Chapter Forty-six
“Hi, Mom, Aunt Barb.” Judy entered the hospital room, trying to suppress the tension she felt inside.
“Good morning, dear,” her mother said, looking over with a nervous smile. She’d been packing items from the bed table in a white plastic bag, but she walked over, bag in hand, and gave Judy a quick peck on the cheek. She was freshly made-up, back in her favorite long gray sweater, black knit leggings, and black ballet shoes, but her manner was stilted. “Did it go okay, at the FBI?”
“All fine, as expected. That’s why I didn’t call. Sorry.”
“Sure. We understand. And Daniella?”
“She’s fine, and in their hands.”
“Wonderful.” Her mother smiled, almost politely. “Did you sleep well?”
“I did, thanks.”
“Are you feeling better?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“You sure you don’t need to be seen by a doctor? We’re in a hospital, after all.”
“No, I’m fine.”
“I bet Frank was glad to see you.”
“Yes,” Judy answered, avoiding her mother’s eye. She wasn’t about to tell them about Frank. She had known both women her whole life, but felt as if she couldn’t trust them anymore.
“You’re all over the news.” Her mother nodded in the direction of the television, which was playing morning shows on mute.
“I know, right?” Judy found herself hesitating before she went over to Aunt Barb, who was sitting inclined in bed, pale and tired under a multicolored cap and buried by a white blanket, her finger hooked up to a monitor and her hand to an IV. Judy learned over and gave her aunt a quick kiss on the cheek, feeling as if she were going through the motions. All of them were.
“Hi, honey.” Aunt Barb managed a shaky smile. “Who knew what a mess I’d get you into, huh? We’re so proud of you, for everything you did, and for helping Daniella.”
“Thanks. How do you feel?” Judy lingered by the bed, glancing at the array of monitors with their blinking lights. The cottony straps of Aunt Barb’s vest, with the drain pockets, were visible because her neckline had slipped to the side.
“Not too bad. It feels like there’s pressure on my chest, but it’s not that bad. They’re weaning me off of morphine and onto Demerol.” Aunt Barb gestured at the IV drip that ran to a port in the top of her hand. “It supposedly makes your back itch, so I have my back scratcher. See, look.” She patted a bamboo backscratcher by her side.
“So, everything went okay?”
“Perfect.” Aunt Barb smiled. “I’m relieved to have it behind me. The doctor said I might not have to have radiation, but we’ll see.”
“I’m so happy for you,” Judy said, meaning it, but she didn’t feel happiness, strangely apart form her own emotions. Before, she and her aunt would have been giggling, laughing, and high-fiving. But that was Before, and this was After. “So you ready to go home today?”
“More than ready.”
“When do you think you’ll be discharged?” Judy asked, making small talk, filling the air with words to dispel the awkwardness.
“They said the doctor should be here in about an hour, then I have to fill out forms and such. Noon, I hope to be out.”
“You sure you want to go back to your house?”
“Yes, thanks for the offer of your place, but I’ll be more comfy at home, now that it’s safe, thanks to you.”
Judy’s mother returned to the bed table and slipped a brown jug of Sunsweet prune juice in a bag. “We have everything planned. We’ll take my car to your apartment, pack her bags, then get her home. Will you join us or do you have to work?”
“No, I have to work,” Judy lied. She didn’t know what she was going to do today, and nobody at the office would blame her for taking the day off.
“But you’ll come out to the house tonight? Say hi? Have dinner?”
“If I can. We’ll see.”
“Good. I’ll make a nice salmon with parsley. You know how you love that dish. Frank can come, too.” Her mother wrapped the top of the plastic bag around the bottom, making a neat roll. “Aunt Barb will rest for the afternoon, then she has to do her range-of-motion and breathing exercises.”
“Breathing?” Judy faked a smile. “In, out? In, out?”
“With that gadget, a spirometer.” Her mother pointed at a transparent plastic tube by the side of the bed, with graduated numbers up the side and a blue plastic bottom. “You inhale and try to get the ball in the air. She has to do it every day, twice a day.”
Aunt Barb patted the bed. “Judy, come sit down and tell us how last night went, with the FBI. I’m so curious about how it works, negotiating deals and such.”
“It’s very bureaucratic,” Judy said, suddenly sick of the small talk, of avoiding the subject. She wished she had gone straight to work.
“I doubt that,” Aunt Barb said, gently. “Is it like on TV?”
“Barb, of course it isn’t.” Her mother came over, setting down the bag. “I bet it is bureaucratic. All those government agencies are the same. Everything is political. Right, Judy?”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” Judy said, the words slipping out of their own accord. “I want to understand what happened with me and you two.”
“Here?” Her mother’s eyes flared. “Now?”
“Yes, here and now. Why not here and now?” Judy thought better of it when she spotted a pained look crease Aunt Barb’s face. “I mean, forget it. You’re right. This isn’t the time or place, after the operation and all. That was selfish of me, I wasn’t thinking.”
“No, it’s fine,” Aunt Barb said firmly. “It is. We can talk about it right now.”
