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“She’s my mother,” he said, as if that explained anything.
“Fredrick, that is not a reason,” Judith said.
“No, it’s an excuse,” I said.
His eyes flicked to me, then to Judith, then back to nothing. I wanted to scream again. If he’d tried this passive-aggressive shit on solid ground instead of in the car I might have pushed him, forced him to look at me. I was so angry with him. The rage that was always inside me was like lava waiting to erupt and spill all over something, because I couldn’t be this angry with my father and still be a good person, a good kid, a good girl, well, fuck that shit. He’d made the mess, and he didn’t get a pass this time, because it was his fault. I couldn’t even blame Judith on this one, and God knows I’d spent most of my childhood blaming her for anything I could. The thought came that maybe I’d blamed her far more than she deserved because I couldn’t hate my father as much as I let myself hate her. I pushed the thought away because I couldn’t deal with the insight right now. One emotional crisis at a time.
Nicky was pretending he was deaf like a good bodyguard, though he was so much more than that to me. Either Dad agreed he was family, or we were both taking the only chance we might have tonight to talk without Grandmother Blake with us.
“She’s my mother, Anita…”
“And I’m your daughter, so what?”
He looked at me then. “She’s not well, Anita.”
“If you mean she’s crazy, then she’s always been crazy, Dad.”
His blue eyes darkened, which meant he was finally getting angry. Great, and I meant that. I wanted to fight with him about this. “She is not insane, Anita.”
“Well…” Judith started to say, but he turned that gaze on her, and she stopped talking, seeing the anger. It was her turn to stare outthe window and stay out of things as far as sitting in the middle of it would allow. Welcome to family life.
He looked back at me. “She is not well, and if she has never been well, then it was…quieter than this.”
“Quieter? Quieter? Really? What you mean is she lost her victim of choice when I left the family and without a specific target she’s spreading it around, or did she choose a new preferential victim?”
His eyes were still angry, but his voice didn’t show it as he said, “I don’t know the term ‘preferential victim.’ ”
“Try ‘preferential abuser,’ have you heard that one?”
“What are you saying, Anita?” he asked.
“She told me I was ugly, clumsy, stupid, and you let her babysit me for years. After Mom died it just got worse. I was with someone who told me I was worthless, and she kept telling me all that anytime we were alone together, and worse.”
He looked at me now, and there was sorrow in his eyes, that old pain of my mother’s loss that had stopped me from pushing issues for so long. I wanted my dad happy, not sad, but fuck that. I wasn’t a child anymore and neither was he—two adults finally dealing with so many things.
“I am sorrier than I have words to say, Anita, for what she did to you when you were a child. I am even sorrier that I didn’t believe you when you tried to tell me what she was doing.”
“ ‘Sorry’ doesn’t fix it, Dad.”
“I am ashamed that I didn’t believe you, and more ashamed that I kept sending you back to her day after day, night after night if I had an emergency.”
I stared at him then, ashamed. Ashamed that he was ashamed? How did I feel about that? I didn’t even know. It was like I’d hit an empty spot, a great black silence that just floated between us because I had no box to put it in or react to.
“I don’t know what to say to that,” I said at last.
“I do,” Nicky said softly.
I wasn’t sure that Dad or Judith heard him, but I turned in my seat so I could see the side of his face. “What would you say?” I asked.
“That if someone says they’re sorry, but keeps repeating the behavior, they aren’t really sorry.”
“He has no stake in this fight,” my dad said.
“Fuck that, Dad.”
“Anita, language,” Judith said.
I laughed, but it sounded bitter even to me. “Really, the fact that I said ‘fuck’ is more shocking than that you brought my abuser to visit without warning me.”
