What to Say Next(57)

“Leave me alone!” I yell. My voice is shaky and sad. It gives me away. Now that my mom senses I’m vulnerable, she’ll pounce. This is precisely when having brothers or sisters would come in handy. Someone to share my mom’s focus.

“I’m coming in.” She opens the door, using what is apparently a spare key to my bedroom that I did not know existed. Like my happy family, my privacy has been an illusion. I wonder what else is a lie.

I do not look up. Do not give her the satisfaction of seeing me like this. It would be better if she just thought I was angry. That I hate her now. This pathetic version of me makes it look like there’s room for her to wiggle her way back into my life. I want to scream, I’m not crying about you! but I don’t seem to have the energy.

“We need to talk,” she says. She sits on my bed, and also my toes.

“Ow!” It doesn’t hurt, but I don’t feel like being mature about anything.

“I understand you’re mad at me,” my mom starts, readjusting so she’s not squashing my feet. “And you have every right to be. Still, I think you need to hear me out.”

“No.”

“Kit.”

“No.”

“Stop being a baby,” she says, which, for some reason makes me snap. I’m tired of playing adult. Of trying to be a good sport. I’m suddenly revved up and burning with rage. This must have been what David felt like earlier, when he started drop-kicking the football team. I need to learn krav maga.

“Are you serious right now? I’m the baby? I’m not the one who slept with my husband’s best friend. You’re a cheater and a liar.”

“Please, honey,” she says, all conciliatory, arms outstretched as if I am four years old and all I need is a hug from Mommy to make my boo-boo better. Like my words bounced right off her.

“Do you have any idea what you did to Dad? He was going to divorce you. He was going to break up our family. That’s how much you must have hurt him!” I am screaming at the top of my lungs, so loud that our neighbors the Jacksons can probably hear me even with their windows closed. I don’t care. I need this to stick. “All because you’re a big slut.”

“Kit!”

“Stop saying my name! You don’t get to say my name! You don’t get to do anything!”

“Kit!” she yells again, but I can’t hear her. The anger is too loud and fuzzy, like radio static. White noise on white noise.

“I wish it was you who died. Not Dad. You. It’s not fair,” I say, and then I curl into a fetal position and cry, because though I have just said the most hurtful thing a daughter can say to a mother, and even though I saw the words land like a punch on my unflappable mother’s face—she actually flinched—I feel no satisfaction. Even worse, as soon as the words are out I realize that they are not true. I loved my dad, maybe even more than I love my mother. But still, despite myself, I need her more. Always have.

My mom puts her hand to her mouth, as if she is trying to stifle a silent scream. She’s more ashen than usual, pale enough that she’s almost the same color as me. And just like that, her composure dissolves.

“Oh God,” she says, and then starts sobbing into her palm in large gulps. “Oh God, you’re right. It’s not fair. He’s really gone. And he died without knowing how much I still—have always—loved him.”

“Mom,” I whisper, but I make no move to comfort her. I just unfold my body, sit up, curl my knees back in. I’m still fetal, though at least I’m upright.

“I get why you’re punishing me. I know I deserve all of it. But just know you can’t hurt me any more than I’m already hurting. He was my husband, the father of my child, we were together my entire adult life. I don’t even know who I am without him,” she says, and clutches at her chest. “The love of my life died—he died, Kit—at pretty much the only moment in twenty-six years when he doubted me.”

And there it is. For the first time, my mother says three simple words—he died, Kit—and at least that part, the he died part, is the truest thing she’s ever said.

“Why’d you do it?” I ask, and the tables flip once more. I’m the one sounding like the grown-up again. “Don’t tell me you were lonely. I want to know why you were willing to sacrifice everything.”

She sighs, closes her eyes, and then opens them, as if gathering herself.

“I was lonely. That’s not an excuse. It’s just the truth. Part of it, anyway. Your dad had his books and his practice and you. He wasn’t the type to say to me, Hey, honey, you look beautiful. He didn’t often even say I love you. He just wasn’t that kind of man. I knew that when I married him, and in the beginning I never really needed it. I felt good about myself. Not just about how I looked, but about everything—our marriage, you, my work. For years, it all hummed along nicely. It seemed, I don’t know, so greedy and American to ask for more than that. Then one day I looked in the mirror and suddenly I was forty-five and I realized I couldn’t remember the last time anyone, including Dad, had paid any real attention to me. I felt…taken for granted. Like I was invisible,” my mom says. “You are too young to know what that feels like. At your age, every day is like being center stage.”

Of course my mom would think that’s what sixteen is like. In high school, she was a clear-skinned Indian goddess among pasty, pimpled white girls. She was like a Lauren Drucker, not a Kit Lowell.