Betrayed (Rosato & DiNunzio, #2)(97)
“Please, forget it.” Judy felt her face heat with shame. “You’ve just had a major operation. It’s just that it’s so fake to be together without talking about it, but we can’t not be together, so we have to be fake. I’m … sorry, that was … wrong,” she stammered, feeling her emotions rise to the surface, the anger and the love both at once. “It was so selfish.”
“No, it’s not. Please, Judy, sit down.”
“No forget it. It’s not fair to you, right now—”
“Yes, I want to talk. Really talk.” Aunt Barb patted the bed again, for Judy to sit down. “I don’t like *footing around it, either. That’s not how we are, or have ever been. There’s an elephant in the room, as they say, and we need to deal with it. Sit. Please? I had a mastectomy, but my mouth works fine, believe me.”
“Okay, then.” Her mother came over, sinking into the heavy chair. “We’ll talk.”
Judy perched on the corner of the bed, distant from them both, shifting her attention from one woman to the other, the sisters’ resemblance clear in the hue of their deep blue eyes, set far apart. Paradoxically, the difference between them could also be found in their eyes, but in the aspect to them; her mother’s eyes were more guarded, her lids closed like a shield against some sudden brightness, while Aunt Barb’s anguish showed clearly through her frank blue lenses.
“Honey,” Aunt Barb said softly. “How can we help you understand this? I’ll do anything, and I’ll tell you anything.”
“Tell me what happened, from your point of view. Because Mom already told me, I mean, my aunt.” Judy swallowed hard, a bitter knot twisting in her chest. “I don’t even know what to call you. Aunt? Mom? Aunt Mom?”
Aunt Barb cringed. “I know it’s hard to process.”
“I want to know what you were thinking.” Judy modulated her voice, trying to stay calm. “Not just in the beginning, but all these years, keeping it from me. I mean, I trusted you. You lied to me, every time you saw me.”
Aunt Barb nodded, pained. “You feel betrayed—”
“Absolutely, of course I do. How could I not?” Judy looked from Aunt Barb to her mother. “Years of Mother’s Days, I’m giving cards and presents to someone not my mother? You did betray me, both of you. You’ve lied to me as long as I’ve been alive. I don’t know who you are, and it makes me feel like I don’t know who I am. I’ve always defined myself in relation to you, at least in the family. I thought I was Aunt Barb’s niece and Delia’s daughter, but it turns out it’s the other way around.”
“We screwed this up, royally,” Aunt Barb said gently. “But believe me, we didn’t mean to.”
“We tried to do the right thing,” Judy’s mother added, pursing her lips.
“Well, you didn’t,” Judy shot back, trying to suppress her resentment. “The truth is the right thing. You could’ve told me the truth, sooner. Even if they made you lie when I was born, you could’ve told me the truth when I grew up, but you didn’t. You avoided it. You put it off. You pretended. It was cowardly.”
“I’m so sorry,” Aunt Barb said, holding tears back. “I’m very sorry, I truly am. I regret that I didn’t tell you sooner, and I should have. It wasn’t until my diagnosis that I realized the cliché really was true, that life is short. I should have understood it after Steve died, but I was so preoccupied with his illness, I didn’t think of myself. Somehow I thought I would never get sick. I was in denial. What are the odds, both of us, getting cancer so close together?” Aunt Barb ran a dry tongue over her lips. “But when I got diagnosed, I thought about putting my affairs in order, so if the worst happened, I didn’t want to leave this earth without you hearing from me why everything happened the way it did.”
“So tell me then.”
“It’s true, our parents did make us do it. I don’t blame them, either, because they were only doing what they thought was right, too. I try not to judge them. I’m in no position to judge anybody.”
Judy listened, trying to adjust mentally to the fact that she knew this woman who was talking, and didn’t know her, both at the same time.
“We made this decision, and we carried it out, and your mother stepped in to help and—”
“She’s not my mother. You’re my mother. Can we please be honest, from here on out?”
“Okay, then let me say what I was going to say, something that even your mother can’t say, which is that when you were born and our parents gave us this ultimatum, she was amazing.” Aunt Barb gestured at Judy’s mother, with an IV port attached. “She responded with grace and generosity. She was thrilled to take you and raise you. She gave me a gift, but above all, she gave you a gift.”
Judy blinked, letting it sink in, because it rang true.
“Think about the position your mother was in. She had a young child at home, but she fell in love with this baby girl, an infant, and she took you in with open arms. She knew the entire time that someday we would tell you the truth and that you would react this way.” Aunt Barb paused. “But I’m not talking about you yet, I’m talking about her. She had a sword of Damocles hanging over her head every day of her life, not knowing when this day would come, but knowing inevitably that it would. Can you imagine being in that position?”