I hung up and turned my phone off. If we were going to have a relationship, I wasn’t going to let his money put him in a position of power. I needed to know he wasn’t going to treat me badly before I let him into my heart, and I needed him to know he wouldn’t be able to just say sorry and by me a rose if he did betray me. I wasn’t going to end up crying over him for days at a time like my mom did for my father.
I took the rest of the week off and left town. I headed across Texas towards the mountains, into New Mexico, and climbed up to Santa Fe. It was a good ten-hour drive through a lot of bare, scrub-covered fields broken up by small, poor towns that had grown up around enormous grain silos. But it was also beautiful, with mountains in the distance on three sides. I loved driving through the old Santa Fe town where the buildings took on the orange clay, adobe shapes and looked like nothing else in this country.
I reached my destination and parked outside one of those picture-perfect houses and rang the doorbell. Mom answered, her little white west-highland terrier, Jasper, under her arm, and smiled. She looked stunning—still glamorous, but then, she was only in her mid-forties. Her hair was still long and black, like mine, and her figure still trim. Jasper barked excitedly as she invited me in.
We caught up for a little while, then went out for dinner. Mom suggested a drink while we waited. I’d brought the Lagavulin 37 to give to her, and she was mightily impressed—as if I’d really pour either of those bottles down the sink. At least James would be pleased if he knew we’d enjoyed them. Damn, it was smooth.
“Well…” She smiled, enjoying her drink. “Whoever gave you this stuff, if you don’t want him, send him to me!”
“That’s what I needed to talk to you about, Mom,” I said. “I think I might actually want to be with this guy, but I’m scared.” And I told her everything. I’ve always been able to tell her everything. I needed her to tell me what to do.
“So, he has great taste in whisky, exceptional taste in women… What’s there to think about?”
“He’s a motorcycle racer,” I said. Somehow, I’d forgotten to include that point earlier.
Mom took a long breath, mulling over this news. “You know,” she began, pouring herself another three-hundred-dollar glassful, “some of the best years of my life were with a racer.”
“And some of your worst years,” I reminded her.
“I don’t know if that’s true.”
“You don’t remember the years of fighting with Dad?” I asked her. It was a stupid question. Of course she did.
“I remember fighting, sure,” she said, “but I also remember the feeling when he came home. How happy we all were in those weeks between races. I think your mind remembers a lot more fighting than there actually was.”
“But you were always arguing because he was screwing around.”
“No, we weren’t. We argued because I thought he was screwing around. I could get possessive back then. I would have a couple of drinks and start a fight because he wanted to go to races without us as you got older. He swore it was because he didn’t want you there in case he got hurt. I would accuse him of just not wanting us around, cramping his style.” My mom stared at a picture of my dad on the wall, sitting on his race car, smiling, and waving.
“But he was unfaithful, right?” I asked. I’d always assumed I knew what happened with my parents.
“I never had any proof,” she admitted. “He never acted like he was. He never tried to spend any more time away from us than he had to. I spoke to your Uncle Reggie”—he was not my uncle really. Reggie was Dad’s team boss—“years later. I asked him, and he said he never saw your dad with anyone but us.”
“So he really just wanted to keep me from seeing anything bad?” I muttered. I felt crushed. How could I have harbored this resentment against him for so long when all he did was look out for me?
“That’s right, angel.” She smiled at me again. “Remember, racers are just people. People that do an unreal job. They’re not more or less arrogant, immature, or anything else than the rest of the planet. Sure, some are cheating assholes, but some are nice guys. The worst thing about dating a racer is you both know he’s going to get hurt at some point, and no matter what you say, he won’t admit to it.”
“So I’ll never get him to quit racing?” I asked her.
“Not if you want to keep him. He’ll have to quit on his own,” she said. “You might persuade him to quit, but he’ll hate you for it eventually.”
So all this time I’d assumed the worst about people like James based on some misunderstood behavior of my father’s. I felt, simultaneously, like a great weight lifted off me and a terrible hole grew in my chest. I could be free, free to love and enjoy life with James, but it hurt when I thought about the way I must have made him feel. What if I’d driven him away? All my resentment towards him because he was a racer was unfounded, yet I’d been kicking him for it all along.
Later that night, as I lay in bed, it all sank in. I hated myself for misjudging my father. I cursed myself for projecting that onto James, a man I could be in love with. Tears rolled down my face as I tried to get my head around all the choices I’d made in my life, all the people I must have hurt, thanks to these walls I’d kept myself behind.