I get a pop-up notification that my parents have just logged into Skype, and I dial so quickly that it’s a little embarrassing. My mother appears onscreen, frowning and too close.
“Stupid thing,” she mutters, and then brightens. “Smurfette! How are you?”
“Fine, how are you?” Before she replies the screen fills with the fly of her jeans as she stands up and calls out repeatedly to my dad for one very long minute. Nigel! Nigel! Even the familiar tone and cadence her voice takes has me shriveling in homesickness. Finally, she gives up.
“He must still be out in the field,” she tells me, sitting back down. “He’ll wander in soon.”
We look at each other for a long moment. It’s so rare to have her to myself, without my dad’s gale-force personality propelling the conversation, that I hardly know where to start. I can’t seem to talk about the weather, or how busy I’ve been. As her shrewd blue eyes narrow as I choose my words, I realize I’d better ask the question I’ve been torturing myself with for these last few weeks, and perhaps all of my life.
It’s something I should have asked her years ago.
“Before I was born, and when you met Dad . . . how could you give up your dream?”
The question clangs in the dead static air between her and me. She doesn’t speak for a long moment, and I think maybe I’ve said something I really shouldn’t. When she locks eyes again with me, her gaze is steady and resolute.
“If you’re asking me if I regret my choice? No.” She sits back into her chair, I sit up properly on the couch, and suddenly it’s like there’s no screen between us. No frame surrounding her face, or mine, and no strangely intrusive preview screen distracting us with our own faces. I feel like I could reach out and take her hand. It’s the closest we’ve been since I saw her last, when I hugged her at the airport and breathed her shampoo and sunshine smell. I watch her thinking, and the clock is ticking before my dad walks in and interrupts.
“How can I regret it for a second? I have your father, and I have you.” It’s the answer and the smile I knew she’d give me. How can she say anything differently?
“But don’t you wonder where you’d be now if you chose your career instead of him?”
She avoids answering again. “Is this about your job interview? Are you worried about what happens if you miss your big chance?”
“Something like that. I’ve just started thinking that even if I get it, I could lose out on other . . .
opportunities.”
“I don’t think you need to give up your dream for anything. You want this, I can see it. I can hear it in your voice. Times have moved on, honey. You don’t have to give up anything. You don’t have to make a choice like mine. You just need to give it your all.”
A door bangs in the background on her end of the conversation, and her eyes flick offscreen. “That’s your dad.”
I’m starting to feel frantic. I can’t tell her about the change in my relationship with Josh, our competition, and what I will lose no matter what the outcome is. There’s no time. There’s only time for this.
“If I were in the same position, walking through an orchard, possibly about to derail myself somehow, what would you tell me to do?”
She looks offscreen and I can hear heavy boots clomping up the stairs to the office. Her answer convinces me of the cherry seed of what if that has always been lodged in her heart. “For you? I’d tell you to keep walking. I want things for you. Keep your eye on the prize and whatever you do, just keep walking.”
“What’s going on?” Dad appears, kissing the top of my mom’s head, and he sees me on the screen. “You should have come got me! How’s my girl? Ready to beat Jimmy at the interview? Imagine his face when you get it. I can just see it now.” He drops into the seat beside Mom and then beams at the ceiling, relishing my fictional victory and his own cleverness.
I can see it on the tiny preview screen; my face falls. It could be seen from space and Mom definitely sees it. “Oh. I see now. Lucy, why didn’t you say?”