Page 56

Yes, we’re on! Meet you there at 5?

There being the new local brewpub we both want to try. He texts back a thumbs-up.

There’s a text from Merry too.

Emailed you some photos from the memorial, FYI

We had Dad’s memorial service at the golf club last month, his “One-in-a-Million Celebration of Life,” as we called it.

Merry wanted to wait for me to be “in a good place” before doing the service, and I appreciated that.

I told her I felt bad for delaying her closure, and she said, “Oh, Nicole, how could I ever have closure ?” And I know what she means now that the memorial service has come and gone.

There was no closure. The event was nice, a type of container we attempted to construct to hold the experience of Dad’s death.

But we both know it will never be fully contained.

It will run like a river through the rest of our lives.

It still shocks me that he’s gone. I’ll think of something I want to tell him and then remember, Holy shit, my dad is dead. The other day, Merry texted me from his phone, and when I saw his name pop up, I thought for a brief second that he was still alive.

Hi. It occurred to me to look at what your dad had in the Notes app of his phone. Thought you might want to see too. Here it is

Then she pasted random notes he’d made—a reminder for his next oil change, a list of restaurants with good coupon deals, golf scores for the past three years, a list of Christmas-gift ideas.

Next to my name for the Christmas-gift list, he had “bonsai tree,” and I have no idea why, but I do know I will buy myself a bonsai tree.

When I log on to my work computer, Jill messages me to say hi.

It’s been good to be in touch with her again.

As part of my mission to have friends, I plan a lunch date with Jill once a month.

Last month, she told me she’s pregnant, after all these years touting the benefits of her child-free lifestyle.

“We had a profound change of heart,” she said by means of explanation, and I tried to maintain a neutral expression on my face though I was laughing like a mischievous teenager inside.

I have evolved in some ways but not others.

I wanted to tell her that she was in for a profound change of life , but I knew nothing I could say would adequately prepare her.

The adjustment will be alarming, and I’ll be there for her as she, like all mothers, undertakes the yearslong process of coming to terms with just how alarming it is.

Jill: Michelle Kwan is on a rampage today

We love gossiping about Michelle Kwan.

Already? It’s not even 9

Jill: She’s been emailing since 6

Oh god

Jill doesn’t know about Elijah, but she knows I went to a “recovery center” to get help with “stress.” She wasn’t surprised. Her exact words: “You were seeming a little unhinged.” She says I seem less unhinged now. Maybe one day she’ll get the full story, but that day will not be anytime soon.

Jill: So ... give any more thought to sending the email?

Ah yes, the email.

In explaining my “stress,” I told Jill about the shock of my mother’s existence. And yesterday, I confessed to her, after first confessing to Crystal, that I’ve been considering reaching out to her.

I googled “Rose Fournier” a couple of weeks ago, and there she was, alive and well on the internet.

I’d googled her in years past, when I thought she was dead and was just curious if the World Wide Web contained any information about her, but I’d always typed “Rose Larson” and gotten no helpful results.

I didn’t know she’d kept her maiden name until I read the now-infamous journal.

Crystal condoned the googling. She’d never believed me when I claimed I didn’t care to know anything about my mother.

“Your curiosity is natural,” she said. “There is healing to be had there.”

According to the internet, Rose Fournier recently retired from teaching feminist theory (surprise, surprise) at Cornell.

The blurb about her retirement said she was moving back to California to “enjoy some much-needed sunshine.” There was a photo of her.

It looked like me, just with one of those app aging filters applied.

I remember what my dad used to say—“spitting image.”

The retirement announcement included a link to her website, which featured various publications of hers, along with video clips of her lecturing.

Her voice is deeper than mine, more authoritative.

We share so many mannerisms—head tilts, hand gestures.

In one of the clips, she’s speaking from a stage, and she paces the length of it, her stride so similar to my own.

I watched that clip over and over and didn’t realize until the fourth viewing that my hands were shaking.

I think of maternal ambivalence, of how my mother felt it, like so many others.

But unlike so many others, she decided the scales tipped toward the side of abandoning her role completely.

I wonder if she’s had regrets, if she ever wanted to contact me.

Or when she left, perhaps the ambivalence vanished as she embraced the life she truly wanted.

When it comes to liberation from oppression (and I do believe my mother felt oppressed), there are those classic words of advice: don’t look back.

Perhaps my mother heeded that advice, steadfastly.

