“And you want to tell me now?” Felix had never believed in spousal sharing. Marriage was more delicate than a hothouse flower. It should exist under a dome of glass, protected from the elements, not exposed to the storms of truth: My father whipped me; I’m about to lose my job.
Ella nodded but didn’t turn. “The conversation last night, the realization that I can’t hide from the future, that Harry will leave home and I won’t be there to keep him safe. I’m not ready to let him go, Felix, to let the world dig its claws in. Adults get bullied, too, you know.”
“Ella, keeping him close isn’t the answer, either. It still singles him out as different. We have to let him do this.”
“I know. He has to move forward and so do we—so do I.” She paused. “I have to move through the rest of my life with no regrets.”
“You have regrets?” He forced himself to swallow. She’d had an affair; she wanted to leave him; she didn’t love him. Had she ever? He’d never deserved her, never.
“You’ve always had such faith in me, Felix. But it’s a burden I can’t carry anymore.”
Felix leaned over the back of the sofa and dug his fingers into the padding. Whatever she confessed, he mustn’t lose his temper; he must keep her calm. “Did—did you have an affair?”
“No, no! Goodness, no.” She swung round and grabbed his arm. “But you think I’m such a good mother. And I’m not. I haven’t been.”
“Codswallop!”
“Please just listen.” She guided him round the end of the sofa, but the moment he sat, she curled away from him, resting her head on the sofa arm.
“When Harry was little, I used to pray for him to sleep all the time, because the moment he woke up, I was in hell. He had no fear. He trusted everyone and he never stayed still. He was an uncoordinated dynamo—a wrecking ball. Other parents at birthday parties muttered about bad mothers unable to handle their kids. Strangers in supermarkets said the same thing. And during the rage attacks there were days”—she lowered her voice—“when I struggled to love him.”
Felix kept still.
“I used to dream about having ten minutes to myself, ten minutes without being dragged into some crisis: ‘Mrs. Fitzwilliam, your son kicked little Johnny.’ And then we hit middle school, and I had a different set of worries. Would academic pressure trigger new tics? How would he cope with standardized tests? Could I get him extra time? Throughout school, I had to supervise, oversee, question. Did the school have enough backup meds; was the new teacher giving him the breaks he needed; was he getting enough sleep to manage his stress? Had someone made fun of his tics?”
Felix reached for her cold bare feet. He eased them onto his lap and started massaging warmth back into them.
“And thanks to you,” he said, “our messy, unfocused son has a level of self-confidence I could never have imagined at his age. He’s in love, he has devoted friends, and he’s trying to take control of his future, all because you taught him to believe in himself. You laid the foundation for the young man who’s developing before our eyes. He’s going to be fine.” Provided he takes his afternoon Ritalin pills. “You’ve given him the tools he needs to be Harry. Now you have to let him find his own way.”
“There’s more.” Ella raised her head and glanced to the hallway, where a single night-light burned outside Harry’s closed bedroom door. “During the rage attacks, I felt dead inside. I wasn’t sure I could be his mother. I wasn’t sure I could be anyone’s mother.” She lowered her voice. “I looked into a residential home.”
“You”—stay calm, Felix—“considered sending our son away?”
Ella yanked her feet from his lap and sat up. “I have no excuse. Nothing I did worked, and I thought that maybe all those people who’d judged and criticized had been right—that I was the problem, that if he got away from me, he might have a chance. For so many years, I wanted to be a mom—and then I was filled with nothing but failure and doubt. What kind of a monster considers sending her child away?”