Chapter 32
Finding the truth ~ Gray.
Traveling back to the UK gave me plenty of time to think about what it was that I wanted to say. Maybe the meeting will be so brief I’ll never be able to say the things I have in my head? My brain was crammed full of questions, each one more pertinent than the last, but my confidence had begun to wane with every mile closer we flew to home.
Talking to my dad the night before made me feel better because I felt guilty about meeting my mother. He’d been the one that was there through all my achievements and failures, guiding me, picking me up when something didn’t turn out the way I had wanted, encouraging me to follow my dreams but ensuring I kept a level head.
Then he said the one thing that showed me the kind of man that he was. “A child is one person created from half of two other people. Never be afraid to know both halves and never be afraid to love both halves. If you get the opportunity to gain knowledge from each of them it will bring a greater understanding of knowing yourself.”
I swear my jaw dropped. It was like something the old Chinese profit, Confucius, would have said, but it gave me the permission I had sought to go forward without guilt.
My mother had agreed to spend a day with me at a small, out of the way cottage in the small village of Harvel, not far from the retreat in Kent. It wasn’t a luxurious cottage, but it was very secluded and gave me the privacy the occasion warranted.
As soon as I saw the one-track country lane leading to it when we turned off the main road at Meopham, I knew we’d have an uninterrupted day free from the paparazzi to speak our minds. I had asked the driver to drop me off and wait for my text before he come back. After he’d gone, being alone for the first time in months felt odd.
Arriving a few hours before she was due, I was exhausted from the flight and even though my nerves were on edge my brain screamed at me for sleep. I checked my phone and there was a signal, and saw a message from Hettie.
Hettie: I’m so proud of you, Gray. No matter what the day brings, know I love you.
Gray: Arrived safely, waiting by the gallows. I love you too, baby. I’ll call you later.
I smirked, stuffed my cell in my pocket, and headed up the rickety, old spiral staircase that creaked and groaned under my feet. Finding the master suite, I lay my head on the pillow and pulled the old-fashioned patchwork quilt draped over the bottom of the bed up my body. I was so used to sleeping in strange beds and this one was no different. Seconds later I went out like a light.
The noise of tires crunching on gravel woke me. My heart instantly galloped at what the sound meant. Before I could make it downstairs a heavy door knocker on the rustic, hollow sounding wood of the front door announced my mother’s arrival.
My heart flipped over in my chest because for twenty-three years I’d had so many negative feelings about the person on the other side of it. For a second I panicked, thinking she may not have come and someone else had come to tell me this. And because of that thought I was momentarily paralyzed.
Throwing up a silent prayer that wasn’t the case, I headed down the rest of the stairs to the door. My heart skipped another beat as I stood quietly, drawing a deep breath to calm myself, praying even, that I’d keep my cool with her, before I opened the door to the person who had been closed in my mind for the longest of times.
Looking almost identical to how she’d looked the day she left, my mother stood passive, radiating the calm I could never have hoped to feel at that moment. Obviously, she was much older, but everything about her looked familiar. She had changed little despite the twenty odd years that had passed and was still a very beautiful looking woman.
“Hello, Grayson,” she said, with the same calmness I had read in her body language.
A thousand images from our time as a family flashed instantaneously and with lightning speed through my mind as I fought for order, peace, and lack of judgment until I had heard her side of her story.
“Hi, sorry, come in,” I offered, pulling the door wide and stepping aside as I fought to keep my thoughts to myself. My eyes followed her, taking in her appearance further. Flat, plain black shoes; straight black skirt; shapeless black woolen sweater; and her hair, the same color as mine, scraped back in a low ponytail held with a small piece of plain cord. From that, I took how she looked wasn’t important; there was no effort to look good for me. I liked that fact, because it felt honest.
She never threw herself at me and I never attempted to hug her…to touch her even. “Please, have a seat.” Gesturing at the chairs in the small sitting room, she took my cue and walked toward the one near the window. She sat after sweeping her skirt smooth at the back, her legs folded to the side at the ankle, and her hands laid softly on top of one another in her lap. It was the same gestures I remembered as a child, but my memory of those was of someone who wasn’t affected by anything around her. As an adult, I read her body language as having a natural elegance and serenity.
