Page 78 of On the Ropes
Alexis shook her head fiercely. “She already has two amazing grandmothers. Kathleen and Eric’s mom. We’ll see when she gets older how we’ll talk about it.”
“And we’re lucky,” Eric said. “Juliet already goes to school with a lot of kids who come from interracial families. Families that look like ours. I hate saying that it’s likely a lot of those families have had to cut someone out of their lives because of their racism or bigotry. But…” His lips pressed into a thin line. “It is likely. My hope would be that we can all help each other figure out how to have those conversations about race and family together.”
I nodded vigorously. “That happened at the Lavender Center for a lot of gay and queer families who went there. They supported each other through a lot of conversations that were difficult to have.”
The relationship we had with my mom when Alexis was a senior in college was strained at best. Early on, she’d made it clear that her new family made a lot of demands on her time. And she and my dad weren’t amicable anyway.
We rarely saw her and—quite honestly—preferred it that way. After years of being subjected to her criticism—and, for me, her manipulative lying—Alexis and I were much, much happier being out from under her thumb.
We weren’t even trying to salvage the relationship as much as we were fine keeping it as it was. I still kept trying to convince my mother that my bisexuality was real and valid out of a desperate attempt to make her a better person. Every attempt at that failed, leaving me heartbroken and hurt while my dad and sister were furious.
And then Alexis started dating Eric. He was right—as soon as things got serious between the two of them and she started bringing him over for family dinners and movie nights, their true love was on full display. By that point, our relationship with our mother had dwindled to a passing text or email, but she somehow saw a picture of the two of them on social media.
We never knew exactly what my mom said to my dad when she called him about it, but he distilled it for us to the pertinent points—her daughters had disappointed her often throughout her life, but things had reached a crisis point for her now that one daughter was bisexual and the other was dating a Black man. Honestly, at that point, there wasn’t even really a relationship there to cut off.
All of us cut her off anyway.
“It’s still confusing to me,” Alexis said. “The way that she raised us affected me for years. The fact that she cheated on Dad, broke his heart like it held no value to her, then left us.” Alexis shuddered. “It fundamentally changed the way I viewed romantic relationships. And parental ones. It’s difficult for me to admit that about a person who I’ve cut out of my life because it gives her too much power.”
I felt a frisson of guilt but tried to ignore it. “I hate that her past actions can still steal away a moment of present happiness and affect my decisions. Especially since you and I are surrounded with unconditional love on all sides.”
“Yeah, you are, and I know you’re both grateful for it,” Eric said, “but I think it’s like how you talk about filmmaking and storytelling. That your job is searching for the common threads that unite us. As awful and stressful as it is, she’s still a thread in all of our lives, even if it’s only an echo at this point.”
I passed my hand across the top of my head. “Two things I didn’t anticipate happening when I came home for a visit. Getting romantically involved with a friend and not a sexy stranger.” I bit my bottom lip. “And feeling like all that stuff with Mom happened yesterday and not years ago. I thought I’d locked it all away.”
I’d never been more tempted to blurt out every last remaining secret that I had. The only thing holding me back was fear—fear that when my family found out I’d known about my mom’s affair all along, had gone along with her lies, they’d stop trusting me too. Some part of me knew that emotionally keeping myself at arm’s length was why I felt like an outsider in my own family, even as they so clearly loved the hell out of me. But they weren’t the problem. I was.
At least now as I traveled across the country, far from them for long periods of time, I could feel their love—in their calls and text messages and emails. Their silly care packages and cat videos. I’d made the decision to cut my mother out of my life when I was an adult. She’d, however, up and left me when I was just a kid. My darkest, middle-of-the-night worry was that I’d unburden myself of secrets only to find all that unconditional love changed to conditional.
“I feel that way too, and I live here,” Alexis said. “Sometimes it doesn’t feel close or that it matters. Other days, it’s like you and I are teens again, watching Mom and Dad fight. It’s not something I can control.” She smiled. “The only silver lining to all of this is that when Eric and I got married, we saw it as an opportunity to love each other and parent the way we wanted. And we love Juliet so much. We support and lift her up no matter what she wants to do. And we both work with kids every day and encourage their imagination. Their creativity, their wishes. And we don’t care about their mistakes.”
“The opposite of how Mom raised us,” I said grimly.
“Exactly.”
I pulled my knees into my chest and gazed at two of my most favorite people in the whole world. “Your story is the real deal. It’s a happily ever after.”
Alexis cocked her head. “Yours is too. Whether it was a story you’d written or one you’d shot on that old camera we had, Mom went out of her way to ignore it or pass judgment on it. And now look at you. All of your stories are about love.”
I hummed a little, considered that description. “I always describe them as being about the power of a community, coming together.”
“Isn’t that love too?” she said.
Juliet called down for her parents, who both rose off the couch and made their way to the stairs.
“This is random,” I said, “but do you guys want to actually stay the night? I can take Linda’s guest bedroom to sleep in, and she has so much garbage reality television to watch, I’d hate to binge Real Housewives on my own. I’d rather open a bottle of red wine and hang with the two of you.”
I couldn’t say the last time the temporary place I was staying in felt like a home. In my aunt’s house, with Juliet running around and Eric and Alexis’s laughter, there was a contentment and safety curling around my heart that I didn’t realize I was missing. I knew this attachment feeling could be dangerous but felt much too vulnerable to turn away from it.
Eric looked down at his outfit and shrugged. “I’m already in my pajamas and am seriously behind on those housewives.”
Alexis gave me a knowing look. “We’ve only got you for a little while longer anyway before you leave again. I need to soak up as much time as I can get.”
I patted the spot next to me on the couch. “All aboard the cuddle express.”
Eric laughed. “I’m going to soothe our daughter, and then someone better have opened that bottle of wine.”
He jogged up the steps, and Alexis watched him go. She drummed her fingers on the banister for a second. “I don’t know if this helps with the Dean situation or not,” she said, “but when we were at Benny’s the other night, you said you were able to keep your relationships casual by always staying in the present moment and not getting hung up on the future.”
