“Yeah, I guess it is. They’re blue and big and you have these incredible long eyelashes that curl up toward the sky. I put on mascara every day trying to get the look you have naturally with those eyelashes.”
She latches an elbow around the side of the swing and touches her beautiful, useless eyes. “Keep going.”
“Your cheekbones are high, and you have a beauty mark low on your right cheek like a famous model. You can probably feel it.” She moves a fingertip down to the spot. “Your lips are tiny and defined. Your hair is perfectly straight and jet-black.”
“The only color I know.” Her eyes tear.
“I’m sorry,” I soothe. “Please don’t be upset.”
“No. It’s the opposite. I’m excited. You’ve given me a secret mirror.”
Kathleen hears the cars arriving before I do. She wipes her eyes and, as I lead her up the hill, hugs me close. The kind of hug that makes you know you’re necessary. “I’ll always remember you,” she whispers.
Being needed instead of needing is a new experience. I like it. A chill runs through me without the temperature changing. I swear it’s my mom. This sounds crazy, but the sensation has her personality tied to it.
*
I go straight from camp to Dr. Jahns. I’m actually looking forward to his opinion on what to do about John, although I try not to show it.
As soon as I sit he digs in, knowing I’m not a fan of small talk. “So how was the movie?”
From his perspective, John is a dream come true. Who better than a high-school sweetheart to wash away a young girl’s grief?
“Fine,” I say. “I had to sort of dumb myself down to laugh at the right times, but it was good to get out.”
“What do you mean ‘dumb yourself down’?” He loves questions that include direct quotes. It drives me crazy.
“I don’t know, it’s hard to see the humor in anything.”
He rubs the scruff on his chin. “I know all about human suffering, but I can’t imagine a world without humor. It’s one of the most important tools we have.”
I arch my eyebrows. “If you’re right, I’m screwed. Nothing is funny to me anymore.”
It’s the first time I hear his laugh. He sounds feminine—I can see why he avoids it. “That’s your grief talking. Someday you’ll remember this conversation and know I’m right.”
“I’m glad you’re so confident today, because I have an ethical question for you.” He straightens his posture, anticipating a breakthrough. “I don’t love John,” I say. “There’s no version of my life where we stay together past August. So is it bad to, like, string him along for company until I don’t need him anymore?” Paige thinks it’s criminal, but she’s biased since John plays soccer with her boys.
Dr. Jahns returns to a slouch. “It’s selfish, but it’s okay to be selfish sometimes, and, when you leave, I get the impression John will be fine.”
Oh goody. Permission granted. I don’t miss John, but I’m starting to miss sex.
Brady
I read the journal entry again before my run. It kept me up last night. I don’t know what the hell to do with it.
July 23, 2013
Brady’s mother has been gone two years and I only just got around to sifting through her boxes. There’s no excuse—she certainly wasn’t a pack rat. Aside from the clothes, furniture, and books we gave to charity, movers fit her keepsakes into three cardboard boxes. After the funeral I tucked them on a shelf in the garage, overlooking their contents completely. But I was drawn to them today as I put out the trash. Next thing I knew I was elbow-deep in love letters from a man named Phillip Goldfarb, all dated before Bethany would’ve met Brady’s dad. Love letters … stashed away by the least sentimental woman on the planet.
Phil was a soldier who had two children Bethany cared for. There was no mention of a wife or mother, but it was plain that Phil thought of Bethany as more than the kids’ caretaker. He described her as “doting,” “stunning,” and “imaginative.”
Bethany was a rigid, soap-in-your-mouth, entertain-yourself breed of mom to Brady. If they weren’t among her things and addressed Dear Bethany (the same mother-in-law who told me Eve was a homely newborn), I wouldn’t have believed it. The last letter was from December of 1959 and had an obituary paper-clipped to it. Phil died in Vietnam. He was survived by two children, Marie and Paul. The article made no mention of their mother. I wonder what happened to them.
My first instinct was to call Brady, but then I realized telling him would be a mistake. He won’t notice if the boxes disappear and he’d likely overanalyze the letters. The woman Phil loved did not map to the mother he knew.
Bethany never said a word about what life was like before she married, but it’s not as if I asked. I took her as someone who trudged through each day without looking for enjoyment. I figured she got pretty much what she put in. The idea that she was once passionate but was destroyed by grief is tragic.
I take off at a steady pace, questioning how well I’ve known any of the women in my life. Left. Right. Left. My feet sync with my breath. I’ve stopped taking music. Running has become my daily sounding board, a role Maddy once filled.
My parents married later than most in their day. I was an accident. Mom was forty-six when I was born and often reminded me she was too old and tired for any crap. She was stunning in her prime, but I can’t think of a single memory where she was doting or imaginative. There aren’t any, I’m sure. The day I got accepted to Harvard she said, “Good luck finding a way to pay for it.” Maddy and I often joked that we learned what not to do from our families, but we’d have to figure out the rest on our own.
Everything about my childhood was aloof—no one was drunk all day, but no one tucked me in at night either. I know only the most basic facts about my mother. She deferred to God, even when parenting. She never explained the why of anything—whether something was unsafe or impolite or cruel—she just hoped I inherited her fear of the Lord. I remember her grabbing me by the arm on prom night and saying, “God will not forgive you if you get some poor girl pregnant.” As if prom was the only night that was a possibility.
What bothers me now, though, as I ruminate, is that I know all my father’s opinions from politics to the best fertilizer, but only the most rudimentary facts about my mother. She was a good cook; she liked to sew; she never complained. Never complaining, I recently learned, is different from having no complaints. For all the time I spent with her—eighteen years of daily conversations and another twenty in weekly contact—that’s all I can come up with. In the argument over whether knowledge is power or ignorance is bliss, it seems I’ve always come down on the side of ignorance. And when that’s the side you fall on, you don’t realize it until it’s too late. Maddy, Eve, my mother—the carousel of women I’ve disappointed. It’s as if I’m running because they’re chasing me.