Sweet Forgiveness (23 page)

Her eyes dim a shade. “No, honey. And that's okay.”

“Why would you say that? Daddy was crazy for you.”

She looks out at the lake. “I was nothing special. School was always hard for me. I missed a lot.”

My heart breaks for her. My dad used to correct her poor grammar, buy her books on the proper use of English. “You sound like a coal miner's daughter,” he'd say, which, of course, she was. “Don't you pick up those bad habits,” he'd tell me. “Smart people don't say . . .” He'd fill in the blank with “You done good,” or “ain't,” or “I got to go.” She'd laugh and wave him off, but once I remember seeing her lip tremble just before she turned her face. I came up behind her and wrapped my little arms around her middle. I told her she was the smartest person in the world.

“Your granddad used to make me stay home and take care of the kids whenever Mama had a cleaning job.” She looks down at her smock. “Can you believe it? I'm a cleaning woman now, too.”

I see now that she's embarrassed. Here comes her daughter with her designer clothes and college degree, and she feels ashamed. I feel a gorge of love so deep that I can barely speak. I want to tell her that it's okay. That I'm just a girl who needs her mother. But it feels too awkward. Instead, I lighten the mood.

“I bet you're the best one in the whole crew. You were always such a clean freak.”

She laughs, and I turn to her. “But in the end, you really were enough. You were the one who found someone else, not Daddy. He was crushed.”

She looks away.

“Isn't that right?” I ask, feeling my pulse quicken.

Her eyes meet mine, and she doesn't say a word. Already I know the answer, but still I have to ask.

“Daddy was faithful to you, right, Mom?”

“Oh, honey, it wasn't your dad's fault.”

I put a hand to my head. “No! Why didn't you tell me?”

“It was the way things were with professional athletes—probably the way they still are. I knew it when I married him. I just thought . . .” She laughs, a sad little laugh. “I thought I could change him. I was young and stupid. I thought all it took to keep him was to be pretty. But there was always someone younger, someone prettier and, well, a whole lot more fun.”

I think of Claudia, and my own insecurities. “You must have hated feeling like you had to be perfect.”

She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Them players could have any woman they wanted.”

My anger rises. “How many?”

She points to a hedge of rosebushes, still a month from blooming. “You always loved the roses. Funny, they've never been my favorite. I prefer these.” She points to a flock of daffodils.

“How many women, Mom?” I repeat.

She shakes her head. “Hannah, stop. Please. It ain't—isn't—important. You can't blame him. Most all the athletes did it. Them girls was theirs for the taking.”

My heart goes out to that young woman with the tight jeans, desperate to stay young and pretty yet never feeling like she was good enough. With every passing year, she must have cursed time.

“No wonder you weren't happy. Why didn't you ever tell me this? I would have understood.”

“‘Honor thy father,'” she says quietly, quoting the Bible. “I had no business telling you then, and I have no business telling you now.”

I want to scream! But it would have explained so much. All those years I'd demonized her—and my father let me. If only I'd known what she'd had to endure, I would have been more sympathetic.

“I had a feeling someday you'd figure it out for yourself, when you got older and we were more like best friends than mother-daughter.” She smiles at me, and I see all of her lost dreams in those pale blue eyes.

She squats down to pick a dandelion from the flower bed. “Your father craved love. He needed it like water. He just couldn't give it.”

I want to tell her she's wrong, that my father was a loving man. But just below the surface, I feel
the
truth bubbling. And I know she's right.

I watch her shake the soil from the weed, and I feel my own “soil” fall from me. Everything I'd held fast to, every truth I'd held, crumbles. Maybe my father really did manipulate me. Maybe he purposely poisoned my feelings, and kept me from my mother. Maybe
his truth
, as Dorothy called it, wasn't
the
truth.

She tosses the weed behind a bush. “You were the one exception. I do believe he loved you, Hannah Marie.”

“As best he could,” I say, knowing that it was a selfish love but all he was capable of giving. A thought occurs to me. “Did you send me letters, Mom?”

