Page 92 of Damnation
Leila shakes her head. “Mom’s upstairs changing. She’s changed five times since she heard you were coming. She couldn’t relax; you should have seen her…” She shakes her head, and the corners of her mouth tilt up in a tender expression. “She also made stew, your favorite.” She gives his shoulder an affectionate shove, in an attempt to thaw a little bit of the frost that her brother has brought in with him. But he remains unmoved.
“It’s not my favorite,” he answers, giving her a dirty look.
“Oh, please, who are you trying to kid? You always asked for it when we were growing up. For your birthday, for Thanksgiving, for Christmas! Don’t tell me you don’t remember!”
“Do you wanna know what I remember? The plates going flying if that fucking stew wasn’t seasoned just right. Look at that wall, Ness.” He points to a yellowish wall behind Leila’s back with an obvious crack in it. “There’s still a mark.”
“Thomas…” his sister murmurs, ashamed, her hands on either side of her head.
“Thomas what?” he demands with a raised eyebrow. “How can you stand there laughing and joking like nothing ever happened? Whatis wrong with you people? This was a bad idea; I shouldn’t have come here.” He lets go of my hand and moves for the front door, opening it and barreling out.
“Thomas, please.” Leila grabs his arm. He lets her. He just halts in the doorway. I watch him from the background. “I know you have a lot of ugly memories in this house; I was there for them. But I am begging you not to leave. Mom has been waiting all day to see you. She started cooking that damn stew at seven this morning. Seven o’clock, Thomas. She was so sure you would be here for lunch. She packed it up and put it aside for you, and she wouldn’t even let me have a bite of it. I’m begging you, please don’t do this to her. Don’t do it to me.”
Thomas shifts his gaze to me, and we stare at one another for a good long moment. I silently plead with him to listen to his sister, but it’s all for naught. He’s determined to leave. “Ness, let’s go home,” he orders shortly.
Dejected, I release the breath I was holding and comply with his wish without arguing. Just like I promised. “If that’s what you want,” I murmur in a small voice, walking over to him.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Thomas says, softening toward his sister, who is now staring at him with glittering eyes and her arms crossed tight over her chest. He moves to her, taking her face in his hands and tilting it up. “I wanted to try. I promise you, JC, I had the best of intentions. But being here…I can’t breathe.”
Leila takes a deep breath and brushes a tear off her cheek. With the slightest movement of her head, she nods.
Thomas kisses her forehead, whispering, “I’m sorry. Call me when you get back to Corvallis.”
He takes my hand and starts to pull me out of the house, but a weak voice calls his name from behind us, stopping him in his tracks.
Twenty-Two
No one moves. Thomas is holding his breath. After a moment, I very slowly turn to see a slender and incredibly beautiful figure. His mother. Her eyes are the same bright green as her children’s. Brown bangs cut across her forehead while the rest of her hair falls straight down her back like a waterfall of dark silk. Her skin is snowy white but marked by time and suffering. Like the scar at the base of her neck, which is only partially covered by her white shirt and slim pearl necklace.
Thomas’s mother is paused halfway down the stairs. With one hand, she holds the rail while the other is pressed against her chest. “You came…” she whispers, observing him with shining eyes. She descends the steps slowly and, in a tragic tone, murmurs, “But you’re already leaving…”
Thomas turns and holds her gaze. He doesn’t say anything; his hands are in his pockets, his lips are compressed into a hard line, and his eyes are full of warring emotions. “It’s better this way.”
“Please don’t go,” she begs, drawing a little bit closer to him. “I can’t stand to see you leave again.”
“Wasn’t so difficult to watch me leave last time.” The moment he says it, I can see on his face that he regrets it, but he tries not to let that show.
His mother hangs her head, overwhelmed, her eyes cloudy with tears. “I was sick, so sick. I didn’t know what I was saying or doing. It wasn’teasy to crawl out of that black hole…but I did it, and I never stopped thinking of you two.” With a marked hesitation, she grasps Thomas’s arms, as if to make sure he’s really there in front of her and isn’t just a figment of her imagination. Discomfort is clear in Thomas’s eyes, but he doesn’t fight her. I’m willing to bet he needs this physical contact too.
“There wasn’t a single day, not one…when I didn’t pray to God and ask him to take care of you while you were away.” I see her chin trembling and tears appear in the corners of her eyes. Thomas looks down at her warily. I wish so, so much that he could find the strength to push past his pain and let himself forgive.
“We’ve managed on our own,” he says, his voice overflowing with years of accumulated suffering.
“I never had any doubt that you would. Your sister has always been safer with you than anywhere else.” She swallows hard. “But I am your mother, and what happened to us…it was horrific for everyone. There isn’t a day when I don’t think about him. Or a day when I don’t miss him. But I should never have let my pain make you feel unwanted. You were not unwanted. I made a mistake, a grievous mistake, letting you go. All I ask is that you let me find a way to make up for it, to make up for all the lost time… That’s all I ask.”
Thomas’s truculent glare softens almost imperceptibly as he takes a deep breath. My shoulders relax as well, certain that the tension in the air is about to melt away. After a long moment of silence in which Thomas simply observes his mother, he nods. His mother’s eyes light up with joy and deep feeling. She takes his hand and strokes it with trembling fingers.
Then, turning in my direction, she exclaims, “Oh, how impolite…” She wipes tears from the corners of her eyes with her fingertips, trying to compose herself. “You’ll have to excuse me… I haven’t even introduced myself. I’m Lauren Collins, and I’m so happy you’re here as well,” she says, holding out a hand to me.
“I’m Vanessa. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Collins,” I answer, shaking her hand.
“Please, call me Lauren.” Our handshake quickly turns into anaffectionate hug that makes me feel welcome. I hear her faintly murmur the wordsthank youa few inches from my ear. I smile at her and tell her that she has nothing to thank me for.
We move to the kitchen, where Lauren goes to the stove to heat up the stew. While Leila takes a bottle of water out of the fridge, Thomas and I sit in silence. The atmosphere is still pretty tense. Leila pours four glasses of water and hands them out to us. Their mother stirs the stew some more before turning in our direction, her back against the kitchen counter.
“You know, Mom,” Leila says brightly, clearing her throat and looping her arm through her mother’s. “Vanessa is the girl I was telling you about…Thomas’s girlfriend,” she explains, giving us a sly look with smirk on her face. Lauren watches us tenderly but, seeing my blushing cheeks and her son’s tight face, she decides not to push.
“JC, why can’t you shut your mouth?” Thomas scolds her with a surly look on his face. Then he takes the pack of cigarettes out of his jacket, ready to stick one between his lips, but his mother gives him a look that must have dissuaded him because he sighs—almost grunts, really—and frustratedly stuffs them back into his pocket.
