She’s standing there in a gray pantsuit, stunned, holding a to-go cup of coffee.
“I thought you were working today,” I say.
“I was.” She blinks at me a moment, then sits on the top step, right next to me. “I come here a lot, right after work.”
She points at a bench just past the monument, curving around the west end of the lake.
I laugh. “I come here a lot too. After school.” I point through the doorway, to the tree and the hillside behind the Portals.
Mom stares at the tree, contemplative. “Hmm.”
“What is it?”
She shakes her head. “Oh, that’s…I don’t know. I think I might’ve met your father there.”
I sit up straight, shoulder blades no longer touching the doorway.
“WHAT?”
Mom gives me a brief side-glance. “What, you thought you were the immaculate conception?”
“No, but— You never talk about that. Him or whatever.”
“I don’t,” Mom says wistfully. She looks over at her bench. As I look at it too, I realize it’s set at the perfect angle to see the branches of my tree through the Portals doorway.
“You don’t talk about it with me,” I say, understanding. “You just think about it on your own.”
Mom says nothing.
“Does it help?” I ask. “To keep it all to yourself?”
“What do you think?” Mom says shrewdly.
WhatdoI think? Every time I’ve sat with my mom at a Chez Moi lunch, it felt like we were both stepping into the future. That she and I got to live vicariously through fantasies unburdened by the past. But now I know that, outside of those lunches, we’ve each come back here on our own. We’ve both stared at the same tree tied to a personal history we can’t really escape from, no matter how hard we try. It makes me think of a dog trying to get away from something that’s tied to its own leg. There’s no outrunning what anchors us down. The only way to actually escape it is to look right at it, to understand it.
And maybe, hopefully, untangle it.
I turn to my mom. “I’m not going to Paris,” I say.
She takes a sip of her coffee. “They said no?”
“I’m not applying.” I squint at her. “But not because the yearbook project doesn’t count as art. It is real art, Mom. Maybe you were right, and maybe it wasn’t really my story to tell. But itisan important story. Whether you’re open-minded enough to see that or not.”
Mom stares at me. Her shock only fuels me further.
“You know, I’ve made my whole life into a stupid competition, because I always felt like you and I were in one,” I say, pointing between the two of us. “I wanted to be as good as you. I wanted to do something that would make you proud of me. But you know what? I am practical, like you. And that’s great! It’s a strength, not a weakness! And if you weren’t so insecure about yourself, you would see how great I am, just the way I am.
“Maybe I’ll be an artist someday, and maybe I won’t,” I say finally, “but it doesn’t matter what I choose to do. You shouldhave been proud of me the whole time. And it sucks that you haven’t been, but that’s not my problem. It’s yours.”
I stand and shake my head at my mom. She continues to gape at me over her coffee. I wait to see if she’ll find the right words to say, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t have them.
As I look at my mom I realize that this right here—her sitting on that bench, thinking of what her life could have been, instead of being happy with what her life is now—thisis what it looks like to be stuck in the past. And I don’t want to be stuck in mine for one minute longer.
I walk back down the steps.
Chapter Thirty-Six
YEARBOOK CREW
