He could have helped us. He didn’t have to leave everything on my mom’s shoulders, making her have to do things she hadn’t been born to do. He’d have spent some time in jail, but not forever–even support from a distance, was better than nothing. Instead, my mother had been left alone to ride out the shame of what her husband had done.
I actually believed that if he hadn’t killed himself, had been sent to jail, and she’d divorced him, she would have had a better life. The divorce would have acted like a knife to their vows, cutting all ties between them save for the one she would forever have in me. She would have remarried, been another housewife, been happy again… At least, that was what I liked to think.
The thoughts were too much, I realized. I needed to share the secrets of my past when I’d never shared them with anyone before.
Terror welled inside me, but this was Lauren. She wouldn’t lay the sins of the father upon the son. I knew that. I had to have faith in her, and her feelings for me.
Such belief didn’t ease my nerves, and I cleared my throat, hating the tears gathering there as I whispered, “Mom was one of those useless housewives, you know? I was too young to really know was going on, but she wouldn’t have been supportive of his bipolar and he wouldn’t have been able to share shit with her. I know that. I loved her, but she couldn’t do anything.” I let out a sigh. “And I know that sounds terrible, but seriously, I was balancing the checkbook when I was nine because she kept getting it wrong, and when she got her wages, I was the one who had to tell her which bank accounts to put them in. She was… I don’t know. She wasn?
??t dumb, just kind of oblivious?
We went from having gold country club memberships and her thinking of nothing other than one-upping her friends there and buying the next stupid dress, to her having to serve at restaurants where she would never have dreamed of dining, never mind working in. She was the kind of woman who needed a man, you know? God, I hate saying all this shit,” I admitted gruffly, and I tugged my hand away from hers so that I could lower down to a crouch on the ground. I rested my hand on the wet grass, feeling the cold damp chill of the fronds against my fingers.
Lauren joined me, except she didn’t crouch, she sat there cross-legged.
“You’ll get wet,” I told her.
“Like I didn’t figure that one out,” she said with a snort.
I sighed, then smiled a little at her. Turning my gaze to the tombstone, I traced the letters of his first name—Edgar. An old fashioned name for an old fashioned guy.
He’d been older than my mother. Eighteen years older. And she’d been his dolly bird wife, I guessed. The woman he had on his arm at events and business functions where other halves were expected to attend. Not for said other halves to be a part of the gathering, oh no. The wives had been there simply to look good and to make their husbands look better.
In that kind of marriage, had my father been unable to face her when it came down to admitting to her what had happened?
“I don’t think she married him for his money, per se, but she could have done. She was a lot younger than him.”
“Does it matter if she did?”
“No. I guess not,” I whispered. “I had no grandparents on his side, but on hers, I think I did. I never heard from them, and if she did, she never told me.”
“Wouldn’t she have gone to them for help?”
I shrugged. “I’d have thought so.” Biting my lip, I whispered, “I think she might have been ashamed.”
“Why?”
I cut her a look, sucked in a breath. It was now or never. A secret that was older than myself, one that I’d buried away after my mother’s death, believing that I’d never have to share it again... “H-He was behind a Ponzi scheme, Lauren. He robbed a lot of money from a lot of people.”
Her eyes widened, her lips parting in astonishment. Endless, terrifying seconds passed in silence as she processed the information I’d just given her. I knew it was a lot to take in, but I ached for her to say something. Anything, to let me know the true reaction to my words.
When said true reaction came, it wasn’t particularly informative...
“Wow.”
I gulped, wishing I could discern more from that. “Yeah,” I whispered hoarsely. “I didn’t learn that until later, of course. Just knew the grave wasn’t exactly overflowing with visitors on the day of his funeral, you know? And nobody came around like had happened with one of my friends when his mom had died. It was like ghostly silent. Then, all of a sudden, mom had to pack everything up. I couldn’t go to my school anymore. We were moving, and craziest of all? She had to get a job.” I shook my head and blew out the deepest breath my lungs were capable of—such an exhalation was like dusting out the cobwebs of my soul. “God, do you know you’re the first person I’ve admitted that to in over twenty years?”
She swallowed, and her hand came out to reach for mine. She squeezed my fingers tightly, and I could see the tears in her eyes. “Thank you.”
I huffed at that, turned my head away from her. “For what? Telling you a shitty part of my past? For telling you a secret that might make you hate me?”
“No, for telling me something that important to you. You trust me, don’t you?”
I sighed. “I’ve always trusted you, Lauren. That’s never been the issue.”
She fell silent again, but before dread could fill me, she whispered, “What has been the issue, Coop?”
I splayed my fingers in the soil, enjoying the texture against my palm and even appreciating the chill as it sank into the digits. “This man ruined my life. He destroyed my mother’s. She worked herself into an early grave. I know the feminists won’t have it; they think a woman doesn’t need a man. Doesn’t need shit from anyone with XY chromosomes, you know? But she did. She married my father with security in mind. Why else would a twenty-year old woman marry an almost forty-year old man?”