Page 110 of The Frog Prince
“You didn’t lose him, Mom. He walked out.”
She looks tortured as she shifts her purse from one arm to the other. “Doesn’t matter how or why he left. A good woman is supposed to be able to keep her man.”
And I understand her perfectly, perhaps for the first time ever. We have both spent our entire lives trying hard, so very hard, and it’s still not enough. And despite wanting to be good, we have been found wanting.
If we were different people, or this were a Hallmark after-school special, this is where I’d hug her. There’d be a swell of music—lots of strings—but this isn’t a movie. This is my mom and me.
So we sit there at our corner table in the Vintage Press and smile awkwardly with that intense history of love and loss between us. Probably no one but us will ever understand how brutal it was for Dad to leave and for us to be left behind. No one else will understand in quite the same way, not even my brother and sister, because they’re not emotionally built the same.
My mom…
My mom…
… is so much like me.
Maybe that’s why I’ve pushed her away all these years. It’s hard enough living all your own struggles, hard enough to try and fail, without seeing your pain mirrored in someone else.
“Did something happen at work, Holly?” my mom asks hesitantly, and yet with a measure of parental possession.
My eyes burn, a gritty, hot sting, and I swallow hard. “Yes.” And I’m just about to tell her when the waitress approaches. Mom knows the waitress, and they chat, and then Mom introduces me proudly as her daughter, the one who lives in San Francisco, the PR daughter, the one who does event planning.
Mom is proud of me, I think. She loved visiting me in San Francisco, going to my office and seeing where I worked. And now I’ve got to tell her I don’t work there anymore. That I’ve been fired.
By the time the waitress leaves, I know I can’t tell Mom now, at least not here, not before dinner. She’s so happy at the moment, so excited to be out having dinner with me.
“Don’t you ever get lonely, Mom?” I ask an hour later, as our dessert dishes are cleared. I had crème brûlée and she had cheesecake, and we’re both stuffed, but it was so worth it.
“No. I’ve learned to stay busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Puttering in the garden. Scrapbooking. Volunteer work.”
“That’s good.” But is it? Because, God help me, I don’t want to end up like this. I don’t. I want so much more out of life. And I don’t want to be her age, living alone, trying to find ways to fill my time so I don’t know that everybody has up and gone and left me behind.
Thatlifehas left me behind.
I don’t want to miss out on anything. I’m struggling with the dreams, all those dreams I still have and can’t let go of, when Mom and I gather our purses and head out.
It’s nearly the first of May, and it’s a beautiful night. It’s warm outside, and the sky is clear, and the stars spread out above my head everywhere.
As we walk toward our cars, I take a deep breath, thinking that coming home always undoes me. Here in Visalia I remember everything. I remember Bastard Ted leaving, and I remember my mother valiantly coping, and I remember how Christmas was never the same. I remember the ugly clothes I used to wear when we couldn’t afford better, and that big purchase, the first pair of high heels. I remember falling in them, and I remember people laughing, and I remember always wanting more.
Next to Mom’s car, I suddenly blurt out, “I lost my job.”
Mom’s just starting to sit in the driver’s seat, and she grabs the steering wheel. “You were laid off?”
“Fired.”
“Fired,” she echoes. “Why? What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“But you had to do something if you were fired.”
I love how she always takes my side. I shake my head, angry. “I’ll see you at home,” I say, and I walk quickly to my car.
I don’t mean to cry, don’t want to cry, but the tears fall as I enter the house. I shouldn’t have come home. This was the wrong place to go.