Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [38]
“So anyway,” Meg says, watching the family unload their cooler. “You and Jack seem good. Should I be on proposal watch?” She flashes a huge grin that’s devoid of happiness, one that I recognize from my old life, when I was the one topped off with plastic enthusiasm.
“Maybe,” I say. “Let me ask you . . . do you ever have any regrets with Tyler? I mean, you guys married so young, and not that you’re not perfect for each other, but . . . I dunno.” I swig my beer. “I’m not sure what I’m trying to say here.”
“I know what you’re saying,” Meg answers. “And not really. I mean, I don’t have many regrets. I guess I never in a million years imagined that we wouldn’t have a kid by now, but other than that, no. He makes being married pretty easy.”
I nod and stare back out at the family—the mom is now distributing sandwiches, and the older brother has the youngest in a headlock. Megan follows my gaze.
“I just know that I’ll be such a great mom,” she says. “It’s, like, all I can think about these days. How much a mother must love her child, and how it must feel to have that love returned. Like you’re finally not alone.”
I look at her with a start. “Meg, you’re not alone. You have me. You have Tyler. I hope that you don’t feel alone.”
“No, that came out wrong,” she says as she waves her hand. I notice bright splashes of pink along her cuticles where she’s gnawed them down to fresh skin. “I just mean, like, your child is tied to you forever, and nothing that anyone does can take that from you.”
I think of Katie and how, now, even when I try not to miss her, it’s impossible: Missing her is like a film over my skin that can’t be washed away. Then I try to think of my fondest memory of my own mother. A sign that at some point, she must have ferociously, uninhibitedly, ardently loved me in the way that Megan is so sure that mothers are bound, the way that I grew to love Katie, even if I wasn’t struck with it from the very second she was born.
The memory comes to me quickly, without too much effort. I was nine, and my dad was out of town on business, like he often was, running an import company that took him across the globe in search of new partnerships. Andy had been tucked into bed early—the summer heat had beaten him down, so he quickly spiraled into slumber after our grilled cheese and tomato dinner—and my mom had just finished tending to her garden in our backyard. It was only minutes after dusk, so the skies weren’t yet black, but there was only a faint glow of light, and fireflies were blinking on and off throughout the yard, begging to be caught. I grabbed two jelly jars from the cabinet and ran down the porch, tossing one in my mother’s hand and tugging her onto the grass. She giggled and followed me, and for the next hour—long after the sun had officially sunk beyond the horizon—we ran through the yard, capturing the fireflies then setting them free, over and over again. Finally, with dirt on our hands and sweat on our necks, we spilled into the kitchen and scooped out hulking heaps of ice cream, building sundaes larger than my nine-year-old self had ever imagined, and then devouring them in nearly one breath. When my eyelids grew too heavy for themselves, my mother carried me up to my bedroom, buried me under my sheets, and kissed me good night. Grime and all, which, for my mother, was a remarkable exception.
I’ve returned to that scene so often, too often, that I’m not even sure if I’ve concocted some of the details. Maybe they weren’t sundaes, maybe they were just scoops of ice cream. Maybe it wasn’t an hour in the yard, more like fifteen minutes. I really couldn’t say. Because it’s the one memory I have that reminds me that perhaps my mother wasn’t the monster I later crafted her to be; that yes, indeed, I was loved, and that her leaving, her abandonment had nothing to do with me, and so much more to do with herself.
“My mother sent me a note,” I say to Megan today, as we remain transfixed on the picnicking family on the beach. “Eighteen years of nothing,