“Please, forget it.” Judy felt her face heat with shame. “You’ve just had a major operation. It’s just that it’s so fake to be together without talking about it, but we can’t not be together, so we have to be fake. I’m … sorry, that was … wrong,” she stammered, feeling her emotions rise to the surface, the anger and the love both at once. “It was so selfish.”
“No, it’s not. Please, Judy, sit down.”
“No forget it. It’s not fair to you, right now—”
“Yes, I want to talk. Really talk.” Aunt Barb patted the bed again, for Judy to sit down. “I don’t like *footing around it, either. That’s not how we are, or have ever been. There’s an elephant in the room, as they say, and we need to deal with it. Sit. Please? I had a mastectomy, but my mouth works fine, believe me.”
“Okay, then.” Her mother came over, sinking into the heavy chair. “We’ll talk.”
Judy perched on the corner of the bed, distant from them both, shifting her attention from one woman to the other, the sisters’ resemblance clear in the hue of their deep blue eyes, set far apart. Paradoxically, the difference between them could also be found in their eyes, but in the aspect to them; her mother’s eyes were more guarded, her lids closed like a shield against some sudden brightness, while Aunt Barb’s anguish showed clearly through her frank blue lenses.
“Honey,” Aunt Barb said softly. “How can we help you understand this? I’ll do anything, and I’ll tell you anything.”
“Tell me what happened, from your point of view. Because Mom already told me, I mean, my aunt.” Judy swallowed hard, a bitter knot twisting in her chest. “I don’t even know what to call you. Aunt? Mom? Aunt Mom?”
Aunt Barb cringed. “I know it’s hard to process.”
“I want to know what you were thinking.” Judy modulated her voice, trying to stay calm. “Not just in the beginning, but all these years, keeping it from me. I mean, I trusted you. You lied to me, every time you saw me.”
Aunt Barb nodded, pained. “You feel betrayed—”
“Absolutely, of course I do. How could I not?” Judy looked from Aunt Barb to her mother. “Years of Mother’s Days, I’m giving cards and presents to someone not my mother? You did betray me, both of you. You’ve lied to me as long as I’ve been alive. I don’t know who you are, and it makes me feel like I don’t know who I am. I’ve always defined myself in relation to you, at least in the family. I thought I was Aunt Barb’s niece and Delia’s daughter, but it turns out it’s the other way around.”
“We screwed this up, royally,” Aunt Barb said gently. “But believe me, we didn’t mean to.”
“We tried to do the right thing,” Judy’s mother added, pursing her lips.
“Well, you didn’t,” Judy shot back, trying to suppress her resentment. “The truth is the right thing. You could’ve told me the truth, sooner. Even if they made you lie when I was born, you could’ve told me the truth when I grew up, but you didn’t. You avoided it. You put it off. You pretended. It was cowardly.”
“I’m so sorry,” Aunt Barb said, holding tears back. “I’m very sorry, I truly am. I regret that I didn’t tell you sooner, and I should have. It wasn’t until my diagnosis that I realized the cliché really was true, that life is short. I should have understood it after Steve died, but I was so preoccupied with his illness, I didn’t think of myself. Somehow I thought I would never get sick. I was in denial. What are the odds, both of us, getting cancer so close together?” Aunt Barb ran a dry tongue over her lips. “But when I got diagnosed, I thought about putting my affairs in order, so if the worst happened, I didn’t want to leave this earth without you hearing from me why everything happened the way it did.”
“So tell me then.”
“It’s true, our parents did make us do it. I don’t blame them, either, because they were only doing what they thought was right, too. I try not to judge them. I’m in no position to judge anybody.”
Judy listened, trying to adjust mentally to the fact that she knew this woman who was talking, and didn’t know her, both at the same time.
“We made this decision, and we carried it out, and your mother stepped in to help and—”
“She’s not my mother. You’re my mother. Can we please be honest, from here on out?”
“Okay, then let me say what I was going to say, something that even your mother can’t say, which is that when you were born and our parents gave us this ultimatum, she was amazing.” Aunt Barb gestured at Judy’s mother, with an IV port attached. “She responded with grace and generosity. She was thrilled to take you and raise you. She gave me a gift, but above all, she gave you a gift.”
Judy blinked, letting it sink in, because it rang true.
“Think about the position your mother was in. She had a young child at home, but she fell in love with this baby girl, an infant, and she took you in with open arms. She knew the entire time that someday we would tell you the truth and that you would react this way.” Aunt Barb paused. “But I’m not talking about you yet, I’m talking about her. She had a sword of Damocles hanging over her head every day of her life, not knowing when this day would come, but knowing inevitably that it would. Can you imagine being in that position?”
Judy let it sink in. She had never seen her mother that way, because she couldn’t have, but she understood now.
“Imagine opening your heart to let in a child that you know will be angry at you for the decision you made—when you did it with the best of intentions, to give that child a home? And can you understand her not wanting that day to come? For putting off telling you, as long as she could?”
