Page 42 of Double Exposure

My answer comes too quickly. “I never saw it.”

The look on her face is enough to make me realize I’ve crossed a line.

Something inside me starts to break down. I’ve done something terrible and I don’t know what it is.

Leaning over, she kisses me on the forehead but when I try to say something she shakes her head “no,” and presses a tissue to her mouth. I rise and give her a kiss on the cheek and close the door firmly behind me.

That’s when the muffled sounds of her crying in the next room makes my heart pound.

I made my mother cry.

I sit on the edge of my own bed. I don't know if I'm having a breakthrough or breakdown. Everything I've ever known about my parents, everything I've ever assumed about my parents over the last ten years is wrong?

They never touch, they never kiss, there is never any sign of affection between them. When Dad would first return from any trip, he would be cordial to her, polite and almost subservient. It never occurred to me there might be a cultural difference or that the cultural mores I fought against were real—real to them. And the same was true when she came home.

It shaped them. It shaped their marriage.

He’s the love of my life.

A small piece of the puzzle suddenly snaps into place. After coming home, they were always distant—there was never the anxious scene at the airport with us waiting for him. It was always either one of them returning, me throwing myself at the absent parent while the other one remained aloof. Then I would go to my friend Carrie’s for an overnight on the first weekend after the reunion. Now it all made sense.

They were carving out space to be together. They wouldn’t dare touch each other.

A small sob starts in the pit of my stomach and works its way up making my throat ache. Have I been misreading burning for each other as apathy or worse, resentment? All this time they were in love and I never had the privilege of seeing them together, as a couple, holding hands, kissing.

Most kids, even adult children, can’t bear the thought of their parents having a love life.

I couldn’t bear the thought of a loveless marriage. And I’d assumed—assumed all the wrong things. As I lie on my bed in the dark, I realize my mother, on the other side of this wall, might as well be a million miles away.

΅

I am up far too early in the morning for a non-excursion day.

My mother exits the bedroom fully dressed and crosses to the kitchen. “Thank you for making coffee.”

“I sent down for a lemon for your lemon water.”

“Coffee’s fine,” she says.

I don’t know what’s more startling. The fact she is eschewing her famous lemon water for coffee or the fact she’s dressed in jeans, a purple turtleneck and a wool vest, with a Western motif necklace and turquoise earrings, like she’s modeling the Sundance catalog.

“Have I ever told you not to go somewhere? Have I ever tried to rein you in?”

I shake my head. “No, Mom. We don’t have to pick up from last night.”

“I couldn’t sleep. Not that that’s your fault.” She holds up a hand. “Do you know how much I had to defend myself against other mothers who told me I was doing the wrong thing letting you go off to Afghanistan?”

This had truly never crossed my mind.

“And who has had your interests in mind since Japan? Have I ever forced you to stay home because ‘something might happen’?”

I offer her some cream from the minifridge. She shakes her head. “No thank you.” Then she pushes on. “I’m the one who begs your dad to let you be you. I want some credit.”

A headache begins to drill behind my eyes. It’s like I’m suddenly living in an upside down world.

There’s a knock at the door.

When I open it, Carter is there with a little bag and two coffees.