Naturally my mother still puts her on that pedestal. I tried to tell her the truth. The first time I saw her after coming back from Kauai, she showed up at Claire’s door wanting to check-in with me. We had an all-out screaming match (luckily Claire wasn’t home to witness it) and I let everything fly. I told her the truth about Juliet, that it wasn’t Logan who cheated, that Juliet had the affair. And, like I thought she would, my mother turned a blind eye to it all. I know it makes me out to be a terrible daughter to bring it all up like that, but I just wanted her to see the truth for once.
Now I know that nothing I ever say will change my mother’s mind. I have to let her be and believe all that she wants to believe. Despite our differences, I know my mother will forever be grieving over her. I know she truly loved Juliet and only wants to believe the best.
Times like this though, it’s hard for me to keep my mouth shut.
“Juliet could have been a movie star,” my mother says, taking a sip of wine. “Sadly, she was too beautiful for this lifetime.” She looks to me. “And Veronica, what have you been up to lately?”
Arch gives me a strange look, probably because it’s a sign that my mother and I don’t talk anymore.
“Living the dream,” I tell her and the phrase makes me think of Charlie when he first picked me up from the airport in Lihue. I miss my friends there so much that it hurts, my chest feels like it’s being squeezed and drained of every last drop.
Even though it’s hard, I still keep in touch with everyone. I talk to Kate, Johnny, and Nikki on the regular, usually through email since I try and stay off of Facebook. The idea of seeing Logan’s photo pop up in a tagged pic or something scares me too much.
I talk to Charlie sometimes. We’ve had a few emails back and forth over what happened, and honestly I can’t go on blaming him. He knows he fucked up and he feels forever guilty (Kate says he’s really taken it to heart). Charlie has always meant well, it’s just a shame it had to come to this.
I ask about Logan sometimes, usually via Johnny since he’s a guy and doesn’t try and tiptoe around the subject. Usually they tell me he’s doing fine, working harder than ever. I haven’t spoken to him though. I want to. I think about it every night. Just texting him. Sending an email. Mailing a letter even. I want to hear his voice, I want to know how he’s doing. If he misses me. If he hates me. If he forgives me for what I did. I want to tell him the truth, and even though nothing will come of it, I want to tell him I always loved him and that everything I’d said in my note was a lie.
He reached out to talk to me after I left. A lot. Phone, email, Facebook, whatever he could. He even called my parents on a few occasions, though I would hear about it from my father a few months later. But every time he tried to talk to me, I couldn’t bring myself to answer. What was there to say. Nothing I could say would ever make him believe me and it wouldn’t make it better.
After a while, the calls stopped. No more texts, no more emails. It meant that Logan was over it, moving on. Done with me, and who could ever fucking blame him.
The thought hurts. It hurts like my heart is breaking all over again and I have to double over from the pain. The idea that I’m alone and reeling from my decision, that he doesn’t think of me the same way. I know I have little right to complain but I can’t help it.
You reap what you sow. I chose what I thought was the lesser of two evils and not a moment goes by that I’m not reaping it.
When dinner is over, the four of us step out of the steakhouse and into the hot Chicago night. It’s nothing like Hawaii. You can’t see the stars. You can’t hear the crickets. There are no chickens. There’s just this smoggy orange glow above you, the dirty smells and grating sounds of the city.
My mother wants us to go to a cocktail bar down the street, though I can tell my dad has had enough, just as I have had. That’s the last thing I want to do. Arch turns to me and tells me he’ll pay for my cab back to my place and I honestly couldn’t be happier about that, even though it’s a slap in the face that he doesn’t even want to come.
So here comes the awkward goodbyes. I give Arch a quick hug and then am soullessly engulfed by my mother who smells like lavender soap and expensive perfume. I have a feeling she just had her hair done before this dinner, though being the deputy mayor she never really needs an excuse to look her best. Growing up, I used to envy the amount of time my mother put into her appearance, like it was magic. Now I know it’s just a mask, hiding everything ugly underneath.
“You can call sometimes, you know,” she says to me stiffly, her chin raised. I know she doesn’t mean it, she just wants to keep up appearances.