Jenson

 

Let her go.

Set her free.

Too bad letting go feels like failure.

It’s after rehearsal on Wednesday that I get a phone call that resurrects my smile. How long has it been since I’ve done that?

“Hey, Ma.”

“Jenson! Jesus, where have you been, hon?”

Her strained tone comes out of left field. “Just rehearsing long hours every day. I’ve been meaning to call and ask if you were coming to the show and how many tickets to leave for you.”

“Well, hold your horses a minute. I’d like to know if you’re going to make it to Thanksgiving.”

“Well, yeah, we’ll be off for Thanksgiving,” I reassure her. I can’t remember the last time she sounded so stressed.

“You do know it’s tomorrow, don’t you?”

I freeze, mentally ticking off the days in my head. Today is Wednesday. Tomorrow . . . Thanksgiving. “Uh, yeah. Fuck, I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner. Rehearsals have been crazy. So what’s the plan for tomorrow? When should I be there?”

“Well, if I could get a hold of you, you’d know. I slipped at the diner the other day, broke my wrist. It’s nothing serious, but I can’t do a darn thing with the splint they’ve got me in.”

I grip my phone until I hear a muted crack. “Wait, you broke your wrist?”

“I know, and right before the holidays. Awful timing. Anyway, I’m sorry to say that supper tomorrow won’t be what it was. I can try to get something together, but it won’t be the usual.”

Guilt slides between my ribs and stabs me right in the gut. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. There’s nothing to apologize for. I’ll figure something out, all right? I don’t want you to worry about anything.”

“Jens, I understand you’re busy. Don’t worry—”

“Mom, let me handle it, okay?”

Silence stretches before she finally answers. “Okay, baby. But listen, there won’t be much left at the stores, so don’t stress it. You being here will be enough.”

“I’ll be there. Supper tomorrow, you and me, okay?”

She’s barely hung up before I pound my fist into the steering wheel, accidentally honking. The one time she needed me, the one fucking time, and I wasn’t around. She broke her wrist, and she was feeling guilty about not being able to cook a proper meal for Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving I nearly forgot.

The arrival of the holiday brings Lindsey back into mind, only now, the memory of her battles my newfound guilt. She’s going to be alone. I forgot about the only family I have left because of my selfish mission to drown her memory, and she won’t even see hers. I wouldn’t count on her roommates to make a proper TV dinner, much less give a holiday meal its due diligence. The combination of missing her and the guilt I feel about my mom makes me sick, and I have to fight the urge to speed home for a drink. This is my last chance to prove to myself I’m not the self-serving bastard I’ve always been.

Besides, I have Thanksgiving to save.

 

I show up at Mom’s place and hustle inside, not wanting to waste any more time being the world’s worst son, but the sight of her in her splint ignites my guilt all over again. I drop the bags and give her the hug she’s deserved every day of her life that I haven’t been around to give her.

“I’m not dead, Jens,” she finally says after a solid minute in my arms. “I take that back, you might’ve cracked a few ribs.”

“Sorry,” I say, pulling back. “I’m so damn sorry.”

She purses her lips and blinks at me a few times, but she finally nods. “You’re here. That’s all that matters.”

I watch her face for disappointment as I unload what I found at the store, but all I see is amusement. “Rotisserie chicken,” I say with an apologetic shrug. “It’s the closest thing they had to turkey, aside from lunch meat.”

“Good thing I like chicken.”

She pops the plastic lid off the container and sets to work reheating our turkey substitute while I boil some water for powdered mashed potatoes. Looking back, I probably could’ve gotten the real thing, but I was flustered and had to make a game-time decision. I heat up the canned green beans, then pour cherry pie filling into the crust I bought and slide it into the oven. I can’t remember the last time I cooked—if I can even call what I’m doing now cooking.

Oftentimes, I’d spend just about every minute outside the studio writing. My lyrics never came out on paper like they did in my head, so I’d spend days mulling them over. The task of keeping us alive fell solely on Raven’s shoulders, and she bore it for the entirety of our marriage. Even then, I sabotaged everything she’d nourished, everything she’d grown single-handedly from seeds. Jenson the Destroyer. Can you change a destiny that’s already been written?

“If you meant to bake that pie, you might want to turn on the oven first.”

I look up and realize Mom’s talking to me. Then I peek inside the oven at the pie that’s sitting on the rack, definitely not cooking.

“Right. It’s my first Thanksgiving handling supper on my own, cut me some slack,” I tease.

It must’ve been a weak attempt because the look she gives me brims with sympathy. She reaches across me and switches on the oven. “What’s on your mind?”

I scrub my face, try to appear casual, but it’s no use. I can’t lie to her. I’ve already put her through too much. “What isn’t?”

