EMERSON
Mama didn’t let me pick her up at the airport the next day, instead she had me text her the address of the restaurant and we met there. She was already seated when I arrived at the fashionable downtown eatery, a place she’d mentioned wanting to go to in passing when I’d been home visiting.
There was an outside patio with clusters of small bistro tables beneath an array of colorful umbrellas, but my mother had gotten there ahead of me, so when I told the hostess I was looking for her, I was led to a table inside, in a far corner. Mama didn’t notice me approaching. She had her menu drawn up to shield her face, as if she were in hiding from the paparazzi.
The whole thing was very cloak and dagger. I’d always suspected that if my mother hadn’t met my father and settled into the life of a football wife, she would have made a great spy. A spy who needed a platinum card, to fund her expensive tastes.
“What’s up with the sunglasses?” I asked, when the hostess left and I took my seat across from her.
“Oops,” She reached for the dark Louis Vuittons still on her face. “I must’ve forgotten I had ’em on.”
But it was like a cave in here, and when she pulled them off, I saw what she’d been hiding. She hadn’t forgotten—her eyes were swollen and red.
I let out a breath. “Mama? What is it? What’s so terrible that you’ve been keeping it from me? That Bitsy insisted I ask you myself?” A million scenarios played through my mind, not one of them good.
She shook her head, her entire face tightening in a way I’d only seen a couple of times in my life: the day we buried Grann, the time Drew wrecked his car and we all rushed to the hospital to make sure he was okay, when my dad got the call that he’d been cut from the team and his contract wasn’t being picked up by anyone else.
Not yet her expression told me. “Let’s just order first,” she said in a strained voice. “I—I need a minute.”
“Okay. Sure.” I lifted my menu and scanned it numbly. Everything looked delicious, but nothing looked good. My appetite had vanished.
When the waiter came by, my mom ordered the salmon and a glass of chardonnay, and I ordered the quail with Asian pears.
When he was gone, I gave her a determined look. “I don’t know what this is about, but you might as well tell me. Whatever this is, it’s clearly eating you up. Are you sick? Is that why Bitsy said I had to talk to you about it?”
“No!”
“Is Daddy?”
“Emerson, no. No one’s sick.” The waiter came back with my mom’s wine and she eagerly took a drink before attempting to answer again. She kept her voice hushed. “This is about your dad and Bitsy . . .”
The gears slipped into place. “You could’ve saved yourself a trip. Dad and Bitsy are old news.” I started to reach for my water, but my mom put her hand over mine. Hers was cold, her fingers like brittle twigs.
“Em, honey . . . don’t. Just let me . . .” She took another sip. “Let me explain.”
Whatever she needed to get off her chest was important, at least to her. “Okay. Go ahead.” I settled back into my chair to let her finish.
She inhaled sharply. “I know what you think, but it’s not that cut and dried.” She worked her jaw back and forth. “Your daddy and I, our marriage . . . we’ve had some rough patches. Being married to a ball player was . . . hard on us. On me. Your daddy traveled. A lot.”
I already knew all this. My mom had practically raised us kids on her own. I might’ve been little, but I remembered how she was always on the go. How she would get up early to pack lunches. How she’d load us all into the car every morning and drop the boys off at school. How she took us to appointments and attended school plays and conferences . . . all on her own. For half the year, she was a single parent.
Which meant for half the year, my dad didn’t have a family. But that wasn’t an excuse for him to cheat.
I planned to say as much if she tried to defend his actions now.
Tears pooled in her eyes. “I got lonely sometimes,” she said, her voice wobbling.
Back . . . the . . . fuck . . . up!
I was ramrod straight now, sitting like I was taking etiquette lessons. “What in the holy hell are you saying?” But in my gut I already knew.
“I’m saying I made a mistake, Em. A terrible, terrible mistake.” The tears broke free and spilled down her cheeks. She reached blindly for her wine and nearly toppled the glass. I would’ve helped her, but I was paralyzed. “I met a man . . . at the country club. I was such a cliché—he was my tennis pro. But he was so handsome, and he made me feel young again. When we were together, I didn’t think about all my responsibilities at home.”
