In front of me, my mom’s pushing the grocery cart, two kids
– twins – in the seat, yelling and giggling and drooling over each other. I’m
older, better than that, having reached double digits last month. It’s
something I’m proud of and mom bought me a batman cake and all four of us blew
it out. I let the twins have the first bite because they probably would have
taken it anyway when mom turned around to get the forks. They’re worse than I
was at that age. Mom doesn’t believe me, but I swear they are.
The cake was ice cream cake, my favorite, because what could
be better than getting two desserts in one? Somewhere between blowing out the
candles and me taking my first bite, we heard the phone ring in the kitchen. It
was the home phone, which people don’t call all that often. The twins didn’t
notice, but mom grimaced. That’s when I knew who it was and I remembered that
he was the only one who called the home phone.
I put my head down and pretended not to look. Mom was having
trouble deciding whether to pick up the phone or not. I don’t understand why.
If dad wanted to call me, I’d answer every time.
“One second, sweetie,” she said, patting me on the hand. “You
eat your cake, okay?”
She skirted the island and picked up the phone.
“Hey Rick.”
“I have caller ID, remember?”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“No, I understand, I just can’t let you.”
“You don’t deserve it.”
“I’m glad you’ve worked so hard.”
“No, it doesn’t change anything.”
“Why?”
She looked back at me. I snapped my head back down to my
cake and hoped she hadn’t seen me watching.
“I can’t talk about this right now.”
“You aren’t supposed to contact me. You’re lucky I’m not
calling them now.”
“I’m too tired for this.”
“You would be able to tell the kids yourself, if you hadn’t
done this to yourself.”
“No.”
“Alright, bye.”
The phone dead, mom stayed at the kitchen counter. She was
shaking, but not crying. Her arms were pushed up, her elbows jutting out. Her
wedding ring with the little diamond tapped against the granite countertop. I
don’t know why she still wore it. My parents weren’t married. Married parents
live together and take their kids to the park and fight over the remote. When
they were married, mom would fuss over dad’s tie when he left for work, and
when he got back, he would cuss if dinner wasn’t ready. Now they weren’t
supposed to talk at all. Married parents are allowed to get within 100 yards of
each other.
The twins were making a mess again. I sighed and grabbed one
flailing arm filled with cake. I couldn’t catch the other one though and the
ice cream hit the other twin straight on. Melting, it slithered down the table
and dripped onto the floor.
“I’ll get it,” I said, before mom even noticed. She was
still in the kitchen, staring at the counter.
“No more,” I said to the twins, sternly, hoping it would be
enough. Sometimes they didn’t listen.
I didn’t like seeing mom like this. She once told me how,
when she was in college – school for big kids – she traveled across Europe with
a single backpack. All by herself, whenever she didn’t have a place she would
find a park or a mountain and set up a tent. She said it was the best time of
her life and that one day she hoped I would take a trip like that. Mom wanted
to be a map-maker and explore the world. She was much braver than I was. I just
wanted to be a teacher one day. But she wanted to be a map-maker and she would
have adventures and maybe she would have taken me along.
The tile floor was dirty. I knew because I could feel the
crumbs sticking to the bottoms of my toes and I felt like I had walked through
a cloud of dust. I reminded myself to help mom clean that later. I probably
couldn’t do it myself, but if I offered to help, it would get done quicker.
Then mom would be happy.
I reached for the roll of paper towels but before I could
grab it, mom took my hand. I looked up.
“You don’t have to worry about it,” she said. “I’ll clean it
up.”
“But I want to.”
“No, please. Let me. It’s your birthday. Finish your cake.”
I nodded and turned around.
“Sweetie, you know it’ll get better, right?”
I didn’t answer but I looked back and I smiled and she
smiled and I was happy.
One of these days, I imagine mom will tell me what happened
and it will be like when she told me Santa Claus wasn’t real last year. She’ll
make a big deal of it and she’ll sit me down on the couch and I’ll wait and my
heart will be pounding because I won’t know what she’s about to say. She’ll
hold my hands and tell me not to worry and that sometimes the things we believe
in aren’t what we always thought they were. She’ll say that the toys were
really from her and that the cookies were just for show. She’ll say she couldn’t
sleep at night because she was so worried about what we would think. She’ll
tell me everything and make it seem like it’s so bad, only it won’t be so bad
and it won’t be such a big deal and she’ll ask me if I’m upset, and I’ll say
no, because I always knew he wasn’t real anyway.
Mom once told me about my Aunt Ruth and how, when my Uncle
Dan died in a car accident, she felt so guilty. I asked her why Aunt Ruth felt
guilty and she said that the morning that Uncle Dan died, Aunt Ruth asked him
to drive the small car instead of their pickup truck. Aunt Ruth felt guilty
because she thought that if Uncle Dan had been in the truck, he might have
lived.
“That’s not her fault though!”
“I know,” Mom said. “But she still felt guilty.”
“Why?”
“It’s just how people feel sometimes.”
“That’s not fair.”
“I know,” Mom said. “It’s called survivor’s guilt. When one
person loves someone so much, they sometimes think crazy things. She felt
guilty because he died and maybe she thought she should have been the one who
died instead.”
Now I’m back in the grocery store again and the twins are
fighting and I see my mom’s face and I’m worried. The shopping cart is rocking
back and forth. The twins are so noisy. A mean lady gives us a dirty look and
scuttles past us. As she does, she knocks over a cereal box and I put it back
up and I look at my mom again.
She is so tired and she works so hard and she’ll never be a
map-maker. That’s the only thing she wanted and she’s not going to get it.
I think I’m feeling survivor’s guilt.
Because there’s some part of me that knows that if it weren't
for me and the twins, mom could go and be whoever she wanted to be. She could
be a map-maker and she could travel the world and she could marry a man who
loved her. She was beautiful and she could dance again and she could buy
groceries just for herself and she wouldn't have to pretend to be Santa Claus
or pretend like everything is always okay, and she wouldn't have to pretend at
all.
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