Leo's Chance(70)

CHAPTER 30


When I get home very late that night, I throw on just a pair of workout pants, and go out on my balcony. I sit down on one of the two chairs out there and put my feet up on the ledge, staring out at the city lights. I just sit and let my mind wander. I think about where I came from, all the miserable things I went through to end up in foster care. I think about my mom for a long time, something I've never really allowed myself to do.

She had tried to get clean a couple times. It never took, but when she was trying, I had gotten glimpses of who she might have been if her life had been different, or maybe if she had been strong enough to lift herself above her circumstances, even a little bit. She had tried to bake cookies with Seth and me one time when my dad was out. I got the feeling that she was trying to do something "mom like," trying to be someone she knew she had failed at being so far. She was trying too hard, humming and chatting a mile a minute. But I didn’t care. At least she was finally trying. While they were baking, she got out the cards and asked me if I wanted to learn how to play poker. So she taught me the basic rules and we sat at our small kitchen table and played for toothpicks while Seth watched. It was one of the only times my mom paid us any real attention and I was so happy, I couldn’t stop smiling. But then we smelled something and black smoke started wafting up out of the oven. The cookies were burning. She pulled them out, shrieking, and tossing them on the stove. And then it was like something just died in her eyes, and she retreated back inside to that place that she usually lived, vacant, unavailable. "I always ruin everything," she had said, emotionless. "I never get anything right." And then she had gone to the couch and sat there watching t.v. and drinking for the rest of the afternoon.

She didn’t get it though. She missed the whole f*cking point. We didn’t care about the cookies. We just wanted her. So badly, it was like an ache inside that never, ever healed. Having her for that brief time just made it hurt all the more when she turned away from us again. And I had hated myself because I felt like I wasn’t enough to make her want to stay.

She was always so checked out, so absent, so seemingly unconcerned with the horror her sons were living through right under her nose. I always told myself that I didn’t love her because she had never shown any love for me. But the truth was, I did love her. I could admit that now. I wanted so badly for her to love me back and she never had. I wonder for the first time what happened to her that she gave up so completely, gave up her very soul. I let myself feel the hurt that washes over me when I recall the blank look on her face as my stepdad wailed on me, day after day after day.

But sitting here alone on my balcony, it suddenly seems as clear as day that it wasn’t about us. Nothing we could do would ever have been enough for her because she had already given up. She had given up so completely that she was empty inside, just like Evie had told me in her story all those years ago. But now I understood that that emptiness had everything to do with her, and nothing to do with me. Sitting here in the middle of the night, staring up at the sky, a feeling of peace washes through me, and I can breathe a little easier.

I think about my dad, my stepdad, although he always called himself my dad. Claiming me on one hand, but then never missing the opportunity to remind me that I only existed because my mother was a whore. I had taken that inside and made it my truth, replaying his words again and again whenever I felt weak, seeking for some reason to confirm to myself that I was worthless. I think about it for a long time and realize that I no longer have a burning desire to prove him wrong. I don’t need that anymore. The only person I want to prove anything to is Evie. She’s the only one who ever deserved it.

I think a lot about Evie. I think about how I was always so in awe of the fact that she was so much more than where she came from. But maybe I am too. Maybe we both ended up being better people than the people who raised us, or didn’t raise us, as the case was.

And that’s gotta be rare. Almost as rare as those counterclockwise whorled snails. The thought makes me smile.

I had told her that some people just know things in their heart. Maybe I know a few things in my heart too. Not as many as her, not by a long shot. But perhaps I have something to offer if I work really hard at it. I want so badly to be given that chance. Once upon a time, she had saved me by loving me, by believing in me. Will she be able to again? Even after everything? I hope to God the answer is yes.

I think about the unbelievable turn of events with Lauren, still a feeling of sickness rising up in my chest when I think about how close she came to putting someone else in the same position she had put me in. And Doc… what he had done for me. I still couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

…it’s my hope that you will see, that I fought for you because you’re worth fighting for.

As the sun comes up in the sky, I go and get some paper and a pen and a book to write on, and I return to the balcony and write Evie a letter, pouring out all my thoughts on paper. Pouring out everything she was to me, everything she is to me, and everything I want so badly to be for her, asking her to please, please choose me again.

After I fold it up and put it in an envelope, something occurs to me. I go into my bedroom and reach in the back of my top drawer, pulling out the letter that I started writing to her all those years ago – the letter I’ve always used to remind myself what a despicable human being I was when I started to forget. A perfect instrument of self-torture, a perfect reminder of what I did to betray her. I don’t think I’ll do that to myself anymore. But I hope it will make her understand a little better.