So Much It Hurts (22 page)

It's hard to know where to begin the conversation. Mostly because my mom and I don't usually have these kinds of conversations.

Mom doesn't know how to begin this conversation either. “You're too thin,” she says. “Maybe you should have ordered the potatoes.”

I pop a pale green cube of honeydew melon into my mouth. “The fruit salad tastes funny. Like it's been sitting around too long.”

Mom tries the fruit salad. She wrinkles her nose. “I know what you mean. Let's send it back.”

“We never send anything back. We only talk about it.”

Mom uses the back of her fork to push the rest of her fruit salad to the side of her plate. Then she clears her throat. She's working her way up to what she's brought me here to discuss. “Iris, the first thing I want to say is, I'm not angry with you. I'm disappointed—deeply disappointed, because I thought we had a better relationship than this—but I'm not angry, Iris.” The way she keeps saying she isn't angry only confirms that she is.

I am wringing my paper napkin under the table. I'm sorry about disappointing her and making her angry, even if she says she isn't.

If she realized last night that I might be angry too— and I think she did—she seems to have decided not to mention it. I'm more and more aware that not mentioning things is how Mom operates. Maybe she stuffs the things she doesn't want to face into some closet in her brain.

“Maybe it's my fault,” she goes on. “Maybe I haven't made you feel you could be honest with me.”

“It's not that. You've been fine. You've been great. Always.” When I say the words, I realize I'm doing what my mom does—smoothing things over, protecting someone else's feelings. I don't want her thinking she's been a bad mother.

Mom has put down her fork and is gripping the edge of the table with both hands. “So what the fuck is going on then, Iris?”

I nearly drop my fork. I can't believe Mom just said “fuck.” She never says “fuck.” She never even says “damn.”

Mom catches my reaction. “What do you think?” she asks me. “That I never swear?”

“If you did, I never heard you.”

“I've always done my best to set a good example, Iris. I've tried to create an environment where you could be honest with me. But now I know that hasn't worked.” Mom shakes her head. It's hard to know if she's more disappointed in me or in herself.

“Like I told you last night, there's kind of a lot of stuff going on,” I say. “It's hard for me to talk about.”

Mom sighs. She's not going to let me get away with not telling her what's been going on. “Let's start by talking about where you've been staying. When you haven't been staying at Katie's. I take it there's a boy involved.”

“It's not a boy.”

Mom looks at me really hard. “You're gay?”

That makes me laugh. Maybe I also laugh because I'm tense from holding so much in. “It's a man. Not a boy.”

“A man?”

“Try not to shout, Mom. We're in a public place.”

“How old is this man exactly, Iris?”

“He's thirty-one.”

“Thirty-one?” The color drains out of Mom's face. “My God, Iris, are you insane? This…this man is more than a decade older than you are.”

I understand Mom is upset that I've been keeping something like this from her, and that Mick is fourteen years older than me. But for the first time I wonder if maybe she is jealous. She's always said she didn't have time for a boyfriend. Not between raising me and running her business.

“That's why I didn't tell you. I knew you'd freak out. But Mom, what you need to understand is…we really love each other. And you can't talk me out of it.”

Mom shakes her head. “A fourteen-year age difference— at your age—well, it's huge. It's practically a lifetime. You're still a child, Iris.”

“No, I'm not. And you have to stop treating me like one.”

Mom is not listening. “How did you meet this man anyhow?”

“Through theater.” I can feel the words sitting in the air between us.

“I see.” She adjusts her knees as if that will make it easier for her to say what she wants to say next. “Unfortunately, I know exactly what a man of thirty-one would want with a seventeen-year-old.”

“You don't understand. The age difference doesn't mean anything to me.” I correct myself. “To us.”

“Well, I'll tell you one thing, Iris: seventeen-year-olds don't know the first thing about life—or relationships.”

“That isn't true. I know something about life.” I'm trying to make her understand what it is I know. “I'm learning,” I say. It's the best I can come up with.

Mom nods. It's more a giving-up than an agreeing-with nod. “Well then, all I can say is, that I want to meet this
man
friend of yours. As soon as possible.”

I don't have the heart to tell her she's already met him.

So I don't say anything. Instead, I run my fingertip over my plate to pick up the last few sesame seeds. That's when Mom notices my dragon ring. “That ring,” she says. “Is it from him?”

I shake my head. I'm tired of telling lies. I'm tired of keeping track of the lies I've already told.

I've been looking for a way to talk to her about my father—my dad. “You know what you said before about seventeen-year-olds not knowing anything about relationships? Were you remembering when you were this age?”

Mom rubs her forehead. I don't want her to start feeling sick, but I can't keep waiting for a better time to have this conversation.

“Weren't you seventeen when you met my father?”

“That isn't what I meant.” Mom hasn't answered my questions. I can't see her hands. Is she playing with her napkin now?

“I was at this party last night and I…” I have to be careful not to tell Mom too much about the party. She'd freak out about the weed. Mom thinks smoking up once means you're headed straight for crack addiction. “I started remembering something that happened…a really long time ago. When my father was still around.”

Mom crosses her arms across her chest.

“I remembered hiding in a closet.”

Mom shuts her eyes, then opens them again. She reaches across the table for my hand. I let her take it. I wonder if she's always noticed that one of my fingers is fatter than the rest. “Oh Iris,” she whispers. “I always hoped you wouldn't remember. You were so little when he left.”