She searches my eyes, then nods toward the counter where our meager meal is spread out. “Let’s talk about it over supper.”

Over the course of garlic butter-glazed chicken, green beans, mashed potatoes, and slightly crushed dinner rolls I recant what happened with Lindsey, from our strange first encounter, to our talks about music and photography, to the situation with Craig and how furious she was that I interfered. I try to make sense of our relationship, but it sounds even more fictitious when I voice it out loud. Like it never even happened. I suppose, technically, it didn’t.

“Anyways, then I told her I loved her and she left.”

Mom takes a sip of her Coke and smacks her lips. “She left,” she agrees.

“I hugely misread that whole situation.”

“I don’t think so. And I would tell you what to do if I thought it would help.” She reaches over our dirty dishes and utensils and squeezes my hand. “Looking at this from the outside, it’ll never make sense to you. Try to get in her head for a change, walk in her shoes.”

I thrust my fingers through my hair, my frustration rising. She’s an enigma. I’m no closer to figuring her out than I was that day I met her at Tripp’s. “Don’t you think I’ve tried that? She’s impossible. You think Raven could put up walls—Lindsey’s a whole other story. She’s like the Pentagon of women.”

“I wasn’t finished,” she chides. “Bear with me. If my memory serves me right, she left behind everything—her family, her friends—and risked a lot to come here. All to do what she loves. Some girls would meet you and immediately get dollar signs in their eyes, see opportunity. She didn’t. You know why that is?”

“Because she’s stubborn as hell,” I say, scratching my beard. “I don’t know.”

“Exactly. She’s stubborn. Just like in the situation with Craig and your offers to help her get her foot in the door. You showed up with your money and your fame, offering up those things as solutions to her problems, and instead of fixing things like I know you meant to, what happened?”

It blew up in my face, that’s what, but I shake my head, at a loss for words.

“You undermined all the effort she’d put in so far. You basically swept aside all those risks she’s taken, the blood, sweat, and tears she’s put into making this dream come true, and said they weren’t enough.”

I open my mouth to protest—that’s not what I did, was it?—until I’m hit with the brunt of her words. “And what about the love part? Or lack of.”

“I don’t know that it’s the lack of love you need to worry about. She’s a goal-oriented girl. Whatever she felt about you made her question the things she came out here to accomplish. What’s the one thing she cares about most in the world?”

“Her family and her photography.” I don’t know why I feel both empty and proud when I say it.

“If that girl left without giving you a piece of her mind, I think you’re underestimating her feelings toward you. From what little you’ve told me, her passion is something she wasn’t willing to compromise. If she left without another word when faced with something so brash and unapologetic as love, my guess is she felt so much for you it threatened the one thing she knew she could count on. Her art. Herself.”

Just like that, every ill feeling I harbored toward Lindsey sways on shaky legs. I didn’t want to believe she was afraid, that I could shake someone so seemingly unshakable. And I’m not sure I’m ready to believe it now. But perhaps Lindsey isn’t the mystery I thought she was; I was just too focused on the illusion—her smoke and mirrors—she put up to see what was behind it.  

“How do you know so much, especially about someone you’ve only met once?” I grumble, half to myself. I’m getting schooled by the women in my life.

“She’s an independent, passionate woman, Jenson,” Mom says, as though that’s explanation enough.

“She’s a force to be reckoned with.”

“It takes one to know one,” she says, and I don’t miss the subtle smirk she gives me. “Now, let’s have some pie and get you cleaned up. I don’t know what you’ve been doing the past few weeks, but you look like a vagrant.”

 

I leave my mom’s place with more than I brought with me, but I’m finding out that’s what happens when you give the things that feed your soul the attention they deserve. My perspective’s been altered, but I’ve got more on my mind than I’ve had in months, about much more than Lindsey. The guilt that I so easily disappeared from everything—life, responsibilities, the small number of people who still count on me—didn’t just subside when Mom forgave me. I’ve overcome a lot, I’ve lost more, and still I was willing to risk what few great things I had left all because of my inability, my refusal, to cope with the things that test my limits.

My band deserves better, my mom deserves better, and I’m beginning to realize that I, and the kid I was at seventeen—the unfettered dreamer—deserve a hell of a lot better. It’s the first time I’ve admitted to that last one, and maybe that’s why it hits me hardest that it’s time for a change. Two stints in rehab didn’t work. Praying didn’t work. My divorce didn’t work. But maybe I can work. Maybe I can do something notable for once, be the man the people around me deserve to see, and kick this thing once and for all.

Those realizations were slow to come by but hard-hitting. I know what I have to do, and nothing is holding me back. And if I ever owed anything to Lindsey, it’s to be the man who’s halfway worthy of her.