Even now, she looked almost sick. “Don’t bother unpacking my things, Vera. I’m not staying for long,” she finally murmured after I lugged the last Louis Vuitton suitcase into the house. She tore her eyes away from the yard where just a while ago she celebrated her marriage. With a huff, she followed me inside.
“Unpacking won’t hurt anything. Besides, Jack said you’re going to stay here while Joseph acclimates to his new job and until your new house is built. That could take months.” I prayed that it took months—years—eternity.
“We were doing just fine until Jack called. My husband was very angry, Vera. Very, very angry. I can’t believe you told Jack about…about…” She cleared her throat before continuing, “Um, my last visit. You’re still young. You don’t understand, Vera.”
She’s lucky I didn’t tell the police about her last visit. She might want to shove her husband’s abuse under the rug, but I refused to. Mom showed up half dead, and I was supposed to just let it go? No. I refused. Letting out a sigh, I continued, “There isn’t much to understand. Joseph hurt you. I didn’t know what to do—”
“Well, you shouldn’t have called Jack. Joseph didn’t mean to hurt me. Sometimes his anger gets the best of him. He just has a lot of expectations of me, and I have to try harder to meet them. I was so close. I’ve been working out. I’ve made his favorite dinners. I pick up his dry cleaning. I wear his favorite colors and ignore the nights he works late. I’m his fucking wife. I can do this. I can be what he needs. I just needed more time. You don’t get it.” Mom’s words meshed together like a rambling broken record. What had Joseph done to her?
She was right about one thing, though. I didn’t understand, and I wasn’t sure that any explanation my mother gave me would help me to make sense of it all.
I let out a sigh and moved her belongings to the first-floor bedroom Jack had set up for her, giving my mother more time to obsess about what coming here would mean for her marriage, and when I walked back, I caught the tail end of her mumbling to herself. “He’s going to find someone else…”
“You’re his wife! You’re married, Mom. You already got him. You aren’t responsible for his actions. You aren’t responsible for his lack of integrity. If he chooses to cheat, that’s his fault. Not yours,” I said, my voice stern and harsh.
Her lip curled, and she spun to face me. “You don’t know anything. You don’t understand what it means to keep a man like Joseph’s attention—to keep him happy and agreeable. We were already hanging by a thread.”
Good, I wanted to say. Let the thread snap. Shatter. Dissolve and disappear. Let us both live our lives in peace. I wanted to destroy anything that tethered us to the Beauregards.
How could she possibly settle for a relationship like that?
“If I married a man like Joseph, a man who beat me up and cheated on me, would you be happy for me?” I bravely asked. I just wanted her to see things through my eyes. Nothing seemed worth her well-being and happiness.
Mom scowled. “At the rate you’re going, you’d be lucky to pull someone like Joseph. I had everything set up for you. Sent you to a school filled with eligible men that have trust funds and financial security people like us can only dream of. But you threw it away.”
Her words hurt, but I pressed on, desperate to get through to her. “But what if I didn’t? What if I married a man like Joseph? A man who hurt me without a care.”
She inhaled deeply and turned to look at me. “I think we established with Hamilton that it doesn’t matter if I approve of the men you date. You’ve always been so reckless. I had such high hopes for you, Vera. I wanted you to do things right. Wait until marriage and find yourself a wealthy man that can take care of you. Not settle for a man like Hamilton.” Her snarky tone sent a wave of anger through me.
I thought about the rose she once compared me to and wondered if there were any petals left. If I was a pretty flower, then Hamilton crushed me in his fist. Hamilton was a mistake, one that left wounds you couldn’t see, but were still just as painful.
Hamilton was still a gut-wrenching topic. The man was only with me to sell me out. So much pain could have been avoided had I just listened to my mother and kept my distance. And the worst part was, I couldn’t even validate my fragile mother with the truth. Jack wanted me to mend his family—continue on like nothing had happened. He expected me to bridge the gap between Hamilton and me, overcoming his absence with determination and pity.
I changed the subject to avoid telling her what had happened. A year ago, it would have felt unnatural not to tell her. There was a time I thought we shared everything. Now, it was just another secret, another lie piled like bricks between us. I had to approach her like a sleeping lion, delicately tiptoeing across her cavernous heart like anything could startle it. “You’re staying with Jack. You like Jack. I doubt Joseph will forget his wife.”
“He just wants to hide me away. He’s embarrassed by me. Ashamed of me.”
“Mom. This is only temporary.” At least until whatever toxic spell he has you under has worn off.
“Just like my marriage,” she spat. “I’ll have nothing. I’ll have to work as a…maid and a waitress. I’ll be a nobody again. A joke. How am I supposed to go back now that I’ve had a taste of everything?”
Everything was just another word for empty. She could fill her life up with designer luxuries and money and influence, but it meant absolutely nothing. Joseph was still an abuser. The Beauregards were still twisted liars.
“Mom. I’m here for you, okay? Everything is going to be okay.”
She looked at me, her eyes dragging up and down my body with such scrutiny that I wanted to scream until every damn window in this massive house burst. I wondered if she noticed the bags under my eyes, or the oversized clothes on my body. Did she see how broken I looked? How destroyed Hamilton left me? Or was she so wrapped up in her own problems, that she couldn’t see past the tip of her own nose? “You need to eat,” she murmured. So maybe she had noticed.
“So do you,” I said.
“Are you doing well in school?” she pressed.
I was getting straight A’s but had no friends. No life outside of class.
“I’ve got great grades.”
“That’s good, Vera. I’m going to my room for the night. Tell Jack thank you for letting me stay here and that I’ll properly greet him tomorrow.” She straightened her spine, shutting off her emotions in the blink of an eye.
I wanted to pressure her to join us for dinner, mostly because I wasn’t willing to eat with Jack alone. I knew he was going to ask me about Hamilton.
“Goodnight,” Mom said before I could argue. Realizing it was hopeless to have a reasonable conversation with her, I left her to sulk so I could go check on dinner. Jack would be arriving any minute now, and I wanted to have the table set before he arrived.
I didn’t trust Jack. I didn’t like that he was holding me hostage with an agreement that would protect my mother and safeguard my college tuition.
The front door opened, and I listened attentively as footsteps clicked across the tiled floors toward me. “Hello, Vera,” he said Jack wore a sharkskin three-piece suit, and his hair was slicked back. The dark brown briefcase in his grasp drew my eye.