Page 149 of Give & Take

“But that’s not really it, is it? You went from lawyer to server, and you could give two shits who thought poorly about you for it. So tell me what it really is.”

I close my eyes. I don’t want to. I really reallyreallydon’t want to. Because it’s her I need to reckon with on this.

She did this on purpose, I think. Asked me now, at my most vulnerable. I feel a flicker of anger at her for this, but it’s old and tired. It’s teenaged defiance masking hurt.

“I can’t be someone else’s regret, Mom,” I say finally.

And there it is. That final piece I couldn’t scrape out of me.

The words, once out, feel bare and lethal, like sharpened blades.

But they’re better outside. They’ve been hurting me for so long.

I wait for Mom’s pat response. Like literal pats, on my leg. Or maybe her tears. Because in pulling out the knives, I’ve brandished them at her.

But in an instant, Mom isn’t the soft, gentle mother I know. Her expression turns from one of gentleness to one of hurt.

And then anger.

Maybe it’s because I’m so tired and haven’t yet slept, but I’m slow to register what’s happening. Because by the time Mom stands up, I’m still trying to figure out what it is I said that might have hurt her.

“Lana Bloor. You didn’t just say you were someoneelse’sregret.”

I’m not proud of it, but I feel myself get defensive. “That is what I said, and?—”

“That someone else is me, you’re talking about, isn’t it? Just to be clear?”

I swallow. “Yes, Mom. It’s you. If it wasn’t for me, you would have lived an entirely different life. You could have done all those things you said you’d always dreamed of. See the world. Go to…art school.” I stand up. “Sing a song in the ruins of the Parthenon.”

She actually said that once. We’d laughed about it. But it had dug a soft finger into the hilt of that knife in my chest. An innocence broken when I was old enough to understand my mother didn’t choose me. That my father didn’t know me, or that he was even a father.

That my mother could have been so much more.

Mom, to my shock, pulls out the shirt she’s tucked into her jeans. She shows me her pale stomach, thesilvery lines I used to admire when I saw her in the bath as a young child.

“These are the marks my body made when I had you. When I carried you in my belly.” She drops her shirt and pulls up her sleeve, revealing a crescent-shaped scar on her inner arm. “This is a burn mark from when I made your first birthday cake. All on my own, with a cake mix I’d gotten at the food bank.” She points to the tiny divot in the bridge of her nose. “This is when you accidentally kicked me in the face on the swing when you were six years old.”

She’s so angry, she’s trembling.

I don’t understand. These are all the ways I scarred her.

“These are my badges ofhonor, Lana. These are the things I look at when life gets hard and I need to remember the one beautiful, perfect gift God gave me. When I struggle, when I’m far away from you, when I worry about anything in life, I touch the bridge of my nose. I rub my thumb over my arm or I hold my belly where I once held you.Youare the reason I survived, Lana. And I have told you over and over and over again how important you are to me. Howvitalyou are to my life.”

“But—”

“Yes I could have lived a different life. Maybe I could have even been happy. But you know what made me happy? The moment I slept with that boy at that party. I didn’t know his name, and for a long time, I was ashamed. But I slept with him in defiance of parents who valued me only for my morality. And my fucking hymen. I sleptwith him and had you, my brilliant, beautiful, perfect daughter. A daughter who chose a whole career because she wanted to show the world what she could do. Who ended up helping people in the everyday moments of miracles in their daily lives by bringing them cakes on forgotten birthdays. Favorite meals at graduations. Maybe a coffee for a person who needed your tired smile in a moment of darkness.”

Mom is crying now, and my heart feels like an open wound. “I’ve hurt you,” I whisper.

“Only for holding on to this your whole life.” She takes a deep breath, then takes my hand. “Come with me.”

I follow her, a mess of feelings in human form, as she brings me up the stairs. She opens the door softly to Aurora’s room.

My youngest looks like an angel on the pillow, her little fist curled next to her cheek. “What would you say if this baby thought she was in the way of your happiness?” she whispers.

We stare at her a moment, that thought feeling more wrong than anything I’ve ever known.

She closes the door. Then she drags me across the hallway to Nova’s room. Nova, too, looks otherworldly, soft and to my stuttering breath, smiling gently in her sleep. She looks like magic personified.

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