Julia 25
I poke at the pancakes, awkwardly. Funny, I’m not very hungry now that they, and Jeremy’s mother, are sitting in front of me. She’s looking at me intently and I feel the need to look away. Finally, I bring my eyes back to her face. She smiles at me kindly.
“Julia. Please don’t be nervous. I promise you, I don’t bite.”
I feel a rush of warmth to my cheeks. “I’m sorry,” I mumble. “I just – this is awkward.”
She nods. “Yes, it is. But it doesn’t have to be. Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself? How did you come to play the cello?”
“I was at the Children’s Home … kind of an orphanage here on Long Island …”
“Your parents are dead?” she interjects, her face wrinkling with concern.
“Yes. Uh – no …”
She raises an eyebrow. “I don’t think there’s much wiggle room in there. They’re either dead … or they’re not.”
“Right. Well, my mother is alive. My father is dead.” She swishes her coffee around, waiting for me to elaborate. “My mother was a drug addict. She left us when I was five. After she’d gone, my father was abusive … physically,” I hurry to add, not wanting her to think it was anything darker than that. “I – I look a lot like her, you see. And he was so angry …” I break off for a moment and look down at my half-eaten breakfast. When I glance up, she’s still waiting patiently.
“Anyway, I was taken away from him when I was eight. That’s when I went to the Children’s Home. And that’s where I met Matthew. His parents died in a boating accident. He was my only friend and he’s the one who introduced me to music. I didn’t speak, so the cello was my voice.”
She looks startled, then confused.
“You were … mute?”
“Yes … sort of, for more than a year. I stopped talking the day I went to school and the teacher realized … what was going on at home. I was afraid to answer questions from the police and the doctors and the social workers. I thought if I told them what was happening, my father would get mad at me and hurt me. So, I didn’t speak then, or for more than a year afterwards.”
Trudy Corrigan puts a firm, reassuring hand over mine. “You were a strong girl. And you’ve grown into an even stronger woman,” she informs me.
I shrug. “I wasn’t always so strong. I became strong after …” I stop cold, but she knows exactly where I was headed.
“After Jeremy destroyed your life,” she finishes for me.
I nod dumbly.
“He’s good at that, my son.”
Another silent nod from me. I’m afraid if I open my mouth I’ll fall apart.
Trudy clears her throat and continues. “Brett came to see us a while back. He was very upset … said he’d just stood by and watched Jeremy hurt some poor girl. He didn’t help her and he was having a hard time living with that.” Piercing, hazel eyes consider me carefully. They are Jeremy’s eyes, I can’t help but notice. And David’s. “Was that you? Were you that girl?”
“Yes,” I whisper. “That was me.”
Trudy’s lips draw into a tight line and her brows draw in toward the bridge of her nose. This expression, too, is a carbon copy of Jeremy’s.
“Well, you should know that it was eating him alive.”
“We’ve talked about it,” I assure her. “He – he’s more than made up for it since then.”
“I’m glad,” she says with some relief before she changes her tack. “Now, what of your mother? Where did she go after she left you? If you don’t mind me asking, that is …”
“Umm, no, no, that’s fine,” I say, my voice a hair uncertain. “She ended up as a … uh … prostitute,” I finally spit out with great difficulty. “She tells me she was an addict and often exchanged … sex acts … for drugs.”
The concern on Trudy’s face is so deep – so sincere – that she makes me feel as if she understands, even before I’ve told her everything. It gives me the courage to finish. “Somewhere along the line, this guy managed to get her off the streets. He married her and now she has a new life, complete with a new daughter.”
“Oh, my. Well, it sounds like she pulled herself out of a bad situation. It’s easy to see where your fortitude comes from, Julia.”
I don’t quite know how to respond to that, so I don’t. She notices.
“You’re not happy for her, then?”
The question isn’t an accusation, so much as a curiosity.
“Happy? No. She left me to rot in an orphanage while she started a shiny new family, not thirty miles down the road.”
“I’m so sorry, Julia. Have you been in touch with her?”
“Yes. I finally gave in and sat down with her for a cup of coffee about six months ago … I was curious more than anything. I wanted to see how she could possibly justify leaving me … with him. She knew the kind of man my father was and she left me with him anyway. Trudy, the man burned me with a car cigarette lighter. He broke my ribs and scalded me with hot coffee. There was no one to protect me.”
At some point during this hellish little narrative, the tears started to fall and I feel them drip down my cheeks and under the collar of my blouse. Trudy reaches into her purse and hands me a tissue, which I accept with a grateful sniff.
“Anyway,” I continue after a minute, “we met and I asked her, point blank, why she didn’t take me with her.”
