Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 76592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76592 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
O…kay. Moving on.
“Did you ever meet my grandparents? I mean, on my father’s side. Your in-laws.”
“Sure I did. I was married to your father for about five minutes, after all. But I told him we had to live in Las Vegas, and he agreed. Then, of course, I met your grandfather again when he came to me after the divorce, and…”
She doesn’t have to finish. I know what she’s saying.
When she sold me to my grandfather for a hundred thousand dollars.
I won’t make her say it. And I won’t dwell on it.
Silence for a few moments, until she continues.
“Did you call to talk about your grandparents and the dry weather, or are we going to do the mother-son thing where you tell me things I can’t fix and I say ‘uh-huh’ a lot and we both feel shitty about it?”
A laugh escapes me. “You’re direct.”
“Sugar, young girls get to be coy. Old women smoke and tell the truth.”
“Have you always been old?”
“Inside? For a long damned time.” She inhales. “Outside? Just for the past ten years or so.”
“The Vegas life is hard, huh?”
“Hard?” she echoes. “Vegas doesn’t do hard. It does cruel. It does bright lights and bad men and mornings where you can’t tell if you’re hungover or just ready to end it all.”
I flinch. End it all? Did she have it that bad? Or is she just being hyperbolic?
I choose to believe the latter.
“It was rough, huh?” I finally say.
“That’s no lie,” she says. “You don’t last out there if you don’t learn how to bluff God Himself.”
“And you did?”
“Once or twice. But He’s got a better poker face.”
God. All these canned jokes. She really doesn’t want to talk about anything serious, does she? She couldn’t be making it any clearer.
But still I want to keep the conversation going. It’s nice to talk to someone who has no stock at all in my problems. Who can take an unvarnished look at me, maybe inject some much-needed perspective.
“Did you ever think of leaving?”
“Sure,” she says. “Every night around three a.m., right before I lit another cigarette.”
“And why didn’t you?”
“I did. I met your father. I had plans.”
“But you self-sabotaged when you screwed the pizza man.”
She rasps out another laugh. “I guess I did. I liked the view from the edge, I suppose. When you’ve danced with the devil long enough, heaven just feels dull.”
I watch a bead of water gather at the end of the porch rail and fall.
“So what do you want, sugar?” she asks.
I sigh. “I don’t know. I thought hearing your voice again would…do something.”
“Like a key in a lock?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“It feels more like I knocked on a door and no one was home.”
I regret the words as soon as they come out. I may not know this woman, but she’s still my mother. She’s still a human being with feelings.
“Ah.” She doesn’t apologize. “You want me to say I’ve thought about you every day? That I pressed my hand to a window and wondered if you were warm and fed?”
“No,” I say honestly. “But in case you’re wondering, I was always warm and fed.”
“I know that.” She sighs into the phone. “I knew your father would take better care of you than I ever could. As for thinking about you… Most days I didn’t. I couldn’t. Thinking of you meant thinking of the life I could have had with you and your father. I blew it.”
I swallow, my throat tight. “I’m not calling to make you feel guilty.”
“I know.” A beat. “Do you laugh like him? Your father? Do you laugh at all?”
“Sometimes.”
“Good. He had a great laugh.” A pause. “Are you mad at me?”
“Yes.” It comes out quicker than I plan. And I’m not sure I even knew I was angry until just now.
“That’s fair.”
Wind lifts the damp hair at my neck. I look out into the trees. “Do you—” I try again. “Do you regret it?”
“I’m too old and tired to have regrets,” she says.
I press my lips together. That’s not necessarily a no.
Something in my chest twists. “You could have called. Checked in on me. Dad had custody, and Mom adopted me, but you could have tried to see me, Francine.”
“Frankie.”
“Right. Frankie.”
“Let me ask you this.” Her voice develops an edge. No longer is she hitting me with one-liners. “Do you think your life would have been any more complete if some ridden-hard-and-put-away-wet woman had come around asking to see you? Pulling you out of your white-picket-fence life? I did you a favor, Henry. I stayed away.”
“You were paid to stay away.”
“I was paid to give up my parental rights. Nothing in that agreement said I couldn’t try to see you.”
I let out a breath. “This was a mistake.”
“It was a phone call,” she says. “You’ll survive it.”
“Right,” I say. The word tastes like copper. “Goodbye, Franc— I mean Frankie.”