me of what Luke said while we were camping over the summer. About how he’d learned things from his father he didn’t know he had. My mind flits to him briefly and I wonder how he’s doing, how he’s coping without Mel, whether he thinks of me.
“Like your father said,” Mom continues, “I wasn’t suicidal. I was mostly functional. I just wasn’t happy or present, and that didn’t sound sick to me. It sounded like something I should be able to fix on my own ...
“It was the day Mel was diagnosed, when I saw what it did to you, that something changed. I didn’t make the jump to getting help right away—that came a few months later. But seeing you that day ... you were so heartbroken at the thought of losing Mel, and I realized you wouldn’t have anything to grieve if you ever lost me, your own mother. Because I hadn’t been there for you. I hadn’t ...”
She’s crying too hard now to keep speaking, and Dad rubs her knee.
“You got help because of me?” I am incredulous. “Even though I was the reason you were sick to begin with?”
My parents exchange a look.
“Jessi, you werenotthe reason your mother was sick,” Dad says firmly. “Yes, her issues started postpartum, but that’s biological, neurochemical, nothing to do with you.”
Mom crosses the room and takes my face in her hands, her hands that are warm for the first time that I can remember.
“You were the bright spot in my life, the thing that kept me going,” she says, tears still streaming down her face. “I loved you. Iloveyou.”
I broke you,I think, but as if she can read my thoughts, Mom shakes her head.
“Don’t you ever believe anything else,” she says, her hands still cupping my face.
My eyes are filling, and I blink hard and fast.
“You said something the other morning—that it was too late,” Dad says now. “Too late for us to change how things are in this family, but I think your mother’s progress the last few months shows that it’s never too late. That there’s always hope ... as long as you’re willing to try.”
It’s similar to the conversation Mom and I had at the start of the summer about me being back in Mel’s life despite all the time that had passed.
Mom lets go of my face and sits down on the couch beside me, reaching for my hand like she’s afraid to let me go.
“I guess that’s what we want you to think about,” she says. “If you’re willing to give us—this family—another chance. We’ve failed you, and we might not deserve it, but we’re asking for it.”
