Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [86]
Chapter Twenty-four
Henry hasn’t returned my call. I’m trying not to consider the implications of this fact two days after Christmas, as I hover over my desk, feigning busywork but mostly bored and listless. And by trying not to consider the implications, all I have done is further obsess about the silent, lifeless, why won’t you fucking ring? phone.
It’s a dead zone, this time between Christmas and New Year’s. Jack is in Antigua with his family, a vacation I gracefully declined months back, before our engagement, and my apartment is so quiet that it leaves me nothing to do but think, so I’ve returned to the office as a default.
I have clicked through all of the online holiday sales, looked up the weather in both Vail and Antigua, and added some stemware to my registry, when out of nowhere, a silly banner ad with an unusually well-endowed bride and her barely aging mother sends my mind flashing to my own mother and how maybe it’s time to start saying something real in the conversation toward healing. How I’m the only one who is going to be able to set aside my baggage and how I’m responsible for owning that. Really, I think, maybe this is what Henry was trying to push me toward, with all of his nagging about reconciliation. I just wasn’t able to see it that way, so his words always seemed to come out wrong. Maybe his intentions were always pure, and that has to count for something.
I close my office door, hearing the latch snap shut, and uncover a pen and pad in my top drawer. I might not be ready to wash it all clean, but I am ready, I know, to begin to try.
Dear Mom,
I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to meet you last week. I shouldn’t have promised something that I couldn’t deliver. It wasn’t my intention to disappoint you. I understand why you want to get to know me now after so many years. And I want you to know that part of me is grateful for that desire. But another part of me feels like, felt like, I should say, it’s all too much, too soon.
I want to forgive you, I do. I’d even like to say that I’m ready to forgive you, but this isn’t a blackboard that can just be erased with one fell swoop. Every day, I’m reminded of what you did to me. For years, I pretended that I wasn’t, but now, it’s clear that nearly everything about who I’ve become has been defined by learning to live with the belief, and the isolation of that belief, that my mother didn’t love me.
I am a chameleon, Mother. I sell myself out to the person who bids high enough with his love. If he gives me enough, I can become whomever he needs me to be. As long as he promises devotion, I’m his, blocking out my instincts to become who I want, to say what I want to say. Because, I’ve long feared, if I expose my true self, if I speak up and say no, he might leave, just as you once did nearly two decades ago.
And even now, with your request to start anew, I feel myself doing it all over again: giving myself over to you because you show up, ready and heady with your love. A chameleon never stops trying to blend in, it seems.
It’s time, however, for me to start sinking into my own skin, not just that of what others want to see. To start facing who I am, who I need to be. I can’t blame you forever, and I don’t want to. I’d like to become an adult who is responsible for her own path and for her own happiness. And I do hope that one day, we can be fully enmeshed in each other’s lives.
But on my terms and at my own pace. And for now, it’s enough for me to know that you’re out there, ready and waiting. I hope this is enough for you, too.
All best,
Jillian
I lick the inside flap of a DMP envelope and taste the stale gum on my tongue. Then I press the seal closed, carefully pen her address on the front, and drop it into my outbox where