The Kindest Lie(78)
She hadn’t expected Corey to be so slight. But Natasha acknowledged he was small for his age. If he’d been born in a hospital, she’d know his birth weight. How big should an eleven-year-old boy be? Ruth had no idea what was normal for his age.
She heard Natasha’s voice next to her but kept her eyes riveted on the playground. “That’s your boy. You loved him from the beginning. He’s here in this world because of you.”
This boy could be hers. It was very likely that he indeed was. Ruth stayed quiet watching the boys run, jump, and tumble, their bodies descending in the snow and rising again.
Averting her eyes, Ruth sighed. “I still don’t know that I feel like a mother.”
“Look, there’s no one way a mother is supposed to feel.” Then Natasha lowered her voice and glanced back at Camila, who was now jamming to music through her headphones. “Sometimes, I wish I hadn’t had a kid. What could I have done in these three years if I’d been free to come and go as I pleased, no kid to tie me down? This little girl drives me crazy sometimes, but I love her to pieces. Love can be complicated and messy. Believe that. Stop beating yourself up.”
The kids on the playground kept screaming, and before long Camila was begging Natasha for a Rice Krispies Treat. Ruth tried to cancel their noise and isolate the sound of Corey, only hear his voice rising above the others. Of course, that was impossible.
Ruth scanned the playground until she spotted Corey again, and she watched him until a whistle blew to end the outdoor activities and the children filed back inside the rec center.
When she saw him disappear into the building, she couldn’t help but think of him vanishing with Mama on the other side of her bedroom door all those years ago. She had an overwhelming urge to run into the rec center screaming his name—some action, something—all the things she now wished she’d done the day he was born.
Twenty-Six
Ruth
After leaving the rec center, Ruth rewound and replayed the image of Corey on the playground over and over. A private memory she could enjoy alone in her own mind, even as she sat across from Eli in the living room. It was Christmas Eve, and they were lounging on the couch, binge-watching back-to-back reruns of some nineties sitcom. A couple of cans of Bud sat on the TV tray next to the couch. Eli sat expressionless, not reacting to any of the punch lines or laugh tracks. She and her brother had said very little to each other since the night at the bar.
His words had cut into her. She thought of the sacrifices he and Mama had made so she could have a chance at doing something with her life. The way they’d protected her reputation. How had she never thanked them for that? She’d gone along with the lies all those years because she worried about what other people would think of her. How that one slipup could forever tarnish the image she’d clung to like a lifeline.
“When I got pregnant, what did you think? I mean, what did you really think of me?” After Papa died, she knew that Eli considered it his duty to stand in for their grandfather and preserve her reputation. “Did you think I was a ho?”
Some sort of spell broke, because Eli almost rolled off the couch laughing at the hopefulness in her voice. “Nope, one baby don’t put you at ho status. You still a corny-ass nerd, though.”
When he turned his beer can up to his mouth, Ruth saw Eli at ten years old guzzling whole milk from mason jars, at thirteen draining orange juice straight from the jug, and then at eighteen, when they were barely speaking to each other, throwing back Gatorade before basketball games. He caught her staring and she gave him a goofy smile, one of those smiles that she hoped meant no matter how old they got or how much they hurt each other, they’d always be brother and sister.
She wanted to tell Eli how the guilt of leaving behind her son had eaten away at her. That the truth might have ruined her marriage. But she also wanted to tell him how excited she was that she’d figured out who her son was, or at least she was pretty sure she had. And most of all, she wanted to thank Eli for protecting Corey, for sacrificing his freedom for her son. But the words stuck in her throat, and before she could untangle them, she heard the sound of Mama’s slippers.
“Cut these lights off. You’re not paying the light bill here.” Mama flipped the wall switch and unplugged the small Christmas tree by the window, leaving the house in darkness except for the flicker of the TV. Ruth shared a quick eye roll with her brother while Mama’s back was turned.
“And get those filthy boots off my couch,” Mama said to Eli, her voice buzzing in the room like a housefly.
“Stop trippin’, Mama. Relax,” he said.
The TV screen went black and Ruth could see in the dim room that Mama was holding the remote. Eli opened his mouth to protest but closed it. Growing up, they both knew that look on Mama’s face meant she was serious.
“Scoot over,” she told him, turning on one lamp after realizing the room had gone dark.
Eli unlaced his Timberlands, tossed them on the floor, and threw his legs over the back of the couch so she could sit down. The popping from the furnace provided the only sound in the room. Someone from church had come by to fix it, and now the house radiated heat. Perched on the edge of the sofa, Mama pulled her nightgown above her knees, exposing stretch marks and dimpling on her thighs. Her face looked tired, lines of age and stress creasing it, and Ruth knew she and her brother had put more than a few of them there. Maybe time away with Dino would do her some good after all.