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That did it. “You were aterriblemother!” Rhiannon exploded.
Joanna lowered her eyes, but Rhiannon didn’t feel bad. She absolutely wasn’t going to apologize.
“I’m sorry, but you can’t ask this of me,” Rhiannon went on.
Joanna’s chin wobbled. “I can’t leave Johnny. He got me off drugs.”
Unceremoniously, here was the elephant, making his presence known. Rhiannon swallowed hard. “And do you think if you left him, you’d feel the urge to go back to…drugs?”
“A baby might trigger me. It’s fuckinghard,hon.”
Rhiannon nearly swallowed her tongue. The rage she’d been trying to suppress bubbled to the surface. “You don’t think Iknowthat?”
Her mother peeked up at her through a curtain of hair. “Ree…”
“I was seven when you disappeared. You just…walked out.”
Her mother blew out a breath and started to stand. “I didn’t come in here to fight.”
“Then don’t put me in this position,” Rhiannon growled. She stood, too. “You could have tried a little harder for your children. You could be trying a little harder now, with the one who isn’t born yet.”
Joanna’s gaze narrowed.
“Look, I get that addiction is addiction. But…but maybe you shouldn’t have gotten pregnant in the first place.” It hurt, saying this, though it was true. With this baby…or with Rhiannon herself.
But that didn’t feel like it stung enough. So then she said the other thing, the worst thing. “Do you know what I used to tell people when they asked why we weren’t in touch? People who didn’t know me as a kid, I mean. I used to tell them you were Jackie Cook. The woman who drove the kids off the bridge. That you tried to kill me.”
Joanna’s lips parted.
Rhiannon held up her hand. “My whole life, I never wanted kids—because of you. I was afraid that what happened to you would happen to me. But now I realize it probably won’t. I’m better than you. I’d never do that to a child.” She felt Joanna go still beside her. Maybe hopeful. “But I’m not taking your baby. And after tonight, I don’t want you to ever contact me again.”
Joanna still didn’t speak as Rhiannon stood, shaking. There was a dust ball in the corner that Rhiannon had neglected to sweep in the deep clean she’d done since moving in. She stared at it then, thinking about how dust was actually a mingling of human hair and cells and dirt.
Finally, her mother breathed in. “I knew, actually.”
Rhiannon turned. “Sorry?”
“I knew that’s how you described me. Carey told me. Said it just like that, actually, same way you did.”
It was the first time Joanna had mentioned Carey’s name sinceshe’d come. But nothing she’d said made sense. “Carey said he talked to you.”
“It was only once.”
The dim shadows danced over her mother’s features, sharpening the lines in her face. She looked so small, almost shrunken. Rhiannon didn’t want to feel sorry for her. She didn’t want to feel anything regarding her mother anymore. Now she felt saddled with a bunch of new emotions, including exasperation. “If you knew that, why did you still ask for my help?”
Joanna raised a shoulder but didn’t answer. Instead, she slipped out of the room and closed the door.
The next morning, before Rhiannon left, she assembled a Pack ’n Play she found in a box in the room where she was sleeping. She opened the diapers and sorted them by size. She arranged a few stuffed animals she’d bought at Target on the windowsill.
She left before her mother woke. She supposed she’d go back to LA, but she still felt so directionless. Lenna wanted nothing to do with her anymore. And neither did her mother, not really.
In the driver’s seat, her chin started to wobble. What did she expect? Of course Joanna wanted something takenoffher hands instead of wanting Rhiannon to be part of her life. And she’d brought Rhiannon here with the full knowledge of what Rhiannon thought of her! Joanna had to be scraping the bottom of the barrel, out of other options. This visit couldn’t actually be because Rhiannon was her daughter, and Joanna wanted to finally have a relationship with her—or, God forbid, she actuallywaslooking out for the welfare of her unborn child.
When she was at the end of the block, her phone rang. It washer mother. Rhiannon considered not answering, but something made her pick up the phone.
“My water broke,” Joanna said, frantic.
Joanna’s labor was swift; she barely made it to the hospital in time. The moment the baby arrived in the world, first pale and gasping and then screaming his head off, Rhiannon turned away. Her half brother. The child of some dude that smelled like cigarettes. And yet the baby was so small and helpless, his arms and legs splayed out, his little mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.
