It Started in June

by Susan Kietzman

  * * *

  “Grace, it’s Robin, your mother. I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner. I’ve been thinking about your message, as maybe you’ve been thinking about my lack of response. We have a complicated relationship, don’t we? I’m so glad to hear about your little girl, Hope. And I really would like to see you both. George, my husband—yes, I’m married after all these years—tells me we’re about three hours apart. Maybe we can meet for lunch in the middle, neutral ground as they say. Can I get back to you with proposed dates? Thank you for your call, Grace. I’ll get back to you soon.”

  * * *

  Robin was satisfied when she hung up with the message that George had helped her write and that she had jotted down on a notecard and read into the phone. She thought she’d sounded natural. Now all she had to do was take a personal day from work and set a definite date to see the daughter who had walked out of her life twenty-five years ago and the grandchild she hadn’t known existed.

  CHAPTER 42

  “I’m more than surprised; I’m shocked,” is what Shannon said when Grace told her she had contacted her mother. Even though Grace knew that she should have told Bradley before she told Shannon, she chose Shannon, who, like Kenny, had known her longer and knew her, still, better than Bradley did.

  “Why?”

  “Why? Grace, how can you ask why? This is the mother who essentially abandoned you at birth, preferring to leave the actual childrearing to fanatical grandparents.”

  “It wasn’t that bad, Shannon.”

  “Are you kidding me? The horror stories I’ve heard over the years may have faded in your memory, but their impact on your childhood, on who you are today, is alive and kicking with me. Why would you want to go back and revisit what you have for so many years paid to forget, with therapy, acupuncture, yoga, massage, and now—if we’re being open and honest—a baby?”

  “You think I had Hope to right the wrongs imposed on me by my mother and grandparents?”

  “I believe that’s one of the major reasons you had the baby, yes. You told me you wanted to prove that, given the same circumstances, you could be a better mother than your mother was to you.” Grace said nothing, as she had, indeed, made this assertion. “Look,” said Shannon, “I’m not looking to get into an argument about why you had the baby. That ship has obviously sailed. The argument I’m looking to have is about your mother and why you have any interest in letting her into your life when you have worked so hard to block her out.”

  “I invited her to my wedding.”

  “An event she attended for twenty minutes,” said Shannon. “But you have not initiated contact since—and neither has she, by the way.”

  “But maybe now, after all these years and the birth of a baby, the time is right,” said Grace. “One of the things I’ve learned from my years of therapy, acupuncture, yoga, and massage, by the way, is that we have to listen to what is being said. If our minds are closed to every possibility, it’s impossible to live a contented life.”

  “I’d have assessed your life as pretty damned contented before you had sex with Bradley, before Hope, and before your recent contact with your crazy-ass mother!”

  “Shannon, I am hurt by your words.” This was something Grace had been instructed by her therapist, whom she had not seen for almost five years, to say in situations that, in Grace’s quick assessment, warranted their utterance. She had used these words sparingly over the years, and she was as surprised by their emergence from her mouth as Shannon was to hear them.

  Shannon sighed into the phone. “I’m sorry, Grace,” she said. “You called to confide in me, and I have jumped all over you. I’m just so worried about you—about your decision to become a mother; about your relationship with a much younger man, who I am tempted to call a boy, and about this reunion with an awful mother.”

  “That’s not much of an apology.” Grace was kidding her, kind of.

  “Don’t you ever get mad? Don’t you ever want to be mean?”

  “Yes,” said Grace. “I broke a lot of glassware and china in my twenties. But it didn’t help anything, even though it felt really good at the time.”

  “I really am sorry I said things that hurt you. But I do have to admit that I did it on purpose. I was thinking that by hurting you, I would get you to change your mind.”

  “Why is it so important that I change my mind, that I don’t try to reconnect with my mother?”

  “Because I don’t want to see you get hurt again.”

  “Oh, you and your broken relationships have a monopoly on that?”