She turns to me, her eyes wide. “The first of each month,” she says. “Without fail. I finally stopped when one was returned to me with a note saying John had died. She told me to stop writing.”

She? I feel myself sway. “Who was it from?”

“A gal named Julia.”

I lift my hands to my head. “No. Not Julia.” But even as I try to deny it, I know it's true. Like me, Julia was another of my dad's enablers. She showed her love by protecting him. How can I be angry when I was no different?

“I wish you'd sent the letters directly to me.”

She looks at me as if the thought were ridiculous. “You wouldn't give me your address. After you left Atlanta, I asked for it over and over. Finally, your dad told me I could send letters to him. He promised he'd give them to you.”

And she listened to him. Just like I did.

“How could you let me go?” The words spill from my lips without forethought.

She steps back and looks down at her hands. “Your dad's lawyer convinced me it was best for everyone, including you. You'd have been forced to testify. Bob could've spent years in prison.”

So there it is. Her own Sophie's choice. She probably gave up her half of the divorce settlement, too.

She grabs me by the arms. “You got to believe me, Hannah. I loved you. I thought I was doing the right thing. I really did.” She turns away and kicks the ground with the toe of her sneaker. “I was so stupid. I thought you'd come back when you turned sixteen and could decide for yourself. When your dad told me you never wanted to see me again, I nearly lost my mind.”

A wave of dizziness comes over me and I fight to understand my father's selfish actions—and my own. Why did he keep my mother from me? Did he think he was being helpful? Or did his competitive spirit crave revenge? Was his need to punish my mother so profound that he ignored the fact that he was punishing me, too? I feel the cargo of anger I've carried for my mother spilling out, creating a whole new heap, this one for my father. And once again, I'm entrenched in bitterness and anger.

I look up at the sky. No! I've come so far to rid myself of the rage I've carried. I have two choices. I can let the anger bury me again, or let it go.

Fiona's words take shape in my head.
We keep secrets for two reasons. Either to protect ourselves or to protect others.

My father was protecting me, at least he thought he was. Yes. I will choose to believe this. Because the alternative, that he was protecting himself, is too heavy a notion.

I lay a hand on her back. “Don't cry, Mom. It's okay now. You did what you thought was best. So did I.” I swallow hard. “And Daddy did, too.”

My mother swipes her eyes, then turns toward the dirt road, looking north with her head cocked. I hear it, too. The distant rumble of an engine. “Bob's coming.”

A
volt of electricity shimmies up my spine. The moment I've avoided my entire adult life has arrived. “I need to go.”

“No. Stay.”

“I'll sit in my car. You can explain why I'm here. If he wants me to leave, I will.”

My mother smooths down her hair and pats her pockets, then fishes out a tube of Maybelline.

“No,” she tells me, her lips now a tawny rose. She tucks the lipstick back into her pocket. “Bob won't remember you.”

I'm struck by the comment. My mother doesn't try to sugarcoat it. He's forgotten all about me. To Bob, I am dead.

A county bus, not much larger than a van, pulls up to the house. So, my mother is a house cleaner and Bob is a bus driver. A bus driver who doesn't remember his wife's daughter.

The green-and-white vehicle comes to a halt in the driveway. My mother stands alongside the bus, waiting for the doors to fold open. When they do, the driver appears—a wiry twentysomething with a tattoo sleeve.

I'm confused for a moment. Who is this guy? Certainly not Bob. I see someone on the other side of the driver. An elderly man, stooped and frail, gripping the tattooed man's elbow.

My mother steps forward and kisses the old man's cheek. “Hi, honey.”

My hand flies to my throat and I gasp. Bob? No. It can't be.

My mother thanks the driver and offers her hand to Bob. He clutches it and smiles. Whether it's his stooped posture or osteoporosis, he seems to have shrunk six inches. I look for some resemblance, some sign of the beefy construction worker with broad shoulders and a hearty laugh. But all I see is a feeble man wearing a pale green shirt with a purple stain down the front, clutching my mother's hand like a five-year-old boy.

