But today, we’re silent and tiptoeing around each other as we pull up in front of a large, pretty unkempt mobile home.
“Is this it?” she asks.
I nod and get out of the car. Aya follows. We walk up the long dirt road to her home, and I knock on the door. No answer.
“What if she’s not home?” Aya asks. “There’s no car in the driveway.”
“Pretty sure she can’t drive.”
She thinks about it. “Oh.”
I knock on the door and there’s still no answer. So, I do it a third time. This time I hear someone puttering around. I also hear a woman’s voice mumbling to herself, but it doesn’t sound familiar.
The door opens. And there she is.
Donna Kinney. My mother.
Only… she doesn’t look like my mother. I mean, she vaguely does. I knew she’d look different then how I remember her from the day she left. I knew she’d be older and grayer. But I wasn’t expecting this.
She looks old enough to be my grandmother.
She’s surprisingly put-together, though. She isn’t the unshowered, slovenly-clothed, foul-breathed woman I remember from childhood. She is wearing jeans and a tee shirt. Her hair is up in a bun. She looks… okay.
“Hi, Donna,” I tell her.
She winces a little at being called by her first name. But I don’t want to call her ‘mom.’
“Shawn,” she says, looking me over. “I didn’t expect you to come here.”
“I didn’t expect me to come here either,” I say, flatly.
She looks at me, and I stare back at her. I have a flash of a memory of her playing water gun tag with me in the park, running and ducking and yelling, ‘I’m gonna get you,’ at me. But there’s no way in hell she’d be able to run or duck now. Her body wouldn’t allow it.
We’ve been in a staring contest for some time now.
“I’m Aya,” she chimes in, suddenly.
Donna blinks a few times, like she’s just been pulled out of a trance.
“Right. Sorry, Donna. This is Aya,” I parrot. “My wife.”
Aya offers her hand and Donna takes it.
“Congratulations on the wedding,” she says. “I’m sorry I couldn’t…”
I wait for her to finish her sentence, but she doesn’t. Instead, she starts tearing up.
“I couldn’t let you see me like this,” she whispers.
Now she’s crying. And despite everything she’s put me through, how many times she’s failed me, I feel bad for her.
“Can we come in?” I ask.
She nods through her tears and reluctantly allows us inside.
I’m immediately taken aback by the overwhelming smell of cat. Not cat urine or anything squalor-like. Nothing unhygienic or unbearable. But still. Cat. I know Aya isn’t going to be able to last in here very long.
Her home is small and cramped, but clean.
My mother never cleaned. Not that I can remember. I remember going to school in stained clothes and not showering for days on end because no one made me. I was a kid, after all.
“Please have a seat,” Donna says. “Can I get you something to drink?”
Ah. This leads us to the big question. Is my mother sober? If so, for how long has she been?
“I have tea,” she offers. “All kinds of tea. Green, chamomile, apple cinnamon, Sleepytime. Well, it’s a little early for Sleepytime.”
“Donna?”
She keep on rambling. “I’ve got peppermint, Earl Grey, and I might even have a little pomegranate-blueberry, though I’m warning you, it doesn’t taste very nice.”
“Anything is fine,” Aya says politely.
I can’t hold back the question. “Do you have any…”
“I don’t have any alcohol in the house,” she says. “In case you were wondering.”
“I won’t lie, Donna. I was wondering.”
“Then let’s get this out of the way now,” she says. Her tone is flat, factual, but not necessarily angry. “I’m not drinking anymore.”
I don’t say anything.
“I’ve made dozens of attempts at getting sober since I… left,” she continues. “This has been the longest successful run. Three years.”
“That’s… that’s good,” I tell her.
“Congratulations, Donna,” Aya adds.
“Thank you,” she replies. “I’ve been to a whole mess of therapy. I’ve done the meetings. I moved out here to the ass end of nowhere, which is the only thing that seems to work. I’m trying, Shawn.”
My eyes dart around her home, and I fixate on random objects, trying to ground myself in this reality. Because I’m not too sure it’s real. My mother is here, an actual living being, right in front of me, and not just an idea anymore. Not just an entity that I knew existed but couldn’t really picture.
It makes it harder to say what I need to say.
Especially considering that she looks so fragile.
“Why did you…” I start, but my voice trails off.
I don’t know what my question is. Why did you leave? Why did you refuse to go to rehab with dad? Why did you wait until almost a year ago to reach out to me when you had so long?
“Why did you miss the wedding?”
Donna looks taken aback. Like, seriously, that’s the question I really wanted to ask?
She takes a minute to answer. Her voice is a little shaky. “I was…"
I wait for it. Selfish. Afraid. Being ridiculous.
“Embarrassed,” she says.
“Embarrassed?” I repeat. “Why would you be embarrassed?”
Donna’s eyes widen in that you’ve got to be kidding me expression.
“Shawn, look around you. Look at where I live,” she says, incredulously. “Now look at me. I’m in my fifties and I look like I’m in my eighties.”
I can’t argue with that, so I keep my mouth shut.
“I failed you, Shawn. And I failed your father. And now he’s married to a beautiful woman and you’ve grown up so fabulously and you all have these wonderful lives. And I’m living in a trailer with three cats and my biggest accomplishment is that I’m not dead.”
I take in a deep breath and let it out slowly, but it does nothing to calm my racing heart. I came in wanting to yell at her, but pretty much everything I wanted to say… she’s already said.
Tears well in the corners of her eyes, but I don’t reach out to comfort her. We’re not there yet.
“Addiction is a selfish disease, Shawn,” she says. “But the recovery part is selfish too. Asking for your forgiveness is selfish. So is asking you to be patient with me while I figure myself out.”
I still don’t think that anything I say to comfort her will sound genuine. I’ve been at peace with my mother’s addiction for a while now, but I don’t think that I’ve forgiven her. I’ve treated her more like she was gone on an indefinite vacation.
“Why did you call me then?” I ask.
She sighs. “Because I really do want to be in your life,” she answers. “But, like… a little bit at a time.”
I look at the floor. Then over at Aya, who smiles meekly and takes my hand.