Page 96 of Back for More
“What I want to say to you, Wes, is…marriage can be hard. Being a mother can be hard. That’s not an excuse, it’s just… Everything is hard when you never got to at least try to be the person you thought you were going to be first. I didn’t find myself before I found my husband. I don’t regret the sixteen years I spent with you. I don’t regret the seventeen years I spent with Toby. I don’t know if you remember what I was like with your father, but…”
“I do. I remember.”
“Well, then, you know it was rough on him. And that made it rough on you… You and Toby are the best men I have ever loved… It just seemed like the only way to save the people I loved from me was to leave. Your dad has always been better with you than I was. I saw a way out, and I left.” She covers her face. “I may have been wrong. I may have been selfish. I have to live with the guilt every day of my life.” She runs her fingers through her hair and looks up at me. She’s not crying, but her eyes are filled with sorrow, and my stomach is in knots.
It’s killing me to see her like this, but we both need her to keep talking.
“If I hadn’t left, you and Toby probably wouldn’t have moved, and you never would have met Lily…” She gives me a halfhearted hopeful smile. “I would have been there for you if I thought you needed me. I’m here for you now.” She slaps her hand down on the table. “Fuck it. You know? I’m here for three more days. Let’s figure shit out. You’re my son. I love you. I want to know you. I’m sorry. Talk to me. Tell me who you are.” She reaches her hand across the table, palm up. She still wears silver and turquoise rings on almost every finger. But no wedding ring. My dad never wore his ring because he was always working with his hands. I stare at my mother’s fingers. They’re trembling.
Susan Carver didn’t used to swear. She didn’t like it when my dad and I swore. She’s the reason my dad and I started saying “son of a biscuit.” Apparently she’s spent the last decade or so in the company of marines, because she swears like one. I’m a little stunned, but she has a hint of a French accent, so it sounds kind of pretty.
I don’t want to be mad at her.
I slap my hand down on the tabletop, startling her. “Fuck it. Yeah, let’s do this.” I reach out to touch her hand. Those beautiful silver rings are a little bit cold and hard, but they’re her. I’ve always liked them.
She suggests we add some whiskey to our coffee, and then I spend the next hour telling her who I am.
I devote about five minutes of that hour to discussing Dad and my job, and the rest of it I’m talking about Lily.
Every kid wants their parents to be together, on some level, but I never had any romantic notions about what it would be like for mine to reunite. I just knew it would happen. One day. They did used to fight a lot. I remember it. But I also remember the passion and how my dad just accepted who Susan was. “Sometimes it doesn’t matter how good the soil is or how well you care for it,” he would say. “A plant can only thrive if it’s in the right location.” He said my mother was an air plant. She doesn’t need sturdy roots in order to survive. They’re just an anchor.
We Carver men are fucking oak trees.
Seeing how my dad is with Susan now just makes me respect him even more. Neither of them ever wanted a fairy tale ending. They just wanted to be a part of each other’s stories.
Now Lily Barnes is a part of their story too, but probably not in the way that she had hoped.
We postpone birthday drinks with Neal and Alecia.
At the end of a long day, Lily and I are back in bed together just holding each other.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she says. She pulls away from me and sits up, covering her mouth. “Oh no!”
I laugh. “It’s not a bad thing.”
“Your parents are getting divorced because of me, and that’s not a bad thing? On your birthday? I feel terrible.”
“It’s actually really good. They don’t need to be married to each other, and now they’re finally dealing with it. They got along great. They’re friends now. It was really cool. We’re all gonna hang out together tomorrow. You’ll see.”
She slides back down so we’re face-to-face again. “Wes. I just wanted to do something for you. In case you were too stubborn to do it yourself.”
“I know. No one else on earth would have done this for me. And you’re the girl who tried to convince me that my mom had been kidnapped by pirates. If I could bring your mother back for you, I would.”
“I know.”
“It was kind of a dick move, though. Now I’ll never get away with giving you an Amazon gift card for your birthday.”
“Speaking of dick moves…” she teases. “I still have one more birthday gift to give you.” She disappears under the covers, and for a couple of seconds, I’m reminding myself to open up a special savings account for the biggest fucking diamond on the planet.
