Then I understood. “You’ve been seeing a therapist.”
“I have. Since last spring. Sally’s idea. She thought I needed to look at some of the stuff I’ve been very deliberately not looking at, for a very long time. A tendency she shares, by the way. Sally is much more like me than you or the boys, I’m sorry to say. She spent years determined not to know that she was gay, and then more years determined not to accept it. I think Paula’s the first person she’s really been able to love. I don’t know how much of that I’m responsible for. I hope not all of it.”
“Oh, I’m sure not,” I said. I was really looking at Johanna now. This was a different Johanna.
“I started with someone in Brooklyn, last April, but I just hated it. I would come home afterward and get into bed for hours. But I decided to try again when I got to the island in June. I found a wonderful woman out near Menemsha. So yes. A bit overdue, I would say, but yes.”
I wasn’t sure what form of acknowledgment was appropriate for this kind of revelation. Finally, I settled on: “Good for you.”
“Yes. Good for me. Hopefully not too late for me to enjoy my life and my children.”
“Oh no, I don’t think so!” I paused. “Haven’t you?”
“What?”
“Enjoyed your life,” I said. “And your children.”
“Well, I certainly intended to. I certainly worked hard at it. Things took an unexpected turn, and you know, after that I didn’t think too much about enjoyment.”
“You’re referring to the fact that Dad’s plane crashed into a building?”
“Well, no,” Joanna said. “If I’m being completely honest, I’m referring to the fact that he got on that plane in the first place. The night before he left, he told me he was ending our marriage. The kids were all in pieces. We’d just had a terrible scene down on the beach. Maybe Sally or one of the boys has filled you in on that. Or Rochelle, for that matter. I don’t think any of them really spoke for years afterward, beyond the absolutely necessary. You know what?” she said, suddenly. “I’m going to get rid of these chairs. I hate these chairs. They are so uncomfortable. I want to sit out here and read and look at the beach, and I want nice chairs to sit in.”
I couldn’t think what to say. I certainly agreed about the chairs.
“I know I’m supposed to tell you that he wasn’t leaving you, he was leaving me, but in this case I don’t think that’s actually true. He was leaving both of us. He’d have been leaving all of us if your sister and brothers weren’t technically already gone. The truth is he hadn’t wanted another child. Or at least, another child with me. I’m not sure he’d wanted any children with me. I basically told him, with the older ones: We’re doing this, and he went along. And then with you I did the same thing again. I’d just found out about Stella. I’d just found out they had a child together. I might not have been in my right mind at that particular moment. I’m sorry, I know that’s hardly going to make you feel better about the circumstance of your birth.”
“Oh, Mom,” I managed to say.
“Well, here’s the thing. I don’t think your father was a bad guy. I think, in his own mind, he wasn’t programmed for happiness, so he didn’t look for it and he didn’t expect it. And then he suddenly was happy, and when that happened it had absolutely nothing to do with me or any of our children. Well,” she shook her head, “there’s a revelation to take the wind out of your sails.”
It had taken something to get this said, I realized. A massive something. I tried to feel resentful on my own behalf, that my father hadn’t wanted either to have me or to stay with me, but I finally just couldn’t. This wasn’t new information, what my mother had just said. Not really. But getting it into words and out into the world—that was new.
“We know about the accident,” I told her, and she said nothing. In fact, she barely moved. “We know about Stella being there, in the car with him. I can understand why he never told Sally and the boys, but I can’t understand why you didn’t tell them. Or me. It might have helped us understand, you know, who he was and why he made the choices he made. I feel as if my first clear picture of him was after I found out. He must have been in so much pain, and felt so guilty.”
“I hope you’re not implying I was unsympathetic to that,” Johanna said sharply.
“No,” I said, slightly taken aback. “I don’t think that at all.”
“Because I spent years of my life obsessing about your father’s pain and his guilt, and everything I was powerless to alleviate for him.”
“Okay,” I said, carefully.
“And I might not have done that if I’d known about Stella. Everything about Stella. I had no idea. I just thought she was some struggling filmmaker who’d gotten her hooks into him, and destroyed our family. I even talked to our attorney about protecting us, financially, but he advised me not to do anything. After your father died, of course, we had to make a settlement with her, but now I can see how much better it would have been if I’d known from the beginning who she was in his life and what she meant, but he only told me that last night, before he died.” She shook her head. “He should have told me everything when he met her again. Certainly before we brought you into it.”
“What?” I said, catching up.
“But then you wouldn’t have been born. So I can’t be sorry, because we had you. And I loved you. I’m sorry you never got the functioning, happy family. You should have had that. To be honest, I’m not sure the others got it either, and they deserved it just as much. And I’m also sorry you ever felt you were born too late, but I think you were wrong about that. I think you were born at the exact right time, and I have a feeling your sister and brothers would agree. You’re not some random person we were all saddled with, you know. You were their missing piece, and they owe you a lot. All of them. All of us.”
I drank the rest of my tea. I could not think of one more thing I didn’t know that I wanted to know. That was an unprecedented and extraordinary feeling.
“Thanks,” I finally said.
“You’re welcome,” my mother said. Then, a moment later, she said: “Something else I want to get off my chest.”
Well shit, I thought. So close. I had no idea what might be coming now.
“I threw my wedding dress away. I’ve been thinking about it ever since Rochelle told me she was wearing her mother’s dress. I got rid of a lot of things like that. Photographs, some of your father’s belongings. I did get very angry at one point, and also, that was around the same time I was probably thinking Sally would never need a wedding dress of any kind.”
I smiled with relief. “Actually, I think you might get the whole shooting match with Sally. Wedding, babies, everything. But I don’t see her in a wedding dress, you’re right.”
“I should have been thinking about you, though. I apologize. Actually, why don’t you do me a favor and take a single apology for everything at once, spare me having to give you an itemized list. I stipulate to everything.”
I shook my head. “I’ve hardly led a deprived life, Mom.”
“In most ways, no. But I could have done better. And not just with you. Which is ironic, since making my family happy is pretty much all I’ve thought about for the past four decades. There’s a lesson there, probably.”
“Is there? What is it? Secure your own oxygen mask first?”
Johanna considered. “Maybe. Yes.” She picked up her proto-sweater again and looked at it. Then she put it to the side.
“I think we should stay in tonight,” she said. “Plenty of excitement when people start arriving the next couple days. Let’s just take it easy.”
I nodded. “Let’s. Good.”