“No. Our entire friendship was a lie,” I immediately replied before stabbing my omelet with my fork. “I’m just glad we didn’t do anything. I don’t think I’d be able to stomach it if I fucked him. He probably didn’t give two shits about me. He just wanted the job. I’m so fucking stupid.”
“You aren’t stupid, Vera. I think he’s a major asshole, and I’d like to kick him off the edge of a cliff, but I can recognize when a man wants someone. He looked at you like you were a snack. A delicious, mouth-watering snack. I bet he took the job thinking it would just be an easy path to his dream job. He probably wasn’t planning to want you—let alone care about you. And for the record, this is really fucking annoying for me to say because the idea of anyone wanting what’s mine pisses me the fuck right off.”
I smiled to myself, then shook my head. “This isn’t the first time my mother has interfered like this, you know…”
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to force the memory down. “What do you mean?” Hamilton asked, his voice holding a dangerous edge to it.
“The family she worked as a housekeeper for? The dad made me uncomfortable. He would look at me…”
Hamilton reached out and grabbed my leg. “What happened?”
“She encouraged it. She would send me over to pick up things randomly or ask me to deliver messages to him when he was alone in his office. I told her that he was leering at my ass one day, but she shrugged. It took me a while to realize what she was doing. He was married and more than twice my age. My mother wanted him to flirt with me—to pressure me. She told me to let it happen. I think she saw it as an opportunity. I was seventeen…”
“That’s really fucked up, Vera.”
“He never did anything, though,” I quickly added. “I know Jared isn’t the same, but it feels opportunistic. He comes from a good family. I’m sure she was all too happy to force us to spend time together.” Hamilton went quiet for a long moment, and I quietly ate my food while thinking over what happened. “She always wanted this, you know. Joseph is the perfect kind of man for my mother. I just don’t know if she’ll ever let me live my own life. She feels like I owe her, as if my existence is a debt I’ll never be able to repay.”
“You don’t owe her a damn thing, Petal,” Hamilton growled. “You don’t owe her shit. Okay? Fuck. I can’t believe she did that to you.”
“She didn’t do anything really; she just encouraged his attention. He was harmless.” Until he wasn’t. There was one night where he grabbed my ass and whispered dirty words into my ear, calling me a tease. If his wife hadn’t shown up and knocked on the door, I don’t want to know what would have happened. Calling the entire experience harmless was probably not a healthy way to look at it, but I’d always struggled with seeing the more sinister parts of my mother’s motivations.
“She was trying to pimp her fucking daughter out. Don’t you see what’s wrong with that? Did he touch you? What was his name?”
I swallowed my bite of food before leaning over the table to kiss him on the cheek. “He never touched me,” I lied. “He just looked. He just…lingered.” Leered. Licked his lips. Dropped things on the floor and asked me to pick them up.
“And your mother has the fucking audacity to get angry about me?” Hamilton huffed. “She doesn’t care about your wellbeing; she cares about money and her image. She’s a nasty opportunist, Vera. Can’t you see it?”
I always thought it was strange that Mom was willing to sacrifice me, when she was a victim herself. I often wondered if she did it because she didn’t know any better or because her morals and rigid views about sex and roses and mistakes had a gray area when it benefitted her.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” I snapped before getting up and putting my fork in the sink. My trembling fingers could barely hold my silverware. I knew deep down that Hamilton was right. My mother was determined. The fact that she lied about being pregnant and went to such lengths to hide it was proof enough of that.
“I’m sorry if I upset you, I just don’t understand your loyalty to her.”
I spun around and leaned against the counter. Crossing my arms over my chest, I spoke. “Have you ever loved someone destructive? Someone that had something really shitty happen to them. Someone that had a good reason for being the way that they were. It kills you to watch them ruin their lives, but you understand it. You’ve seen their trauma firsthand. You’ve held them during their most vulnerable moments. You’ve suffered because they suffered.”
Hamilton stared at me, his eyes full of emotion but his expression vacant. “Yeah. I have.” I wanted to know about the person Hamilton loved who was destructive, but I didn’t ask. Letting out a sigh, I wrung my hands through my skirt before responding. How could I possibly explain my mother to Hamilton? To an outsider, her behavior didn’t make sense.
I was willing to love a person for what they were capable of. Just because my mother was ruined by abuse and shouldered with the responsibility of raising a baby while barely a teen herself, didn’t mean that she wasn’t capable of loving. She just didn’t know how to do things the right way. You can’t blame someone for their ignorance. “She’s just a damaged woman. She’s struggled with her mental health all my life. Even though she didn’t let me see a lot of it, I knew it was there. I know that, at some point, we all are responsible for our actions. We can’t always blame our trauma for the bad things we do. But what if the person simply doesn’t know any better? What if her only perception of love came from a child she didn’t want and a mother who abused her? I guess it may seem like I should challenge my mother to do better, but it’s not that easy. She is a product of her upbringing. She’s driven by her desire to feel secure. It’s not a crime to want a better life. I just want her to be happy.”
Hamilton thrust his hands through his hair and looked down at the ground. “I get it,” he whispered. “I really get it. My mother was an addict, Vera. Started taking pills after I was born.”
I wasn’t expecting Hamilton to admit that, and waited patiently for him to continue, though on the inside I was thankful that he was opening up to me—really opening up. It made our relationship feel more real. He popped his knuckles. I knew in my gut that Hamilton had to reconcile with his story on his own terms. He’d only share what he was comfortable with, and if he wanted to tell me more, he would.
“When I was young, I didn’t get it, but as I got older and the news about my birth mother broke, it all suddenly made sense.” Hamilton stood up and started cleaning up the kitchen, keeping his hands busy as he worked. “I was just a kid. I just wanted her to love me like she loved Joseph. But she was broken by Jack’s betrayal. The drugs got harder. The hate got heavier. The burden of her depression became too much, but I wanted to carry it all. I felt responsible for her sadness, you know.”
I wanted to wrap Hamilton up in a hug. It broke my heart to hear him talk about his mother. “I’ve never had normal relationships. I just wanted to be accepted. But I understood her pain. I wanted to take it all from her. And then she ended her life.”