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I’ll skip showering today, despite how badly I want to stand under a stream of hot water and drown out life for a little while. I slip out of my clothes, not realizing that I’m standing in the middle of our room rather than hiding in my closet. I don’t notice until my mom’s breath catches as my tights are halfway up my legs. I freeze and look at the scarring on my leg then glance to her, a soft but pained smile on her lips.
“You’re not hiding it,” she says.
I chew at the inside of my mouth as my gaze falls back down to where my hands have gathered the top of my tights.
“I’m trying to be better with it. Accepting,” I say in a hushed tone.
I stretch the thick black material up over my hips.
“You’re beautiful,” she utters, and rather than it floating by me without notice, I take her words in. She has to say those things. It’s in the mom playbook. But hearing her say them now makes me think of Cameron saying them to me.
“When your dad and I first started dating, my friends, Shelby especially, all told me I was crazy to trust a man going into the military who looked like him,” she says. It’s story time. Some lesson from my parents’ past that she will no doubt attempt to string into a meaningful reason why I need to believe in him again.
“I guess it worked out,” I say as offhanded as possible.
“Not at first. No, it definitely did not,” she says.
I pause with my arms halfway through my Welles sweater and peer at her over my shoulder to test her expression. She’s not looking at me, but instead at the wall that is shared with her old room.
“I thought you and Dad had the perfect fairytale. He went into the military, you graduated and went off to Sarah Lawrence, and eventually you followed him around the world.”
My mom’s chest quakes with silent laughter, and she shakes her head.
“That’s the short version, I suppose. There’s a lot of fast-forwarding involved, including how my roommate Shelby hooked up with him after I broke it off on her advice.”
My mouth hangs open at the revelation and my mom’s gaze moves to me, catching my reaction.
“That’s right. The same Shelby you callAuntieShelby. There’s a lot of water under bridges, believe me.” A single, sharp laugh leaves her chest.
“How are you so close with her now? She was in your wedding!” I snag my shoes and move back to my bed to put them on. If anything, this walk through the past is more interesting than others.
“Ah, you mean how did I forgive them? I didn’t at first. And I had one hell of a romance myself my first year at Sarah Lawrence. That’s a story for another day, butooof!” My mom fans herself and my only option is to let my eyes bulge so wide they’re about to fall out of my head. She laughs hard when she looks my way.
“We were young, Brooklyn. And then we got a little older, and your dad came to visit me on one of his leaves, and I got to know the man he was becoming. I won’t pretend there isn’t a lot of narcissism there. I saw it then, built into his drive and this picture he painted of his future. But I think it takes a stroke of that type of egotism to get some things done in this world. It’s an evolutionary trait maybe, one some people are given to help our species survive our worst actions. It takes someone like him, who yes, maybe isn’t present when we need him to make us feel better, but it’s because he’s busy focusing on the big picture. And he loves us, in his way. He loves us enough to tolerate dislikeable people who can help him take steps forward, toward his goals—ourgoals.”
“People like the Powells?” I quirk a brow, gathering where she’s going with this.
“People like them, sure.” Her mouth rests in a straight line and I mimic her expression while we stare at one another in silence.
“I don’t know,” I finally say, pulling my gaze away. Maybe I don’t have the stomach to follow in my father’s footsteps. Perhaps that’s the grand lesson to learn here, that my young ambition has been misguided. This path isn’t for me, because I don’t think I can endure relationships with people I don’t trust or who reveal themselves to be unworthy. People who hurt other people.
“Brooklyn, honey . . .” My mom moves to sit right next to me, stopping short of putting her arm around me. As tough as I’m trying to be, I think if she did that, I would break down in tears right now. All of this feels so awful.
She leans into me, and I lean back. It’s enough to break me open briefly. I let one sob out before chastising myself for doing so and pinching my brow. I draw in a stuttered breath, fighting to keep it together.
“Nobody gets it right all of the time,” she says.
I nod.
“Nobody gets it right all of the time,” she repeats her words, reaching for my chin and forcing me to look at her when she speaks. Our eyes meet, and the full circle of her story comes together. That’s why they’re together, why she loves him and supports him. Even after he dated her friend, probably to get back at her for breaking up with him in the first place.
“Your dad said to give you this.” She pulls a sealed envelope from her purse and hands it to me. Nothing is written on the outside. I’m almost afraid to open it. “And he said if you would rather not attend the gala, he understands.”
I let out a short laugh-cry. The stupid gala. I have a gown hanging in my mom’s closet at home that we spent weeks picking out.
“Is it poor taste to want to go only to wear that dress?” I half-joke.
My mom levels me with a serious gaze.