These are always the words Mom uses when she talks about my father. That he left us. But now I understand that that may not be how it really went. “You kicked him out, didn't you? You made him go.”

Mom nods but doesn't volunteer any more information.

“What did he do that was so bad?” I can almost feel the floor shift under me. It's the question I've never dared ask her.

“I didn't have a choice,” Mom says. “He nearly ruined us.” Mom's voice is so quiet, it's hard for me to hear her over the buzz of conversation around us. “I've told you before he had terrible problems with money…” Mom's voice catches in her throat, and I know she doesn't want to tell me more.

But I need to know. Even if it's hard for her. “But what did he do exactly?” I ask, prompting her. “Max out your credit cards?” In Economics, the teacher warned us about the dangers of credit-card debt and how even before we graduate from university, credit-card companies will be fighting for our business.

Mom bites her lip. Whatever happened was worse than credit-card debt.

The waitress offers to refill our coffee. Mom wants more. She takes forever to peel the cover from the little plastic cream container. Then she stirs the coffee, first in one direction, then the other. She looks at me. “Maybe the reason you've fallen for some inappropriate older man is because your father's out of the picture.”

“M—” I stop myself just in time from saying Mick's name. “He isn't inappropriate.” I must be raising my voice, because a man at the next table turns to look at me. “Did you ever think that not telling me about my dad…well, maybe that wasn't the best idea? Maybe there were too many secrets in our house. Too many things we could never talk about. So he lost a lot of money. Our money. It's not the end of the world. We got through it.”

“It wasn't just our money,” Mom whispers.

I don't know what she means. “Whose money was it?”

“Lots of people's money. My parents' money. The neighbors who lived on our street, people we'd gone to school with…pretty much everyone we knew. Yes, your father had credit-card debt, but that was the least of it. That we could have dealt with. But there was more—your father talked other people into investing their money with him. He lost nearly three million dollars—of other people's money.” I picture my father's smile when she says that. The kind of smile that would make people like him, trust him. “Some of that money went into bad investments.” Mom stops to take a breath. I can tell it's hard for her to go on, but she does. “He gambled the rest of it away. At high-stakes private card games, at the casino. He kept promising me he'd stop the gambling, that he'd get professional help, but he never did. He was addicted to the thrill. I couldn't live with that.”

“He gambled away three million dollars?” It's such a large amount, I can't get my mind around it. “Is that why he's not allowed in the country?”

Mom nods. “That and the fact that he still owes a fortune to Revenue Canada. At least they didn't come after us for that.”

“Mom,” I say, looking right at her. I swallow hard. “I saw him.”

“Saw who?”

“Him. My father. My dad.”

Mom rubs her belly with both hands. How could her stomach be hurting so soon?

“What are you talking about, Iris?”

“We've been in touch. On Facebook and over the telephone. We met up in Plattsburgh. In October.”

“In October?” Mom's voice breaks. “And you didn't tell me?”

“He gave me the ring.” I extend my arm so she can see the ring. But she won't look at it.

“How could you not have told me, Iris?”

“I'm telling you now.”

“How is he?”

It's the last question I expect from her.

“He's okay, I guess. He's working on some big deal.”

“He always was.” She says it sadly.

“Did you love him?” I don't know why I never thought of asking her this question before. Because now it seems to me like the most important question in the world. The only question.

Mom doesn't say she loved him. Or that she didn't love him.

All she says is this: “I had to make myself stop.”

“Stop what?”

Mom looks down at her hands as if they might have the answer. “Stop loving him. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do.”

I could feel sorry for her, but I don't. I don't even care that I've hurt her. She's hurt me, too, by keeping my father away from me all these years. Even if he did bad things, reckless things, he was still my father. She could have let me speak to him; when I was older, she could have found a way to let me meet him.

“He told me he tried to stay in touch. But that you blocked him. That you changed our number. He said I should ask you why you did it.”

Mom's face is crumbling. “I'm sorry,” she says. “I didn't know what else to do. I was protecting you…”

“Protecting me?”

We both know it's a lie. She was protecting herself.

Mom sighs. “I was afraid”—now I notice that her upper lip is trembling—“afraid I wouldn't be able to live without him. That if I saw him again, or even heard his voice, I'd give in…”

I don't see Mick all weekend. He texts to tell me it's better this way. All I know is life feels flat and dull when I'm not with him. I've gotten so used to thinking of myself as part of a couple (“me and Mick”) that I'm not sure anymore who
me
is without him. At least Mom doesn't bombard me with more questions. Either she's making a big effort not to be annoying or she's recovering from our talk at the bagel place. Maybe a combination of the two.

I spend Saturday and Sunday afternoons studying in my room. Concentrating, which usually comes easily to me, feels like a huge effort. But when I'm finally able to focus on economics or world history, I forget—for a while anyhow—what a terrible mess I've made of things.

Mom stands outside the door a lot, asking if I want green tea. “No sugar. Not too strong. Just the way you like it.” In the end, I say yes to the tea, more to make her go away than anything. Why is it that love can sometimes feel like a burden?

It seems like forever till it's finally Monday after school. When I let myself into the loft, Mick is already there. The place looks brighter and shinier than usual. Mick must've cleaned over the weekend. Maybe because he was so lonely for me. Maybe because he feels bad that I've been doing so much of the housework.