Chapter Fourteen: Burdens
DANIEL sat in the kitchen watching his mother as she finished priming the dishwasher. Audrey, still in a huff, had retreated to her bedroom downstairs. He suspected he’d have to apologize to her before he left; Ryan likely wouldn’t until he saw her hurt feelings as a problem that hindered him in some way, even then only if an apology was the most efficient solution. Ryan probably didn’t care if Audrey’s feelings were hurt -- it probably didn’t register on him in a conscious way. Daniel had few doubts about Ryan’s loyalty to Audrey and his willingness to protect her, but sometimes it was hard to see beyond his general dispassion. Daniel, in contrast, actually cared whether Audrey was upset.
He’d been sitting in the kitchen for the last fifteen minutes after helping Ramona load the dishwasher. Tio Chava had left half an hour earlier with his young wife and their kids; he was always the last to leave, the slowest to take the hint, but the first to show up with his family if there was free food. He was a good guy, Daniel reflected, but he had a bad case of ‘youngest sibling syndrome’, as his mother put it, used to taking advantage of his youngest sibling status, while clearly idolizing his older sister. Ramona unhurriedly prepared a cup of tea, her gaze abstracted as she poured the water into a green glazed mug.
She sat across from him as she blew over the top of her mug. She’d been surreptitiously studying her eldest son since he’d settled in the kitchen, taking her time with the dishwasher and the tea to give herself more time to think. She wrapped her hands around the mug, debating whether she should wait him out or go directly to the heart of the matter. Two decades of motherhood had given her a finely tuned instinct for her children’s moods. She suspected she knew what was coming, and dreaded it.
While she decided how to initiate the conversation with Daniel, he studied her, reflecting that his mother’s relative youth still surprised him. She was a small woman, probably only a hair’s-breadth over five feet fall, with a heart-shaped, expressive face and lively brown eyes. Her hair was still mostly its original color, though there was starting to be a little grey mixed in with the lustrous black. It was currently in a simple pony tail, though he remembered when his father was still alive that she used to wear it down more often than not. She wasn’t a vain woman, but Daniel knew that she was an orderly woman, capable of functioning in extremely stressful environments (she was an ER nurse, after all). She could bring order to a room through sheer force of will and rarely needed to raise her voice or rely on threats to do it. Daniel didn’t know how she managed it; sometimes he wondered if she had missed her calling by not enlisting.
They’d be calling her ‘The General’ long before she actually got the rank, he thought wryly as she sipped her tea.
After a brief companionable silence, she broke into his thoughts, “What is bothering you, mijo? I have not seen you carrying such heavy storm clouds in a long time.”
He stared at her in surprise, momentarily at a loss for words. While it was true that he’d been hovering in the kitchen hoping to speak with her, he hadn’t really decided what he wanted to say, or what he wanted out of a conversation with her. She, like Ryan, often had a no-nonsense way of taking apart a problem, and an equally disconcerting way of reading between the lines and deducing what was bothering him. He had hesitated, because speaking to his mother was also likely to earn him a lecture about his lifestyle or a conversation about going to college. He briefly debated denying anything was wrong, but he had never been able to lie to Ramona -- she always saw right through his subterfuges and attempts at dissembling (his parents had long ago dissuaded him and his siblings from telling lies with the belt that likely still hung in his mother’s closet -- though he doubted it had seen use in a long time).
“Nicolette is back,” he answered simply.
She nodded, surprising him with her calm acceptance. He wondered if she already knew -- though it didn’t seem likely that Ryan would tell her about their earlier conversation so readily.
“Did Ryan say something?” he asked, stalling.
She shook her head as she sipped her tea, though she didn’t immediately answer.
She looks tired, he thought, surprised at the observation, feeling a vague fluttery worry about her health. After his father passed, he never took Ramona’s health for granted.
Ramona, perhaps intuiting some of his worry, smiled as she reached across the countertop and patted his hand, “No, mijo. She called me the day she got back.”
She sighed heavily, almost visibly aging as she added, “It wasn’t a pleasant conversation.”
Daniel leaned back, surprised and a little hurt, “How long has she been back? How long have you known?”
“Dos semanas, más o menos.”
The silence between them stretched for several long seconds before he quietly asked, “You’ve known for almost two weeks...and you never told me? Why?”
Ramona studied him, intuiting his internal struggle to keep his anger and frustration in check. She abruptly deflated, her mouth turning down as she shook her head slightly, “I was trying to think of the good way to break the news to you. Things have been going so well for you lately--“
“Mom, I broke up with Carla.”
She glared at him, clearly not appreciating the interruption, while simultaneously disagreeing with his interpretation of the breakup as she emphatically reiterated, “Things have been going so well for you lately, I did not want to disrupt things. I wanted to tell you, mijo. I was going to. But after that first conversation with her, I...”
She faltered, surprising Daniel with her uncertainty, “I was too...”
“Conflicted?”