“You mean, like the boys and me?” The accusation spilled from my mouth like acid. “And Daddy?”
“Especially your daddy,” she admitted. She drained the last of her glass and set it at the edge of the table. She’d definitely be getting another. “I think part of me did it to get back at him for leaving me alone so much of the time.”
The idea of my mother in the arms of another man . . . God, it was almost too much.
But I had to ask, “Does Daddy know? Or just Bitsy?” Of course Bitsy knew. This was obviously what she’d sent me here to discover. Why hadn’t she just told me? Surely the other woman in my dad’s life would’ve enjoyed telling me that the perfect wife wasn’t so perfect after all.
My mother’s eyes fixed on mine. “He does. He found out after about a year. Hired a private eye. Had pictures and everything. Confronted me and threatened to divorce me if I didn’t end it.” She swallowed. “I did, of course. And your daddy . . . well, I suspect he must’ve said or done somethin’ at the country club—to that tennis pro—because I never did see him around there again. “She stopped talking when the hostess led two women who were dressed in business attire past us. She seated them near the wall of windows several tables away. “Eventually, your daddy forgave me.” She said this warily. Wearily. “But it took a long time. A very long time. The whole mess was . . . ugly.”
Ugly. That was the word she’d chosen to describe an affair she’d kept secret for an entire year? I’d say it was more than just ugly.
Vile. Reprehensible. Repulsive.
All the things that came to mind whenever I conjured up images of my dad and Bitsy.
“My God, Mama. How long would you have kept it up, if Daddy hadn’t put an end to it?” Would their marriage have survived another year? Two? Or would I have had a tennis pro as a stepfather?
She shrugged, a non-answer.
“And what about Daddy and Bitsy? That night I walked in on them?”
“That was right after he found out . . . ,” she looked to the ceiling, as if there was help up there, “ . . . about me. He was hurtin’ something awful and he wanted to get back at me. Rightly so, I suppose. That night, he got good and drunk and he made a pass at Bitsy.” She sighed. “Bitsy shot him down, of course.”
Shot him down?
I dredged my memory, trying to remember every detail of that night. Had that really been all there was to it, a one-sided attempt by my dad to get even with my mom? Had I run off too soon to witness the truth? To see Bitsy turn down my dad’s advances?
And what about the night of my dad’s party, in The Shrine? Could that have been a misunderstanding too?
I remembered the way Bitsy had been with Will’s friend, Ryan, the surfer she’d been launching. How chummy she’d been with her new client.
Was that all I’d witnessed in The Shrine, just a couple of good friends getting drunk and reminiscing?
Seth’s words echoed in my head: Some things aren’t what they seem.
I watched the two women the hostess had seated, laughing as they perused the menu. Their conversation was a million miles from the one Mama and I were having. “You should’ve told me, when I accused Daddy of cheating.”
My mother’s lips pinched into a tight line. “Emerson Monroe McLean, your daddy’s the proudest man I’ve ever met. The last thing he wanted was for you kids to find out what I’d done. He’d rather have you thinking ill of him than of me. And Bitsy went along with his wishes.” She ran her finger along the tines of her fork. “Despite what you think, she’s always been a good friend. To all of us.”
She was right. Of course Daddy had covered for her, the same way he’d always protected the rest of us. The same way he’d gone in front of the school board to make sure his little girl got her chance to play peewee football with the boys.
He’d always been our champion—why would this be any different?
I’d spent all those years directing my anger at the wrong people. At my dad and Bitsy, instead of at the one person I should have been mad at.
The waiter was just setting down our plates when I scooted my chair back from the table.
“Emerson,” my mom said, even though the waiter was standing right there and could hear her. I guess she was past caring about discretion. I guess we both were. “Don’t go. I don’t want you to be cross.”
“This isn’t about being mad, Mama. But I need to be alone right now.”