This is why Lola played along.
“Is there not some way to save us?” she asks. “I needed help, but I didn’t ask. All I had to do was ask. Even though I failed, I wanted to be a good mother. I wanted it so badly.”
I’m stopped in my petulant tracks. For all my talk about her not seeing me when I needed her, I realize that I did see her when she needed me, but I looked away.
“I think you did ask,” I say. I’m humbled and sad and my voice breaks when I speak again. “We just didn’t understand you.”
“I didn’t ask in a way that you could have,” she says. “You were children. It wasn’t your fault. But I am asking now.”
“For help?” I ask, tears welling in my eyes. “Do you still need help?”
“I need forgiveness.”
I look away. Help is easy. Forgiveness is hard.
“I don’t understand why you drank, Mom. I don’t understand how you could forget that I still needed a mother. I don’t understand any of it.”
“Understanding why someone did something doesn’t change anything,” she says. “Forgiving does, and that doesn’t require understanding. We have to start with forgiveness or else there’s no point in trying to move forward.”
“But how does forgiving you change the past?” I ask, my throat tightening.
“It doesn’t. It changes the future. That’s all we can do.”
I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.
“Nate,” Mom says, turning back to Dad. “If you would, put in a good word for her up there. She’s giving up, and I don’t want her to. She needs you right now, Nate, and I know I’m a poor substitute.”
I shake my head and fight back tears. My throat has jagged rocks in it, and they hurt when I swallow.
“You’re not a poor substitute,” I eke out, tears spilling over again.
Mom presses something into the palm of my hand. I know right away what it is. The round, stone beads are still hot with prayer—from this morning, yesterday, years ago.
“You try too hard to figure things out on your own,” she says to me. “Sometimes you have to give up control. Because if you want to know the truth, control wasn’t yours to begin with. You’re scraping and clawing to hold the reins of a horse that you can’t lead. Turn them loose, baby.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Well,” she says, “I guess I have something to pray for you about now. You start on your end, and I’ll start on mine. You’ll get there.”
I burst into hot tears, thick heavy sobs, and for the first time in a terribly long time, Mom puts her arms around me and doesn’t let go.
I finally see that Mom just wanted to be Wonder Woman, but her cape was constantly stuck in the door of the invisible airplane and she couldn’t see where the door handle was to release it.
She holds on tight, and I let her.
“So, did you reach him?” Mom asks after the lull.
“Reach who?” I ask, pulling out of her embrace so I can look at her
“Your father,” she says, holding my hand. “On that Magic-8 Ball.”
“No,” I say. “Well, probably not. How did you know?”
“You left the game out,” she says and pats her other hand over our interlaced fingers. “And you ate all my chips.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Let’s get out of here,” she says. “I’ll talk to you later, Nate.”
Mom heads back to her car, and I stand there looking at Dad’s headstone.
Cut your mother some slack, I feel him say. Cut yourself some too.
“See you later, Dad.” I hurry to catch up with Mom.
“What did Dad tell you on the Magic-8 Ball?” Mom asks.
“We asked him where you keep the mints. In case we got a trick-or-treater.”
“He doesn’t know.”
“That’s pretty much what he said.”
I stop at her car and wait for her to open the door.
“Go make up with your sister,” she says before she closes the door.
I don’t ask her how she knows things are askew. Mothers just know.
◆ ◆ ◆
“You want to recast me, don’t you?” I say when Lola opens our bedroom door.
“I thought about it,” she says with a small smile. “But you really are perfect for the part. I have to think about the greater good of the film.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, sitting down on one of the twin beds.
“Me too,” she says, sliding down to the floor at my feet. “I’m sorry I didn’t come back out to talk to you and Ray last night. I just wanted to be alone. I thought we all needed a little space to process.”
“Come up here,” I say, and she wiggles up beside me on the bed.
“You were right last night,” she says. “I am tired of all the secrets. I should have told everyone when I started to remember things.”
“To what end? There was never going to be a good time to reveal that. Is that what’s got you upset?”
“I guess.” She grabs the pillow from the head of the bed and hugs it close to her chest. “Is that why Ray didn’t tell me the truth. Habit?”
“No,” I say. “Fear. Sometimes saying something out loud makes it too real.”
“But he told you. All this time, you thought you and Ray didn’t have a bond. But you do. You always did.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Can I ask you something?” she asks but doesn’t wait for permission. “Sometimes I worry about what’s real. Were all the things we shared as kids real? All the things we laughed about and all the stories we told each other? Was the lying just about what happened before the accident, or was my whole life after that make-believe?”
I angle toward her so we sit cross-legged in front of each other with our knees touching. This has always been our signal of truce, of confidence, of sacred space.
I take her hands in mine. “This is real. Everything I’ve ever said to you is real. Ray is real.” I squeeze her hands tighter. “You are real. Everything you
