The Rhubarb Patch

by Deanna Wadsworth

  Swallowing, he took the letter opener out of the “donate” box. His hands shook as he slid it into the crease of the green envelope.

  The card had a puffy white snowman covered in glitter and Merry Christmas scrawled across the top. As he went to open it, something slipped out.

  A fifty-dollar bill.

  It was one of the old bills they didn’t make anymore. Scott let out a shocked huff and set the money aside.

  The manufacturer’s inscription read: I hope Santa is good to you this year! A note was written in the same handwriting as the outside of the envelope:

  Scott,

  Pick out any toy on us!

  Love,

  Grammy and Papa

  Scott forgot he used to call them that.

  He’d always been afraid of Papa. He’d been a loud and overbearing man. Actually, Scott had been afraid of most men as a child, even the incessant parade of boyfriends his mother brought home—talk about confusing feelings to have while figuring out he was gay. Mom had her faults, but at least she’d never allowed any of them to boss him around or left him alone with her boyfriends. Thank God he hadn’t been sexually abused on top of all the other drama in his life. When he wasn’t in school, Mom had been with him 100 percent of the time.

  If Joe considered that coddling, then Scott was grateful to be coddled.

  But why did she keep these Christmas and birthday cards from him? All those years he’d dismissed his grandparents for not acknowledging his birthday had been completely unfair. What was more unfair was that Mom had allowed him to think they didn’t care about him.

  Scott returned the card to the envelope, then took out the second one. What if there’s a fifty in every envelope?

  Could he be so lucky?

  The next one was dated September of the next year. It would’ve been his sixth birthday. He smiled. There was another fifty inside.

  But no poignant note to his six-year-old self from two dead grandparents. Just a Happy birthday! Love, Grammy and Papa.

  Like a man on a mission, Scott went through the envelopes. Much to his surprise and delight, each one had a fifty inside. Every card was signed: Love, Grammy and Papa. Until his tenth birthday when George had died and the cards were only signed: Love, Grammy.

  Shaking his head, Scott looked at the stack of outdated bills—six hundred bucks so far. If Mom had known there was money in those envelopes, she might not have been so hasty to send them back.

  He continued on with the cards, and when he opened the card for his thirteenth birthday, he found a surprise. Another fifty but this time the entire left portion of the inside of the card had a letter.

  Dear Scott,

  I don’t know if you’ll read this. I’ve been sending you Christmas and birthday cards every year, and your mother sends them back. You’ll have to ask her why she’s doing that because it’s not my place to tell that story. If by some stroke of luck this card is intercepted by you, I want you to know I miss you and love you. Use this money to take a pretty girl to the movies. This might cover the cost of two tickets, popcorn and pop, ha-ha!

  Happy birthday!

  Love,

  Grammy

  He chuckled, wondering what his thirteen-year-old self would’ve thought if he’d intercepted this card like Nancy had hoped. A) He would’ve been mortified Nancy suggested he take a girl to the movie. And B) He would’ve been livid with his mother.

  Hell, he was livid with her now.

  Why had she done this?

  A white-hot surge of anger went through Scott. He set the box to the side and snatched up his cell phone. He scrolled through his contacts, clicking on Mom. Arms crossed across his body, he hit Send. His knee bounced impatiently as he listened to the rings.

  “Hey, honey, what’s up?” Mom answered in a pleasant voice.

  “Let me guess, you’re making cookies.”

  A long pause. “Yeah, I am actually.”

  “Figures.”

  “Is that why you called?” Mom sounded pissed. “Just to see if I was making cookies for Joe? He’s right. You are jealous of him.”

  “Jealous!” Scott jumped to his feet. “Why would I be jealous of that bum? He’s the one jealous of me and Davis. If you can’t see it, you’re a fucking idiot.”

  “What?”

  Not even as a rebellious teenager had he ever said something like that to his mother. Though thirty, he still tried not to cuss in front of her. But after what he’d just discovered, he wasn’t about to apologize. “When were you gonna tell me Nancy was mailing me Christmas and birthday cards my whole life?”

