Mom repeated that things were just fine. She tried to convince me by giving me a new dress, and by then I was old enough to know that such tricks were a bad sign. She didn’t know but I would catch her crying in the kitchen while she made dinner. I would sense the growing anxiety in my father’s hands every time he ran his fingers through my hair at night and whispered “sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite,” his breath still sweet from the after dinner cognac. And I could see it in their eyes when they looked at each other.
They sat me down after school one Friday and tried to explain the situation very gently to me. At that point I wasn’t as much bothered by the idea of them being apart. It was their inability to accept that I knew full well what was happening that really infuriated me. It made me feel like a child and I had just begun to see myself as something other than that. Not yet an adult, but something more than a child, with insights into dark, secret places that most people ignored. I wanted to let them know that I was privy to this new knowledge, that I knew people lied, that people had to lie. Sitting there at the kitchen table listening to them beat around the bush, I became angry at myself for not knowing how to tell them. I knew everything would be okay. I knew things would be different and I was fine with it.
For a few months my father kept an apartment in the city and only came home during the weekends. When he was home he would drive me to the ice-cream parlor or the arcade and we would talk about all the other times we’d been to those places together. I wanted to go somewhere else, somewhere new we’d never been to before. I couldn’t keep my father from going back to those same old places.
When he showed up my mother would find chores around the house to keep her busy. He would find her tearing up weeds in the garden or searching for something in the attic and ask her if she wanted to join us. She would pretend to be too busy with the task at hand and politely decline. When we’d get in the car I couldn’t help but picture mom crying while she repeated the same motions again and again like a robot in short-circuit.
After months of this same routine my mother began to cheer up. She started leaving the house more often, meeting friends for dinner and going on walks around the lake. When it started to get cold she decided to clean out the house and held a garage sale that did away with most of the objects she associated with memories too strong to bear on a daily basis. She said it made no sense to her why people did this sort of thing in the spring. “When winter comes you’re locked up inside, so why not make more space”. She was reinventing herself slowly, starting with what she knew best, which was the house.
One day my father invited the two of us to breakfast in the city. There was a shabby old diner we used to go to, and he must have figured it’d be a good place to pretend things were normal. My mother was still too used to pretending to know how to stop.
I got dressed quickly and sat on my mother’s bed watching her try on different outfits, stand at the mirror curling her hair and nervously apply makeup. I could sense her fear from across the room. Neither of us said a word to each other. As she drove she kept playing with her hair and checking her makeup in the rearview mirror, then clenching the steering wheel with an anxious grip. I asked her if she was okay.
“I’m fine, just not sure I want to drive all the way. Do you mind if we take the train in?”
Once in the train my mother closed her eyes and sat back in her chair. She held my hand tightly once the train started to move, turning her head away to look out of the window at the bright day outside. When the train went under an overpass I quickly caught her reflection on the window and saw a streak of tears rolling down her face. I squeezed her hand tightly and she squeezed back, remaining perfectly still and quiet.
The train let out a painful groan that slowed time down then suddenly jolted forward with a terrible force. My mother and I slammed our heads into the seats in front of us and passengers flew out of their seats onto the aisle and bags crashed down from the rafters spilling onto people’s heads. The train’s moan was joined by the gasps and screams of those being pummeled by its momentum. I felt my whole body shake from the force of it, felt the fragility of my bones at the mercy of this metal monster and its grinding loss of control. My head spun with weird memories as if awoken by this shove. Then in a flash the train stopped and everyone looked around with great big eyes full of surprise. People were scattered about in awkward positions. The sight of men in business suits crumpled up in between seats like day-old newspaper was eerie. The human body caught by surprise, an abrupt break in routine. Everything seemed very clear and obvious in that moment. Everything made sense. I felt more alive than ever before. My mother’s nose was bleeding from the impact and her expression was one of terror, but I knew everything would be all right from that moment on. My mother was petrified with shock. She asked me if I was okay and then looked around frantically trying to piece together what had just happened. I grabbed her hand once again and squeezed even tighter than before.
“Mom,” I said, “everything is going to be okay. You’re going to be fine.” She stared at me and her body relaxed. I smiled and she began to cry. She wrapped her hands around me in a starved hug. She was laughing and sobbing at the same time. Finally, catching her breath, she said, “Yes, baby. We’re going to be fine.”
