“Yes, there is. And she’s four-and-a-half years old.”
My mother looked confused.
“He has a daughter. That he’s kept from me.”
She went silent, the calm before her impending storm. My mother couldn’t stand dishonesty. She was wisecracking and irritable and stubborn. But, beyond all that, she was remarkably genuine. And she demanded the same of the people she loved.
She reached for her coffee. “I’m sure Ben has an explanation for this,” she said.
“You can’t be serious,” I said. “I just told you that Ben has a child with someone, and he didn’t choose to share that information. I found out at my dress fitting when I saw him walking down the street with the mother of his child.”
“I understand. It’s awful. Particularly that he didn’t tell you.” She paused. “I’m just putting it out there that he may have an explanation for keeping this to himself.”
This was what she had to offer me? Pre-Henry, my mother would have demanded blood from Ben. She would have stormed around the dining room talking about values, the way she’d done when my best friend in high school had used her parents’ restaurant to throw herself an open-bar birthday party. Even when I explained how that had happened, she had said there was no explanation. You either were truthful or you weren’t, and that defined you.
Where was that mother now, screaming about Ben’s lie of omission? Why couldn’t she take on that role so I could find my way to
the other one—the one where I got to find sympathy for Ben in her outsized protection of me. That was the mother I knew.
I stood up. “I can’t deal with this right now. I’m going to bed.”
“Then go.”
I headed for the door, completely exhausted and ready for the night to be done.
“Henry is an old friend,” my mother called out after me. “We knew each other back in New York. And he recently was named the conductor of the San Francisco Symphony.”
I turned around, but stayed in the doorway.
She shrugged. “He’s only been out here a few months, but it’s been nice. Just . . . to be a part of that world again.”
Part of that world. She looked defeated saying the words and remembering it—who she used to be, how she used to be. It made me want to convince her that she was still a part of it: She had been the music teacher in town for decades. But that wasn’t the same thing. And what was the point in trying to convince her it was, anyway? As if anyone could convince you of the one thing you didn’t want to see.
“What does that have to do with you and Dad?” I said instead.
She looked up at me.
“I’m not talking about Dad. I’m talking about you and me. You have always tried to take care of everyone in this family, just like I have. As opposed to figuring out what you want. Not what you’re supposed to want, but what you truly want.”
I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it.
“You can’t seriously think you’re in a good position to offer me advice on my romantic life at the moment.”
She met my eyes. “I think I’m in a great position, actually,” she said. “No one sees what an incomparable person you are more than I do. Except, perhaps, Ben.”
She paused. And then she said it simply. “Be careful what you give up.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, trying—in spite of myself—to hear what she wasn’t saying. “Because you can’t get it back?”
She stood up, walking past me in the doorway.
“No.” She squeezed my shoulder. “Because, eventually, you get it back any way you can.”
I waited for her to disappear up the stairs before heading that way myself. But before my mother was gone, she called out a final good night. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re home.”
That made one of us.
The Contract