Thank God the waiter approaches and takes my drink order. “Scotch,” I tell him, “neat.”
My mother declines anything further.
“No martini?” I ask her.
She shakes her head. “No. I have made some changes in my life over the past two years, and one of them is reducing my alcohol consumption.”
“Good for you.”
“It hasn’t been easy, but I feel so much better without all the drinking.”
Okay. She’s never admitted to overindulging, even though we all knew she did.
She takes a sip of her water. “I’ve made other changes too, like reducing my workload, and I started seeing a therapist.”
Taken aback, I’m not sure what to say. “What prompted all this?”
“So much.” Her answer is simple and I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with it. “So,” she says, “I heard you are staying in California. I was so happy to hear this.”
I sit back in my chair. “Yeah, I took a job that I really like and I’m doing very well.”
My mother folds her hands on the table. “Tell me all about it.”
The waiter arrives with my drink mid-conversation and takes our orders. I resume talking, and the nervousness disappears with each passing word.
By the time our salads come, we’ve moved on to her job, and the films she’s working on. I haven’t seen her since my father’s funeral, which I was surprised she flew to New York for, and haven’t really spoken to her since then, so it’s odd that the conversation flows with such ease right now.
By the time our entrees come, she’s asking me about Maggie, Brooklyn obviously having told her about the two of us.
And then she’s paid the check at her insistence and we’re just finishing our coffee when she reaches across the table and grabs for my hand. “Keen, I don’t know how to say this, so I just am. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for never being there for you. For never giving you the attention you deserved. For assuming your father had it all figured out and you didn’t need me. I’m just so sorry.”
Aggression spikes and heats in my gut. I want to say it’s too fucking late, don’t you think? I want to tell her to go to hell. I want to get up and walk out of this restaurant and throw her the bird. Yeah, I want to do a lot, but instead I sit here dumbfounded. Staring. Feeling way too much as I watch tears spill from her eyes, the same fucking eyes as mine.
Reaching with her free hand, she runs her fingertips over my forehead and pushes the hair from my face. “I owe you more than I can ever give you, but I hope you’ll listen to me, and maybe someday understand that I did what I thought was best for you.”
My features draw together, and I’m having a hard time breathing steadily as I push words from my lips I have wanted to say for so many years. “You did what was best for you, Mother.”
She shakes her head. “I know you think that, but your father is what was best for you.”
I should leave right now. I shouldn’t be talking about this. And yet, she opened the fucking door, so I’ll open it even wider. Here it goes. I’ll put it all out there. “And what, I wasn’t good enough, but Brooklyn was?”
I have never felt an ounce of jealousy toward my brother, yet somewhere deep inside I have hated my mother for not keeping me in her life, but keeping him.
She recoils, her hands going to her lap in a nervous gesture. “Keen, no, that is not true.”
“Then why, Mother? Why?”
She dabs at the tears on her cheeks with her napkin. “Because your father was a good man, better than me. Brooklyn’s father was nothing like your father. He couldn’t keep a job or stay out of jail. And Keen, look at how well you turned out, and then look at Brooklyn, still struggling to find his way, and tell me I was wrong.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “But I needed you.”
There, I said it.
Finally.
And it feels like a big fucking weight has been lifted off my shoulders. “I needed my mother to read me bedtime stories and tell me I was okay after I fell off my bike. To teach me what to say to girls, how to act, to help me understand what love is. And you know what, Mother? I got none of that.”
Emma Fairchild stands, and I swear she’s going to walk out on me. But instead she circles the table and drops to her knees. Taking my hands in my lap, and putting her head there, she whispers, “I know and I’m so sorry, but I hope it’s not too late, Keen. Tell me it’s not too late.”
Years of hostility just melt away and I wonder why. Why now? Perhaps it is me that has changed or her that has changed, or maybe it’s a combination of us both. Who knows? Perhaps it’s even my involvement with Maggie.