Silence. Outside, the snow was still falling, so clean and white, covering everything. “Fine,” she said, but her tone made it clear this was anything but. “If you don’t want to see me, you don’t want to see me. I can’t do anything about that, now can I?”
No, I thought, you can’t. Life would have been so much easier if I could do that, just agree with this statement, plant us both firmly on the same page, and be done with it. But it was never that simple. Instead, there was all this dodging and running, intricate steps and plays required to keep the ball in the air. “Mom,” I said. “Just—”
“Leave you alone,” she finished for me, her voice curt. “Never call, never e-mail, don’t even try to keep in touch with my firstborn child. Is that what you want, Mclean?”
“What I want,” I said slowly, trying to keep my voice level, “is the chance to have my own life.”
“How could you think it’s anything but that? You won’t even share the smallest part of it with me unless it’s under duress.” Now she was actually crying. “All I want is for us to be close, like we used to be. Before your father took you away, before you changed like this.”
“He didn’t take me away.” My voice was rising now. She’d fumbled around, poking and prodding, and now she’d found it, that one button that could not be unpushed. I’d changed? Please. “This was my choice. You made choices, too. Remember?”
The words were out before I could stop them, and I felt their weight both as they left me, and when they hit her ears. It had been a long, long time since we’d talked about the affair and the divorce, way back to the days of What Happens in a Marriage, that brick wall that stopped any further discussion. Now, though, I’d lobbed a grenade right over it, and all I could do was brace for the fallout.
For a long while—or what felt like a long while—she was quiet. Then, finally, “Sooner or later, Mclean, you’re going to have to stop blaming me for everything.”
This was the moment. Retreat and apologize, or push forward to where there was no way to return. I was tired, and I didn’t have another name or girl to hide behind here. Which is probably why it was Mclean’s voice that said, “You’re right. But I can blame you for the divorce and for the way things are between us now. You did this. At least own it.”
I felt her suck in a breath, like I’d punched her. Which, in a way, I had. All this forced niceness, dancing around a truth: now I’d broken the rules, that third wall, and let everything ugly out into the open. I’d thought about this moment for almost three years, but now that it was here, it just made me sad. Even before I heard the click of her hanging up in my ear.
I shut my phone, stuffed it in my pocket, then grabbed my backpack. Four hours away, my mother was crumbling and it was all my doing. The least I could have felt was a moment of exhilaration. But instead it was something more like fear that washed over me as I started down our walk, pulling my coat tightly around me.
Outside, the air was cold and crisp, the snow coming down hard. I turned the opposite way from the bus stop and started walking toward town, the snow making everything feel muffled and quiet around me. I walked and walked; by the time I realized how far I’d gone, there were only a couple of storefronts left before the street turned residential again. I had to turn around, find a bus stop, get to school. First, though, I needed to warm up. So I walked up to the closest place with an OPEN sign, a bakery with a picture of a muffin in the window, and went inside.
“Welcome to Frazier Bakery!” a cheerful voice called out the second I crossed the threshold. I looked over to see two people behind the counter, bustling around, while a few people waited in line. Clearly, this was one of those chain places that was supposed to look like a mom-and-pop joint: decorated to look small and homey, mandatory personal greeting, a crackling (fake) fireplace on one wall. I got in line, grabbing a couple of napkins to wipe my nose.
I was so tired from the walk, and still reeling from what had happened with my mom, that I just stood there, shuffling forward as needed until suddenly I was face-to-face with a pretty redhead wearing a striped apron and a jaunty paper cap. “Welcome to Frazier Bakery!” she said. “What can we do to make you feel at home today?”
God, I hated all this corporate crap, even before I’d heard my dad rail against it endlessly. I looked up at the menu board, scanning it. Coffee, muffins, breakfast paninis, smoothies, bagels. I looked back at the smoothie options, suddenly remembering something.
“Blueberry Banana Brain Freeze,” I told her.
“Coming right up!”