“And what was her reply?”
I scoff and roll my eyes as if it’s too unbelievable to even say out loud. But then, I say it out loud.
“She told me that she knew that as bad as my father could be, I would still be safer with him than with her. That she knew she might end up doing something awful if she took me with her and that she’d make the same decision again if she had it to do over again. Can you believe that?” I ask incredulously.
Trudy seems to give this some thought. “I know you don’t want to hear this,” she begins slowly, quietly, “but I have to say it makes perfect sense to me.”
“What?”
“Julia, one of the hardest things for any parent to comprehend is that there are times when the best thing you can do for your child is to leave him.”
I shake my head. “No. No, I don’t buy that …”
She holds up a finger to stop me. “Please, just hear me out. I have been a kindergarten teacher for more years than you’ve been alive and I’ve seen my share of family dysfunction. Bitter divorces where the children are pawns, abusive parents, abusive children, homelessness, abandonment …and some of the vile atrocities one human being can inflict upon another.
“But I’ve also seen incredible acts of heroism in some of those situations. And in that category I include the father who threw himself between his daughter and an oncoming car and the mother who gave full custody to her ex-husband and committed herself to an institution for psychiatric care.”
“Trudy, how can you compare those things to what my mother did? There was nothing heroic about her actions. She wasn’t saving my life or protecting me from what she might do …”
“Wasn’t she?” Trudy asks. “Now, believe me, I pray to Jesus you never have to face a situation like that, but until you do, then you’ll never know the agony that your own mother felt in making the decision to let you go.”
I can feel the shock that must be telegraphed across my face … slack mouth, wide eyes, flaring nostrils. I simply cannot believe what I’m hearing.
“When something like that happens,” she continues, “you have to fight yourself, every instinct you have as a mother. You have to make a decision you may very well be hated for, during the rest of your life. But you’ll do it. And you would do it again if you had to, because you know in your heart that it’s the best thing you can do for him.”
I lean forward across the table so that eyes are locked together.
“Are you telling me that she abandoned me because it was the best thing for me? Trudy! How can you possibly …”
“I don’t know your mother or her situation. But, based on what you’ve told me, I’m guessing she felt leaving you was a better option than what you might have endured had she taken you with her that day. She was a prostitute …and a drug addict to boot.”
I nod miserably.
“Well, it’s my understanding that the kinds of people who move in those worlds would think nothing of offering her a fix for … use … of a beautiful, innocent little girl.”
“I – I don’t understand …”
She closes her eyes for a brief second and then answers.
“I’m saying, that desperate people do desperate things, Julia. And that somewhere, deep in her addled mind, she knew that taking you with her was not an option that day because … because she wasn’t strong enough to protect you from herself.”
“More coffee?” a perky young waitress pops in and I practically jump out of my seat.
“No!” I say a little too harshly. “I’m sorry,” I say more softly. “No, thank you. We’ll let you know if we need something else.”
The girl can’t get away from our table fast enough. I turn back to Trudy, unsure of whether or not I’m offended.
“Even if I can come to some understanding of that,” I concede at last, “of her decision to leave and not take me, how can she possibly justify not coming back?”
Trudy sits back in her chair and folds her arms across her chest. In this light, I can see that her light brown hair, cut to chin length, is threaded with silver. She looks tired suddenly. And, if I’m not mistaken, just a little bit sad. Oh, hell. I have to remember that this woman just lost her husband … and here I am bringing up my ancient baggage.
“Trudy, let’s just talk about something more pleasant …”
She puts a warm, delicate hand over mine. “We will in just a moment, I just want to finish this. To answer your question, I don’t know why she didn’t come back. Perhaps she wasn’t secure enough in her sobriety or didn’t trust herself … I wish I had the answer for you, but I don’t. There’s only one person who does …your mother.”
“So, you think I should reach out to her?”
She gives me a small, sympathetic smile. “I think that there’s no wrong answer here, Julia. And, there’s no time limit on this. You may not be ready to hear her now …but possibly later you’ll feel differently. The best advice I can give you, Dear, is to consider the circumstances around her … departure … and try, as a mother, to see if her actions are redeemable, or even explainable, in any situation. Then, listen to your heart, Julia. It won’t steer you wrong.”
I want to snort, but it comes out more like a hiccuppy sob.
“Oh, but it did, Trudy,” I sniff, using a napkin to dab at my damp eyes. “My heart steered me right into Jeremy.”
I don’t know where the strength to say that to her came from, but there it is. My words are like a living, breathing thing at the table with us.
“Yes,” she says at last. “Yes, I suppose you’re right about that.”