  Shannon waited a moment, and then said, “I guess you can be mean after all.”

  “Okay,” said Grace, “let’s quit being mean to each other. I understand what you are saying to me, and I know that I am being wildly unrealistic about anything good coming out of a reunion with my mother. But something in me has changed, Shannon, since Hope’s arrival. Maybe I need to reassess. Maybe I need to crack open the door.”

  “I agree,” said Shannon, “that occasionally we need to reassess decisions we made long ago. But you need to be clearheaded about this, Grace. Before you move forward, you need to admit to yourself that this meeting has a very good chance of not only failing but also of opening that door more than a crack.”

  “Agreed,” said Grace.

  “And you need to talk to the boy,” said Shannon. “He’s involved in this, too.”

  * * *

  Unlike Shannon, Bradley, when Grace told him she had contacted her mother, wanted to know how he could help. “Do you want me to go with you?”

  They were sitting on the couch in their living room. Hope, who had just eaten, was sleeping on Bradley’s right arm, cradled, as usual, like a football carried by a running back. “You are sweet to offer, Bradley,” she said. “But I think I need to do this myself.”

  “I could call my mom. Maybe she could help, give you some tools, as she calls them, for dealing with what might prove to be a difficult reunion.”

  Grace nodded. “I’ve thought about talking to your mom,” she said. “But in the end, I think I have to work through this on my own. I know that I am asking for trouble. But I am prepared to get up from our lunch table and leave if I feel more uncomfortable than I can handle. If our meeting is a bad idea instead of a good idea, I will carry Hope to the car and drive away.”

  Hope opened her eyes and Grace held out her arms to receive her. As Bradley was transferring her from his arms into Grace’s he said, “I miss your old car.”

  “Me too,” said Grace. “It was a very classy, classic automobile. What a fool I was to go out in the snow that night.”

  “Don’t feel bad about that, Grace,” said Bradley. “Look, the Subaru is great. And much more practical than the Cadillac.”

  “You are way too young to be using that word.”

  “I miss the drop-top,” said Bradley.

  “I miss feeling like I was in a parade every time I drove it.”

  “And I miss the backseat.”

  Her right arm securing Hope to her left shoulder, Grace leaned in and kissed him on the lips, a longer, more passionate kiss than she had given him since the baby was born. “As soon as she goes to bed after her next feeding, we’ll go to bed, too.”

  CHAPTER 43

  Robin contacted Grace the following week, telling her what a whiz George was with the computer and that he had used Google to find a restaurant halfway between her historic saltbox in New Hampshire and Grace’s beach house in Connecticut. Nel’s Place was located just a couple miles off I-395 in Massachusetts and featured homemade soups, salads, and sandwiches. Her George had told her, Robin relayed to Grace, that it appeared to be the perfect choice for two roadweary women to refuel their bodies while they reconnected their lives. They agreed to meet there at noon on Friday.

  Grace arrived early, as she did for business meetings—on this day to see Robin before Robin saw her; Grace wanted to watch Robin emerge from her car, to get a feel for her body langua
ge. Would she linger in the car before reaching for the handle and opening the door, indicating, perhaps, some hesitancy, a second or third guess? Or would she throw the car into park, thrust open the door, and charge out into the sunlight,—a mother on a mission to see her daughter for the first time in too many years and her newborn granddaughter? It was a sunny day, which pleased Grace. Had rain been pouring out of the sky or had the clouds blocked out the blue with a foreboding gray, Grace would have felt less optimistic about what very well may have been a hormone-imbalanced decision to seek her mother’s company.

  Grace backed her Subaru into a space in the far corner of the lot, so she could see the approach of a car from either direction. She glanced at the mirror Bradley had affixed to the headrest in the backseat, so she could see if Hope was awake. Grace understood why infant car seats needed to face backward, but she hated the increased level of separation she felt as a result of not being able to see her baby. Grace had fed her just before getting into the car, hoping the baby would sleep for the entire ninety-minute trip, and she had.

