Just One of the Guys(91)

“Not in the same way, honey.” She leans back against the couch and fiddles with her bracelet. “Chastity, you can’t spend your life loving someone more than you’re loved. You know that, don’t you? It makes you feel small, no matter how tall you might be.” She gives a small, sad smile.

“What…what are you talking about?”

“Trevor.”

I suck in a breath. “I—I—I don’t—”

“Yes, you do, honey. You love Trevor. You’ve loved him since you were a kid.”

My face crumples, the tears coming faster now. “Okay, well, yes. But let’s talk about you and Daddy,” I whisper.

“Okay. But I think you’re being smart to find someone else, someone who thinks you light up the room.” She pauses, staring at the floor. “Not someone who doesn’t even really see you anymore.”

I don’t know if she’s talking about me or her or Trevor or Ryan or Dad. I wipe my eyes and try to swallow.

“I’m tired of fighting to get your father to notice me,” she says, looking so weary and wise that I have to clench my jaw shut so I don’t sob. “He spent too many years just expecting me to be there when he felt like noticing. There I was, mother of five, keeping the house, cooking, running you kids all over, taking care of you when you were sick, and I was still just as in love with him as when we first met. Meanwhile, he just kept doing whatever he felt like doing. The job, the guys, you kids when the mood struck him. It seemed like everything was more important than I was.”

Buttercup moves her head to Mom’s lap now, and Mom strokes the dog’s big ears.

“Do you really love Harry?” I ask around the thorn in my throat.

“Yes,” she says simply, and my heart cracks. “I like feeling new and interesting and…well, adored.”

I nod, misery rising off me like a fog.

“I was hoping you’d be my maid of honor, Chastity,” she says. “Though you don’t have to answer now, of course.”

I don’t want to break down in front of my mother, so I stand up. “I have to go,” I squeak.

“Okay,” she says, standing too and hugging me. “I love you, honey.”

“I love you, too, Mom.” I choke. “I just have to run to my room for a sec.” With Buttercup on my heels, I escape down the hall.

As I was the last kid to leave for college, my room was spared from being made over into the den or sewing room, as were the two rooms that held the boys. Sitting on my old bed here in the gloom, Buttercup beside me, I look around. My basketball trophies still sit on the top shelf of the bookcase. The Goo Goo Dolls stare at me from a poster. My fuzzy lavender rug, which I thought so utterly feminine at the time, looks considerably more Rastafarian than it once did. Otherwise, not much has changed.

Tears are dripping down my cheeks. I try to take a deep breath and get a grip. I fail.

I once believed in everlasting love. I thought that, at the root of everything, beneath the irritation and impatience and bickering, my parents would always love each other. Would always be together, even when they were apart. I didn’t know that someone could be the love of your life and then fade from your heart. I didn’t know your heart could feel like a used-up eraser, rubbed down, grimy from neglect and overuse. It’s an unbearable thought. Unbearable.

The back door slams. “Betty?” My father’s voice is laced with panic. I didn’t hear his car.

“Betty, Jack just called me. Betty!” My father, who thinks nothing of tramping through burning buildings on floors weakened by flame, sounds like a frightened child. “You can’t be serious, honey. You can’t do this!”

Their voices come to me with horrible clarity, and though I hate hearing them talk, I’m welded to the bed. Buttercup rests her head on the purple rug and watches me.

“Mike, I’m sorry, but I am. I’m marrying Harry.” There’s no anger in my mom’s voice, just sadness and resignation and an underlying, bleak honesty.

“Oh, Betty.” I have never heard my father cry before. I’ve seen tears in his eyes, yes. Quiet with grief or sharp with fear, yes, but this raw sobbing punches me right in the throat.

“I’ll retire. I’ll do it tomorrow! I’ll call the chief right now, Betty—”

“It’s not that, Mike. It’s too late. I really am sorry.”

“You can’t! You still love me. Please! I love you, Betty. I always have.”

Mom’s voice is soothing and kind, horribly gentle—not the Father Donnelly voice, but the loving-mother voice, the one we heard when we were feverish or stomach sick or crying because we weren’t popular enough or hated being tall. “I gave you years to retire, Mike. If you do it now, it’s just because you don’t want me with someone else. It’s not really for me.”

“Please, Betty.”

“No. I’m sorry, Mike. Part of me will always love you, and we’ll always have the kids and grandkids, but it’s over now.”

My father’s crying breaks my heart.

Mom talks some more, but I don’t hear it. After a few minutes, the kitchen door closes and I hear an engine start, then Mom’s footsteps coming down the hall. She opens my door, leans against the door frame and looks at me.