In seconds, my brain makes assumptions. He's had an accident. He has a disease.

“Aren't you the pretty one,” he says to my mother, as if he's never seen her. He spots me and breaks into a grin. “Hello,” he says in a singsong voice.

“Bob, you remember Hannah, my daughter?”

Bob chuckles. “Aren't you the pretty one.”

Slowly, I move toward him. He looks elfin now, with a tiny, smooth face and enormous ears that look like they've been attached to the sides of his head like Mr. Potato. He wears white sneakers and a pair of chinos cinched with a brown leather belt, accenting a balloon-sized paunch.

All my fear has vanished, and in its place I feel pity and sadness and shame. My hands fall to my sides. “Hello, Bob.”

He looks from my mother to me. “Hello,” he says, and smiles.

My mother puts an arm around me. “Bob, this is my daughter.” She speaks kindly but deliberately, as if she were speaking to a child. “This is Hannah. She's come to visit.”

“Aren't you the pretty one.”

In an instant, I know his diagnosis. Alzheimer's.

Bob sits at the kitchen table putting together a children's puzzle while my mother and I prepare dinner. I watch him examine a wooden fire truck, running his finger over its edges, contemplating in which of the five slots it belongs.

“You doing okay, honey?” my mom asks again. She pulls a Ziploc bag from the freezer. “Homemade garlic toast,” she tells him. “You love it, don't you, hon?”

I'm in awe of her cheerfulness, the unapologetic dignity she gives her husband. I sense no bitterness, no impatience or anger. She seems almost giddy with joy that I'm here, and it both pleases and pains me. I should have come back twenty years ago.

She touches me every minute or two, as if by touch she's confirming that I'm really here. She fixes spaghetti, which she remembers as my favorite. She sautés ground beef and onions, and mixes in a jar of Prego spaghetti sauce. The Parmesan cheese is from a green container rather than freshly grated. The only culinary trait we share is our love for homemade bread.

Again, I'm struck by how very different my life is than hers. Who would I have been, had I stayed with my mother? Would I be living here in Northern Michigan, fixing Chef Boyardee for my family? And the bigger question, is my life better for having left, or worse?

Our dinner feels like an outing at Chuck E. Cheese's. While my mother and I try to talk, Bob interrupts, interjecting the same questions over and over again.
Who's she? Aren't you the pretty one.
Going fishing in the morning.

“He hasn't fished in years,” she tells me. “Todd puts that old boat in the water for him every year, but it just sits there. I really got to sell it.”

We talk about the years in between. My mother tells me they moved north after Bob lost his teaching job.

“It was another hurdle,” she says. “Leaving teaching was hard enough, but wow, losing his coaching job nearly did him in.”

I don't want to ask the question that's burning in me, but I must. “Did . . . my situation . . . have something to do with him losing his job?”

My mother wipes her mouth with a napkin, then feeds a forkful of spaghetti to Bob. “Mrs. Jacobs. Remember her? She lived in the ranch next door.”

“Yes,” I say, recalling the old biddy I once overheard calling my mother “flashy.”

“She'd gotten wind of the fallout.”

The fallout. She's talking about the incident. The accusation.
My
accusation.

“Who told her?” I ask. “The . . . incident . . . happened here, three hundred miles from Bloomfield Hills. How'd she find out?”

My mother wipes Bob's mouth, then holds a glass of milk to his lips. She's not answering my question.

“Dad,” I say aloud. My father must have told Mrs. Jacobs about my accusation. He knew her reputation as a gossip. He knew she wouldn't be able to keep it quiet. Which, of course, is exactly why he told her. Another shot of revenge.

“Oh no,” I say, feeling the weight of my shame, sensing the ripples of damage from that one accusation. “And she reported him?”

My mother leans in and touches my arm. “In some ways, it freed us, honey. We left Detroit and come here. We got us a fresh start.”

