She hesitated. “Well...” But then, what did she have to lose? At least this would distract her from dwelling on what had happened. “My mom...after her divorce, she just lost it. She used to have it all together, but when my dad left her for another woman, it just killed her. And after that, she went into one relationship after another, trying to recapture what she used to – what she thought she had with my dad. Everyone thought she had turned into a slut, and it doesn’t help that her current boyfriend’s always younger than the last.”
Daria had to pause afterwards, struggling not to cry again, but for a different reason this time. She remembered how her mother had been so clearly, like it was just yesterday that Magnolia was driving her to school, her packed lunch something her mother had prepared in between answering her agency’s emails. She remembered how Magnolia would make sure to call Daria every day after school when she was working out of the country. It didn’t matter if she was between shoots, didn’t matter if she had to wake up in the middle of the night despite having a meeting at seven in the morning. Those five o’clock calls always came on the dot, and there was never a time Magnolia had sounded anything less than upbeat when asking Daria and her dad about their days.
Those times were so vivid for her, Daria thought painfully. So why couldn’t the other people in their lives remember the same things?
“All her friends turned their backs on her,” she whispered. “They think she’s a joke, and they keep saying mean stuff about her. No one seemed to remember how my mom used to be – how she still is the nicest person you could ever meet, always ready to help, with never a bad word to say about anyone.”
When she paused again, the cab driver said gravely, “I’m sorry about your mom. It seems she’s made some pretty bad choices in life, but obviously that’s no reason for people to treat her that way.” He adjusted his rearview mirror to give her a closer look. “But...what does that have to do with you?”
Her lips twisted. “That’s the thing.” She laughed, and the sound was painful to hear, even to her own ears. “I ended up doing the same thing, too. I didn’t plan to at the start, but the more I see my mom hurting, the more I wanted to fall in love – I just wanted to find the right guy so I could tell the world...” She sucked her breath in. “It’s okay to get it wrong. It’s okay to make more than one mistake when you fall in love.” She swallowed hard. “Silly, right?”
The cab driver didn’t answer right away. And as more seconds passed, Daria began to feel silly, sharing her life story with a total stranger. He must think she was crazy, she thought. That, or he didn’t know what to say without revealing how much he pitied her, just like how the rest of the world seemed to think she and Magnolia were pathetic.
“Not silly at all,” the cab driver finally answered. “You might just be trying too hard to do everything on your own.” His gruff voice startled her into looking up, and she found a self-deprecating smile on the old man’s face. “I had a good life, once. Nice job, nice house, nice car. Everything was perfect until the day when my son told me he had AIDS. I didn’t even know he was gay, and before I could process everything, the illness took him from us in a matter of months. Everyone who came to the funeral, I saw it in their eyes – they thought my son had been silly, too. They couldn’t say it to my face, but I wasn’t dumb. They thought my son was being silly for falling in love with another man, for having unprotected sex. They blamed him for everything.”
A deep, painful sigh rumbled out of his chest. “What happened to your mother after her marriage broke up, it happened to me, too. When you lose the one thing that drives you to live, it devastates you, leaves you feeling like there’s nowhere to go, no one to turn to.”
“I got fired, my wife left me, and I didn’t care. I mostly spent the next years drinking. I only got my senses back when I woke up with a hangover next to my son’s grave, and I realized that everything I was doing was just going to make people keep thinking of my son as someone silly, stupid, and selfish, when he was...” His voice turned rough and fierce. “My son was more than what everyone said. He made a mistake, and he paid for it. But it was a mistake that didn’t cause them harm. A mistake he did out of love. Why should people make him feel ashamed of it, even in death? And even if they keep thinking that way, why the hell should I care about what they think? He was my son, I knew him best, and he was a good person. An imperfect person, but he was a good person, and I think that’s better than someone who only lives to do the right things and laugh about those who made the wrong choices.”
Ahead of them, the lights turned green, and the cab started to move again.
“Your mom, she made mistakes, but she’s not a bad person for it. As long as you know that, as long as you still love her in spite of her mistakes, then that’s all that matters. At least you still have each other.”
“The same goes for you, missy. You made mistakes, but you don’t have to be ashamed of them. You loved. It’s not the worst thing to do in the world. And if you still want to love, that’s not a bad thing either, but maybe this time, you should ask for a little help.” The driver patted the crucifix on his neck. “You can’t ever be wrong with His choice.”