Page 120 of Dirty Like Dylan

“And where are you off to next?”

“Thailand, I think. I’ve been wanting to go back there for a while and stay longer than the first time. I have some friends there now, a couple I met while I was in France. I can stay with them a while, and travel around, too.”

“That sounds lovely.”

“Yeah. Will you worry about me this time?” The last time I went to Thailand, she’d read some news article about a tourist being kidnapped there, and worried about me. She told me I was crazy for going there. But that was a long time ago, one of my first trips to a foreign country.

“Amber, dear.” She squeezed my hand again. “I’d worry about you if you stopped doing these crazy things.”

That made me smile. Because sometimes my mom just understood me, even when I couldn’t understand her.

“I met someone,” I told her, before I could second-guess it.

“Oh?”

It was always dicey to bring up the subject of men with my mom. But I decided to take the risk, given that I was here to try to foster more of a bond with her. Couldn’t exactly do that if I locked her out of my personal life, right?

I decided not to mention that I’d met two someones, though.

“I’ve been thinking, about what it would be like to be with someone longterm. Be in love. Maybe get married someday.” She was the only person I’d said that to, and somehow, I felt safe saying it here, to her. “I haven’t thought about that a lot since, you know, Johnny. But… I think maybe it’s important to me. To get married one day. Have a husband. Be a wife.” She listened as she poured us both a tea, a slightly dreamy look on her face. “I don’t think I really knew it was so important to me until I started feeling something for someone again. I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Maybe even have kids someday… Does that surprise you?”

“Amber,” she said, her gentle gaze holding mine. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the most important thing.”

Wow.

I’d never talked about this with my mom. I’d never talked about wanting to get married or have kids. I’d only ever talked to her about my travel plans and my photography dreams. I’d always been scared to talk about marriage with her.

But she was taking it better than I’d expected.

“It was the most important thing to me,” she added. “The day I married your father was the happiest day of my life…”

And then off she went.

She started spouting off the same old crap about my dad that she’d been saying for the past twenty years. About their life together. About their undying love. Talking about him like they were still together, when he’d left her two decades ago and never looked back.

He’d remarried, for Christ’s sake. Fourteen years ago.

It was so fucking sad. Listening to her go on and on…

And it made me angry.

I barely got another word in, but what would I say? Reminding her he was gone never helped. Telling her he wasn’t coming back could only do damage, sending her into one of her downward tailspins, where she stopped answering her phone and lost her job and gained more weight.

I managed to excuse myself about half an hour later, leaving her house just in time for the hot tears to spill down my face. Tears of anger and frustration and disillusionment.

I just did not know how to have a relationship with my mom when it was so tainted with her fucking delusions.

I walked up the road and sat on the curb. I texted Ashley that I was ready to leave. It was earlier than he probably expected. I didn’t know how long he’d be, so I just sat here. At least I stopped crying as the anger overtook the sadness. And then the surrender kicked in. I gave in.

I gave up.

I tried to feel sympathy for my mom, but I just couldn’t. Not really. Not a lot. Maybe I’d burned it all out in the first ten years or so after Dad left, as I grew up.

We’d taken her to the doctors again and again, and they’d all said the same thing. She wasn’t medically depressed. She didn’t actually believe Dad was still married to her, or that he’d just gone out for groceries or something and was coming right back. She wanted to live in her memories. She chose to shut us out, to shut everything out, when she heard what she didn’t want to hear. She still ate, still bathed, still went about the motions of a normal-ish life.

She’d been through counseling, but without any diagnosis of depression or anything else, she refused to take any kind of medication, and I wouldn’t exactly want her to.

When I’d suggested pot, to maybe mellow her out and possibly open her mind to see things differently, she’d flatly refused.

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