The Lucy Variations (26 page)

“This is just an idea, right? Something I could potentially talk you out of?”

“No.” Her hand went to her left jaw.

If I didn’t know my mom so well, I wouldn’t have believed her. But this was completely consistent,
so
something she would do. She’s never been one to solicit opinions before making major decisions. It drove Dad crazy. She’d go trade in her perfectly fine car for a brand-new one, or book a non-refundable vacation on a total whim. Then there was the time she decided she wanted to paint every room in the house a different colour and started one Saturday while Dad and I were at the self-defence class he made me take. We came home and the living room had gone from white to Alpine Lake Azure. Surprise! I didn’t really care, but Dad was so aggravated.

This, though, I cared about, and when I realized she was serious, I said, “It’s insane.”

“War is insane. The fact that there’s still no cure for AIDS is insane. This is not insane.”

“You’re old, Mom!”

“Thanks, honey. Early fifties is
not
old.”

“When the kid is my age, you’ll be—”

“Seventy. I can do the math, Jill.”

“Seventy is
old
.”

Everything was in its normal place: the old wooden farm table in front of me, the iron pot rack over the stove, the cigar box full of stamps at the end of the counter near the phone. Our quiet street outside. Yet this conversation? Not normal. She remained so perfectly calm through it all that I had to say several times, “You do realize you’re talking about
adopting a baby
?” to make sure we were living in the same reality.

“Yes.”

“A
baby
baby.”

“Jill. Yes.”

We went on like that for a while, and I got angrier and angrier, though I couldn’t say exactly why.

“I’m not asking you to do anything, Jill,” she said. “You’re leaving after graduation. You know Dad and I talked about doing something like this for years.”

Yes. And they really got into their volunteer work with foster kids a few years ago. “That’s different.” What I wanted to say was that with Dad gone, it didn’t seem so much that she was carrying out their plans as trying to replace him. With a baby. Which just seemed like a really, really bad idea, for so many reasons. But I couldn’t say that. Sometimes even I know when to shut up.

As I got up from the table and took our bowls to the sink, something I didn’t want to feel pushed up from underneath the anger. Anger I can deal with. Anger is easy for me. It can actually be kind of energizing to fume and feel superior and think about all the ways you’re right and other people are wrong. But the truth is I felt like I was going to cry. The feeling pushing up, the one I avoid at all costs because I don’t know what to do with it, was hurt. That she’d decided this huge, life-changing thing without consulting me.

My mom is not a stupid person and not a selfish person. Things she does that might seem that way on the surface come from a really good place in her heart. One year she boycotted Christmas because she was fed up with consumerism. A cool idea from a good place, yet it also kind of sucked because, you know, no tree, no presents, not even a stocking. And one time she decided we’d eat only one meal a day for a month and send our grocery money to Sudan, where a lot of people eat only one meal a day all the time. Again, chronic hunger wasn’t so terrific for helping me get homework done, and I’m pretty sure my dad was sneaking lunch on the job, but you have to love that heart.

And I know that’s the heart that led her to make this decision. Adding someone to a family, though? Is major. Life-changing. Permanent. When someone’s been subtracted from a family, you can’t just balance it out with a new acquisition. In the months after Dad died, a couple of people told us we should get a dog. A dog!

How is this all that different?

I rinsed the dishes and beat down the hurt with more anger. “I can’t believe you’re doing this, Mom. It’s just so impossible.”

Grim, resigned, she got up and headed to me with the casserole dish. She spooned leftovers into a plastic container. Snapped on the lid. Put it in the fridge. Handed me the casserole dish to rinse. “I want to give a good home to someone who might not otherwise have one,” she finally said. “Why see that as impossible? Seeing good things as impossible is exactly what’s wrong with our world.”

What could I say to that?

She put on the kettle. I watched her middle-aged body move, her back half-covered by silvery hair Dad would never let her colour, and I could almost see his hand smoothing it down as he bent to give her an after-dinner kiss before taking down the cups and saucers – pottery from their tenth anniversary trip to Brazil.

“Mom…” I stopped short, not sure what to say. I knew how much she missed Dad. I missed him, too. And I knew how different our missing him was, and that made it even harder. Couldn’t it be just us for a while, missing him together, in our separate ways? Couldn’t she at least wait until after graduation? Let us get used to each other, the people we are without Dad. “Mom,” I tried again, but she probably thought I was going to keep berating her and said, “No, Jill, I’ve made up my mind. It feels right. A death, and now a life.”

The next day, she chopped off her beautiful hair.