My dad has split my mother in half. She’s two different people now: Outside Mom and Inside Mom. Outside Mom wears her bright lipsticks and covers her bruises with paint the color of a happy woman. Outside Mom tells strangers in the grocery store that her anniversary is coming up: twenty-five years, and she smiles with a closed mouth like she’s hiding the secrets to a happy marriage behind her lips. Outside Mom joined a book club with Mrs. Wilkerson, who lives three doors down. She comes home smelling like white wine. Inside Mom is a deflated balloon. Inside Mom has stopped yelling or arguing or caring about anything. She wanders around the house, not looking at me.
This morning, I’m on the beach early. I’m alone with the water, which is exactly how I like it. I pop my earbuds in and turn the volume on my iPhone as loud as I can take it. I don’t recognize the band or the song, but I don’t need to. What I need is noise, a noise other than my father screaming at my mother, or the sound of something breaking. I break into a run, following the silver line at the water’s edge. The sun worms its way higher in the sky. It’s not long before my body is humming.
It’s not just anger at my dad that’s built up in me, if I’m honest. It’s fear. I’ve always believed that the Real Me and the Real Him were the same. We were beach rats, with sand and salt in our veins. We didn’t care about college or better lives or Other People the way my mom did. We cared about real things: varnish and sawdust and a hard day’s work.
Maybe we are the same, I think as I push harder, sweat stinging my eyes. It’s humid, but there’s a breeze, and I lift my face toward the sky. I’ll bet I’m just as angry as he is. I destroyed his boat in the workshop a few months ago. What if I have it in me to hurt people, too? It would make sense. I’m partly him. We have the same hair and eyes. I’m not exactly sure how it works, science-wise, but maybe we have the same anger, coded in our DNA. If that’s true, I won’t ever escape it. No matter how fast I run.
When I get home, I stand at the back door, my ear pressed against it. Sweat slides into my eyes and down my temples and pools in my ears. My heart is still pounding in my chest.
“He’s not here,” Mom calls from the breakfast room.
“Good.” I find her sitting at the kitchen table, sipping tea that smells too strong. She’s still in her bathrobe, even though it’s almost eleven. Her hair is messy and she’s wearing the shadow of yesterday’s makeup. In front of her are all these photographs, hard copies. I’m small in all of them. Dad and me in the ocean. Dad and me in the workshop. Dad and me. It occurs to me that Mom has lived her whole life watching us. Apart from us.
“Where is he?” I pull out the chair next to hers and relax into it. I take my first real breath. Minutes without my father are like deep breaths of ocean air.
“I don’t know where he went. I woke up, and . . .” Her voice trails off. She sips her tea.
“Hey.” I rest one of my hands on top of one of her hands. It isn’t something we do, really, but suddenly I want to slide my arms around her and hug her tightly enough that she becomes a whole person again.
She snaps when I touch her. “What, Wil?”
“Nothing, Mom.” I make my voice like air. “Nothing. I’m sorry.” I want to ask her the same question I asked her right after it happened the first time, the question she never answered. Do you think I’m like him? Do you think we’re the same? I don’t need to ask. She answers me every time she jumps at the sound of my voice.
“I’m sorry, hon. I’m just—I don’t know what I am anymore.” She releases a sigh that’s been building up for years. Her voice is watery.
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.” She touches the pictures longingly; traces my little boy face with her fingers.
“Mom. You’re . . . you’re my mom,” I say earnestly, but it comes out sounding thin.
“Did I ever tell you I thought about college and dental school?” She smiles a little, and the skin around her eyes crinkles like tissue paper.
“What, like, you were gonna be a dentist?” I say, surprised.
For the first time in weeks, she’s looking directly at me. “I don’t know. Maybe it was stupid.” Her face goes slack again.
“No. Mom. No. That’s what you wanted to do?” I ask.
“I thought about it. My boss said he thought I was smart enough.” The storm clouds in her eyes vanish. “It was nice. To hear that somebody smart thinks you’re smart, too.”
“Yeah. Sure.” Suddenly, I wish my dad had said those words to her. Maybe everything in the universe would be different if he had. “I think you’re smart, Mom. I do.”
But my words are feathery, and they don’t land.
“But college is expensive, and we were getting by okay, and time just passed faster than I thought it would.” Her face says My whole life would have been different.
I want to tell her how sorry I am.
“I don’t want you to feel like . . .” I’m digging for the words, stumbling over them, not saying anything right. “I want you to be happy.”
“Do you know what I want for you, Wil?” She clenches my hands so tightly, I wince. “Ten years from now, twenty or thirty years from now, I hope you want exactly the kind of life that you want right now.” Her voice calcifies. “Look at me.”
Her eyes are deep, clear pools, and I can see straight down to the sandy bottom.
“But if there ever comes a time that you need a different kind of life, I want you to be able to go after it. I don’t want anything to get in your way. I will die before I let anything get in your way, do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” I rasp.
I hadn’t realized. I thought she wanted me to go to college for appearance’s sake. I thought it was about telling Mrs. Wilkerson where I’d gotten in. Or about being Just As Good As everyone else’s sons.
“Good.”
There’s a force in her that’s stronger than anything I’ve ever felt before. Stronger than gravity or storm winds. Even in her screaming moments, in her thick, sharp, silences, she’s never felt this way to me. I wonder who my mother really is. I wonder if I have never seen her before today.
We both jump when the kitchen door slams. Mom clears her throat and I can tell: we feel the same way.
“That you, Wilson?” she says, not loud enough for him to hear. She’s disappeared again. I hate him for doing this to her.
“Dad,” I say louder. “Is. That. You?”
“Who the hell else would it be?” His voice is runny as he stumbles into the kitchen. “You ladies having tea?” He laughs, like he thinks it’s the most hilarious thing anyone has ever said.
“I came back to work on the skiff.” My hand finds its way to my mother’s arm. “Where were you?”
“None of your damn business.” He wipes his meaty mouth with the back of his hand. “Yours, either,” he tosses at my mother. His giant ogre body throws a shadow over the table. He doesn’t notice the photographs.
“She didn’t ask,” I mutter. “Besides, I think it’s pretty obvious where you’ve been.”
“Wil,” Mom murmurs. “Don’t be stupid.”
“What?” Dad takes a step toward us, then a step back. “What did you say to me?” If he could focus, he’d be glaring at me. But his head is bobbing like a buoy on rough waters.
“Nothing.” I stare directly at him. He doesn’t scare me. I won’t let him.
“Nothing,” he spits back. “That’s . . . right, nothing.”
My stomach surges. I swallow bile. The sight of him is literally making me sick.