Night Road(119)

She wanted to smile and change the subject and pretend she had nothing pressing on her mind, but her whole life was falling apart, it seemed, and she had no strength left for pretense. “Why is it we never really talk?” she said slowly. “I don’t even know you. And you certainly don’t know me. Why is that?”

Her mother put down her wine glass. Backlit by the gray day, she looked ethereal. For the first time, Jude noticed how old her mother looked, how tired. Her shoulders were thin as bird bones and her spine had begun to curve forward. “You, of all people, should understand, Judith.” Her mother’s voice was sharp and thin, a razor blade, but the look in her eyes was perhaps the softest expression Jude had ever seen. There was sadness there. Had it always been there?

“Why should I understand?”

Her mother glanced out the window. “I loved your father,” she said quietly, a crack in her voice. “After he passed, I knew I had you to care for, and I wanted to care for you, to love you … but there was nothing inside me. Even my ability to paint vanished. I thought it would last for a day or a week.” She looked at Jude. “It just went on and on, and when it finally lifted enough that I could breathe, you were gone from me. I didn’t even know how to get you back.”

Jude stared at her mother in shock. How was it that she’d never made this connection? She’d known that her mother quit painting on the day of her father’s funeral, that she’d walked out of the house and never returned, not really.

“I watched the kind of mother you became, and I was so proud of you. But I never said that. You wouldn’t have heard me anyway, although perhaps I want to think that. Either way, I didn’t say it. Then I saw you make the same mistake I did: I saw you stop loving Zach … and yourself. It broke my heart. I would have told you what you were doing wrong, but you were always so sure that I was weak and you were strong. So yes, Judith, you—of all people, you—should understand my mistakes. You should know why I treated you the way I did.”

Jude didn’t know what to say. It felt as if her whole life, her whole identity, had just cracked open.

Her mother got to her feet. For a second, Jude thought she was going to walk over here, cross the distance between them, and maybe even sit down beside her. “You’re young,” her mother said finally. “You can undo this mistake.”

Jude felt herself starting to shake. Here it was, the thing she’d been afraid of. “How?”

“People think love is an act of faith,” her mother said. “Sometimes it’s an act of will. I didn’t have the strength to love you, Jude—or to show that love, I guess. I don’t know which it was, and in the end, what’s the difference? You’re stronger than I ever was.”

In a way, it was the same thing Dr. Bloom had been saying for years. Jude glimpsed the regret in her mother’s gaze, and it was like looking into her own future. She didn’t want to someday be eighty years old and alone. “I’m not the only one who can undo a mistake, Mom.”

“I’m not young anymore,” her mother said. “I’ve missed my chance. I know that.”

“That’s what the lunches were about.”

“Of course.”

“And that’s why you wanted me to take over the gallery. So we’d have something in common.”

“Did you ever wonder where the gallery name came from? JACE. Your father named it for all of us: Judith Anne, Caroline, Edward. He thought we’d always be together in it.” Mother sighed. “Another regret of mine.”

Jude got to her feet. The trembling in her hands eased; suddenly she felt stronger than she had in months, maybe years. She didn’t know how she would correct all the wrong paths she’d taken, but it was time to start undoing her mistakes. One at a time. “On Saturday, I’m going to take Gracie to the aquarium. Why don’t you come with us?”

Mother gave her an uncertain smile. “Really? I could meet you at the ferry terminal. Say 11:00. We could have lunch at Ivar’s after. You and your father used to love throwing french fries to the gulls.”

Jude remembered it in a rush: standing by the railing with her parents, throwing fries to the gulls teeming overhead. That’s it, punkin … kid’s got quite an arm, doesn’t she, Caro?

“He loved us both,” Jude said.

Her mother nodded. “It’s good to talk about him finally.”

And just like that, Jude knew what she had to do. Maybe she’d known for years, but just now, this instant, in the sweet glow of this new start, she was ready to try. “I can’t stay for lunch. I’m sorry. There’s something I need to do.”

“Of course,” her mother said. If she was surprised by the sudden change, she didn’t show it. She led the way to the elevator.

There, they stared at each other for a long time; in her mother’s aged porcelain face, Jude saw the long-forgotten image of another woman, one who’d loved to paint.

“I’ve missed you, Judith,” her mother said softly.

“Me, too. I’ll see you Saturday.”

Jude left the austere penthouse and returned to the underground parking structure on Virginia Street. From there, she drove out of the dark lot and into a rainy day. Driving carefully, she arrived at the Capitol Hill Community Center. There, she sat in her car for more than ninety minutes, waiting. Every moment she sat there was an act of courage; it would have been so much easier to drive away. That was what she’d done a dozen times before …