Sweet Forgiveness (22 page)

I
can't make a decision this morning. Every choice—from jewelry to hair—seems crucial. A pair of leggings or a skirt? Hair curled or straight? Lipstick or ChapStick? Necklace or no necklace?

“Shit,” I say aloud when I drop my blush compact. It ricochets off the tile, shattering the mirror and scattering pink shards of powder across the floor. My hands shake as I pick up the pieces.

What if I've waited too long? Maybe my mother no longer has those loving feelings that bond a mother to her daughter. Maybe she's forgotten about me, taken Bob's side. He may have brainwashed her.

Surely Bob hates me. A thick, sobering dread fills me, and I imagine a dozen possible scenarios, none of them good. Will he yell at me? Would he dare strike me? No, I don't remember him as a violent man. In fact, I remember him never raising his voice. The most vivid memory of him is the one I witnessed after I'd called him a pervert. It's the haunting memory of a face crumpling in disbelief.

At half past eight, I drive by the house one more time, my reconnaissance mission. My hands are damp with perspiration, and I hold tight to the steering wheel. I'd hoped to see my mother outside again today. Alone. I could walk up to her and tell her I'm sorry, and be done with it. But the brown Chevy sits alone in the driveway. Nobody's outside this morning.

I slow. Beyond the picture window, I think I see movement. Is she inside? What if I ring the bell and Bob answers? Would he recognize me? Could I claim I had the wrong address and leave unnoticed? Maybe I should just wait until she comes home this afternoon.

No. I need to do this. It's already Tuesday. I don't have much time.

I park in the road again, but this time I trek up the driveway instead of sneaking through the woods. The drive is unpaved, like the road, and the loose gravel shifts beneath my flats. I wonder how my mother navigates this cobbled patch. At once, it comes back to me, that final scene, in my father's rental car in this very driveway. He shoved the gearshift into reverse and we backed away. My mother ran after the car, like a dog chasing after its owner. We'd reached the end of the driveway when I saw her slip on the loose gravel. She fell to her knees, sobbing. My father saw it, too, I know he did. When we got onto the road, he stepped on the gas. I swiveled in my seat and watched, horrified, as tiny stones flew at her from the car tires. I turned back around. I couldn't watch anymore. Instead, I added another layer of steel to my heart.

I put a hand to my head.
Stop these memories. Please!

The concrete steps give way when I take my first step up to the porch. I grab hold of the iron rail. Up close, the wood-framed house looks worse than it did from the road. The gray paint is peeling, and the screen door is falling off its hinges. Why the hell doesn't Bob fix this? And why did I wear this old necklace? It's probably worth more money than this cabin. After all my years of anger, it's odd to feel protective of my mother.

Faint voices and laughter seep through the closed door. I recognize Al Roker's voice
on
Today
. A vision of my mother comes to me. She's leaning into the bathroom mirror, the
Today
show blaring from the living room so she could hear while she applied her makeup. I wonder now if her love of morning television influenced my career path. Did I hope that one day she'd hear me? Or was it as I suspect, I chose a career where I could ask the questions, not answer them?

I take one deep breath, and then another. I clear my throat, rearrange my scarf to hide the diamond-and-sapphire necklace, and ring the doorbell.

She's wearing a blue smock and a pair of black slacks. And she's tiny. So very tiny. Her hair, which was once her best feature, is dull brown and brittle-looking. Around her mouth is a nest of lines and wrinkles, and dark circles hover beneath her eyes. It's the broken face of a fifty-four-year-old woman who's had one hell of a life. I put a hand to my mouth.

“Hello,” she says, and pushes open the screen door. I want to scold her, to tell her she's naïve, that she should never open the door to a stranger. She smiles at me, and I see stains on her once-pretty teeth. I search her face for familiar pieces of her and find them in her pale blue eyes. Kindness still lurks there, and something else. Sadness.

I open my mouth to speak, but my throat closes. Instead, I simply stare at her, and watch as her eyes and mind register my identity.

A moan as primal as an animal's wail comes from her throat. She steps onto the porch and the door slams behind her. Her tiny frame nearly knocks me over when she bangs into me full-force. “My girl,” she cries. “My beautiful girl.”

It's as if twenty years dissolve on sight, and we're just a mother and a daughter, caught in the most fundamental, instinctual love.

She pulls me to her chest and rocks me. She smells of patchouli oil. “Hannah,” she says, “Hannah, my dear Hannah!” Back and forth we sway like a wind sock. Finally she pulls back and kisses me on the cheek, the forehead, the tip of my nose, just as I remember her doing before I went off to school each morning. She sobs now and, every second or two, steps back to stare at me, as if she's afraid she's dreaming this moment. If I ever doubted her love for me, the thought has vanished.

“Mom,” I say, my voice breaking.

She covers her mouth with her hand. “You're here. You're really here. I can't believe it. I just can't believe it.”