Wandering over to the seat opposite her I sat down and my eyes connected with hers properly for the first time. The power of the moment hit me right in the chest, stealing my breath for a second, and I felt tears well in my eyes. I swallowed roughly, past the lump growing in my throat and my words were out before I had filtered anything going on in my head.
“Why? I want to know why you left me.”
“How do I start to tell you without knowing what you believe to be the truth? How do I ever say anything that helps you accept what happened? How do I even begin to make you believe I love you?”
Three questions that sounded thought out, delivered with such control that they seemed contrived. Remembering I knew her once told me they weren’t.
“I know my dad cheated on you, but that’s about the extent of it,” I said, not wanting to discuss all the things he said about her. I loved him above all others for how he’d taken care of me, but I wasn’t afraid to face the fact that his judgment could have been clouded for his personal experience with my mother.
“I’m glad you found me, Grayson. I never thought I’d get the opportunity to set things straight with you. To see you again, hear your voice, and to see your sweet smile.”
My mouth was dry, my heart thudded hard in my chest. It ached for whatever morsel of comfort she could say to make it feel less bruised for all that it had gone through after she left.
“I was brought up in a strict Roman Catholic family. Every spare moment was spent around the church, reading from the scriptures or studying passages from The Bible. My parents were devoted to the chapel I attended and encouraged me to join their youth fellowship program. Patrick, your dad’s father, your grandfather, was one of the leaders of the program, and he and my father were great friends.
Naturally I got to know your dad and he invited me to the movie theatre…in a group of others from the fellowship. After about six months, he asked me out on a date. Initially, I told him my parents didn’t let me court anyone. I was only seventeen at the time. Your dad being the kind of man he is asked for my father’s permission. My parents saw your dad as the kind of boy they wanted for their only daughter and were delighted. They encouraged me to go. Wanting to please them, I accepted, but I had a burning desire of my own that I had been harboring since the day I took my first holy communion in church.
After I saw your dad a few times, he wanted to kiss me. I felt uncomfortable with this because of my own dreams, but again, I was swept along by my parents and your dad’s parents, and before I knew it we were getting married. It was my father that accepted the proposal on my behalf when your dad asked in front of everyone at our house one Sunday after church.”
All the time she spoke her voice was neither pleading nor persuasive. It remained flat and quite monotone which led me to believe what she said was fact.
“Call me weak…I was weak back then. After your dad and his parents left, I disclosed my vocation to my parents. I wanted to enter the sisterhood, Gray. My parents were selfish and didn’t want to lose me to the church. They said I was too privileged and lazy to do God’s work that way. They told me I was lucky to have the love of a good man.”
I stared blankly and felt shocked she had wanted to be a nun. She stopped and looked out the window for a minute, like she was thinking.
“I was so naïve about love and relationships. As soon as I was eighteen the wedding was arranged and we married, but my emotional maturity and life skills were of someone much younger due to my strict upbringing. I even tried to postpone the wedding but your dad had fallen in love with me. And as they say, love is blind. No matter how hard I tried to persuade him to wait, he was driven by our parents to cement the deal.”
“You wanted to be a nun?” My voice sounded high pitched, disbelieving, my stomach knotted tightly in anger. Both from the perspective she’d married my dad knowing this, and secondly that she had been so weak. The only thing that stopped me from giving her a piece of my mind was when I stared into her eyes and saw pain there. Then all I had felt was pity.
“Some people have it all marked out…life I mean. They know exactly where they’re going and how to get there. Me…I had no clue about anything, except God.”
“If you were so driven by your religion what happened to the sanctity of marriage? You deserted the marriage and let a good man go through all of that because of some selfish notion about wearing a habit?” I felt my hands curl into fists.
“I cried on my wedding night, Grayson. I cried because I knew inside that I would never be the woman your dad deserved. I cried because he took my virginity, and I sobbed a bucket full of tears because he loved me above everything else. Having sex without procreating felt wrong. I couldn’t do that, I felt dirty. Don’t judge me for that. It’s my personal beliefs that have shaped me.”
