“For what?”
“For being a big sister to Audrey…she worships you.”
“You don’t have to thank me for that. She’s my sister. I’d do anything for her.” I turn to find my mother watching the horizon. “She’s a good kid. A bit dramatic, but good.”
Eileen turns to me and smiles. “Wonder who she gets that from.” This time we share a smile. Another first.
It dawns upon me as I watch her. In the process of not becoming my mother, I’ve shortchanged myself. By letting my fear of becoming anything like her dictate my life, I’ve given my power away.
“So––did you dump the lawyer?” Typical. Expecting her to change is about as futile as asking a tiger to become a vegetarian.
Her tone sets me on edge. She’s judging me. And her verdict is that I’m an idiot because I’m putting my career before a man. “Let’s not pretend we’re the Kardashians because we shared a meal.”
“Gawd, you’re such a bully. I was just asking a question.”
“I’m a bully?” I nearly shout, talking over her.
“You’re so smart, right? Miss Ivy League,” she sneers. “You love to remind me how much smarter than me you are. Well, has it ever occurred to you that I was doing the best I could? That I wasn’t equipped to raise a baby at twenty-one because I didn’t know how?!”
“Know how? Are you kidding me? You didn’t even try. You were always too busy juggling all your boyfriends. You didn’t have any time for me.”
“Because they were easy to please! I knew what they wanted from me. Sex––and then they went away. But you…” she says head shaking, eyes brimming with unshed tears. “But you wanted things from me that I didn’t have to give! I’m not confident like you! I don’t know what I’m doing half the time! Who knows where I’d be without Dan!”
Shocked, that’s what I am. For the first time I see her through a different lens. One that isn’t colored by my memories of her, but rather as an objective bystanders. Mind you, it takes a lot. Images come flooding back. All the times she stumbled into the doorway laughing, hanging onto the latest boyfriend while she ignored me and went about her business with whomever she’d brought back to our apartment over my grandmother’s garage. Leaving me at the theater. There are enough memories in my head to fill a The New York City Public Library.
However, for the first time I see her as a victim of her immaturity instead of the callous, selfish person she’s always been in my eyes.
“I just needed you to be there.”
“I regret a lot. I regret how I was with you. But you can’t blame me for the things that didn’t work out for you, and you can’t punish me the rest of my life.”
“I don’t blame you for the things that didn’t work out for me. That’s on me.”
We’re quiet for a while, a reflective silence stretching between us.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me…I’m asking to start over somehow. I’d like for us to be a family. Dan and Audrey want it. I know I do.”
I take in the nervous way she’s lacing her fingers together and gripping them closed, the tightness of her full lips, her neck mottled with anxiety. “I’m not making any promises––but I’ll try.”
“Ready,” Dan says interrupting.
“Have a safe trip,” she says.
I take a last look at Eileen and nod at Dan.
The car ride back to the city is peaceful. Staring out the passenger window, I get lost in the music. Miles Davis, Duke Ellington––a little Charlie Parker. Dan has always been a big jazz aficionado.
When we get to my tree lined street in the Village, he parks. By some act of God we find a wedge of space large enough to fit his Subaru.
“Why’d you marry her, Dan? What was it about her you couldn’t live without.”
His expression turns wistful, as if he’s peering into the past and reliving a memory. A really good one.
“It’s her enthusiasm for life. She lives every minute like it counts. Back then, when we first met, I had none––” His eyes cut to mine, cloudy with the remnants of an old pain. “You know why.” When Eileen crashed into Dan, he was a widower and a single parent of a seven year old boy, having buried his wife, a woman he loved, a year and a half prior. “And she had too much of it. I guess I was hoping a little would rub off on me.”
“Did it?”
“Yes,” he says, smiling. “Every day. Even after all these years. She fuels me, gives me something to live for.”
Tears track down my cheeks. I wipe them away.
“Ya know…” Dan’s mouth presses closed, as if he’s not sure he should let the words out. “You two are more alike than you think. I hope you take that as the compliment I mean it to be.”