Page 74 of Second Act
“I told you that my parents dropped me at a foster-care center and never came back. That’s not accurate.” He looked away so she could see the sharp lines of his profile outlined by the lights of the skyscrapers behind him. “My father wasn’t in the picture from the start. He was a brief relationship that ended when Ma discovered she was pregnant.I never met him and never want to, although she often told me how much I look like him.”
Jessica said nothing about it but she noted his use of the wordoften, which seemed out of place in the story. “I don’t know if that’s better or worse than him abandoning youafteryou were born. Maybe better?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s just a fact in a sordid story.”
“Not sordid,” she said, hating his belittling of his history. “A tragic and terrible story.”
He shrugged. “My mother took me to the foster-care center but made it clear that the situation was only temporary. She told them—and me—she was going to come back for me.”
“Oh no.” Jessica’s heart contracted painfully. Despite his withdrawal, she needed to offer comfort and reached forward to lay her hand on the back of his where it rested on the bed. “That was cruel, even if her intentions were good.”
He looked down at her touch but didn’t acknowledge it in any other way. “Ah, but she did come back. More than once. I would get settled with a set of foster parents, and then she would show up on the doorstep, demanding my return.”
“What? She could do that?” She tried to imagine how Hugh would have felt as a small boy when that happened.
“She wouldn’t relinquish her parental rights because she was sure she could be a good mother to me...if she could just stop drinking.”
He’d never told her why he had been put in foster care. Jessica had assumed his irresponsible parents just didn’t want to be saddled with a child. “Did you want to go with her?”
“I couldn’t pack my garbage bag fast enough every time. It didn’t matter if I liked the foster family or not—she was my mother and she had come back for me.”
“But she didn’t keep you.” So he had been whipsawed between joy at his mother’s return and what? Crushing hurt and disappointment when she threw him back? Jessica forced herself to do nothing morethan squeeze Hugh’s hand when she wanted to throw her arms around him and rock him like the child she was picturing.
“Ma would go to AA meetings for a while. Then something would happen to upset her at work—she mostly waitressed—and she’d quit. Or I’d get sick and she’d have to use part of the rent money for the doctor and meds, so the latest landlord would get nasty. It always started with just one little drink to take the edge off her problems.” He shrugged again. “But an alcoholic never stops at one.”
“How old were you the first time it happened?”
“I’m not sure. Young enough not to remember much about it, except that she gave me back.” His last words were raw with a pain that scraped over Jessica’s nerves like a knife blade.
“You thought she didn’t want you.” She could barely speak through the heartbreak she felt for that little boy.
“The next time I was old enough to understand what would happen if she started drinking. I did everything I could think of to prevent it. I made the beds every day. I washed the dishes. I helped her clean the apartment. I took out the trash. I kept ‘quiet as a mouse,’ as she always admonished me when she left for work, because there was no babysitter, of course. She couldn’t afford one.”
Jessica winced. “How old were you?”
“About eight or nine, I think.”
“Oh dear God!” She pictured the boy doing chores beyond his years because he thought it would help his mother stay sober. Tears burned in her throat.
“I didn’t need a babysitter. The apartment was perfectly safe.” His voice was harsh as he defended his mother.
“That wasn’t what I was thinking of. It was you”—her voice broke on a sob—“working so hard to be perfect, believing you could change her behavior when her problems had nothing to do with you. I want to take that little boy in my arms and tell him none of it was his fault.”
“But I was never good enough.” Now his voice was harsh for a different reason. “Never good enough to make her want to stop drinking, so she could keep me.”
Tears ran down Jessica’s cheeks. “You know that’s not true. She had a disease. That’s what alcoholism is. Shedidwant to keep you—look at how often she tried!—but the disease prevented it.”
He let out a long breath. “It didn’t feel that way at the time.” Suddenly, he turned his hand under hers and clasped her fingers. “She screwed up my chances of being adopted by a stable family. I screwed up my chances, too, because I refused to cooperate in case she wanted me back again. At the same time, I still hoped someone would want to adopt me, just because it would prove that there wasn’t something wrong with me.”
“Who could blame you?” Jessica fought down another sob. “When was the last time you saw your mother?”
His grip on her hand became convulsive. “Six years ago. At the morgue in West Covina to confirm her identity. She’d been hit by a car. Her blood alcohol level was .21.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jessica whispered, the words inadequate to acknowledge his terrible loss. Her death meant that there was no chance for Hugh to ever have a real relationship with his mother.
He reached for her other hand and faced her, angled so she could see half of his face while the other half was still in shadow. “I didn’t tell you this to make you pity me. I told you because that’s why I reacted the way I did when you broke our engagement. Because I felt like that child who’d been abandoned all over again.”
She nodded. “I understand.”
