“That’s your excuse?” I ask. “Your father sold you into marriage with Daddy?”
She goes on speaking without acknowledging my words, sucking angrily at her cigarette every few sentences. “They just want to breed you like an animal and make more pretty playthings for them to use. And then once you’ve made them an heir and another piece of meat to auction off, they have no interest in you. Your usefulness is gone by twenty-five, and they don’t need you anymore. They go find a new little whore and leave you at home to raise their kids so they can use them to their advantage all over again.”
“Don’t you dare speak badly about my father to me,” I say, gripping the edge of the table so hard I think it’ll crumble. “He’s the only person in my life who did the right thing.”
She snorts smoke out both nostrils. “Your father’s a monster, Eliza,” she says, and I remember that she’s the first person I ever heard call him that. “You really think that other family killed your brother? No, sweetheart. It was your own beloved father. He found out what Johnny’d been doin’ to you, and he killed his own son.”
“Whathe’dbeen doing?” I swallow hard, staring at her through the haze of smoke. I don’t want to believe her. If my father found out but thought it was my brother hurting me, not Mom, he might have killed him.
But she’s lying. I know she is. Dad would have gotten me help. And my brother’s death was too hard on Mom, and that’s why she left.
Or maybe she left because she was afraid Jonathan had talked before he died.
“That’s why you left, wasn’t it?” I ask. “Not to protect me, not because you loved me but couldn’t stop and you wanted to keep me from what you were doing to me. You weren’t even conflicted about it, were you, Mom? Are you even sorry?”
“You look like you’re doing fine,” she says. “Come in here looking all pretty. Expensive clothes. That handbag probably cost a year’s rent in a place like this. Am I supposed to feel sorry for you, Eliza? Would you rather I’d taken you with me?”
“No,” I say, horrified at the thought. I don’t even want to imagine what I’d have become by now if she’d taken me from Dad. But he’d never have let her. He might have let her leave him, not gone after her like most mafia men would. But if she’d taken his daughter? He would have hunted her to the ends of the earth. I may not be a son or an heir, but he’s never once expressed even a word of disappointment, never treated me asless than.
“Then I did a good thing by you,” she says. “You’ll see soon enough. Marriage takes the best years of your life and leaves you with nothing. You’re too young to believe me, but you will.”
“You’re wrong,” I say quietly. My voice is firm, though.
Her words played on a loop in my childhood, cursing marriage and men and my father. I didn’t even realize how much of my objection to marriage came from her until now. She’s the one who told me over and over, when I was way too young to understand, that marriage was a trap, a curse, a pit of quicksand to be avoided at all costs. As she splattered my little plastic plate with dinner, she cursed my father for not being home, cursed her life, her marriage, and the institution in general. Somewhere along the way, my impressionable little brain internalized it.
Maybe marriage was a trap for her. But that doesn’t mean it has to be for me. For me, it was the net that caught me on the way down when I was falling off the tightrope she put me on all those years ago. It was a support system even when I didn’t realize I needed it, when I didn’t even notice it was there—thathewas there, waiting to pick me up if I fell, willing to do anything to get me back and show how sorry he is. Because he knows it’s never over, he’ll work harder than anyone else ever would. That’s what he was doing all those days before I left, trying to work things out. And ever since he came back into my life, he’s been proving himself to me.
I was the one who refused to try from the very first day. Being forced into this with him doesn’t make him the enemy, though. He didn’t pick me, either. And he’s no older than me. Neither of us had a clue what we were doing. But being bound together forever means learning to think of someone else’s needs, to stop being selfish and running from reality, because this reality never ends. It means growing together, being there for each other.
Like he was for me last night.
My husband didn’t ruin me. Even after I told him what she did to me, he didn’t hate me. He wasn’t angry or disgusted. He just wanted to protect me, and I wouldn’t let him. If our marriage was a trap, it’s because I made it one.
He threw me a lifeline even when I refused to take it. He tried to pull me from the quicksand she pushed me into when I was too young to understand what it was, too young to take a step and get out. Her toxic beliefs are hardwired into my brain, screwing me up for life. That’s the curse. Not marriage. She’s the one who taught me to cut the lifeline even if it meant I would drown. To her, that was better than being stuck with someone she didn’t choose. And when she had her freedom, look what she chose.
“You buy into it, don’t you?” she muses, watching me. “All your father’s lies. The Life. I’m too smart for that. I wasn’t going to be part of it. They’re all sick bastards, every one of them. My father, your father—they’re all the same. I wanted my own life.”
“And it looks like you fucking found it.”
We stare at each other across the table for a long minute. Mom gets up to get an ashtray and crushes out her cigarette before sitting back down.
“Your father’s the monster,” she says again, a familiar refrain from my childhood. “All of them are. The way they treat us. We’re nothing but a conquest, some dumb thing to stroke their ego and their dick. You think you won’t wind up that way, but mark my words, as soon as you’ve served your purpose, that new husband of yours will trade you in for a younger model. See, once you have kids, you’re not so tight anymore, and he’ll want a young one again so he can show his prowess, make him feel powerful when she worships him, make the other men admire how many sluts he can get to spread their legs for him.”
“Not every man is like that,” I say. “And not every woman does what you did when a guy cheats on her. I’m sorry Dad was unfaithful, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that you hurt me.”
“Don’t judge me,” she snaps. “Once you see what you’d do to get his attention, how you lose your mind sitting home night after night, knowing you have nothing to look forward to for the rest of your life, living on nothing but the fuel of your own rage while some teenage whore at one of his clubs gets his affection, the gifts, everything you once got. You’ll convince yourself that maybe it’s because he didn’t get to pick you, that it was all chosen for him. That if he’d gotten to choose for himself, he would have chosen her. Everyone deserves love, after all.”
I shiver, remembering King’s words.
Mom laughs. “You already know it’s true. You’ll be a fool once or twice, but pretty soon you’ll see the truth. He doesn’t love the first one or the fortieth. He just keeps shoving his dick into more of them in desperation to fill the empty cavern inside him where his heart should be. He can’t love those girls any more than he loves you. He can’t love anyone. That’s what the mafia does to you. It makes men monsters, and women into empty shells.”
“Stop,” I say, slamming my palm down on the table. I let her control me for too long, not just my body, but my mind. She told me lies, and she knew I wanted to trust her so badly I’d believe them. No more.
Mom jumps, licking her lips nervously and glancing around like she forgot where she was, who she was talking to. She reaches for her cigarettes and pulls out another one.
“I’m sorry if Dad cheated on you, though I’m guessing it had at least something to do with you not wanting anything to do with him. He shouldn’t have done that. But I didn’t come here to hear about what a monster Dad is. I know what people say. He likes women. He’s killed people. He’s far from perfect. But he doesn’t abuse children. Nothing excuses that.”
She smirks and lets out a stream of smoke. “How old’s his currentgoomah?”