Should Have Known Better

They all laughed and R. J. said the oddest thing I think I ever heard him say.

“I don’t know you, Grandma. But I miss you.”

My mother found something in the kitchen and even though I’d refused a need to eat five or six times, food was in the pots and she was standing by the stove.

She’d given R. J. and Cheyenne a bag of green beans she’d picked out of her garden in the backyard and they were sitting at the kitchen table snapping and laughing like two kids who’d had this as a responsibility all of their lives.

My mother and I made small talk by the stove. I asked about people on the street. She mentioned people from the church. We said everything that we weren’t thinking and the worst part was that we both knew what we were doing. We didn’t look into each other’s eyes. We didn’t ask anything about each other. What was there to say? To ask. After I’d left for college, scarred in welts from the bottoms of my ears to my ankles, the little relationship we’d had dwindled to nothing. Campus was just a jog of miles away, but we hardly saw each other and spoke even less. She was stuck in my father’s shadow, and soon, to me, she became him.

There was nothing I could say about that. And what I’ve learned is that when you can’t talk about the past, talking about the present is almost impossible.

My mother should’ve been asking why and how the daughter she hadn’t seen in three years had shown up on her doorstep in the middle of the day with her grandchildren and no husband. Why my eyes were so puffy and it seemed like something was on my mind. She should’ve been asking where Reginald was.

But she couldn’t.

“I only got four pork chops,” she said after an awkwardly long break in our conversation.

“Four’s fine,” I said. “I told you we’re not too hungry. Maybe they’ll eat a little later.”

“Four’s fine? That’s just enough for us and the twins. That’s all the company I’m expecting?” she asked, and in that question was a heap of expectation.

“Yes.”

“You all will be staying the night?” She turned to the dish of pork chops she’d been turning in raw eggs and milk.

“I think so,” I said with my voice cracking.

She looked up at me for the first time. She dropped the pork chop she was turning into the dish and wiped her hands on her apron slowly, keeping her eyes on me.

“Hey, ya’ll,” I called to the table. “You two go out to the car and get our bags.”

“We’re staying here?” R. J. asked.

“For tonight,” I said. “Now, get the key from my purse and bring the bags inside.”

“You can take them up to the room next to your mama’s old room,” my mother said. “The one with her name on the door.”

“That’s Daddy’s old study,” I said to my mother after R. J. and Cheyenne left the room.

“Turned it into a guest room. Don’t have a lot of guests, but don’t have a lot of need for a study either. Gave the books to Goodwill. You sure we don’t need an extra pork chop for your husband?” she listed quickly and it was clear the only statement she really meant to make was the last.

“Mama, I know what you’re thinking. You probably want to know where Reginald is, and it’s cool, everything is—” I swear I was about to say “OK,” but I couldn’t. It seemed a silver dollar was caught in my throat and any lie I wanted to force out got stuck. I felt my body sigh.

“Don’t you even try to finish that sentence, honey,” my mother said, pulling her apron off. “Insult my intelligence. Even a maid knows something’s wrong when the daughter she hasn’t seen since they buried her father in the earth shows up at her front door with two kids and no husband. Even a maid.”

I laughed uneasily.

“What is it?” she asked. “Where’s Reginald?”

My mother’s face stayed solid as I told her only half of what I knew about where Reginald was. I couldn’t take hearing the truth again. And I couldn’t handle thinking what she might think of me if she heard what the truth really was. All that was necessary was that he was somewhere on Lover’s Lane and I needed to get to him. I’d brought the twins there because I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.

“You told them? You told them kids their daddy’s gone?”

“Not directly, no. They know something’s up. But I just . . . I don’t know if he’s gone, really.” I tried to sound convincing. “And I don’t want them to feel bad. Like they did anything. And what happens when he comes back?”

“You still banking on that?”

“Banking on it? Mama, you make it sound like we’re talking about a sale at the mall. This is my husband. My marriage. My family.”