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“Great. I’ll let your sisters know.” She zips up the bag then passes it over. “Hey, did you ever end up going back to Marie’s for those mom dates she does?”
Sighing, I tug the bag onto my back. “I already told you, I’m not sure it’s for me. I just…don’t feel like I fit with a bunch of moms, you know? They’re all married and in completely different places than I am.”
The way her mouth pinches makes me think she doesn’t like my answer, but I don’t know what else to tell her. She’s asked me twice since the first and only Mom-osa thing I went to lastmonth, and I don’t know what to say to get her to leave me alone about it, to stop pushing.
“I did get smoothies with Marie earlier this week, though. I really like her.”
Hopefully that’s enough.
Of course, at that news, my mother’s smile breaks free. “Oh, well that’s great. I’m glad you’re at least giving that friendship a chance.” She reaches out and tucks a piece of loose hair behind my ears. “I just want you to have somefriends.”
I roll my eyes. “I have friends, mom. You act like I’m some kind of town pariah.”
She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Stop being dramatic, Busy. That’s not atallwhat I said,” she says with a sigh. “I feel like you find any reason you can to be upset with me.”
My head jerks back. “What?”
I can’t believe she would say something like that.Me?The one who is always mad ather?
“What are you even talking about?”
“I’m talking about the fact that I can barely even say anything to you anymore without you being angry with me,” she tells me. “At some point, you decided every comment I make is a dig at you. It’s like you’ve been mad at me for so long you can’t even remember why.”
I’m so shocked by her statement that I’m completely silent, trying to understand what the hell she’s talking about. She can’t possibly thinkI’mthe one who is causing this tension. Can she?
“I don’t know when things between us changed,” she continues, bracing herself on the kitchen island, “or what I did that was so horrible, but I wish you would just…tell me so we can put it behind us.”
“Put it behind us,” I repeat, staring at her. “I told you I was pregnant and you barely spoke to me for a month.”
Her mouth drops open. “You didn’t tell me you were pregnant until you were six months along!” She laughs, but there’s no humor there. “It was like you didn’t even need me! Excuse me for taking some time to lick my wounds.”
What?
I try to mull her words over, certain I must be misunderstanding because…
What?
Something in my face must convey the shock at what she’s said, because she lets out a long sigh then speaks again.
“Every mother wants her daughter to need her, Busy,” she says, bracing herself on the marble countertop between us. “I’ve always been proud of you—how independent you are, how you’ve always blazed your own trail. You’ve never let anything stand in the way of whatever you want in life, but…” She pauses, her eyes dropping to where Junie is still sitting on the floor, playing with a stack of plastic blocks. “I guess I always assumed when you became a mother, that might be the time when you’d lean on me. I thought you might, I don’t know, need me a little bit.”
The vulnerability in what she says shakes me, and I drop down onto one of the bar stools at the island, feeling surprised and shocked and emotional in a way I wasn’t expecting.
“You’re my mom,” I tell her, my voice quiet. “OfcourseI need you.”
Her head tilts to the side, sadness in her eyes. “Sometimes, I’m not so sure.”
I glance around, suddenly feeling desperate to explain this to her but worried I don’t have the words.
“Do you want to know why I didn’t tell you I was pregnant until I was six months along?” I ask, though it’s more of a rhetorical question. “Why I waited to tell everyone? Because Icouldn’t muster up the courage to say I’d fucked up again, and this time, there was no going back. No ‘fixing it’.”
Her shoulders fall.
“I’ve always been the one getting in trouble or breaking the rules or screwing things up and I just…” I shake my head. “This felt too big.”
My mom reaches forward and places her hand on mine. “Nothing is too big,” she whispers. “Nothing is bigger than how much I love you.”
I watch her for a long second before I speak again, and when I do, I can barely get the words out as tears threaten to spill down my cheeks. “It doesn’t always feel that way.”