  There was an even longer pause. “I think you owe me an apology for what you just said.”

  “Fine, I’m sorry,” he said without a stitch of remorse. “Tell me why you returned all of the cards Nancy sent me.”

  “She crossed the line first.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Maybe because she kidnapped you.”

  “Kidnapped me? C’mon, Mom, I know I was little, but I think I’d remember being kidnapped.”

  “No, I kept a lot of bad stuff from you.”

  “Then why don’t you start filling in what you left out,” he said, not hiding his irritation and doubt. The story he’d always been told was Mom got knocked up in high school and her parents wanted her to get an abortion or give the baby up for adoption—something Mom enjoyed reminding Scott as an example of what a devoted mother she’d always been. So Mom ran away to Cincinnati with Dale, then Dale got abusive, and then they got divorced.

  Fast-forward to present day.

  Yeah, that was about all Scott knew.

  “Dale always had a temper, but it wasn’t until he lost his job that things got bad,” Mom began. “When we both went out for the same factory job and I got it, he flipped some kinda switch. But when he started treating you bad, I got brave enough to call the cops. I told them he was beating us, and when they hauled him off, I thought, This is it, we’re free.” She sounded relieved until her voice hardened. “But you know what? Nancy went right down there and bailed his ass out. And the first thing Dale did when he got out was put me in the hospital.”

  Did Mom just swear? He shook his head. “I don’t remember any of that.” But did he remember cops at the house? He couldn’t be sure…. Most of Scott’s earliest memories were of his parents yelling and pushing each other, even of him hiding under the bed—not that he liked to dwell on that one.

  She scoffed through tears. “Of course you don’t. When I heard Nancy bailed Dale out, I sent you home with Tracy, who worked with me.”

  He scratched the back of his head, trying to remember. He’d been so young. “Was she the lady with the poodle?”

  “Yeah, that was Tracy. Oh, Dale was pissed when you weren’t there. He broke my arm,” she said, her voice choking off. “It was awful.”

  Scott heard her sniffling. “Mom, don’t cry.”

  Suddenly the rumble of Dumbass’s voice filled the background. Scott heard him demand, “What’s going on, Rachel? Why are you crying?”

  “I’m fine,” Mom insisted, sniffing.

  “Tell him to mind his business,” Scott snapped.

  “Who’s on the phone?” Joe demanded.

  “I’m talking to Scott.”

  “What did he do to you now?”

  “Tell him to mind his own fucking business, Mom! Go in another room! He doesn’t need to know any of this!”

  He heard her muttering something—she must’ve put her hand over the phone—but he could still hear Joe shouting.

  “Mom! Go in another room!” Scott screamed. “Mom! Mom! Go in another room! Now!”

  More muffled sounds, Joe shouting, and then Mom finally answered Scott, “Fine, fine. Okay, I’m going into another room.”

  Joe said something, and Mom answered, but Scott couldn’t hear what either of them said.

  “Mom! What did you just tell him?” When she didn’t answer, he repeated the question, louder. “What d
id you tell him?”

  As mad as he was at Mom for keeping all of this from him, his blood positively boiled thinking Joe would learn their past.

  After a long pause and a low muffled noise, she said, “Okay, I’m in our bedroom. Calm down.”

  “I’m calm,” he snapped, though he was anything but calm. He took a steadying breath. “This is our past, Mom. It isn’t Joe’s business.”

  “I agree. That’s why I went into the other room.”

  “Oh, okay,” he said, shocked at her consideration. His heart pounded, and he sat back down. “Okay, can you tell me the rest?”

  “When I checked out of the hospital the next day, you weren’t with Tracy. Nancy and George took you, and Tracy couldn’t exactly stop them. For almost three days, I had no idea where you were. None. Do you have any idea how terrified I was?”

  From the picture everyone in Ohio painted of Nancy, that shocked Scott. But the agony he heard in his mother’s voice told him it was the truth.

