“She would have told you all about it herself, Nate,” Mom says, still looking at me. “She always told you everything. But she can’t talk to me. I think she needs to get some things off her chest, though. I think it’s time. Maybe with you here for support she’ll be able to.”
Ready or not, the words pour out of me, like all the things I wanted to say have been right on the end of my tongue all these years and now that I have permission, they’re all tumbling out.
“Did you know Dad bought me my first training bra?” I ask, hands on my hips just like Cassie does. “Not Grandma, like he told you.”
I tilt my head like I’ve delivered a good hard blow.
“I knew that.” Mom nods. “Your father always tried to spare my feelings. Your grandmother would have rather taped your breasts down and pretended the whole thing wasn’t happening. The older you got, the closer to death she got—according to her.”
That sounds like Grandma. I want to laugh, but I’m not going to let Mom lighten this moment. She asked for it, and she’s going to get it.
“Do you know when I started my period?” I ask, sounding like a petulant child.
“You were about fifteen,” Mom says, squinting her eyes into the past. “I remember because it seemed a bit late to start.”
Ha, I think. I’ve got her.
“No.” I shake my head at her, and she winces. “I was thirteen. Right on time. Textbook. I told Dad because you were still wearing your Lola-goggles at the time.”
“That’s not fair.” She turns to Dad’s headstone. “Nate, you can vouch for me.”
“Dad’s dead,” I shout at her point-blank. “Talk to me. Take off the blinders, Mom, and see me. That’s all I ever wanted, and you still can’t do it.”
We stand there, staring at each other in the cemetery. The grass is too green and the trees are too perfectly spaced and the whole place seems like a picture of somewhere you’d want to have a picnic—were it not for all the gravestones.
“I saw you,” she says, her eyes filling with hurt and anger—at me or herself, I’m not sure.
“No, you didn’t,” I say. “You saw Lola, and you saw Ray, and I think you noticed Dad from time to time, but I could have been gone a week and you wouldn’t have noticed the difference.”
“That’s not fair,” Mom says. “You know how much physical therapy Lola needed. I was busy, is all. It’s not like she could take herself to her appointments and back.” She stops talking and looks at me as if this settles it. I look back at her and raise an eyebrow.
“Is that all you have? You were busy with Lola—that’s it?”
I click my teeth at her rudely. I want to play fair, really, but if she thinks she’s going to get off easy, she’s wrong.
No, that’s a lie. I don’t want to play fair at all.
Mom shifts her weight around and looks back and forth between me and Dad’s rock.
“Well,” she continues, “I was busy, too, with the meetings and, you know.”
“It’s all in the end of that sentence,” I say, my eyes burning a challenge. “Isn’t it?”
“That’s water under the bridge,” she says, tossing the cliché at me like it’s supposed to close the subject. But it’s more like she’s the troll under the bridge and we’re the three billy goats gruff. “But I know you need to say it. I understand. That’s why I asked you here.”
“It’s not water under the bridge, Mom. It’s a raging flood, and I’m clinging to the railing trying not to get washed away. Do you really not know that? Do you really not know how much your drinking hurt us? We were just kids. How did you think we were supposed to take care of ourselves without you? We needed you.”
Mom looks at me, and I see that she wants to throw out another platitude, but I also see that she knows it’s more complicated than that.
“I asked for this,” she says and touches my arm gently. “Go ahead and tell me.”
I could scream, I’m so mad at her for thinking that all I need is to get a few thoughts off my chest.
“Ray and I still mattered,” I say, my rage audible beneath the wavering of my voice.
“Resentment is a useless emotion,” she says and smiles at me. “There is never a way to go back.”
“Why weren’t we important enough to change for? How did you think I could forget about all those years I spent not being as important as the bottom of a vodka bottle?”
“You’re not pulling any punches are you, Nina?”
“No,” I say, firmly. “I intend to land every one of them.”
“Nina,” she says and then offers up the truth of it. “I’m just a person. Being a mother doesn’t stop me from doing things wrong. It doesn’t give me superpowers. The most disheartening thing you realize as a parent is that no matter how hard you try, you’re still just a regular human being. No cape or magic rope or invisible airplane can help you. You will screw up your kids. It’s just a matter of how badly. You see it happening right in front of you, yet you’re powerless to stop it. Life spins out of control, and you are who you are. I guess the best superpower is having the courage to admit you have none.”
“Is that some sort of apology?” I ask. “What are you apologizing for, exactly? Before the accident or after? Because you were just as bad after as you were before—just different. It wasn’t better. None of it was good. None of it was fair.”
For some reason, the memory of our last vacation before the accident comes to me. Mom sat under a huge umbrella stuck deep in the sand. It was late in the day for her to be as sober as she was. Dad and Ray were out in the ocean,