“You turned your back on me.”
“No, Gray. I left you with someone I believed could give you all the love you deserved. And I left your father the gift of you, because children are a gift from God. I’d caused him harm and hurt. He loved both of us so much. I couldn’t love him in the way that he wanted, but the most difficult choice was to leave you behind. There was no way I wanted to break his heart a second time by taking you away as well.”
“He thinks you left because he cheated.”
“No. I left because he’d found comfort with someone else. I couldn’t be what he wanted me to be, no matter how much he loved me. You can’t love someone in that way unless your heart agrees.”
Rage brewed inside me. She could have told my father all of this a long time ago; it may have helped him heal. Her parents had affected her in a similar way that she had affected me. “You know, maybe if you’d been honest your life could have turned out differently.”
“And maybe if I had, this conversation between us would have be taking place, and I’d never have been able to see the gift from God that you are. Don’t think I never loved you. I accepted my pregnancy with grace because God is good. It was His will I gave your father a son. When I held you in my arms you filled my heart with joy and broke it at the same time.”
“I broke it?” I felt crushed by how she told me I’d affected her.
“Yes, you were so beautiful and your father was so happy. The shine in his eyes was like the brightest light and it made me feel ashamed of how I had treated him, and how he would hurt afterward because I couldn’t respond to intimacy for intimacy’s sake.”
Everything she said mirrored my dad’s explanation but was completely different from her perspective. She delivered her speech with sincerity, humility, and I heard the hurt for our situation in her voice. I didn’t understand her thought processes but I couldn’t toss her words aside either. No matter how pissed off she made me feel, in her own fucked up way she felt she had done the right thing.
“I hated you for leaving.”
She smiled at me. “I’m glad…there’s a fine line between love and hate. You felt. I was numb.”
“Problem for me was it was pretty much the strongest feeling I’ve had all these years. When I reached adulthood, I thought I had survived my childhood relatively unscathed for what had happened. It was as if you’d died, but worse, because you had walked away from us without a backward glance. It’s only been this past year that the damage from that time has raised its head and left me with a clusterfuck of mistakes toward the women I’ve hurt.”
“Is there any need for profanity, Grayson?”
“You don’t get to tell me whether I cuss or not, I’m thirty-two years old. Twenty-three years you’ve been missing.”
Unexpectedly, she covered her face with her hands, and a sob tore from her throat. It was the first and most appropriate reaction I’d seen in her since we’d started to talk. When she cried, I should have felt angry that she was indulging in self-pity. I didn’t feel any animosity toward her, and I couldn’t find it in me to be cruel. The only thing I did feel was pity.
After a few moments she regained her composure and stared directly into my eyes. They seemed honest in their expression - honest and pained.
“I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt anyone. I’ve punished myself every day since I left. How do you think it felt to work with children every day, teaching them all the things I should have been teaching you? That was my penance for doing what I did. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t ask God for forgiveness for what I did to you and your father. I’ve prayed for you both every night. I can’t forgive myself for not being stronger to stand up to the bullying I had from my family in all of this.”
Silence fell between us. Each of us sitting with our own reflection, until I came to my own conclusion. She’d made many mistakes and my own Confucius proverb came to mind. As far as I could see, by following her own beliefs she had dug her own grave in terms of relationships with the rest of her family. If I couldn’t find it in my heart to forgive her I may as well have dug mine.
I wasn’t prepared to do that because of what I’d found with Hettie. My love for her had made me feel more benevolence toward my mother than I would have otherwise. I’d only just begun to let love thaw out my heart, to feel what love could do, and to know how it could destroy another when I couldn’t feel what the other person wanted me to feel.
“I forgive you.” My voice sounded steady and without feeling. Ranting and raving wasn’t going to wipe out my past, and I kind of understood the part about not loving someone because you want to. I’d been there with Phoebe and maybe it was that experience that made what she said a little easier to tolerate. When I said those words to her I’d meant them.