“Yes. Well, most of the time.”
He says nothing.
“Sometimes it’s her coming back. Like she did. She’s standing at the door and she’s smiling, and I think how I know her and I don’t. And I’m paralyzed. I can’t move, even though I know I should be running. I can’t move and I can’t… well. I can’t breathe.”
“That’s when she told Derrick she was fighting him for custody?”
“Yeah. Sort of. It got more convoluted than that.” Which is an understatement, of course. I didn’t find out until much later that she’d come back yet again when Otter and Mrs. Paquinn were in the hospital. I thought I’d be angry that Bear and Otter had kept that from me, and there were a few moments that I was. But when Bear told me what had been said between him and Julie McKenna, the anger melted away. How anyone could think that Bear Thompson is anything but the strongest man alive is beyond me. “They’re not all bad, though.”
“The dreams?”
“Yeah.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Because there were… good parts. To her. I think.”
Eddie looks surprised. “There were?”
I almost feel embarrassed at this, that I should have any good memories of a woman so horrible as to leave her kids behind to fend for themselves, only to return to try and wreck their lives at the promise of money from a perfect stranger. How could there be anything good about someone like that?
But there is. There was. Once, she took me to the beach, and she and I flew a kite together, and she laughed and said, “Look how high it is! Look how high up the kite is, Ty!” And it was. It was as high as I’d ever seen it go before. And the way she had smiled at me, like I was the greatest thing she’d ever seen. And the way she had laughed with me, like she didn’t have a single care in all the world.
Once, she made cookies and let me lick the spatula.
Once, she held me in her arms after I’d fallen and scraped my leg.
Once, she sat with me when I was sick, singing a song in a low voice.
Once, she pushed me on a swing as it started to rain.
Julie McKenna is not a good person. She made choices so reprehensible that it negates anything that could be considered motherly about her. I hate her for what she did to me. I hate her for what she did to Bear. And I hate her for what she tried to do after our family had finally found some even footing, some solid ground to stand upon. I hate her for all that.
But there was one time when I was five, shortly before she left, when she looked at me and said, “You know I love you, right?”
I was only five, but I already knew she wasn’t much of a mother. She was drunk a lot of the time and would stay locked in her room when her own earthquakes rolled over her and buried her in a landslide of depression. She would stay out until early morning and come stumbling home, reeking of Jim Beam and Marlboro Reds, waking Bear and
me up. He would get up, telling me to stay in bed, and he’d close the door behind him, and there’d be raised voices as he told her off, because how could she do this to us? To me? How could she take money from Bear, money he was saving for school? How could she leave us alone for days at a time, when she knew Bear had to go to school and there was no one else to watch me? What kind of mother was she?
I knew this. I knew all of this about her. I did.
But I was five years old, and she looked at me and said, “You know I love you, right?” Already she was planning to leave. Already she was saying good-bye, in her own way. Already she was looking at her five-year-old son, knowing she was going to leave him behind. She knew this. All of this.
But she said what she said, and I remember a feeling in my chest like a sun bursting, because could I remember a time before when she’d ever said that to me? Could I remember ever hearing those words from her?
I couldn’t.
I thought that it was meant to be the start of something wonderful. That she had climbed out of whatever hole she’d dug for herself and she was going to be my mom and Bear and I could be her sons and we would make her so proud. She’d be so damn proud of us, and I’d hear it from her all the time.
You know I love you, right?
I smiled at her.
I love you too, I said.
And she laughed. I laughed with her.
A few weeks later, she was gone.