When he pulled up, she was wearing a chic black pantsuit, one black shoe, and the infamous cast on the broken ankle that had started Deanna’s assault on their mother. Her hair was neatly pulled back, and she was wearing makeup. She had a tan, and she beamed the moment she saw him. What struck him was how youthful and beautiful she still was, and looked nowhere near her age. He hadn’t seen her in almost seven months, and was ashamed to admit it when he flipped back through his appointment book and figured it out. She hopped into the Range Rover with ease, agile despite the cast.
“You look terrific, Mom,” Ben said warmly after he hugged her. There was a sparkle in her eye, and despite the sad news about Andy, she was in better spirits than he expected. He hadn’t had an evening alone with her in eight years, since he’d married Laura, and she was very touched.
He drove down the hill to an excellent Italian restaurant and had asked for a quiet table where they could talk. He had expected her to be tired from the trip, and instead she was full of energy, and was proud to be with him when the maître d’ seated them. Ben asked for champagne for them before they ordered dinner.
“That’s quite an adventure you just had,” he said quietly. He had followed her the entire way on Instagram, and she still hadn’t called Deanna, or even texted her. She’d had no contact with her since she left New York.
“I needed to get away,” she said seriously. “After I broke my ankle, things got out of hand. I had a few run-ins with Deanna, and I needed time to think.” He didn’t admit that he’d heard all about them from his sister, and he could easily understand why she had dropped everything and run for a while. With threats like Deanna’s, he might have done the same. Ben was a quiet, thoughtful man, and he was assessing his mother as they spoke.
“What made you decide to look up Andy after all this time?”
“I found a box of old letters in the closet the night I fell. Not just from him. There were some from a man you probably don’t remember, Bob Holland. You were about seven when I started dating him.”
“I vaguely remember him,” Ben said as the waiter came and set the menus on the table and left.
“We dated for two years, and I was fairly serious about him. He moved to California for a venture capital job in Silicon Valley. We lost touch after that. I googled him and he has his own firm in Boston now. I wanted to catch up and see what had become of him.”
“And did you?” Ben was intrigued by what she was saying.
“I did. I always wondered if I’d made a mistake turning him down. I didn’t. He totally sold out. He married a woman from a prominent family in Boston, realized he’d made a mistake, and stayed married to her to protect his career because her father owned the firm he worked for. Somewhere along the way, I think he sold his soul to the devil for a major career and everything that goes with it. He’s been having affairs for years, would have been happy to do the same with me, and he’s not a nice guy. I definitely dodged a bullet there,” she said with a smile at her son, and he laughed.
“Sounds like it, although the trappings might be amusing.”
“Not in exchange for being married to the wrong woman. He’s had a loveless life, and he has no soul. Then I went to Chicago and had dinner with Jacques Masson, whom you probably do remember.” Ben grinned as soon as she said the name.
“I was in high school when you dated him. I had a lot of fun with him.” He smiled at the memories Jacques’s name conjured up.
“So did I, and he hasn’t changed a bit, except that he owns seven restaurants now, drives a Bentley, and the girls in his life have gotten younger. He’s having a ball. He has an eleven-year-old daughter he seems to be crazy about, but he didn’t marry her mother. He’s going to be a player forever. I guessed that one right. He cheated on me all the time,” she told Ben, now that he was old enough to hear it. “I got tired of it when we were dating. He’s still a nice person though. He said to send you his love.”
“Were you thinking of going back to either of them, Mom?” He wondered if she was looking for a husband now, before she got any older. He thought maybe Deanna had driven her to that, but Maddie shook her head.
“No, but I made strong decisions in my life, particularly after Andy. I never fell in love again, and I like my independent life, but when I read the letters, when I was laid up for a few days with my ankle, I wondered if I was right. I just wanted to see for myself who the men in my life were twenty or thirty years later. I knew my decision with Andy was right. I didn’t want to live in Wyoming, and I didn’t think he could survive in New York. It would have killed his soul.” Ben didn’t disagree with her from what he remembered of him.
They stopped talking and looked at the menus then, and the waiter took their order. “I never second-guessed the decision with Andy, and we only spoke a few times after we broke up. At some point, when the right situation hasn’t presented itself, you make a decision. Either to settle for something that’s not right and make your peace with it, or get bitter at the way your life turned out, or put your energies in another direction. I put mine into the three of you, and whatever was left over went into my career. And once you all grew up, and had less time to spend with me, understandably,” she said gently, “I poured everything into my work. It became the whole reason for my life. If it hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to let go and let you have your own lives. I had to find something else to dedicate myself to, body and soul. For the last fifteen years, it’s been my job. I lost interest in dating after Andy. I didn’t think I’d ever find a man I loved as much, so I developed my own life to justify what I’d done, and I’ve always assumed I would just keep plugging away forever and that would be my life until the end.
“None of you really need me anymore, you have your own families and partners, and Milagra has a life that seems to suit her, so I’ve had my career. I figured I would keep at it and come back to the firehouse and curl up between assignments, and then get back on the road again. It’s been good for me until now, and it fills the void you all inevitably left when you grew up. I never questioned it until now. I just stayed on my path. I figured I’d go on forever the way things are. It never occurred to me that could change.
“But when I broke my ankle, Deanna gave me a clear picture of what could happen, and what the future could look like. She wants me to sell my house. She thinks I should buy a co-op in an assisted living facility, in anticipation of when I can’t take care of myself. She wanted me to wear one of those geriatric falling alarms. All of a sudden I could envision everything I care about, and everything I’ve built my life on, being taken away from me: my work, my home, my freedom, my independence. I guess it could happen, but it had never occurred to me. I never thought I needed anyone to take care of me, not a husband or a man, and suddenly I could see where those choices could lead me, and maybe already have.