“As I’m sure you know, my schedule was grueling and exhausting. I ignored the nausea, pushed through the fatigue, and never gained weight. I didn’t find out until it was too late to…well, until it was too late.”
I toss the photo to the ground angrily and cross my arms in front of me. The silence in the room is deafening, and I want to smack her across the face for how little she cared about me from the moment she found out she was pregnant. Something most women would think was a blessing, she thought was a curse and hated the idea of it. Hated me.
“Too late to get rid of the problem, that’s what you meant to say, right?”
She swallows nervously and gives me a terse nod of agreement.
“Your father was over the moon with happiness when I told him. He always wanted a family and was finally getting what he wanted. He had no idea that it wasn’t what I wanted. No idea that it would ruin everything I’d worked my entire life for. I figured I’d have you, hire nannies, and work twice as hard to get back to the only thing I ever cared about, but it didn’t work that way. By the time I’d given birth to you and recovered, it was already too late to go back. The ballet world moves quickly and there’s always someone else waiting in the wings to take your place, someone better, younger, stronger, and with no attachments.”
I can do nothing but shake my head at her, holding back the tears that are pooling in my eyes.
“I didn’t know how to be a mother and I didn’t want that life, but I still hated it that you went to your father for everything. I hated that the two of you were so close and I felt like a third wheel around you. Then, when I found out you could dance and that you were a hundred times better than I’d ever hoped to be, I hated that you were going to get the dream I’d always wanted. The one I gave up to have you and the one I still wanted more than anything else in the world, so much that it consumed me and I couldn’t stop myself from being so jealous and angry,” she admits.
I finally have the answer to the question that plagued me my entire life. The reason why my mother never hugged me, never smiled at me, never encouraged me, and never treated me like anything but a thorn in her side. I should feel relief finally knowing the truth, but I don’t. Everything inside me feels bruised and battered, knowing there’s nothing I could have done to change things. Nothing I could have done to make her love me. She hated my very existence. But it still doesn’t explain everything.
“Why did you send Eli away?” I demand. “I can try to understand why you treated me the way you did, why you hated me so much and made my life miserable, but I can’t understand why you’d do that to him. Why you’d hurt him and threaten him and take him away from me? As much as you loved dance, as much as it consumed you and made you happy and you couldn’t imagine your life without it, that’s exactly how I felt about Eli and you took him from me. If you hated me that much, why didn’t you just let me go? Send me away and let me live my life and never speak to me again? Why did you have to hurt him? WHY?”
I can’t hold the sobs in any longer and my voice rises in a shout, so hurt and so angry by her actions and her choices and how easily she could ruin so many lives because she couldn’t let go of the past and couldn’t find her own happiness.
“Tell her. She deserves to know the truth.”
My mother’s head drops and mine whips toward the sound of Eli’s voice to find him lounging against the door frame. I want to run to him, wrap my arms around him. and let him take away all of this hurt and pain that engulfs me, but I can’t move. My knees are locked and my feet are rooted in place as my body shakes in fear, already preparing myself for the final blow I’m waiting for my mother to deliver.
“I tried,” she whispers, so softly that I have to crane my neck forward to hear her better over the loud thumping of my heart pounding through my ears. “I know it was too late, I know I couldn’t make up for what I’d done, but I tried. I did whatever I could to protect you, but I had no other choice.”
For a minute, I’m confused all over again thinking she’s still speaking to me, until she finally lifts her head and looks back at Eli.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she tells him, tears clogging her voice.
“So, you admit it? After all these years, after everything you’ve done, you finally admit it?” he asks.
She nods her head silently and I watch the pain wash over Eli’s face, tightening his features as he closes his eyes and runs his palm down his face.
“Shelby’s father had made a lot of careless choices with our money over the years. Things I knew nothing about until he died and it was too late to figure out how to fix them.” She speaks rapidly, looking back and forth between me and Eli. “I didn’t know what to do. We were going to lose the house, we were going to be bankrupt and left with nothing. I had a bad night, too much to drink, and I went for a drive, just wanting to clear my head and forget about things for a little while. It was dark and I was upset and it all happened so fast.”
My hand flies to my mouth and my body bends in half at the waist. I shake my head back and forth, not wanting her to keep going, not wanting to hear the next words out of her mouth. I hear myself chanting softly as I cry, telling her to stop.
Stop, stop, stop, please don’t say what I know you’re going to say. Please don’t let this be true, please, please, please.
“I lost control when I went around a curve and it happened so fast,” she says again. “I didn’t know what to do. I knew it was bad but I didn’t know what to do, so I called Landry.”
My hand drops from my mouth and I whimper when she says his name, still shaking my head back and forth trying to shake this knowledge and this truth from my head before the weight of it crushes me.
“So he’s the one who covered it up. Made it look like the accident was all my parents’ fault and took you completely out of the equation. Why? Why in the hell would he ever do something like that for you?” Eli asks angrily
I can barely understand the words he’s saying and the questions he asking; all I can think about is that my mother killed Eli’s parents. My mother is the one who tore apart their family, left Eli and his sister alone and forced him to work himself to exhaustion for years just to keep a roof over their head. I don’t understand how he doesn’t hate me. I don’t understand how he could even look at me without being sick and disgusted, always assuming but never knowing for sure until now.
“Don’t clam up now, you’re on a roll,” Eli tells her angrily when she doesn’t immediately answer his questions. “Why in the hell would Landry do that for you?”
My mother looks back and him and then slowly turns to look at me.