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Mama moved closer, put her hands in his hair. He buried his face in her stomach, started to shake and cry. “I’m so sorry. I just love you so much … it makes me crazy. Crazier.” He looked up, crying harder now. “I didn’t mean it.” “I know, baby.” Mama knelt down, took him in her arms, rocked him back and forth.
This isn’t PTSD. It’s textbook domestic violence and they’ve been in this cycle for years. The tears, the apology are his way of staying in control.
Leni felt the sudden fragility of her world, of the world itself. She barely remembered Before. Maybe she didn’t remember it at all, in fact. Maybe the images she did have—Dad lifting her onto his shoulders, pulling petals from a daisy, holding a buttercup to her chin, reading her a bedtime story—maybe these were all images she’d taken from pictures and imbued with an imagined life.
Mama wanted Leni to look away as easily as Mama did. To forgive even when the apology tendered was as thin as fishing line and as breakable as a promise to do better.
Teaching her daughter how to endure pain without challenging it.
She loved her parents, both of them. She had known, without being told, that the darkness in her dad was bad and the things he did were wrong, but she believed her mama’s explanations, too: that Dad was sick and sorry, that if they loved him enough, he would get better and it would be like Before. Only Leni didn’t believe that anymore.
Leni heard the words behind the words, the please let’s pretend that formed a dangerous pact. Mama wanted to induct Leni into some terrible, silent club to which Leni didn’t want to belong. She didn’t want to pretend what had happened was normal,
“You’re judging me.” It was true, Leni realized with surprise. She was judging her mother, and it felt disloyal. Cruel, even. She knew that Dad was sick.
“It’s more complicated than you think. He doesn’t mean to do it. Honestly. And sometimes I provoke him. I don’t mean to. I know better.”
“But we’re in Alaska now, Mama. It’s not like we can get help if we need it. Maybe we should leave.”
“Besides, we don’t have anywhere to go and no money to go with. Even if I wanted to run home with my tail between my legs, how would I do it? We’d have to leave everything we own here and hike to town and get a ride to Homer and then have my parents wire us enough money for a plane ticket.”
She’s thought about it. This is a plan she’s contemplated.
“He would never take me back. Not if I did that. It would break his heart. And no one will ever love me like he does. He’s trying so hard. You saw how sorry he was.” There it was: the sad truth. Mama loved him too much to leave him.
Maybe what she’d always said was true, maybe she couldn’t breathe without him, maybe she’d wilt like a flower without the sunshine of his adoration.
Leni saw his love for her, shining through his regret. It eroded her anger, made her question everything again. He didn’t want to hurt Mama, didn’t mean to. He was sick …
“Really?” “I’ll try harder, Red. I promise. I love your mom like…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “She’s my heroin. You know that.”
to compare your love to a drug that could hollow your body and fry your brain and leave you for dead. But they said it to each other all the time.
She wanted his regret, his shame and sadness to be enough for her. She wanted to follow her mother’s lead as she always had. She wanted to believe that last night had been some terrible anomaly and that it wouldn’t happen again.
Neither one of them needed platitudes right now. What they needed was help.
She and Mama moved cautiously, tried never to aggravate him.
Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now.
