In the Stillness(50)

Two hours later, Eric swoops into his parents’ house to give everyone hugs and kisses before he has to go back to campus. My mom smiles in the way she only does when Eric’s around. It’s like he makes everything all okay for her.

“I’m proud of you, you know,” I say as I walk him to his car. I really am, even though I can’t shake the nagging jealousy that I won’t be up there today with him, receiving my Ph.D.

“Thank you, Honey. I’m proud of you, too. You’ve put up with a lot of shit over the last few months.”

Years, Eric. Years.

The fact that he said “months” proves how out of touch he is.

“Well, see you later, Doctor Johnson.” I give him a well-meaning peck on the cheek and wander out back to find my dad.

Standing by a tree in the backyard, my dad puffs a cigar out of view of the kids and my mother. I shoulder up next to him, taking the cigar from his hand and handing it back after a puff of my own.

“How you doing, Kid?” My dad puts his arm around my shoulders.

I rest my head on his. “Just fine, Michael. Just fine.” I giggle when he smacks me for using his name.

“It’s been quite the few years, hasn’t it?” Sunshine highlights the fact that his hair—which is as black as mine—has very little grey peeking through.

“I saw Ryker last week, Dad.” Apparently I just blurt things out now.

I hear his breath catch for a second. “Oh yeah?”

The truth is, I’ve been dying to tell him. I haven’t talked with Tosha about it again because I’ve been running it over and over in my mind, trying to come up with some explanation for it all—cosmically speaking—but have arrived at the same shoulder-shrugging conclusion. It was a ten-car pileup on serendipity’s highway.

“Mmhmm. Tosha and I were at Atkins and he was unloading a truck. Apparently he has a farm . . .”

“Did you two talk?” We talk more like mother-daughter than father-daughter, and that’s okay with me.

“We said ‘hi’ and then he had to go . . . said I should stop by the farm sometime.”

I Googled it. I know exactly where it is and how long it would take me to drive there. It’s about ten minutes north of the center of Amherst, in Leverett. I haven’t pointed my car in that direction, though. I have enough sense to leave well enough alone.

Out of the bowels of are-you-kidding-me, my mom appears. “I hope you told him you weren’t interested.”

“Don’t start, Leslie.” My dad tries to cut her off at the pass.

I put my hand up, stopping my dad. “I didn’t tell him anything, Mother. It was just a run-in. I haven’t seen him in ten years.”

“And I wish you’d gone another ten. Don’t ruin things, Natalie. Eric’s a great man.”

“Are you kidding me?” I try to keep my voice at the appropriate WASP setting of low. “I run into someone and you immediately think I’ll somehow ruin things . . . for you?”

“Well,” my mother purses her lips, “it’s not as if you’ve spent the last decade trying to make something of yourself. You kind of need Eric if you’re ever going to get out of that tiny apartment.” She’s an absolute bitch; the kind of woman who expected me to slide into the role of wife and mother she assumes I created for myself, yet still resents that I don’t have my Ph.D. yet, like she and my father planned.

“Leslie, enough!” my father hollers. He hollers, good for him.

Despite the hole she just stabbed in my gut, I raise my eyebrows as I fire back. “There it is. You do know I didn’t get pregnant to spite you, right? I’m sorry if you think I run around ruining things for you. I’ll try not to let it happen any more. Besides, I didn’t need Eric when I got my master’s degree, and I don’t need him now.” I storm into the house and get the boys into the car to head to the ceremony, wondering cynically what will become of Leslie Collins when her daughter divorces her doctor husband.

We smile, though, like the perfect family all through Eric’s graduation ceremony.

The next morning, Eric and I kiss the boys goodbye as they’re buckled into my parents’ sedan. I’m just grateful I don’t have to sit in a car with my mother for three and a half hours.

“Thank you, Dad,” I whisper into his ear as we hug, “for everything.”

He kisses my forehead and holds my chin. “I love you, Kid.”

“I love you, too.”

I wave politely to my mother, who’s already settled in the car, and watch them pull away. When Eric and I re-enter our apartment, the silence is deafening. It’s not just from the boys’ absence.

“Things seemed a little tense between you and your mom.” Eric cracks open some eggs and whisks them in a bowl.

“They always are . . .” I grab some grapes from the fridge and curl up on the couch. “When did you get your haircut?”

Eric chuckles. “Yesterday morning, thanks for noticing.”

I roll my eyes and shrug. Glad he could clean up for graduation when I’ve only been asking him for months to cut his hair.

“My mom’s just uptight, you know that.”

“What about now?” Eric drops butter in a frying pan and stares at it while it melts.