  “I called Dale and Nancy nonstop, but no one answered. I thought she gave you to Dale and he skipped town. I called the cops, and there wasn’t much they could do legally because Dale was your father. It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever experienced. I called my parents, and they came. Like it didn’t matter anymore that I ran away and they didn’t know where I was for four years. We had to find you.”

  “Where was I?”

  “George had a fishing cabin, and when the cops finally checked it out, there you were,” her voice rose to a somewhat hysterical pitch, “sitting on the floor playing fucking Candyland with Nancy.”

  Scott was speechless. Not only because his mother just used the F-word but the story was unbelievable.

  “So you ask me why I hate that woman, why I sent those cards back? That’s your answer. She thought she could still be your Grammy after that, she had another thing coming.”

  “Why did she take me?” he wanted to know. “What was her reasoning?”

  “Some garbage about you being with family, not a stranger,” Mom said irritably. “She told the cops she didn’t know I was out of the hospital and she was just babysitting for us. And the fishing cabin didn’t have a phone. That it was all just a big misunderstanding.”

  Once more, he didn’t know what to say. He remembered a fishing cabin vaguely, but he hadn’t remembered being kept from Mom. What if Nancy had been telling the truth? But it seemed a little cruel not to see if Mom was out of the hospital, to check in and let her know Scott was okay. And why had his grandparents taken him to a cabin instead of their house? That seemed fishy.

  “This is all a little hard to absorb, Mom.”

  “Well, it’s the truth. I went home with Grandma and Grandpa, which I should’ve done in the first place. I learned my lesson the hard way. Nothing was more important than you. Not my pride, not a man, nothing.”

  She spoke with such conviction, Scott believed her—even if she still dated losers.

  They were quiet for a while, and Scott eyed the letters littering the bed.

  This was all so much information, he didn’t even know how to process it. After the screaming match and Mom’s story, he felt utterly exhausted. “Look, I probably would’ve hated her too, but from what Phin has told me—”

  “Who’s that?”

  “My neighbor, Phineas,” he tried not to spit out. “Nancy’s best friend. He told me she lived with a lot of regrets. I bet this is all part of that. Maybe that’s why she left me the house.”

  Mom scoffed. “To appease her guilty conscience.”

  “And what’s wrong with that? Haven’t you ever heard of a deathbed confession?” Scott demanded, feeling oddly defensive of a woman who’d terrified his mother in some obscene domestic squabble. But this new knowledge juxtaposed with the idea of a woman Phin knew and loved, the woman Scott thought he was getting to know, left him off-kilter, unsure.

  “So you’re taking her side?”

  “I don’t know what to think, Mom. It was pretty crappy not to tell me that she kidnapped me before I got here. Everyone in Gilead loved her, and I just don’t know what to think, how to feel. And now I’m sitting here all by myself, crying and opening birthday and Christmas cards from her. Cards that you kept from me.”

  Dammit, he was crying again.

  “Honey,” Mom started. Then she let out a trembling sound. “I’m sorry you have this Phin character telling you Nancy was a good woman. Maybe she became a good woman, but a good woman doesn’t just take another woman’s baby. It doesn’t work that way. But you’re right. I should’ve told you. But when she stopped sending the cards, I just figured that was the end of it.”

  “And you would never get caught.”

  “Oh, you’re real funny,” she snapped. “I’m not apologizing for keeping them from you. I gave you a good life. Look at what Davis’s parents did to him. I may not be the best mom, but I did the best I could. You were never hungry, you never had dirty clothes, and I’m still paying for your college. I gave you everything you ever wanted. I kept you safe, and I never even cared that you were gay.”

  “Did you know before I left you that letter?” he suddenly needed to know.

  “Yes, I knew when you were four years old and obsessed with The Little Mermaid. When we played, you insisted on being Ariel because you wanted to marry Prince Eric.”

  He let out a chuckle. “I forgot about that.”

  “Yeah, Dale threw away your Ariel doll and the movie, did you forget about that?”