  As soon as Grace turned her attention back to the lot and the road in front of it, she saw a maroon Toyota with New Hampshire plates pull in. She removed her sunglasses to get a better look at the driver, who Grace instantly recognized as her mother, even though her shoulder-length hair had been cut into a bob that wrapped around her chin. Robin drove her car to the opposite side of the lot and chose a parking space close to the Dumpster. Hope cooed in the backseat, which meant Grace had another couple of minutes before Hope would become fully awake and want her attention. Grace looked back at her mother’s car and watched Robin step out of it. She was thinner than she had been at Grace’s wedding; she was dressed in a calf-length denim skirt tied at the waist, a tucked-in pink long-sleeved shirt, and sensible-looking shoes. Robin walked around to the passenger side, opened the door, and reached in. When her arms again appeared, they were holding a navy blue leather purse and a white box tied up with pink ribbon. She shouldered the purse and walked with purpose toward the restaurant entrance. Grace studied her face, which looked if not peaceful then certainly neutral. As soon as Robin disappeared inside, Grace got out of the car and walked around to the other side to release Hope, now fussing just a bit, from her car seat.

  When Grace walked into the restaurant and looked for her mother, Robin signaled her from a corner booth where she sat facing the door. As Grace and the baby closed the short distance between them and Robin, Grace’s heart beat faster and faster. She was experiencing what her therapist had called a mini panic attack and knew she needed to breathe deeply to counteract her rapid heart rate. She was only partially successful by the time she took the fifteen steps to reach the booth; the thumping had diminished somewhat, but it was replaced by a momentary inability to speak. She stood, staring at her mother, waiting for whatever would come next. Her mother stood, put her hands on Grace’s shoulders, and leaned in to kiss her cheek. “Grace,” she said.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  Robin shifted her gaze from Grace’s face to the baby. “And this is Hope. May I?” she asked, already reaching for her.

  “Of course,” said Grace, handing the baby to her mother.

  Robin cradled her with her left forearm, hugging Hope against her body. “She’s darling,” she said, looking at the baby’s face and then surprising Grace by kissing Hope’s forehead. “She smells like a baby.”

  “Shall we sit?” asked Grace, struggling to stop the swirl of thoughts running around her brain, willing her legs to stop trembling.

  “Yes, yes,” said Robin, sitting back down on the padded bench and gently sliding in toward the center. “Is this okay?”

  “Is what okay?”

  “The booth,” said Robin. “I chose to sit here so I could watch for you, but we can certainly change seats if you’d prefer to sit elsewhere?”

  “No, no,” said Grace, “this is fine. I like a booth.”

  “I do, too,” she said, smiling, as if they had just discovered they had something meaningful in common. “How was your drive? Did you find the place okay?”

  “Oh yes,” said Grace. “It was no trouble at all.”

  The pleasantries continued, with easy conversation about the warm spring they were having, Robin’s plans for her vegetable garden, and how well Grace liked her new Subaru, all the while Robin rocking Hope on her arm. After they placed their orders, the spinach salad special for both of them, they talked about their jobs, Robin outlining the myriad duties of an academic dean’s assistant, and Grace talking in generalities about the challenges of media relations. It was as if they were interviewing each other for an unknown or unstated position, breaking the ice so to speak, before diving into the particulars of what brought them together. Grace was abruptly aware that this kind of superficial banter could define the lunch. Robin would return to her home with George and tell him she’d had a lovely visit. And Grace would be able to relay to Bradley that her mother was affable and accessible. But this was not what Grace wanted. This was not why she was there. And so she started with the first question on the list she had composed in the car. “Why are you here?”

  Robin finished chewing the spinach leaves in her mouth and then said, “Because you asked me to come, Grace.”

  Question number two: “Did you have any expectations about this meeting?”

