Page 63 of When Stars Collide
“So,” I began, “let’s not beat around the bush. Why Betsy Sloan? What was it about her that brought you two together?”
“I’d actually like to know that, too,” Elle added.
Mark smiled at Elle. “Well, for starters, she was a beautiful woman, very smart. She was funny, always had a comeback for anything, and when she wasn’t drinking, she could be very sweet.”
“Huh,” Elle scoffed. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard my mother and sweet used in the same sentence.”
“Now that’s unfortunate.” Mark frowned “She wasn’t sober very often, then?”
“Try never.”
“Elle, I’m sorry,” Mark said, placing his hand on hers. “Had I known you existed, I would have done everything I could do to get you out of that situation.” His hazel eyes, the same shade as Elle’s, glistened with tears.
“You couldn’t have known,” Elle answered him reassuringly.
“The last time I seen her was the night we went to a poetry reading together. She’d been sober for at least six months.”
“Poetry reading? My mother liked poetry?”
“Liked poetry? Your mother loved poetry. Loved it so much she wrote it herself.”
Stunned, Elle could only sit in silence.
“Elle writes some pretty mean poetry herself,” I offered, hoping to jumpstart Elle’s brain again.
“She’s more talented than she gives herself credit for,” Luke added.
“Sounds exactly like Betsy.” Mark took a sip from his iced tea. “Betsy was always writing and submitting her work off to places. She’d get rejection letters in the mail and be down on herself for a bit. Then she would pick herself up and resubmit other poems, until one day, toward the end of our relationship, she received a particularly hurtful rejection, like the author had just had a bad day and was taking it all out on Betsy. Whoever wrote it, told her that she basically shouldn’t quit her day job.”
“What a dick,” I proclaimed, eyeing the plate of mushrooms placed down in front of me.
“Isn’t that what you do for a living?” Luke nudged me.
“Yes, but I keep my dickishness to a professional level.”
Whatever trance Elle had been under lifted. “That’s why she never encouraged me to pursue writing while I was at Cogsworth. Why she always told me I was just wasting my time.”
“Because she was a terrible mother?” I asked.
“No … well, not entirely. She didn’t want me to face the same rejection she had. She didn’t want me to get my hopes up, only to have them quashed.”
“She encouraged you not to pursue your dreams? Some fine parenting, there.”
“In her way, it was,” Luke observed. “She suffered pain and she didn’t want her daughter to meet the same fate. It’s an ass backwards approach, but in her mind, she was doing the right thing.”
Mark nodded. “Betsy had a way of projecting herself onto others, especially after she’d been drinking. All her deficiencies, her character flaws, they became yours in her eyes. It was a coping mechanism for her, one she was working on while she was sober.”
Elle glanced back at Mark. “If she was still sober and working on herself before your relationship ended, why did she leave without a trace? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“That was my fault,” he answered, ashamed. It was a subject he’d obviously been trying to put off for as long as possible. He scratched his head through the mess of thick, brown hair, intermingled with wisps of white. “You see, when Betsy and I started seeing each other, we weren’t exclusive. I was her AA leader. I was supposed to be mentoring her, not falling for her. We kept things casual, and I thought we were on the same page, but then as we were walking home from the poetry reading together, a woman I’d gone out with a couple times approached us. She kissed me on the cheek in front of Betsy, telling me how she missed me. I knew what she was doing, trying to upset Betsy, and I told Betsy as much. I-I thought we were okay when I dropped her off that night, but it would seem as though we weren’t.”
“You broke my mother’s heart,” Elle said matter-of-factly.
“I guess I did,” Mark acknowledged. “Elle, had I known she was pregnant, I would have done right by her. I would have proposed to her. We would have been a family.”
“Did you love her?”
Elle’s question hit Mark like a punch to the gut. He sat quietly, choosing his words wisely. “I was falling for her, for sure. I wouldn’t call it love yet, but I also wouldn’t not call it love, either. Had I known she was pregnant and had we agreed to some sort of commitment, I have no doubt that I would have loved your mother.”