  “No.” The memory slammed into him, painfully vivid. Scott searching for his doll, and Dale replacing it with a Tonka truck. Scott hadn’t wanted the truck. He wanted Ariel.

  Until Dale got out his belt.

  Scott learned very quickly to like the truck because Daddy wanted him to like it. He just wanted his father to be happy, to not hate him. To not hit him…. Dammit, that’s when it started.

  He squeezed the bridge of his nose. “No, I remember that, Mom.”

  “It’s how I got brave enough to finally press charges against him. He was on you already, but I couldn’t imagine how terrible it would get if you really were gay.”

  “Thank you,” he said around a lump in his throat.

  “I tried to be a good mom.”

  “I never said you were a bad mom,” Scott cried. “Thank you for getting me away from Dale, Mom. Seriously, thanks. You were always there for me. I love you.”

  “I love you too, Scotty.”

  “But just because I love you doesn’t mean I’m not mad at you for keeping all of this from me. This is some serious shit, ya know?”

  “I made a mistake not telling you about your past, but it wasn’t nearly as awful as what Nancy did to me. All we can do is move forward from this point. Support each other,” she said. “I need you to be here for me too. And by being here for me, that means I need you to be supportive about Joe.”

  He made a blustering sound at her selfish switch in topics. “I’ll always be here for you, but I am done supporting you when you have lousy boyfriends.”

  “That is not being supportive.”

  “Mom,” Scott insisted. “You and I have shit taste in men. You know it. I know it. I’m done. I’m done trying to please the Dales and the Brents and the Joes who don’t treat me right. I’m not letting men control me. You should do the same.”

  “Joe doesn’t control me.”

  Scott crossed his arms. “Really? Are you making cookies for him with that eleven-dollar flour he didn’t want you to buy?”

  “You were completely out of line—”

  “No! Joe was out of line for telling you that you couldn’t have something you wanted. Maybe I shouldn’t have yelled, but I’m sick of him bulldozing over you.”

  “Hey, I never criticized Brent, and he didn’t treat you very good either.”

  “Maybe you should’ve criticized him. He was a big controlling creep just like Joe. Do you know why I finally ended it with him?”

  “Because you go
t sick of him cheating on you?”

  Scott flinched. “How did you know?”

  Mom sighed. “I’ve been cheated on enough. I recognize the signs.”

  “So why didn’t you tell me?” His voice broke.

  She sighed heavily, and he heard sniffing. “Baby, I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. Heck, I don’t know why I stay with men that treat me bad either. I just didn’t want you to be mad at me.”

  “Don’t you see how seriously fucked-up our behavior is with men? You tell me all this shit about Dale, but you’re still with a controlling jerk. Well, I’m done. I don’t wanna keep letting men use me. And I don’t want you to either.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Was I the only person yesterday who watched you put back that stupid flour because your boyfriend without a job told you it was too expensive?”

  Mom sniffed a few times. “Honey, I know you’re jealous of Joe. And I understand—”

  “I am not jealous of him! That’s what he thinks because he’s jealous. You didn’t see the nasty look on his face when you were giving me and Davis Mama Love in the kitchen. He’s the one with the problem, not me!”

  “Fine, you’re not jealous.” There was just enough dismissal in her voice that pissed Scott off. “I know the two of you don’t like each other, and I don’t know how to fix it. But I love Joe, and he’s good to me. He would never cheat on me.”

  Scott bit the inside of his cheek before he said, And faithfulness is the only prerequisite for dating someone these days? “I’ll try to be nice, but I can’t make any promises.”

  Mom said something muffled, and he realized she was talking to Joe. Then, “Look, honey, I gotta go. Davis is here because he forgot his prescriptions when we dropped him off.”

  “Again?”

  “Why are you surprised?” Mom was the one who took care of Davis when he didn’t take care of himself or when yet another medicine stopped working and his viral load skyrocketed. His disease had ruled her life for the better part of a decade, even switching her major from dental hygiene to nursing. Sometimes Scott wondered if Davis was really that forgetful, or it was just his excuse to stay close to Mom. Then again, Mom liked to be needed.