After long moments, she says, “You don’t sound very surprised.”
“No,” he says dully. “Secrets have a way of coming out sooner or later, don’t they? Even if it takes twenty-three years.”
“How did you . . ?”
“Completely by chance. Turns out you haven’t been honest with me from the beginning.”
“That was for your own protection.”
“Actually, Ma, I’ll give you that one. He’s definitely not father material. But the thirty-five grand you stole from this family? I can’t let that go.”
In the ensuing hush, the ticking of the clock on the kitchen wall seems to grow louder and louder.
“I didn’t steal it,” Lilia finally says, her tone firm. “I went looking for it. If I hadn’t, there’d have been no money at all.”
Scott’s abrupt, humorless laugh makes me jump. “Really? That’s what you’re going with?”
“I did what I had to, Scotty.”
“You had to rob your son of his last year of childhood?”
“Don’t be such a martyr.”
“You don’t even feel guilty, do you? You think you had every right to force Abuela and me to scrounge up whatever we could to stay afloat. You don’t regret it at all.”
“No, I don’t! I needed that money for more important things.”
“What could be more important than your family?” Scott thunders.
“Robbie could have gone to jail for life. Life, Scotty!”
Scott makes a sound more suitable to a dying animal than a person before he says, “You’re unbelievable. Why you’d choose that lowlife over your own kids, I’ll never understand. But I’d say it’s pretty ironic that your choices made me into a man who won’t hesitate to sue you for custody and reimbursement of that money.”
There’s a dramatic pause then the sound of the front door being wrenched open.
“Ma,” Scott calls loudly. “When is he getting out?”
But there’s only the slamming of the door.
Scott
I’ve never understood my mother. As a young child, I yearned for her attention, but she was just as likely to look at me with loathing as she was with love. Not only did she forever run hot and cold, but she was in and out of my life constantly. Whenever she had a new boyfriend or fell off the wagon, she would either leave me behind with Abuela, or occasionally, she would take me with her when it suited her needs. So many of my early memories of her are characterized by that insecurity and confusion.
Curiously, my life became far more stable when Desiree was born because for a long stretch, I didn’t see my mother at all. I was four years old when she left and I barely recognized her when she showed up on our doorstep two years later with my baby sister in her arms.
From there, I did my best to make sense of her baffling mood swings and erratic behavior. In turns, I downplayed her cutting comments, avoided the embarrassment she caused me with my friends, or deflected her attention away from Desiree who was much too young to cope with it all.
I was seven when Roberto, or Robbie, came along. Early on, I knew he was trouble. He and my mother would have raging, drunken arguments that would occasionally degenerate into physical violence. I did everything I could to keep myself and Desiree out of his way. The first time he told my mother he never wanted to see her again, relief like I’d never known came over me. That was until my mother begged him to stay and my relief became bewilderment. So many times over the years I watched her make choice after choice that made no sense to me. If some kids mimic their parents’ behavior and follow in their footsteps, I wasn’t one of them. By eight or nine, I started filing it all under headings like how not to act, what not to do, how not to let people treat me.
By ten, I’d lost all interest in her. To me, everything she touched was toxic and I dismissed her as irrelevant to my survival. She always hated that, and I admit I took satisfaction in knowing I could inflict on her even a fraction of the distress she’d caused me over the years.
So I’m willing to take partial responsibility for the animosity that exists between us today. But this thing about the money . . . I’m not sure I’ll ever get past it. And now her decision not to mention Robbie’s pending parole? That just blows my mind. But none of it changes the fact that I need a plan for when that mean bastard is getting out. I follow her out the front door.
I’m expecting to have to chase her down the driveway, but when I get outside, she’s sitting on the top step, lighting a cigarette. Since no one remembered to turn the porch light on this evening, the end glows cherry red in the dark as she takes a drag.
Taking a seat with my back to the railing post, I face her, but she doesn’t look at me.
After a minute of silence, she says, “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. No girl dreams of a life filled with one disappointment after another.”
I fight the urge to roll my eyes. She’s entitled to her feelings after all, no matter how fatalistic they are.
“I’m forty-one years old and I’ve been in love with a man who probably doesn’t love me back for more than fifteen years, half of those he’s spent in prison. I have a grown son who hates me and two teenage daughters who disregard me.”
“Ma, I don’t hate you.”
She doesn’t respond to that though, just takes another drag and stares out into the empty street. I occurs to me that her problems are self-made . . . an idea that strikes me as familiar. Didn’t Ellie tell me once that I did that? Created my own problems? The idea slinks through my brain until my mom’s voice calls me back to the present.
“So you met your father?”
“Not really. I got introduced to him, that’s all.” A dog barks in the distance as I watch the TV in the front room across the street create shadows that ebb and flow.
“Every year you look more and more like him.”
“Is that why you treated me like you did when I was a kid?”
That gets her attention. Instead of dismissing my words like I’m expecting, she says, “That’s not why, no.” Averting her gaze, she takes another drag. “If you want the truth, I despised how your father made me feel like such trash.”
“But that had nothing to do with me. God, I was a kid, Ma.”
“Well, so was I. Did you know he accused me of getting pregnant on purpose?” She shakes her head angrily. “We didn’t even discuss protection. Protection didn’t even occur to either of us until after all was said and done . . . but it was my fault?”
I can hear the rising indignation mixed with sadness in her voice.
“Then, he tried to claim he wasn’t the father. But when I agreed to any test he wanted, he still wasn’t happy. I should have known it was a lost cause, but I couldn’t face it alone. I was eighteen and scared, you know? Then I found out he was thirty years old and already had a wife and kid at home.”
I feel bad for her, I do, but something about her attitude rubs me the wrong way. “I understand that you got a raw deal. But what about now?”
“What about it?”
“If you want things to change, then change them.”