Page 99 of Good Days Bad Days
She glances around the room critically and says to my dad, “The lighting in here is perfectly dreadful. Greg, open the curtains, will you? I need some sun.” It’s growing dark outside, so there’s no way to bring in natural light, but Greg dutifully opens the curtains and turns on every light he can find. With every bulb burning, I flinch against the eye-aching brightness.
My mother sucks in a breath through her teeth.
“I’m sorry,” she says, “I thought you were my daughter, Charlotte. I can see I was mistaken. Could you tell her I’m waiting and ready for her to come in?”
She doesn’t recognize me, but it’s different this time. Instead of thinking I’m Laura or an old coworker, she’s looking for her daughter Charlotte but can’t see her in me because she’s looking for the fifteen-year-old girl who left her house thirty years ago.
“IamCharlotte,” I say.
“No. No. You’re not Charlotte. Charlotte is a little girl. She’s got blond hair and blue eyes and ... and ... Greg, where is Lottie? Did she run away from home again?”
“No, no. This is Lottie, honey. She’s back. With her daughter, Olivia,” he repeats, knowing that only some of what he says sticks.
“You are Lottie?” she clarifies, her eyes softening, a mix of young Betty and my mother Betty. She tries to touch my face, but she can’t because of the gauze wrapped around her hands.
“I am.”
“Goodness,” she says, shaking her head, “I thought that nasty woman took you away, but you came back. You came back, and now everything is fine.”
I can tell my dad is holding his breath, wondering if I’ll explode with pent-up resentment like I did a few days ago. I look at his anxious face and back at my confused, frail mother. I want to tell her they did take me away and that she did nothing to get me back, but what good would that do at this point? I’d just be beating up on a sick old woman for my own satisfaction.
“Yes, Mom, everything is fine.”
There’s something peaceful about that mantra: Everything is fine. In some ways, it’s true. I have a beautiful life—it’s not perfect, but it’s mine. I have my own children, house, career, and family. And over the past several weeks I’ve gotten something I never thought I’d have—a relationship with my mom. I’ve found a way to love her again. Betty Laramie can’t apologize for something she doesn’t even remember, and I don’t really need it. I think I’m starting to forgive her.
But strangely, the more I’ve come to care for Betty, the more I wish I could really know her. I can research news articles and court records, but without Betty’s perspective, I’ll never know what it was like for her to work at the Playboy Club-Hotel, whether she experienced the same kind of stage fright I do every time I start a show, and if that fear turned into steady calm once the cameras started rolling. I won’t know if she loved her first husband, what color my big sister’s eyes were, and if she killed them both.
“You look sad. Why are you sad? Are you in pain?” she asks, sounding more like the nurturing mom I remember from my childhood than the one who turned against me during my teenage years.
“I’m not in pain. I just ...” I glance at my dad, who is refilling my mom’s water cup from a pitcher on the nightstand. I don’t want to upset Betty again, not after everything that happened at Ike’s, but I can’t help but tell her the truth about what is on my mind. “I was thinking about Laura.”
The pitcher slips out of Greg’s grasp, splashing water everywhere. He curses under his breath, and I pass him a towel to sop up the mess, giving him a reassuring stare.
“Laura?” Betty asks, looking to my dad and then back to me. “Who told you about Laura?”
“You did,” I reply, which is the truth. She called me Laura the first day I was in town.
“I did? Now, how could I possibly have thought that was a good idea?” she muses.
“And you showed me a picture of her as a baby.” I recall the first photograph I put in the “keep” box from my parents’ bedroom—a woman holding a baby with the name Laura written on it. My sister, Laura.
At first, she seems a bit dazed, but then she grasps onto a memory. “Baby Laura.”
Greg offers Betty a sip of water, staring at me with a look on his face that saysBe careful.
“Dad, maybe you’d like to chime in here since Mom’s a little confused. Tell me about Laura,” I prompt.
“Stop, Lottie. This is not necessary,” Greg says with finality, and I think of the argument we had in my parents’ room a few days ago.
“I agree, Dad. You could’ve told me a long time ago, and none of this would’ve happened.”
“It never should’ve happened,” Betty agrees, and I know she’s not talking about the current conversation.
“Don’t do this. You’ll only upset her. There’s no reason to—”
While I’ve been learning to forgive my mother during my time here, the resentment toward my father has grown. The more he retreats, the more blame I find to direct at him. He could fix all of this and leave my mother out entirely.
I take a breath in through my nose and speak again, calmly this time. “How about this—I’ll gladly step outside, and you can answer all of my questions honestly.”