I’ve been in touch with Amber from Come . I thought she would have regrets. I thought she would look back. But no. Exactly as she planned, she got her own apartment and rarely sees her boys. She visits with them for a handful of hours a couple of weekends a month, and that’s it.

“Not every woman is cut out for motherhood,” she said to me, with a confidence and conviction in her voice that I hadn’t heard at Come .

“We’re told we are, that it’s part of our DNA, but that’s just not true.

And we need to talk about this before women sign on for something they’re told will fulfill them.

We do all women a disservice by silencing women like me. ”

“Women like you are the threat, though,” I said. “If more women embraced your thinking, if more women opted out, the human race would be in trouble.”

She laughed. “The human race is in trouble as it is.”

When I asked her if she’s happy, she said she’s happier than ever, that she finally feels like herself again. In my efforts to not judge her, I have thought over and over again of my mother. In efforts to forgive my mother, I have thought over and over of Amber.

Me: Ugh. I started to type it out and ... I just don’t know

Jill, like Crystal, says she doesn’t have an opinion on whether I should or should not contact my mother. “Only you know,” they both said. They have more trust in my intuition than I do.

Jill: If you’re not sure, wait. You’ll know

Will I? I don’t know. But thank you

Jill: Sorry, gotta go. Kwan is calling about the headline options I provided for this stupid brochure

Godspeed

This is the short, pitiful draft in progress:

Dear Rose,

This is your daughter, Nicole. My father died and I found the journal you kept all those years ago ...

I don’t know what to write after this.

Would you like to talk on the phone sometime?

Do you want to meet over Zoom?

Where in California are you? Should we do lunch?

Do I even want contact with her? She has never wanted contact with me all these years.

Am I after something else? If I’m honest, perhaps I just want her to know I know.

You couldn’t hide forever! Perhaps I’m hoping that will torment her.

Perhaps I long for an apology. Perhaps I long for her remorse, if just to prove to myself that staying in the trenches of motherhood, despite all temptation to go AWOL, is worth it.

Perhaps I long for this more than I long for an actual relationship.

Perhaps when Crystal said, “There is healing to be had there,” she wasn’t implying healing via reaching out to my mother, but healing via reaching within myself.

It’s a busy workday. I stop only to make myself a sandwich and enjoy the silence of my home. It was uncomfortable at first, the silence. After all, what mother ever gets quiet time alone in her own home? I’m ashamed of my needs at times, embarrassed by my privilege.

Before I know it, it’s four o’clock, and I hear Kyle open the front door, the girls calling, “Mommy!” Kyle says, “Give her a few minutes to wrap up work, okay?” but they do not listen.

Their feet are loud and fast on the wood floor, and then they are standing before me.

I feel the ambivalence in my body—the joy of seeing their little faces, the annoyance at an earlier-than-expected end to my workday.

I am learning to carry both. There is room for both.

Grace is holding out a picture she drew at school—two stick figures that have only heads, a line for their bodies, and feet.

No arms. She says one is me and one is her.

Liv is shouting over her that she did not have an accident all day.

I transform my face into one displaying enthusiastic joy and watch their faces do the same in response.

We are, the three of us, wide eyed and ecstatic.

“Mommy done?” Liv asks, looking at my open laptop.

“Almost,” I say as I stand and pick her up. She wraps her legs around my middle.

“I want to koala too,” Grace says. We have recently made koala into a verb.

I put down Liv and lift Grace. She is heavier, and my back aches, but I know someday soon they will be too big for me to hold, and I’ll feel an ache of a different kind. I have to wonder how much of suffering is rooted in shortsightedness. These moments with them are fleeting, so fleeting.

“Girls! Let Mom finish!” Kyle shouts, looking out for my sanity in ways he never did before. “Come here!”

I put Grace down, and she says, “Mom, I can do a pirouette!”

She shows me, and Liv copies her, and they turn in circles toward the door as Kyle yells for them again.

“Okay, tiny dancers, go with Daddy. I’ll be right out.”

They obey. It is only when they are gone that I realize I’ve been holding my breath. I am still working on relaxing into the ambivalence.

I exhale as I sit and turn back to my laptop, stare at the draft of my email to Rose Fournier. I move my cursor over the words, highlight them.

I inhale.

I hit Delete.

The girls erupt into laughter, and I rise from my chair, compelled to discover the origin of such glee.

I close my laptop.

I do not need to write to my mother. Not today, anyway.

Today, I do not have answers or resolutions, but I do not require any. Today, I am sure of nothing except that I have everything I need.