She takes me by the hand and pulls me toward the door. I don't move. From inside, I hear the blare of the television. My head swims. My legs are concrete posts, rooted to this spot. I turn to look back at my car. I can leave now. I can say I'm sorry and leave. I don't need to go back inside this place—the place I swore I'd never set foot in again. The place my father forbade me from visiting.

“I won't stay,” I say. “You need to get to work. I can come back later.”

“No. Please. I'll call for a substitute.” She tugs on my hand, but I pull back.

“Is—is he here?” I ask, my voice shaky.

She bites her lip. “No. He don't get home till three. It's just us now.”

Just us. Mother and daughter. No Bob. The way I wanted it to be—then and now.

With my hand in hers, I enter. The smell of wood smoke and lemon oil takes me back to the summer of '93. I breathe deeply, hoping to slow my frenetic heartbeat.

The living room is cramped but spotless. In one corner I spy the old wood-burning stove. I'm relieved that the old brown sofa is gone now. They've replaced it with an oversized beige velour sectional that seems to swallow the small room.

My mother chatters about all of the changes as we pass through the living room into the tiny kitchen. “Bob built these new cupboards about ten years ago.”

I run a hand over the pretty oak. They've kept the same vinyl flooring—squares and rectangles that are supposed to look like ceramic tile—and the white Formica countertops.

She pulls a chair from the oak table, and I sit down. She sits facing me, holding both my hands in hers.

“I'll get you some tea,” she says. “Or coffee. Maybe you like coffee better.”

“Either is fine.”

“Okay. But first I got to look at you.” She stares at me, her eyes drinking me in. “What a beauty you are.”

Her eyes shine, and she reaches out to smooth my hair. It strikes me now that I've robbed her of so much, so many mother-daughter moments. The woman who loved to do hair and nails and makeup would've loved teaching her daughter her tricks. Senior proms, homecomings, graduations. They'd all been stripped from her clutches, no different than if I'd died. Or possibly worse. Instead of leaving her through accident or illness, I'd left her by choice.

“I'm so sorry, Mom.” The words tumble from my mouth. “I came all this way to tell you.”

She hesitates, and when she speaks, each word is measured, as if she's afraid one wrong syllable could send the entire confession tumbling. “You . . . you're sorry for what you done to Bob?”

“I . . .” I've practiced the sentence for weeks now, but still it gets stuck in my throat. “I'm not sure . . .”

She nods, signaling me to continue, and her eyes never leave mine. There's a ferocity in those eyes, as if she's hoping against hope I'll deliver the message she's desperate to hear.

“I'm not sure what really happened that night.”

I hear a gasp. She puts a hand to her mouth and nods. “Thank you,” she says, her voice strangled. “Thank you.”

We finish our tea, then take a stroll in the garden. It's the first time it's occurred to me. My love of flowers came from my mother's passion. She points out every plant and flower, each one with a special purpose, planted in memory of me.

“Here's the weeping willow I planted the year you left. Look how big it's grown.” She looks up at the tree, its reeds bending toward the lake like Rapunzel's hair. I imagine my mother digging the hole, placing this spindly tree into the earth, trying to replace her daughter.

“These lilacs always remind me of your first ballet recital. I brought you a bouquet of lilac blossoms that day at Gloria Rose's Studio. You told me it smelled like cotton candy.”

“I remember,” I say, recalling that worried little girl peeking out from backstage, wondering why her parents weren't in the audience. “I panicked. I thought you weren't coming. You and Daddy had had a fight.”

It's odd that the memory found me, after all these years. That recital was long before we'd moved to Detroit. I'd convinced myself they never fought until Bob came along.

“Yes, that's right.”

“Why were you fighting, if you don't mind my asking?”

“It don't matter, sweetie.”

For some reason it does. “Tell me, Mom. Please. I'm an adult now.”

She laughs. “You are. Do you realize you're the very age I was when you left?”

You left.
She doesn't say it in an accusatory way, but still the words sear my soul. She was so young when I left her. And the life I went on to have is so vastly different than hers, then and now.

“You and Daddy married so young. You used to tell me you just couldn't wait.”

“I was desperate to leave Schuylkill County.” She plucks a frond of Spanish bluebell, rolls it between her fingers, and inhales the scent. “Your dad was being transferred to Saint Louis. He wanted someone to go with him.”

I cock my head. “You make it sound like a marriage of convenience.”

“He wasn't exactly a world traveler back then. Neither of us was. It was scary leaving Pittsburgh. He liked having me along, I guess.”

“But you loved each other.”

She lifts her shoulders. “Even then, when we were happy and passionate, I knew I'd never be enough for him.”

I reach out and pull a loose strand of hair from her smock. “You? You were so pretty.” I correct myself. “You
are
so pretty. Of course you were enough for him.”