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Chapter Thirty
“Mom, I invited you here today because I need to talk to you about what happened to me when you brought me to Aunt Lydia’s here in New York, all those years ago.”
“Now, Patty,” Betty warned.
“No, Mom, I’m talking and you’re listening. Since the day we walked out of that hospital, it’s never been discussed—”
“You wouldn’t be where you are now if you’d kept that baby,” Betty chipped in.
“Stop! Just stop it. There’s no one here for you to impress apart from me, so you can stop with the you-know-best attitude for once.” I heard Tricia take a deep breath and huff it out like she was keeping herself in check.
“Is that any way to speak to your mother, Patty?”
“Oh, you want respect? Where was mine, Mom? Was how you dealt with me being pregnant any way to treat your daughter? I was sixteen, Mom. A nice kid before all of that happened to me. You’re fucking lucky I kept in touch at all after leaving home.”
“Really? After all I did for you? Do you know the shame I faced calling my sister and begging her to help us?”
“That’s right, Mom, because that whole devastating event was about you, wasn’t it? Oh, but thank fuck Aunt Lydia knew someone, who knew someone, because it allowed you to go about your life for the last thirty years relatively unscathed, right?” Tricia’s tone was a mixture of fury, personal agony and disbelief that after all this time her mom had made her daughter’s pregnancy personal to herself.
“You should be thankful we gave you your life back.” The indignant tone Betty had in her voice made me shoot to my feet. My fists were balled tight and it had taken all my restraint not to go into the sitting room and throw her out of the apartment.
“You gave me my life back?” Tricia scoffed and groaned so deep I felt it resonate in my chest. “Mom, the way you handled me being pregnant destroyed me. I’ve been living in hell for the past three decades, thanks to you.” I sat down again when Tricia sounded more in control.
“It’s because of me you went to that fancy college and earned your fortune. I’d have liked to have seen you try to do that with a baby to care for.”
“I went to that fancy college to get away from you and your unique brand of poison. I worked damned hard to get out of our home, and then harder again to ensure I never had to go back and live under your roof. In fact, I was fanatical about making money because every dollar I earned meant less chance I’d ever have to ask for your help… I mean look where it got me the last time I came to you. Mom, if I were dying, I’d rather trust a stranger in the street before I’d trust you to make a life-changing decision for me ever again.”
“Now, Patty, you obviously have a very skewed view and don’t recall the dreadful situation we were in. You were sixteen years old, and you went and got yourself pregnant. Perhaps if you’d kept your legs closed, we wouldn’t—”
“Huh? Shut. The. Fuck. Up.” My feet hit the floor and my hand was on the handle of the door but when Betty stopped talking, I waited. My heartbeat raced and my lips tingled until I exhaled, and I realized I’d held my breath when her mom tore her up. “I made a terrible decision when I slept with that boy. I was a teenage girl who lost her virginity and got pregnant. It was devastating, Mom. I was scared like you wouldn’t believe. What happened next after that, under your care, was more traumatic than the pregnancy itself.”
“Now wait a minute—” Betty began.
“No, you wait. It’s my turn now. I’ve asked you here today because I need answers to some questions I still have about that awful time in my life. I’ve been in therapy for a while and I’ve reached the point where I won’t ignore my feelings anymore. This isn’t about you, Mom; it’s about me, and a traumatic event I suffered that was completely brushed aside. You cared what people thought about your reputation more than you cared about my feelings.”
“How do you think James will react to this when you tell him? Do you think he’ll look at you the same?”
Tricia scoffed in the face of her mom’s stinging words. “Actually, if I’m honest, I was petrified of how James would see me. He’s my world and I’ve never loved any man the way I love him. If I lost him it would crush me. But… you know what? He already knows, and I think he loves me more for my honesty.”
“You told him?” Betty’s cutting tone was an octave higher and I heard her distress at someone else knowing.
“Absolutely. He knows what I know. You see, James doesn’t have children and as you instructed me to give mine away, I’ve never thought I deserved to be a mom, for letting you do that to me. But I had no say about that at sixteen. My thoughts and feelings were yours because you never asked me what I thought or how I felt or even reasoned with me why it would be better for my child to be brought up by someone else. It was James who gave me the courage to face my past and feel I wasn’t entirely to blame for how this turned out.”
“What do you want me to say, Patty? What’s done is done. You have your life and that baby has had hers. Life is full of imperfections. Why would you go dredging all of this up now? James can give you a second chance. There are certain procedures these days for women your age—”
“I was sterilized, Mom. Personal choice, that’s what this did to me. If I couldn’t have my baby, I didn’t want another. What I need to know is what happened with the adoption.”
“Why?”
“Because I deserve to know what happened to my child… your grandchild.”
“I don’t know what happened. Lydia took us to that birthing facility for girls who had children for adoption. That’s all I know. After the child was born, it was taken to the parents and we signed the baby into their care.”
“What were their names?”
“There were no names on the documentation, only yours and mine. We signed the papers and the nurse and doctor in the room witnessed them, and then we were done.
“Where are the papers now, there must be copies?”