“Why didn't Bob teach here?”

“Construction was booming at the time. Still is.”

“But he loved teaching, and coaching, too.”

She turns away. “Life is a trade-off, honey. It was too risky. If anyone would've made a complaint against him, he'd be a sitting duck.”

Aftershock. Collateral damage. Whatever you call it, it's wreckage, the result of my accusation. I push my plate away, unable to eat another bite.

We sit on the back porch that evening. I take a seat in a molded plastic chair, and my mom leads Bob to the porch swing. The spring air is chilly, and my mother retrieves sweaters for all of us. She tucks a blanket around Bob's shoulders. “Are you warm enough, sweetheart?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“This porch is your favorite spot, isn't it, hon?”

“Oh, yeah.”

I watch, touched by the loving care my mother provides to this shadow of a person she calls her husband. And it's taking a toll on her, I see it. I think of my father at age fifty-four. He traveled the world, played golf five days a week. He had health and money and Julia. This isn't fair. My mother should be traveling and enjoying life. Instead, she's tethered to a man who sometimes recognizes her, sometimes doesn't.

“Who's she?” Bob asks for the umpteenth time, pointing to me.

My mother starts to explain, but I interrupt. “Let me, Mom.” I rise and take a deep breath. “I've come a thousand miles to apologize. This isn't the way I intended it to be, but still, I need to do it.”

“Honey, that's not necessary.”

I ignore her and walk over to the porch swing. Bob scoots aside and pats the place next to him. I sit down.

I should take his hand. I should pat his back or rub his arm, something to let him know I'm his ally. I hate myself for it, but I can't. Even now, in his compromised state, the thought of touching him is too unsettling. Is my reaction instinctual? I close my eyes. No! I cannot keep second-guessing that night. Bob's touch, no matter how intentional it felt, was accidental. Period. End of story. My entire relationship with my mother depends on that truth. And I'll learn to believe it. I know I will.

“Who's she?”

I take a deep breath. “I'm Hannah, Bob. Suzanne's daughter. Do you remember me?”

He nods and smiles. “Oh, yeah.” But he doesn't. I know he doesn't.

Finally, I muster the courage to take his hand. It's cool, with big earthworm veins meandering over bone and under age spots. But it's soft. He squeezes my hand, and my heart wrenches.

“I hurt you once,” I say, and feel my nose burn with shame.

“Aren't you the pretty one.”

“No,” I say. “I'm not pretty. I accused you of something. Something very bad.”

He's looking off into the woods, but his hand is still in mine.

“Listen to me,” I say, through clenched teeth. For some reason, it comes out angry.

He turns to me, the face of a child who's been scolded. Tears flood my eyes and I try to blink them away. He stares at me, bewildered.

“I want to tell you I'm sorry.” My voice is husky, trembling.

My mother comes to my side, patting my back. “Shhh. It's not necessary, honey.”

“I accused you of touching me,” I say. Tears stream down my cheeks now. I no longer try to be stoic. “I was wrong to do that. I had no proof. You didn't mean to . . .”

He lifts his free hand and touches my face. He trails a tear with his finger. I let him. “She's crying,” he says, looking to my mother. “Who is she?”

I swallow hard and swipe my eyes. “Someone very small,” I say softly. I start to rise, but he has a firm grip on my hand.

“Aren't you the pretty one.”

I look over at this man, a picture of innocence. “Will you forgive me?” I ask. I know it's not fair. He isn't capable of granting forgiveness. But still, I have to ask. I want to hear it. I
need
to hear it. I turn to him. “Please, Bob, forgive me. Will you? Please?”

He smiles. “Oh, yeah.”

I cover my mouth and nod, unable to speak. Slowly I open my arms and pull his frail body to mine. He clutches me, as if the human touch is instinctual, the last vestige of our humanity.

I feel my mother's hand on my back. “We forgive you, honey.”

I close my eyes and let the words wash over me. So much healing in those four words.