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I zeroed my gaze in on him. “You’re wrong,” I argued. “Because I have to be. That’s how I survive this. I don’t come out with a renewed vigor for life, I don’t become inspirational, an ‘everything happens for a reason’ person that I imagined I might be if something horrible ever happened to me.”
I sighed, overwhelmingly exhausted at the prospect of life outside of this hospital room.
“No, I’ll be the villain,” I decided. “Not in the conventional sense, of course. But I’ll hurt people.” My eyes met his. “I’ll hurt you. I won’t be able to help it.”
His face was ravaged in sorrow. “Sweetheart, hurt me all you like. I promise I can take it. I promise I won’t go anywhere.”
I turned my gaze from his, looking up at the ceiling. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” I muttered.
He didn’t say anything else, just settled into the seat beside me. I squeezed my eyes shut and pretended to sleep.
It was just me and my mother in the room.
Karson was probably standing outside the door. He slept in here, of course, when everyone was gone, but he didn’t linger in the room when there were other people in here.
I wasn’t sure if he was standing guard or if he just didn’t want to be far from me. I supposed I was still in danger. But maybe not. This had been a message. To Jay. I assumed that Stella was the target, his wife. They were telling him they could do damage. That they could and would end lives.
I imagined things were going to get worse before they got better. But beyond my friend’s wellbeing and safety, I didn’t care much about all that.
It was not often my mother and I were in here alone. She’d avoided it. Having to face me, having to find the things to say to me. I understood that.
She was messing with the flowers that littered the surfaces of this room. They kept coming, and I fucking hated them. All in varying ‘sympathy’ arrangements. Tastefully arranged. Well meaning, of course. But I fucking hated the sight of them. Blooming with life and vigor. I wanted to tear them apart with my bare hands.
Her back was to me when she spoke. “I lost three children, before I had you.” The words were said so tenderly, almost a whisper.
But they boomed inside of my head, cut through some of the numbness covering my body. I hadn’t heard my mother speak in that tone before. I hadn’t ever heard such raw emotion from her. She always spoke carefully, with an almost undistinguishable accent that she forced to sound more interesting. Actually, I didn’t think she forced it anymore. It was who she was now. A supremely rich, stylish, successful and eccentric woman with a veneer covering her aura to keep her unattainable and distant.
Finally, she turned toward me, walking slowly to my bed, resting her hands at the end of it, her fingers trailing ever so slightly on my feet, as if she was afraid she was going to hurt me.
“Two miscarriages and one stillborn,” she continued, eyes glassy. “A boy.” Her voice was tinny, and she was looking at me, though I could tell I wasn’t who she was seeing. “Henry. He was so very tiny. I held him in my arms before they took him away.” She stopped speaking for the longest time.
“We didn’t talk about it, your father and I.” She let out a long breath. “I couldn’t. I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. I hated myself and feared he hated me too. In order to survive, in order to hold on to my marriage, I had to shut off all of those feelings. Had to erase those pregnancies, had to erase Henry. I didn’t acknowledge any of it. Didn’t speak about it to friends.”
She smoothed over the sheets covering my body, frowning at them as if she hadn’t brought them in and steamed them herself.
“Those things weren’t discussed back then, you see.” She looked up at me once more. “Especially not in the circles we ran in. The subjects of conversations were about who got facelifts, new properties in France or who was having the affair with the tennis instructor. True tragedies were swept under the rug and never spoken of. Especially losing children. Women were expected to carry on ... silently. Deal with such things alone. It made people, most especially men, uncomfortable.”
She sighed, squeezing my foot but hesitantly. My mother didn’t know how to touch me. We weren’t affectionate, not like me and my father.
“Your father wanted to help, wanted to be there, but he didn’t know how. Especially when I put on an incredibly convincing show of being okay. Even though I was gutted inside. But I kept running the business, going to charity functions, redecorating the house, getting up in the morning. And then I got pregnant with you.”
She smiled at me with a sadness that broke my heart. Or it would’ve, if it wasn’t already in a thousand tiny pieces. I wasn’t sure it even existed anymore.
“I wasn’t happy,” she continued. “I couldn’t let myself be. If anything, I was angry. Furious that I was going to go through it all again. I knew I wouldn’t survive another loss. So I closed my heart off to you. I didn’t let myself hope, didn’t let myself love you. I was prepared, every single day, to lose you. And then you were born. Beautiful. Perfect. Ten fingers. Ten toes.”
She squeezed my foot again, a little tighter. “And still, I kept my heart closed. I didn’t let myself register just how much I loved you because I couldn’t. I was broken inside. It’s not until now, seeing my precious baby in this much pain, that I truly see how much I’ve failed as a mother.”
“No,” I replied quickly and firmly. “You have not failed.”
She smiled again, with even more sadness in her expression. “Thank you, sweetheart, for loving me wholeheartedly despite the distance I’ve put between us. I will regret what I lost with you, but that was the only way I thought I could survive. I was quietly fighting for my life without a single other person knowing.”
There was something in her voice I recognized. A fire that I was feeling deep inside. I never imagined I would feel such a kinship with my mother. Because she was right. There had always been a distance between us. One I’d always accepted and never resented because I didn’t know any better. Because I grew up around other trust fund kids whose mothers were either too pilled out to care about them or too busy with plastic surgeries, charity galas or spa days. And even if they weren’t trophy wives, they were self-made women, hardworking, without the time to devote to their children.
Sure, there were exceptions to every rule, and I did witness friends who had mothers who cared about their grades, their college prospects or whatever boy they were in love with at the time.
I’d convinced myself that I had it much better, a mother who didn’t know whether I went to school or not and didn’t care. One who let me use the jet whenever I wished and let me have wine with dinner.
“Men are different creatures.” Her words broke into my thoughts.