  Hope started to whimper, as if on cue. “I think she wants something that I can’t give her,” said Robin, holding the baby up over the table so that Grace could receive her. “Do you need to go to the car to feed her?”

  Grace extracted a cotton blanket from her diaper bag. “I can feed her right here,” she said, draping the blanket over her shoulder. Robin focused her attention on her salad, as Grace lifted her shirt and unsnapped her bra cup so that Hope could eat. Grace performed this task easily and privately, without flashing any boob, as Bradley so often asked her to do, and yet Robin was clearly uncomfortable, seemingly embarrassed. “Are you okay?” asked Grace as Hope was feeding.

  “Of course I am,” said Robin, waving her hand over her lunch as if it were a hot dish instead of a salad. “Everything is so out in the open these days.”

  “A good thing,” said Grace. “There is no reason to hide a natural act or relegate its occurrence to a back hallway or an unsanitary bathroom.” She had meant to say this with an unweighted voice, as she had coached herself. But the veneer was sliding out of place; the guttural emotion pulling it away from her quick-setting cement heart. Grace was, right then, furious. She looked out the window, scanning the horizon for something to say to make this right, something that would shove the anger back into the compartment it had been contained in for twenty-five years. She had not felt this kind of anger since her grandfather had kicked her out of the house. She had told her therapist that it had been hurt feelings, but she knew now as her therapist must have known then that it was rage.

  “I suppose you’re right,” Robin said. “It’s a different world.”

  “And thank God for that,” said Grace, her tone harsh now and unforgiving. “Because the world I lived in before was cruel, intolerant, and hateful.” And the tears she told herself she would not allow, that were unacceptable in the Taylor house, were pooling in her lower lids, threatening to jump the barrier and highjack her cheeks, as well as the conversation. Robin’s reaction to this was not what it might have been. She did not reach across the table to lay a hand on Grace’s arm in an attempt at soothing her. She did not speak calming words. Instead, she straightened her spine and shut her eyes. Grace had seen the ramrod posture, had practiced it daily, as this was how she, her mother, and her grandparents prepared for every meal of her childhood, with military-style alertness, lowered eyelids, and a lengthy prayer. But the completely closed eyes confused Grace, prompting her to say, “What are you doing?”

  Robin kept them closed. “I’m shutting out and shutting down.”

  “Like you did when I was a child, willingly handing over any and all authority to your
parents, who hated me almost as much as they hated you for having me?”

  Robin opened her eyes and glared at Grace. “I did not ask for this meeting. I did not ask for this.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t ask for it,” said Grace. “Because the day I walked out of the house when I was eighteen was the happiest day of your life!”

  Robin stood and looked down at her daughter, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the people in the restaurant who, alerted by Grace’s raised voice, were looking at her, too. “That is simply not true.”

  “Oh, yes it is,” said Grace. “And until you can admit that to yourself, you will never be whole, and the hurt between us can never heal.”

  Without another word, Robin reached into her purse and extracted two twenty-dollar bills from her wallet. She calmly placed them down on the table, told Grace to drive carefully on the way home, and walked out of the restaurant. It was Grace’s turn to close her eyes. And when she opened them again, she noticed the unopened gift for Hope still sitting on the seat her mother had vacated.

  CHAPTER 44

  Grace mentally sucked the water coating her eyes back into her head. Tears were for the weak, she’d been taught, for those without the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives. She managed to finish feeding Hope without making eye contact with any of the other diners who, she guessed, were still wondering and gossiping about what the hell happened at that booth in the corner. She held Hope against her shoulder as she picked up the present and the two twenty-dollar bills from the table. She walked to the cash register and stuffed the bills into a coffee can that sat on the counter, a collection of funds for the local animal shelter. She paid the lunch bill with a credit card and walked out of the restaurant. As soon as she had Hope buckled into her car seat, she sat in the driver’s seat and pulled her phone out of her purse. She broke down when Bradley answered. “I made a mess of everything!” Grace was sobbing.