Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [71]
Today, looking at my mother, I couldn’t help but remember those early days with Katie, when I wondered if I’d made a mistake that now couldn’t be undone. And it was hard not to see how closely our cloths were cut.
We chew on our sandwiches thoughtfully, silently.
Finally, I say, “So why now? It’s been eighteen years. Why now?”
“Well, that’s where there’s more to tell.” She swallows.
I nod and wait, as she reaches down into her purse and slides out a photo, then pushes it across the table.
I shake my head. “What’s this?” The shot is of my mother on the nose of a sailboat, a younger girl sitting below her, and a man, whom I presume is my mother’s husband, with his arm thrown over her shoulder.
My mom clears her throat and speaks carefully. “This is your sister.” She waits for a response but I have none: I feel as if I’ve been pierced in the gut, like an ice pick is jutting over my skin, then through it, so she continues. “She’s nine now, the same age you were when I left you.” She pauses, and I see her searching for a way to make this right, though rage is creeping into my gut, and I want to tell her to quit, to stop now because there’s no possible way, in fact, to make this right. “I see her now, and how precious she is, and Jill . . .” Here she reaches across the table to my sweaty hand, which I immediately pull back from her grasp. “I look at her, and I can’t believe that someone as young as her, with all of her innocence, might have to endure a life without her mom.”
I stare at my mother for a beat too long and realize with the force of a flying fist that this was a mistake, that all of the healing that I thought this might bring, all of the wisdom that I assumed I missed out on the first time around by spurning her, well, fuck that, I think, surprising even myself with my vitriol.
“So you’re sticking around for her, but couldn’t bring yourself to do it for me? Protecting her fragile nature while leaving me and Andy to fend for ourselves abandoned on the roadside?” I finally spit out. I reach for my bag. “You know, we’re done here, Ilene. I don’t know what you were hoping to gain from this, but whatever it was, I don’t want to be part of it.” I stand to go, holding back furious tears.
“Jillian, please, let me explain. Please don’t leave like this.” Her voice is pleading. “I’m trying to make it up to you.”
“There is nothing you can make up to me now,” I seethe. “Nothing.”
She flops her hands helplessly, and I race to the door before she can see me crumble. That’s the thing about the people I love and me: One of us is always leaving the other, even when our intentions promise otherwise.
Chapter Twenty
That is it, that’s the one,” Ainsley says from the cream chenille chair at Vera Wang. She picks up her cup of decaf. “That is definitely the one.”
“You think?” I swivel in front of the three-way mirror and arch my neck to see the back. Dozens of hand-sewn buttons trickle down the spine of the gown, and the flesh of my back is naked and exposed. “Meg? You like it?”
“Uh-huh,” she answers, though she seems noncommittal.
I turn and face front again. “I do like it,” I say, running my hands over the beaded bodice and the rich, heavy silk organza. “But shouldn’t I, like, know know, when it’s the right dress?”
Ainsley shakes her head. “I think you just find one that you love, and that‘s that. You don’t have to break down in tears and have an epiphany or anything like that.” She cocks her head. “I’d tried on about five dozen dresses