“We should find a star, like, in the sky,” I said to Mom, “to name after Judy instead.”
Mom smiled. “Let’s do that.”
Then it was quiet for a moment. I dipped a French fry in the ketchup and started nibbling on it.
Finally Mom looked up from her plate and said, “Laurel, I owe you an apology. I am sorry that I was gone for so long.”
I didn’t know what to say back to that. It’s all right? It wasn’t. And I wanted to try to be honest. “Yeah,” I said. “It was hard.” And then, “I mean, I know that you left because you were mad at me. I know you think that it’s my fault, and that’s why you wanted to go. You can just say it.”
“What? Laurel, no. Of course I don’t think it’s your fault. Where would you get that idea?”
“Because,” I said, “because you left. I thought that was why.”
“Laurel, if I left because of someone’s failings, they were my own, not yours. I really just—I must be the world’s worst mother.” Her voice started to break. “How could I have let that happen? How could I have lost her?”
I didn’t realize that Mom felt guilty, too. “But Mom,” I said. I reached out to take her hand across the table. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Yes, it was. I was supposed to protect her. And I didn’t.”
“Well,” I said quietly, “maybe you didn’t know how.”
Mom shook her head. “It’s like when you guys were little, you needed me. I was the sun that you’d orbit around. But as you got older, and the orbit got wider, I didn’t know my place in the universe anymore. I thought, That’s what’s supposed to happen. They’re growing up. I thought the best thing I could do was to try not to hold on too tight. But you two were my reason to be.”
“But what about Dad?” I asked. “Why didn’t you love him anymore?”
“I’ll always love your father, but we got married so young, Laurel. When May started to have her own life, and you did, too, your dad and I started having more trouble. It felt like we had so little in common, besides our daughters. But I shouldn’t have left him. I don’t think May ever forgave me.”
Mom was shaking now. She looked down at her burger that had only one bite out of it. She seemed so fragile, like a little girl. I saw why May thought that she had to keep all of the hard stuff secret from her.
“And look at you,” she said. “You’re doing so well. I can’t help but think that I was right. That you were better off without me.”
“Mom,” I said. “I love you, but that’s dumb. I still need you.”
“Do you want to tell me, Laurel? Do you want to tell me what happened?”
There it was. I knew it was coming. I couldn’t help the surge of anger that rushed into me. “That’s why you’re really here, right? So that you can find out finally? So that you can have an answer to everything? And then you can feel better?”
“No! No. I just want you to know that you can talk to me, if you want to.”
“Well, I don’t. Not about that. We can talk about something else.”
She looked like I’d stabbed her in the heart when I said it.
“Fine, Mom. Look. When we were supposed to go to the movies, mostly we didn’t go. May was seeing an older guy. And she went off with him. She thought I went to the movies with this friend of his who was supposed to take care of me, but I didn’t go, either, because the friend molested me instead, and when I tried to tell May that night, she was already drunk, and then she was so sad, and when she got up, she started pretending to be a fairy, and she slipped or tripped or fell off the bridge or something. There you go. You can go back to California now.”
I got up from the booth and walked out. I was crying in the parking lot, and hating myself for crying, and for being so mean to Mom, and for everything. It’s supposed to get easier when you say it out loud. But it didn’t feel that way. I was searching the sky through my bleary eyes, trying to find you, to find May, to find some sign that things weren’t as lonely as they seemed.
Then Mom walked out. She was crying, too, but I could tell she was trying not to. She put her arms around me. “I’m so sorry, Laurel. I’m so sorry I let that happen to you.” And I don’t know what it was, the way that she smelled like Mom or the way that she stroked my head like she had when I was a kid trying to fall asleep, but I felt little again, and I put my head against her chest and just sobbed. I wasn’t the same person she’d left. But she was still my mother. And the memory of the way that felt, to have a mom, it took me over.
People can leave, and then they can come back. It sounds simple, like an obvious thing. But when I realized that, the truth of it seemed important. My mom wasn’t perfect. And she didn’t even always take care of me. But she wasn’t gone forever.
When I finished crying, I looked up at the sky and pointed to the star in the middle of Orion’s Belt. “That one,” I said to Mom. “That’s the Judy Garland star.” And then I pointed to the one at the handle end of the Big Dipper. “And let’s give that one to May.”
Yours,
Laurel
Dear Kurt, Judy, Elizabeth, Amelia, River, Janis, Jim, Amy, Heath, Allan, E.E., and John,
I am writing to say thank you, to all of you, because I think this will be my last letter. It feels right like that. Yesterday was our last day of school. When the final bell rang, the halls filled up with woohoos. I walked past the screams and cheers and out to the alley to meet my friends. The air hung open in that way where we weren’t sure if we should be somber or celebratory, but when Tristan got there, he walked up to Kristen and slapped her butt and said, “How’s my New York babe?” She smiled. It was their last day of high school, forever. Tristan said that this called for a ceremony, and Kristen agreed.
So we all drove up to Kristen’s house, and Tristan made a tent of little sticks in the yard that he lit up with his kitchen lighter. It would be like New Year’s, but this time we were supposed to burn things we wanted to let go of. Tristan pulled the contents of his emptied locker out of his backpack—algebra quizzes and lab reports and tests with red 68s circled on them—and he started putting them in the fire. Then he pulled out his English paper, one he had gotten an A on, called “I Lost Paradise,” but before he could throw it in the fire, Kristen grabbed it and said, “I’m keeping this.”