Page 95 of Back for More
I clear my throat and find my voice. “She certainly has been busy.” I finally look over at her. She’s not blubbering like I thought she would be. She’s looking at me expectantly, hesitantly. Waiting for a reaction. I don’t know what my reaction is yet. I’m not an actor. I don’t do exercises to help get in touch with my feelings. I’m in shock. I’m a little bit in awe. I’m definitely confused. But I still somehow love Lily even more right now, and I just hope she can see that in my eyes.
I take a seat at the kitchen table across from my mother. She started telling me to call her Susan when I was eight. Lily pours me a cup of coffee and puts her hand on my shoulder, giving it a little squeeze. Then she places a cupcake with a candle on the table in front of me. Susan smiles and winks at me, in that way that she does. Not a lot of women can get away with it, but my mom has always been able to smile and wink with the best of them. It’s little things like that that I missed.
“I think I’m gonna head over to the theater early,” Lily says to me. “Give you two a chance to catch up… Does that sound good?”
“Sure. Call me when you’re on a break.”
“I will.” She rubs my mother’s back, kisses me on the head, and she’s gone.
Susan and I are just staring at each other. If she’s waiting for me to say something first, then she may have to wait forever.
“This is a wonderful house,” she offers, clutching her coffee mug. “I love what I’ve seen so far.”
“Thanks.”
“I like Belford too. What a nice small town.”
“Cool.”
“You look good. You seem good. Happy.”
“I am. Thanks to Dad. And Lily.”
She sighs and, after a moment, says, “She hired a private investigator. Lily did.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Apparently I wasn’t all that difficult to find. Credit cards and mobile phone accounts and such. When she got my number, she called me directly. She told me she’s your girlfriend and that you’re doing very well and you’re a wonderful young man whom I should get to know. She said she didn’t want to email me because she wanted me to hear her voice and she wanted to hear mine. She told me she’d pay for me to fly out here to visit you for your birthday. This was a few weeks ago. We’ve been emailing ever since then. She’s very good at keeping a secret.”
She waits for me to respond, but all of a sudden I’m just angry, and all I want to fucking know is: “Where have youbeen?”
Her posture changes. She’s much less confident now. She takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. I don’t know if she thought this was going to be easy, and maybe I imagined it would be a fucking Hallmark commercial too, but they don’t make birthday cards that say, “Happy birthday, son. I left your father and you before you became a legal adult, haven’t spoken to you in over a decade, but let’s have some pancakes and work this shit out. What do you say?”
“I’ve been in Paris, mostly. Paris is my base. I travel around Europe a lot.”
“Does Dad know you’re here?”
She nods. “I rang him last night when I got to the hotel. Told him I’d be surprising you.”
“You talked to him last night?”
“For a little while. We’ll go visit him later, yes?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re angry with me.”
“I’m a lot of things. Angry is one of them. Are you still with that man you ran off with?”
“No. No, not for several years now.”
I shake my head and look away.
“Why didn’t I tell you this? Is that what you want to know? Why the fuck didn’t I come back to you and your father? You have every right to ask me this, Wesley. I could ask you both why you never tried to reach me…”
“Please tell me there are five hundred letters you wrote him that you just didn’t have the courage to send.”
“No. But there are five thousand letters I thought about writing. To both of you.” She pushes the coffee mug away and places her hands flat on the tabletop, staring down at them. She can’t even look at me right now. Christ, I don’t need her to feel bad, I just want answers.
