Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [80]
Chapter Twenty-two
I’ve begged off a staff meeting to find a sliver of free time, and my mom has agreed to meet me at the south gate of Central Park at lunch. It’s an unseasonably mild day for early December, though it snowed earlier in the week, so the lawns are bathed in slush, and puddles threaten on every sidewalk corner. As at the tea emporium, she is there early, and I see her from my corner perch long before she sees me.
She is chewing the inside of her lip, and while I imagine this should endear her to me, it instead angers me all over again, shooting shards of her betrayal, of her plea for sympathy, of the news of my sister through me like hot lightning.
Henry, my old Henry, would be proud of me, I think. He’d pushed me relentlessly, until his hints were no longer subtle or even all together padded with softness, to forge a reconciliation, and so, if he could see me here, toeing the literal line between my childhood self and my adult one, surely, he’d be proud.
But as I watch my mother glance through the passing crowds, searching strange faces for mine, a familiar one, it occurs to me that pleasing Henry, making him proud, has nothing to do with anything. Before, in my old life, I felt much the same, only it wasn’t really the same feeling at all. Before, back then, I was cocooned in hostility, the way that it’s so easy to be when the person closest to you isn’t telling you what you want to hear or isn’t taking the time to listen clearly to what it is that you need them to hear.
Instead of shutting down with Henry, I consider, I should have listened more. Listened to why this reconciliation with my mother mattered to him. Told him why it felt like too much to bear for me. Maybe then, instead of digging emotional graves for ourselves, we could have forged an understanding that would have pleased us both equally. Because the Henry I’ve come to know in this second chance would have preferred that, and I realize, as I see my mother check her watch once again, I would have much preferred that, too.
I start to move toward my mom, but still, something holds me back, like I’m trapped in a giant impermeable bubble that won’t allow me through. I freeze and exhale, trying for the first time in so, so long to listen to what it is that I need to do for myself, not what I think needs to be done for the future and not what I’m doing to escape my past. Just here and now. Me, myself, and I.
I’m not ready, I say. I’m not ready to let this all go. I wish that I were but it can’t be so easy. Stop pretending that it’s all so fucking easy. As if you should be able to forgive her just because she beckoned.
The words resonate within me, echoing and ringing clearly, and I know that they are true. So rather than cross the street and gloss over the scars that still lie within me, I pull my hood tight over my head, turn down the avenue, and, like a ghost, am gone.
“OH MY GOD, what is that smell?” Later that night, I hear Josie’s voice from the hall before I see her in my office.
“Chinese,” I say, gesturing to the spread in front of me. “You want? We ordered way too much.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Meg says, her chopsticks diving into her paper plate. “I’m eating for two.”
“Hey, congrats!” Josie kisses Megan on the cheek and grabs a dumpling with her fingers. “What are you doing here on a Friday night?”
Meg tries to answer but her mouth is too full, so mostly, she grunts and gestures toward me.
“Forgive her,” I say. “She’s nine weeks pregnant and