“Where is this coming from? That was over a year ago!”
“So what?! So what, Mom?! And you never answered my question. Was there ever a time in your pitiful marriage that you actually liked my father?”
Mom ripped off her apron. “I don’t have to answer that! You don’t get to ask me questions like that! You have no idea—NO IDEA—the love I had for your father!”
“Really? Because as far as I’m concerned, I’m the only one who truly loved him! I’m the only one who accepted him for who he was: messed up and sloppy and fucking human! We shared the secrets. We shared the jokes. We shared the love because you couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. You were too busy hating his guts!”
My reflexes were no match for the swiftness of my mother’s hand. She whipped it out and smacked me so hard that I stumbled backward. And then she did it again. And again.
“Never talk to me like that again!” she roared.
I shut my eyes tightly, willing the tears to recede. They squeezed between my eyelids instead, and I hated myself that she elicited the reaction. I never wanted to shed tears for my mother ever again. I hated her.
“I hate you,” I whispered, rubbing my tender jaw.
Mom gasped, and then it caught in her throat. I knew the tears would come next.
“You hated us,” I went on.
And that’s what I wanted to say all along. It wasn’t just about my father. It was about me, too. Ever since my formal diagnosis. Ever since the first trip to therapy where Mom shifted relentlessly in the passenger seat of our old SUV—embarrassed and irritated that she had another one to deal with. Ever since she held Nicki in her arms for the first time in the hospital, and I knew she didn’t care about me anymore.
Those moments branded my heart, and I just now recognized it. I could cope with my mother when Dad was around. He was the peacemaker. I could crack jokes with him and hide my pain under sarcasm and self-deprecation. But now there was no one to joke with. There was no hiding my fury, my anger at a mother who couldn’t accept me for being like Dad.
“I never hated you,” my mother wept. “How could you say that?”
“I was dreaming it all?” I asked. “I dreamed it when you sent me away from the hospital without letting me hold my sister? I dreamed it when you yelled at me on the sidewalk for counting my steps? I dreamed it when I overheard you ask the doctor if there wasn’t just some pills you could give me so that you could get on with it? Or how long that therapy session would take because you had things to do?” I paused. “I dreamed all that?”
“You were seven,” Mom breathed.
“I remember, Mom. People can remember stuff from when they were seven.”
Mom turned her face and sobbed. I wanted to walk away, but I also wanted to hear her answers—her excuses for why she was such a terrible mother.
She blotted her face with the backs of her hands and walked to the coffee maker. I watched in confusion as she poured the water, scooped the coffee grounds, pulled the sugar from the cupboard. I watched her stare at the pot as it percolated, and I realized I was getting no answers until a cup of coffee was made. I grew impatient.
“I think I’ll just go home,” I said.
“No,” she replied. “Stay.” She pulled two mugs from the cabinet.
“I don’t drink coffee,” I said.
“Tonight you will,” she replied.
I watched her pour the cups, dress the coffee, and take them to the kitchen table. I followed reluctantly. I didn’t like the turn of events and raged inside that she took control of the conversation with a coffee pot. I liked it better a few minutes ago when I controlled it—when I had her flustered and on edge and angry.
I slipped into a chair and waited. Mom sipped her steaming brew, then placed the mug on the table.
“I discovered his tics about eight months into our relationship,” she began. “At first I thought he was just habitually late to everything.” She paused and smirked. “We were always late to the movies. Always.”
I tapped my fingers on the tabletop. She noticed and said nothing.
“I learned a few months later about the neighborhood loops. You know what I’m talking about?”
I nodded. I could see Dad even now, circling the neighborhood at exactly fifteen miles per hour.
“I . . . I was going to break it off,” Mom continued. “I didn’t know much about the condition, but what I witnessed with him was enough to aggravate the shit out of me. And I was afraid of more. I thought perhaps I’d just skimmed the surface of his tics. Of course, I learned years later that I had. There were a slew of them, and it was hard to cope. They didn’t know back then the things they know now. It was frustrating when there were so few answers.”
“So why didn’t you?” I asked. “Why didn’t you leave him?”
A sad smile played on my mother’s lips. “I found out I was pregnant with you,” she said softly.
Now it was my turn to gasp.
“What?” I breathed.
“I was pregnant with you,” she repeated.
I checked the math in my head. It didn’t compute. Didn’t make sense. I was born in July of ‘82.
“You were married a year before I was born. March of ‘81,” I said.
Mom shook her head. “Not exactly.”
“What do you mean, ‘not exactly?’ What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“We . . . your father and I married in March of ‘82. We just decided to tell you ‘81 because, you know.” She took another sip of her coffee. “The stigma.”
“The stigma?”
“My parents,” she said quietly, “my parents were furious. Good ol’ Southern Baptists and all.” She sighed and looked at my mug. “You haven’t had any.”
I lifted the cup to my lips automatically and drank. I tasted nothing. My sole focus was on this new revelation—the revelation that my perfect mother who needed a perfect second daughter in place of her imperfect one screwed her boyfriend and got pregnant, had a shotgun wedding, then lied about it for thirty years! I’d no idea I was smiling brightly until Mom pointed it out.
“I just . . . I can’t even . . . you of all people . . .”