Page 103 of Big Stick Energy
I turn to leave, but Sharp follows me to the door. “Don’t forget my reservation!”
“Don’t forget to say please and thank you, motherfucker.”
Eric looks alarmed when I breeze past him and head for the escalators.
“Please and thank you, motherfucker!” Sharp calls after me.
My mother is, in fact, standing in the lobby when I arrive there five minutes later. She looks half hopeful and half worried.
As she should. There’s a reason I’ve been avoiding her. I’m still wrestling with the idea that I have a trust fund and educational resources that I never knew about.
“Hi,” I say stiffly.
“Hi,” she says softly. “I didn’t know what else to do, honey. You won’t talk to me. At least tell me what I did wrong.”
“Let’s walk,” I say, because I can’t have this conversation in the building. I don’t like people overhearing my private business.
She follows me outside, where the weather is hot and cloudy. Twenty-First Street near the river is always windy, so the effect is kind of like walking toward a giant hairdryer. We head toward Ninth Avenue and my favorite bakery. If my mother is going to bomb into my life, she can buy me a cupcake from Billy’s.
I choose the Bourbon Salted Caramel because I’m feeling extraneedy. Mom chooses the coconut, and we install ourselves on one of the benches outside. I take a very delicious bite and screw up my courage to begin the real conversation. “Did you look for me at my apartment first?”
“Yes,” she says, wiping a bit of icing off her lip. “I know your schedule is hectic this month, but Darcy, I’mworriedabout you. Ever since that wedding, you won’t talk to me. Did something terrible happen?”
I sigh and shake my head. “I’m conflicted, that’s all. Dad told me about some trust account he set up for me. And that you’ve known about it this whole time?”
She winces. “I wondered if that was it.”
“Youwondered,” I spit. “Was it just a matter of time until it came up? Do you actually get a statement every month? That you’ve beenhiding from me for half my life?”
Her chin drops. “I didn’t mean it to be a big secret, Darcy. Not at first. Hiding it made sense when you were a girl. It wasn’t even legally your money at that point. You were barely a teenager, and I didn’t want his child support. I knew I could take care of you just fine.”
“And you did,” I admit. We weren’t wealthy, but I didn’t go without. “But it shouldn’t have been a secret forever.”
“There was no right time,” my mother insists.
“Really?” My voice rises. “I can think of a few. Like the moment Idropped outof college because I couldn’t afford it!”
“You didn’t drop out,” she returns. “You changed your track.”
“Mom! Don’t revise history. That’s whathedoes.”
She gasps like she’s been slapped. “Don’t compare me to your father. I’m nothing like him. And neither are you! I gave you agift, Darcy. Self-reliance is the most important thing a woman canhave. You grew up knowingdown to your bonesthat you didn’t need to rely on a man.”
It’s true, up to a point. I know how to install a dishwasher, and how to change a flat, and how to manage my money. “But it wasn’t mychoice. You made that choice for me.” And it turns out I’m angrier about that than I realized. “And the worst part—the thing you really ought to realize—is that the dishonesty of it is the real sin.”
Her eyes flare. “Itwasyour choice. You knew your father was paying for the twins’ college educations. You must have known he’d pay for yours. Even when you made the difficult decision to leave NYU, you never mentioned your father.”
“At the wise old age of nineteen?” Ifeltlike an adult making my own decisions. I know I did. But it all looks very different seven years later. I open my mouth to say that, but something else pops out instead. “Did you ever miss him? After he was gone?”
Which only goes to show where my brain has been this month.
My mother blinks. Then she takes a sip of her iced coffee, playing for time. “No, not exactly,” she says quietly. “His treachery made that impossible. Every time it was tempting to miss him, I thought about how big a fool I was. All those times he didn’t make it home for dinner—or to one of your choir concerts. I’d thought he was just too busy providing for his family.”
“He was,” I say darkly. “His other one.”
She gives me a little smile. “That’s exactly it. I was too angry to mourn him properly. If I missed anything, I guess it was my own ignorance.”
I think back to that time, and I know just what she means. When I was a child, my father used to call me at bedtime when he was away on one of his business trips. But after I inadvertentlyblew up his double life, I realized that sometimes he’d been calling me from Marblehead, not LA.
