Page 67 of A Bookish Story

“Wait until you’re my age. The little things don’t matter anymore and you don’t care what anyone else thinks.”

“Did you ever?”

Maybe this is unfair but it comes out of me before I can stop myself.

“Of course. Men have ruled my life for far too long. I cared what they thought, what they said, what they wanted, and whether they liked me or not. My life was judged for merit by how well men noticed me. It’s how I got myself into this mess.”

“What mess?”

“I loved Eddie, and he was my first love. But I let him call the shots. He wasn’t ready to commit, he wasn’t ready for so many things. Then, there was Antonio, so loving and devoted to me.”

“You always made your love story sounds so amazing, but my father wasn’t even your first love, was he? He wasn’t the love of your life!”

“Now you need to be the one to stop thinking about life like a romance novel. Your father knew about me and Eddie. The truth is we both may have hurt Eddie without meaning to. I suppose he thought I’d sit around and wait for him forever.”

“Then the next thing you know you’re dating his brother.”

The thought of my father, possibly taking away the woman his brother loved…it’s not fitting into my brain. My mind doesn’t have the bandwidth or the compartment size for this truth bomb. This puzzle piece is too big to fit the shape. I resist the idea that my father was anything less than a perfect man who was my mother’s first and only true love. It’s the real reason I resented Seb, but I can’t possibly hate Eddie for taking my father’s place. My mother, as usual, is wreaking havoc in my life. Ruining everything. For the first time, I wish she hadn’t come back.

“I realize it’s difficult to think of these things but it shouldn’t concern you,” my mother says. “Your father is still your father, a wonderful man.”

“But it’s not the great love story you led me to believe all these years!”

She doesn’t seem to grasp the significance of this. I would think she realizes what a romantic I am, thanks in part to their love story. I’ve made a career out of this. And now she’s destroyed what’s left of my illusions.

“It was a great love story,” she insists. “Nothing can take away those years I had with him.”

“But if not for Eddie’s commitment issues, it would be him and not my father.”

“We will never know but it doesn’t matter. Because a person can have many loves in their life.”

“Pull over!” I shout. “I need out of this car. Now.”

“What? I can’t.” She glances wildly over her shoulder and all the traffic on University. “Look at all this traffic.”

“If you don’t pull over, I’ll throw up in your car. Is that what you want?”

“It’s a rental!” she screeches as she turns onto a side street and pulls over. “What’s gotten into you? It’s just like when you were a little girl! ‘Mami, watch this. Mami watch that.’ All the time performing and craving attention. Good thing you were an only child because you never could have shared the spotlight. You needed too much, you had to have things a certain way, or you’d have a fit. Your father always indulged you and that was a mistake. You’re a grown-up, Luci. Newsflash: Things do not always work out the way you’d like. You need to accept that people in your life make their own choices.”

Tears prick my eyes, but I spill out of the car without another word.

“Luci! Wait. I’m sorry!” she says. “I didn’t mean all that.”

“Of course you did.”

Slamming the door, I make my way to the sidewalk. I’ll walk home from here. Yes, I know, I’m too much. That’s what she always said. It might be the reason I made myself smaller, the pieces of me easier for someone to digest. I loved writing but didn’t have the courage to put myself out there so I found a job ghostwriting. Falling in love was important, and I fell for someone who thought of himself first in everything.

I’ve always been behind the scenes, whether in my work or my relationships and grew comfortable there. But there was a time in which I was the center of a man’s world. My father’s.

It’s so long ago I can barely remember.

I walk for thirty minutes, head down, for approximately a mile, texting with Sofia, who is trying to talk me off this metaphorical ledge.

No big deal, she says. These things happen, she says. Eddie is great, she says. It could be worse, she says.

Look, she’s far more accepting than she would be if her mother had originally dated Eddie, then married her second choice. I’d like to see what she would say then. Sofia doesn’t understand, but no one can. I had this image in my mind of my parents, their forever love, cut down in its prime. It was so romantic and tragic. Like so many things, my mother has destroyed that picture for me, too. There’s only one person I want to talk to right now and I can’t. My poor father. I want to know if he always felt second or if it’s true that my mother really loved him as she claims.

My hands are shaking and my stomach is burning. As if all this disillusionment isn’t enough, the skies open up in a rare showing of water falling out of the sky in the month of June. This thing we call rain is sprinkling and it’s no big deal. No self-respecting Californian ever gets upset about the rain because we always need more. But this Californian never drives in the rain.