My mother was in love, but she wasn't completely stupid, and she knew in her heart he wasn't telling her the truth. So, armed with her instinct, she got in the car and drove by his house, and sure enough his ex-girlfriend's car was sitting in the driveway.
From there, her writing turned slightly frantic. I could always tell her moods by how the passages were written. When she was writing and she was upset, her writing was messy, sometimes written so furiously that she missed the bottom line of the paper altogether. She tried to reason that Sarah –the ex-girlfriend— was probably only there to give him his Christmas present because she wasn’t letting go gracefully. In fact, she was holding on for dear life, and since she had been with him for four years before they broke up she felt it was her right.
The amount of emotional torture that man put my mother through would be enough to make me hate him even if nothing else had ever happened.
Reading her journals, I've seen that he caused her more pain than anything, more tears than she would have ever permitted herself to cry if she wouldn't have been blinded by him. Even though she tried to ignore it, Sarah had never completely gone away, although prior to the Christmas catastrophe, the way my mother wrote it (I'll never know if it was true or just wishful thinking) Mike did seem to finally be making efforts to push Sarah out of the picture and move my mother into it.
On Christmas Eve he worked but she didn't, so she took a stocking filled with his favorite candies up to him, and when she came home she was terribly upset because she wrote that she could feel the difference in the way he hugged her and he wouldn't look her directly in the eye.
It was two days after Christmas that a mutual friend of theirs let on that she thought my mom should just find someone new to love. Since the friend seemed to know something she didn’t, my mom pushed and pried until her friend finally blurted, "Sarah's pregnant!"
There is a little bit of writing from that night, but it's mostly smeared with tears and written so frantically that it’s more or less illegible. But I don't have to be able to read it to feel the pain she felt. She wrote so hard and so desperately that there were holes where the pen pushed through the paper.
The next day she decided she had to go to Mike, let him tell her himself and ask him the question she feared the most: Were they back together?
I know from the entries she wrote prior to visiting Mike that my mother had every intention of backing off if they were back together, that although it would hurt her, she would do it. But something happened when she went to see him that night.
When she got home there were pages filled with rambling passages about how he had "broken her heart and stolen it at the same time," and she claimed that it was in those moments with him that she realized she couldn't walk away. She had even come right out and asked him, after he verified that he "guessed" they were back together, as if there was nothing he could do about it. She had asked him if he loved Sarah or if he was only with her now because of the baby. He assured her he was only with her because of the baby.
My mother saw hope here, thinking if he was only with her because of some feeling of duty, time would pass, the sense of shock would pass, and someday he would be hers again. She asked him that night if he wanted her to give up on him, and he had looked up at her and told her no, he didn't. So she held his hand, feeling empowered, and she promised not to let go, not to give up. Apparently they shared many tender moments that night, and she said she could feel how much he cared about her in the way he held her close, the way he curved his face into her neck and pressed his lips against her skin.
The months that followed would be pure hell for my mother, her only small moments of relief being a stolen kiss in the break room or a brief touching of hands as they passed each other.
Since Mike was technically back with Sarah, no one was allowed to know they still had feelings for each other, and I believe this is another one of the things that taints my mother's memory. Once he had her heart, it was hard for her to cover it up, while apparently he was much better at it. (I suspect that he was playing my mother to a certain degree, although she would have never been able to see that.) Other people could still see her adoration in the way she looked at him, while he would only show her affection or attention of any kind when they were alone.
Sarah would continue to pick him up and bring him to work, and my mother said that it hurt just to see her car. Even though she disdained Sarah for using pregnancy to hold on to a man who no longer wanted her, she couldn't help envying that at least Sarah could kiss him in front of people if she wanted to, and she wouldn't have to sneak a moment in the break room and risk getting caught.
The secrecy and the torment took a toll on my mother, and it was a mere month later when she journaled in very small handwriting –there are hardly any of her entries with this writing, but it means she's worse than upset, she's emotionally devastated—that she knew she couldn't take it anymore. She had tried to give him time, tried to let him realize on his own that he didn't have to be with Sarah, that he could s
till be there for his child, but she had to know that was what he wanted. She needed him to see it soon, because she didn't know how much more her heart could take.
In one of her entries she pleaded,"Can't he see that he's killing me? With every mention of her name with his, every word I hear about them at work, every time I see her drop him off ...it's killing me."
She wrote him a letter, pouring her heart and soul out to him, and she gave it to him before she left work one day.
Since she didn't work with him, she didn't get an immediate response, and finally he came in one Saturday night with his best friend, just to visit her like he used to before he and Sarah got back together. She tried to wait for him to say something to her, but he didn't.
Finally, she pulled him off to the side and asked him about it. "So, you read my letter?" she asked him.
"Letter?" he laughed a little. "Hon, it was a novel."
Her heart soared that he had called her "hon" again, but she tried not to look too eager. "Well, what did you think?"
She didn't write exactly what his response was, but I believe it was something along the lines of, "I don't know," because she was in disbelief. How could he not know, she wondered? She had poured her heart and soul into that letter, told him she was at the very end of her rope, that she didn't want to let go, but it was killing her to hold on the way she was, and he couldn't even give her a proper response?
In the midst of her lecture, however, he cut her off, saying, "I don't know, hon. Me and Sarah broke up today, she moved out... I don't know the specifics yet."
My mother wrote that he looked so happy to be sharing that news, and she was so elated that she nearly burst into tears.
Despite her self-control, he must have seen it in her face, because he adopted a playful look and shook his head, saying, "And what's this? I don't even get my damn hug?"
Of course she hugged him with all of her heart and didn't let go until she knew she could contain herself.
But her heart had wings that night.
After all the pain, all the tears, all the difficulty, all the patience, the man she loved was finally going to be all hers.
She was so happy that week that reading those entries in her journal makes my heart ache for her, even after all these years. Her heart was so full of hope, her dreams just a breath away from becoming reality, and she loved him so much. She went shopping for a new outfit that week, and decided to buy a matching bra and panties set, too, because even though she wouldn't admit it plainly, she was planning to finally make herself his in the only way that she wasn't already.