Judy swallowed hard. She glanced at her mother, who kept her head down, rubbing her linked fingers together in her lap.
“Still think she was a coward? I don’t. I think she was a human being. I think she was a woman, with a heart.” Aunt Barb shook her head sadly. “So let’s give your mother some credit, because she was your mother, she did raise you, and she didn’t tell you the truth because she wanted things to stay the way they were. She’s terrified to lose you.”
“Mom, you won’t lose me,” Judy blurted out, though her mother didn’t look up. “You could never lose me, either of you. I just feel angry—”
“Of course you do,” Aunt Barb said quickly. “We have lived this way for this long, and you can call it a lie or a betrayal, and I suppose you’re right about that, but to me, what we call each other isn’t the thing that matters. Even that I’m your birth mother, and your mother is the one who raised you, that doesn’t matter either.”
“How can you say that?” Judy asked, bewildered. “What matters then?”
“Judy, to me, those things are just on the surface. We’re no different from a woman, or a girl, who puts up a child for adoption and is lucky enough to find that child welcomed with loving arms, by another woman. Both women are mothers.” Aunt Barb’s eyes flashed with new animation, and her tone strengthened. “The only difference here is that I was lucky enough to stay in your life, and if you think back, I’ve been in your life, for all of your life.”
Judy thought back, to the events in her life. To college graduation, and law school. Aunt Barb had organized the luncheons afterward, with her mother. Judy remembered when she was a child, to Brownies, then to Girl Scouts. Aunt Barb had sold cookies in front of the supermarket with Judy. Aunt Barb had been the den mother, not her mother, and she had even chaperoned the field trips. Aunt Barb had woven herself into Judy’s life, the two of them there for her, for as far back as Judy could remember.
“We shared you, in a way, you know. We sat down with your schedule for your various activities, your choir recitals and such, and even for your soccer games, home and away. Whatever you were doing, we did as many as we could together.” Aunt Barb met her gaze directly. “There were times, too, when we actually took turns. Your mom was kind enough to step aside for some things, to let me have you all to myself.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
“Like the aquarium?” Judy asked, the memory coming out of the blue. She remembered that the aquarium trip had always been a sore spot with her, because her mother had simply said she was too busy to go, so Aunt Barb had gone instead. “Did you guys agree that you should be the chaperone, not mom?”
“What grade was that in? Remind me.” Aunt Barb frowned in confusion. “It’s my chemo brain again, or maybe that’s an excuse. I remember the trip, but I don’t remember the grade.”
“Fifth,” Judy answered, beginning to feel a new sympathy for her mother, whom she’d blamed whenever she wasn’t there, sending Aunt Barb in her place.
“Yes, I remember now. She went to the zoo trip, because I took you to the aquarium. You loved the puffins. You wouldn’t stop watching them.”
“Yes.”
Her mother looked up, with a sad smile. “You came home with the toy puffin. It’s still in your room.”
“Yes. You named him Mort.”
“Right.” The sadness left her mother’s smile. “What a name.”
“Besides I think he’s a girl,” Aunt Barb chimed in, with a chuckle.
Judy felt the knot in her chest loosen, relieved that all this time, her awkwardness with her mother wasn’t her fault, and that nothing she could have done would have made it better. Somehow the lifting of the secret relieved the burden of guilt she’d felt every minute, until now.
Aunt Barb continued, “Judy, we both love you, like a mother. We have both spent our lives mothering you. I completely understand that you think of my sister as your mother, and I would never dream of asking you to change that, nor do I even want you to.” Aunt Barb shook her head, her lips pursed with conviction. “Keep calling her your mother. She deserves that. She has earned that, in spades. And please keep calling me Aunt Barb. I’m used to it, I don’t want that to change. It’s only superficial. It’s form over substance. It’s not what I want.”
“What do you want then?” Judy’s emotions welled up. She realized that Aunt Barb really was the unselfish person she’d always believed her to be.
“I want us to be honest and close, and take our new relationship as it comes, bit by bit. That’s how I took the chemo, that’s how I’m taking this mastectomy, and that’s how I’ll take the radiation, if I have to.”
Judy felt her resentment melt away, and Aunt Barb continued talking.
“We will go forward, getting our test results over time, changing our treatments and protocols, our dosages and our meds, revisiting our prognosis. You have to take it as it comes. That’s what I’ve learned, not from cancer, but from life.” Aunt Barb faced Judy’s mother, with a crooked smile. “We’ll muddle through, the three of us. We’ll fuss and bicker, but we’ll be fine. Won’t we, Delia?”
“We sure will,” her mother answered warmly, reaching over and patting Aunt Barb’s arm.
Judy watched them both, thinking back to last week, when she’d been sitting at a bridal salon, wishing that she were closer to her mother. In the end, it turned out that she really was close to her mother. She just hadn’t known who her mother was, until now. It wasn’t quite the ending she expected, but it was a happy one.
Her spirits lifted, and her heart filled with love. She had a feeling that from now on, things were going to be different. Even, better.
With both her mothers.
And the truth.