“How old were you when she died?”
“Twelve.” Sheryl tried to keep her voice free of tremors. She stared straight ahead. At the same tree her mother used to stare at endlessly. “She killed herself. It ruined my dad. Me as well a little, I guess.”
“Oh no.” Kristin turned toward her. “I’m so sorry.”
Sheryl kept looking ahead, but she felt Kristin’s gaze on her. “It was a long time ago. They didn’t tell me it was suicide at first. I only found out when my father blurted it out in a drunken fit a day before the funeral.”
“Jesus.” Kristin shuffled in her seat.
Sheryl felt the lightest touch of a hand on her knee. “I didn’t believe him at first. I didn’t believe my mother would leave me like that. I couldn’t understand why she would do that.” Sheryl believed she wasn’t doing such a bad job of recounting the facts. Her hands remained steady, her voice calm. “Officially, I lived with my father, but my Aunt Rita stepped in a lot. She came round all the time, often took me home with her, fed me, bought me a new school uniform once in a while.” She shrugged. “All things considered, I turned out all right.”
“My goodness, Sheryl. No child should go through something like that.”
“Yet children go through so many things.” Sheryl finally turned to face Kristin. “Many through much worse than I did.”
Kristin shook her head. “It’s good that you told me.” She reached for Sheryl’s hand and held it firmly between hers.
“It’s not something I go around shouting off rooftops, as you can imagine. Not many people know this about me, but ever since we arrived here yesterday, I’ve felt compelled to tell you. To explain myself to you better. Not to gain your sympathy. But I needed you to know this about me.”
Kristin nodded. “This place must be full of memories.”
“It was an impulsive decision to bring you here, but it felt right.” Sheryl squeezed Kristin’s hand. “So many things about you feel right.”
“I know that feeling.” Kristin brought their hands to her mouth and planted a soft peck on one of Sheryl’s knuckles. “I feel like I should tell you something dreadful that happened to me in my childhood, but I was a pampered only child of Korean immigrants. My parents’ only fault is that they can’t really fathom the fact that their daughter might be a lesbian. It seems so foolish now. I feel foolish for not telling them.”
“We all have our own cross to bear.”
“Perhaps, but some are heavier than others.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything. This isn’t a quid pro quo. I just didn’t want this to be something I would tell you in a few weeks’ time. Didn’t want it to be something I had kept from you. But that’s all it is. As I said, I think I turned out rather well.”
“You turned out one fine woman.” If Kristin scooted any closer, she’d be sitting on Sheryl’s lap. “Can I ask a follow-up question?”
“Sure.”
“You never see your father?”
Sheryl felt her muscles deflate. “I haven’t seen him in years. I had to let him go, for my own sanity. I tried taking care of him for a long time, but nothing I ever did helped. When Mom died, he disappeared as well. He checked out.” Sheryl decided to keep that particular, equally painful conversation for another time. Out of sight was definitely not out of mind. She thought of her father often, of that shell of a man, drinking the rest of his life away. “I think I’m ready to change the subject now.” She tried a smile but didn’t manage to pull her lips all the way into one convincingly. “Let’s talk about you now.”
Chapter Eight
Kristin didn’t know how to keep a straight face, how to not communicate all these things she felt blazing inside of her to her parents, who were still the people who knew her best. Not in all ways, of course, but surely, in more ways than Kristin felt comfortable contemplating.
There she sat, opposite them, in the apartment where she had grown up. If she went down the hall and opened the door to her room, she would find it intact, nothing altered, as though her mother felt the need to keep it as a shrine to the dream of the daughter she knew she would never have.
One weekend and everything seemed to have changed, even the way she carried herself around her parents. How was this Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy going to work now? So far, it had been easy. Kristin had, literally, had nothing to tell them. As if being a lesbian was only true if she were having sex, which was a ridiculous notion. But it was also a very comfortable safety blanket to hide beneath all these years she had known, but never said.