Page 68 of Twice
“Can I ask you something? It’s about Mom.”
He nodded.
“Did she ever talk about having a different life? Before she got, you know, religious?”
He glanced at me but said nothing. He swallowed, wiped some mustard off his lips, then cleared his throat.
“Why are you asking me that?”
“Because just before she died, that day in Africa, she told me that she’d changed.”
“Changed?”
“Yeah. She said she’d been a different type of person before, a selfish person who lost her heart and soul. I never remember her that way... Do you know what she was talking about?”
I studied his reaction. I wanted to see if my mother had ever told him about her power, to know if we shared that secret. It felt important. I’m not sure why. When you realize you are about to lose a parent, you suddenly want to know everything, say everything, share every little detail you omitted during the years when you were taking them for granted.
“Your mother suffered, Alfie,” my father said.
“Suffered from what?”
“An illness.” He paused. “A mental illness.”
I blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“She imagined things. She was haunted by events that never happened.”
“Like what?”
He crumpled a napkin in his fingers and turned his gaze out the open car door. “Like she’d been a drinker, for one.”
“A drinker?”
“Yes. An alcoholic. So bad she’d gone to jail.”
“Mom went to jail?”
“That’s what she imagined.”
“I never saw her drink.”
“She did when we first met. But then she suddenly stopped. She never had a problem. And God knows she never went to jail.” His voice lowered. “Or met up with other men. Or left the country...”
“Wait. She told you she did all that?”
“No. I found out after she died.”
“How?”
He looked back at me. “Her therapist.”
“Mom had a therapist?”
“For years, apparently. When we came back from Africa, the woman got in touch with me, you know, to say she was sorry. She said that Mom had been a brave woman over the years. She was surprised I never knew about their sessions.
“I asked to meet with her. I begged her to share what Mom had said. She refused at first, because of the ethics, you know? But I said our time together was so short and now that I wouldn’t get any more, I wanted to know everything I could about her.”
He paused. “That’s when she told me those stories.”
