My father barely hesitated before striding out the door.
Peter caught my eye. I looked down and gave him a slight nod to indicate he could leave me alone with her. He slipped backwards out of the room. When the tip of his sneaker vanished around the corner, I finally allowed my eyes to rest on her.
She wasn’t the beautiful, composed woman who graced my father’s arm at charity functions so long ago. Her eyes were hazel baubles surrounded by a brownish-yellow sea. Her skin had a taint of jaundice, and deep lines burrowed into her forehead and at the corners of her eyes. Botox must not be a good mix with liver failure.
My analysis complete, I kept my neutral expression and waited. I wasn’t going to give her the upper hand by speaking first. I would not reveal the depth of my rage; it was so profound, my upper lip twitched with the urge to sneer. I would not give her a goddamned thing.
“You look like my brother,” she said.
“That’s…” Interesting? Who gives a crap? About twenty-six years too late?
“Neither here nor there, I know.” She waved a hand blithely and took another sip. “You don’t want to hear about Denny or me. You’re pissed off, and you want to let me have it. Probably with buckshot.”
“Mother’s intuition?” I said coldly.
She barked a laugh and took a long gulp from a pink plastic cup when the coughing fit started. The soft color was striking against her pale lips. “Sound like Denny, too.” She put the cup down and closed her eyes. “He was a homosexual. Died of AIDS in…’88? ’89?”
Her words were a rain of stunning blows. I couldn’t speak. I wanted to ask about Denny, about her family, but my tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth. My fingers bit into my palm and arm.
“If you come back, I’ll show you some pictures. Tell you what I remember about my folks and Denny.”
“I won’t be coming back,” I said stubbornly, even while another part of me longed for knowledge.
“Suit yourself. You got some cousins and an aunt. I’ll just leave you notes with the albums.” She pursed her lips and shrugged delicately.
Her fingers swished around in the cup. I heard ice click against the sides. It was the only sound in the room. My rage magnified with each clack.
“Are you human?”
“You think I should be groveling for your forgiveness and giving you a list of excuses about why I abandoned my family. That isn’t going to happen. I didn’t want to be a mother.”
“No shit.”
She fished into the cup and popped a few slivers of ice into her mouth. The crunching sound raked along my spine. “That’s as much of an explanation as you’re going to get.”
“I’m so glad we settled this.” I pushed off the wall, determined to get out of there before I strangled her. Before I could open the door, she hit me with another stunner.
“Don’t you want to know about your brother?”
Baggage for Two, Please
“How old is he?” Peter asked.
The restaurant we stopped at on the way home was filled with family units. My eyes settled on a nearby couple with two rambunctious children. “Six.”
“How old is your mother?”
“Forty-five.” One of the boys tipped sideways and held onto his seat while looking upside down under his chair. The mother, a woman not much bigger than her child, leaned over and blew a raspberry on the boy’s back. He giggled and nearly fell off.
While observing the little kid, all I kept thinking about was Peter. Peter and me. After all the shit we’d gone through, was there even a Peter and me now? I couldn’t look at him. So I watched the little boy’s antics. Until Peter forced my attention back to him with a gentle tap of my hand.
“Earth to Austin.”
“I agreed to take him.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Peter replied. “What’s his name?”
“Stuart.”
“Your father agreed to your having custody?”
“He didn’t have a choice. She’s got maybe a few days left since my liver wasn’t a match. If she dies—when she dies—she threatened to leave her half of the practice to me if he didn’t sign over his parental rights.”
“Sounds like she’s trying to make things right for at least one of her kids.”
“Yeah. Hard to stay angry with her after that,” I agreed. Actually, it was hard to stay angry with her at all. It wasn’t her fault she was fertile.
“Where is he now?”
“Boarding school in the UK. She said he knows about me.”
“I don’t get someone who doesn’t want kids having a second one.”