Chapter 104
I’ M NOT SURE why I needed to tell them about Maria now, but I wanted the kids to have some more of the truth about her. Maybe I wanted them to have the closure that I couldn’t get myself. I had never lied about Maria to the kids, but I had held back, and
no, I had lied about one thing. I’d told Damon and Jannie that I wasn’t with Maria when she was shot, but that I got to St. Anthony’s before she died, and we’d had a few last words. The reason was that I didn’t want to have to tell them details that I could never get out of my own head: the sound of the gunshots that felled Maria; the sharp intake of her breath the instant she was hit; the way she slid from my arms to the sidewalk. Then the unforgettable sight of blood pouring from Maria’s chest, and my realization that the wounds were fatal. I still could remember it with nightmare clarity more than ten years later.
“I’ve been thinking about your mom lately,” I said that night on the porch. “I’ve been thinking about her a lot. You guys probably know that already.”
The kids were gathered around close, suspecting this wasn’t one of our usual talks. “She was a special person in so many ways. So many ways, Damon and Jannie. Her eyes were alive and always honest. She was a listener. And that’s usually a sign of a good person. I think it is anyway. She loved to smile and to make other people smile if she possibly could. She used to say, ‘Here’s a cup of sadness, and here’s a cup of joy, which do you choose?’ She almost always chose the cup of joy.”
“Almost always?” asked Jannie.
“Almost always. Think about it, Janelle. You’re smart. She chose me, didn’t she? All the cute boys she could have had, she chose this puss, this dour personality.”
Janelle and Damon smiled; then Damon said, “This is because the one who killed her is back? Why we’re talking about our mother now?”
“That’s part of it, Day. But lately I realized I had unfinished business with her. And with the two of you. That’s why we’re talking, okay?”
Damon and Janelle listened in silence, and I talked for a long while. Eventually, I choked up. I think it was the first time I’d let them see me cry about Maria. “I loved her so much, loved your mother like she was a physical part of me. I still do, I guess. Still do, I know.”
“Because of us?” Damon asked. “It’s partly our fault, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean, sweetheart? I’m not sure that I follow you,” I said to Damon.
“We remind you of her, don’t we? We remind you of Mom every day; every morning when you see us, you remember that she’s not here. Isn’t that right?”
I shook my head. “Maybe there’s some little bit of truth in that. But you remind me in a good way, the best way. Trust me on that. It’s all good.”
They waited for me to talk some more, and they didn’t take their eyes off me, as if I might suddenly run away on them.
“Lots of changes are happening in our lives,” I said. “We have Ali here now. Nana’s getting older. I’m seeing patients again.”
“You like it?” Damon asked. “Being a psychologist?”
“I do. So far.”
“So far. That’s so you, Daddy,” said Jannie.
I snorted out a laugh, but I didn’t go fishing for a compliment about what Jannie had said. Not that I was completely averse to compliments, but there was a time for everything, and this wasn’t it. I remember that when I’d read Bill Clinton’s autobiography, I couldn’t help thinking that when he was confessing to the hurt he’d caused his wife and daughter, he couldn’t seem to resist looking for forgiveness too, and even hugs from the reader. He just couldn’t resist ? maybe because his need for love is so great. And maybe that’s where his empathy and compassion come from.
Then I finally did the hardest thing ? I told Jannie and Damon what had happened to Maria. I told my children the truth as I knew it. I shared most of the details of Maria’s death, her murder, and I told them that I had seen it happen, been with her when she died, felt her last breath on this earth, heard her last words.
When I was done, when I couldn’t talk anymore, Jannie whispered, “Watch the river, how it flows, Daddy. The river is truth.”
That had been my mantra for the kids when they were little and Maria wasn’t around. I’d walk them by the Anacostia River or the Potomac and make them look at it, the water, and say, “Watch the river
the river is truth.”
Or at least as close as we’ll ever get to it.