It didn’t escape me that Caroline had once asked me to go to a family function. An excuse rolled from my tongue before the invitation was even fully out of her mouth. Yet with Bianca, I had no hesitation at all. Even more fucked up was that, as she painted a picture of something I’d normally run the other way from, I found myself thinking that perhaps seeing her with her sister’s kids in action might be a glimpse into my own future.
I brought our entwined hands to my mouth and kissed the top of hers. “I don’t scare that easily.”
“Say that after you meet the twins from hell and sit in rush hour traffic to Staten Island.”
Turning to face her, I cupped her cheeks in my hands. “Did you say rush hour traffic? I can think of a few ways we can pass the time back here on the way to Staten Island Friday night. I’ll bring a cheap jacket this time.”We’d had a change of plans for Friday night. My afternoon interview wound up being in New Jersey, so I’d told Dex to meet me at my mom’s house, rather than my going back through Staten Island to Manhattan at rush hour only to turn around and come back. Plus, after I thought about the prospect of Mom meeting Dexter Truitt, I decided it might be best to tell her alone who Dex’s father was. It had been so many years since Mom lost her job and my parents divorced, but if I was initially harboring a grudge against Dex for his father’s actions, there was a possibility Mom could feel the same. Or worse.
“Hey, Thing One.” I let myself into my mother’s house and one of my sister’s daughters, Faith, ran up to greet me at the door. She barreled into my legs and I lifted the featherlight four-year-old into the air. Her face was covered in chocolate and she had on a headband with tiny red horns, the kind that came with a devil costume. “The horns finally came out, huh? I knew they were in there somewhere, and it was only a matter of time.” I shifted her to my hip and went to find the other little monster. It was quiet; I hoped they didn’t have my mother tied up somewhere already.
“Mom?”
“In here, sweetheart!” Mom’s voice yelled from the kitchen.
I walked in to find Hope, Faith’s twin, standing on a chair stirring something at the table while wearing white angel wings. Mom was taking the large, silver mixing bowl from the nearby KitchenAid Mixer. She smiled warmly. “I have two assistants today.”
Kissing Faith on the forehead, I said, “I see that. And one of them is in costume.”
“I’m an angel, Aunt Bee!”
“Far from it. But your wings are pretty. Did Grandma take you shopping in the costume store today?”
Faith nodded her head rapidly. “She said you’d do our makeup later, too.”
“Oh she did, did she?”
My mother kissed my cheek. “I actually didn’t tell them that. We never even discussed makeup today.” She turned to my niece. “Faith, what did Mommy tell you about lying?”
Faith covered her nose with both hands. “I’m not lying.”
Mom and I chuckled. Then Faith spilled whatever it was that she was stirring all over the table and floor, followed by Hope getting half a head of her hair stuck in the mixing spoon Mom had given her to occupy her mouth while we mopped up the mess her sister had made. After we finally finished cleaning up the kitchen and the two terrors, I popped in a Full House DVD and poured Mom and I a glass of wine.
We sat at the kitchen island where we could still keep our eye on the girls watching TV in the living room. “So. Tell me about this man you’re seeing who is coming over.”
I took a healthy gulp from my glass before answering. “Well…he’s handsome, smart, and successful.”
“Sounds perfect so far.”
“He’s definitely not perfect. We actually got off to a pretty rocky start, but we managed to weather it through. I think that’s what I like the best about him. He doesn’t pretend to be perfect. When he made a mistake, he didn’t try to make any excuses. He owned up to it.”
Mom’s smile was sad as she looked down. “Owning up to your mistakes is important in a relationship.”
I knew she was talking about Dad. Even after all these years, what he’d done still saddened her. I covered her hand with mine. “Can I ask you something, Mom?”
“Of course.”
“If Dad had come clean about what he’d done, had owned up to it, do you think you could’ve stayed together? Could you have truly trusted him again once he’d broken your trust?”
“Sweetheart, it wasn’t Dad’s fault we didn’t stay together.”
Never once in the fifteen years since the split did my mom come clean over what Dad had done to her. She was the type of mom who wanted to protect us at all costs. But my sister and I had overheard enough fighting about his affair to know the truth.