She smiled at him as she agreed, “Conflicted. Then too much time passed, and I was not sure how to start. I supposed one way or another, I was going to mention it today, but you did it first.”
His annoyance crept into his voice, “‘Too much time’? Mom, that’s bu--“
She glared at him.
“--not cool.”
She relaxed, “No, it’s not, and for that I apologize. I should have called you the day she called me.”
He sighed, feeling some of the emotion drain away, “Why didn’t you?”
“Daniel...when she left, there was a little while I thought we were losing you. That plus your father passing..."
Her voice trailed off as she looked away, momentarily lost in thought. Daniel waited patiently until she continued a moment later, "You were so filled with anger, getting into many fights. No one could reach you. Then you had that fight with your brother...”
She shook her head slowly, blinking rapidly, the memory clearly still disturbing.
“I remember something one of your tías said back then. ‘If ever there was trouble, you would go to jail; but your brother would go to prison’. That night, that night I almost lost both my sons.”
She stopped, staring down into her mug. He was shocked at the slow realization that his mother was fighting back tears, though it barely registered on her face. He slowly realized his mother’s words were uncomfortably true; that Daniel nearly hospitalized his brother that night, but if pushed hard enough, his brother might have reacted with cold violence, indifferent to the consequences until it was too late. He shuddered, the thought once again occurring to him that perhaps things with his brother weren’t ever going to be totally comfortable.
“That night, I was certain I had lost you.”
She reached out and placed her hand on the side of his neck. He could feel the tension in her forearm, surprised at the strength hidden in her diminutive frame as she gently pulled his head toward her, until she could touch her forehead to his. He was surprised to hear the tension in her voice when she continued, speaking quietly but with feeling, “But we didn’t.”
They stayed like that, touching foreheads for almost half a minute before she released him and sat back.
“When you joined the Army, I was worried we might lose you all over again -- you were in such a bad place
. Putting you somewhere bad men would be shooting at you just seemed...”
She shook her head slowly, unwilling to finish the thought out loud, as if doing so might revoke their good fortune.
“When you came back you were struggling with the drink, the fights, the arrests; it was a long time before you started to be yourself again."
He looked down at the table as his mother spoke. She had never discussed what it had been like for her, what she had suffered as a result of what he had since realized was a rageful death wish. For the first time, he stepped back and really allowed himself to empathize with his mother for the last seven years, how it impacted her and the family. Shame warred with resignation; it had been hard on the family, but he had made the best choices he could.
“It’s not fair to the girl, but I blamed her -- blamed her for hurting you, for running away from us after all we offered her. You were not the only one that felt rejected, I think. When she called, it was hard to hold back the last seven years -- not all of it was her fault.”
His eyebrows rose with surprise. Ramona had never shared this with him either -- had never even hinted at it.
He shook his head as he quietly interjected, “I was the one that put the family through all that, mom -- not her.”
He hesitated, "And if I'm being honest...I think I may have had a part in driving her away after Dad..."
Ramona started to wrap her hands around her mug, only to frown as she realized it was empty. He watched as she refilled the cup with hot water, reusing the same tea bag. Her back was to him when she continued, “Perhaps. I was worried the effect her return would have on you, bringing back that terrible time. With such an unknown quantity, I was worried what she might say or do. Mijo...even now, you are not out of the Wilderness, yet, I judge.”
He frowned, considering this, then nodded slowly. He knew she was right, though he felt he was farther out of the woods than his mother probably realized.
Ramona hesitated; Daniel could hear genuine regret when she spoke, still facing away from him, “I was...very unkind in our conversation. I suppose shame made me hesitate to tell you as well. She surprised me with her call and I was not ready for it. After that...well...it seemed like calling her back and pressing her for more information would not be appropriate.”
She returned to the island, sitting across from Daniel as she contemplatively continued, “That girl... I do not know what to make of her.”
“What did you talk about?”
She smiled sadly as she patted the back of his hand, shaking her head, “Nada, mijo. Nada that I would be proud to repeat. I was very unkind -- as if she needed more unkindness in her life.”
She hesitated, momentarily lost in thought, replaying her memories of Nicolette, “What Rose put that girl through...” she spoke musingly, lost in thought.
Daniel snagged her hand before she could withdraw it, watching as she lightly curled her fingers around his.
“It was bad,” he said, more statement than question.
She shook her head, the contradiction momentarily catching him off guard, “It was criminal.”
Ramona turned his hand over, looking at the scars that criss-crossed it. He studied her, smiling faintly at the sad look that crossed her face as she ran her thumb over the hard, ridged flesh where the missing bits used to be. After a long contemplative silence, she picked up the thread, “Rose never really understood how a real family works.”
He frowned, puzzled at the seeming non-sequitur as his mother continued, “Rose was a domineering woman, to say the least -- it is a miracle that her daughter no was...was not crushed into thef jellyfish, like her husband. Nicolette had an escape here, with our family. I think it probably drove Rose to distraction that her daughter was able to find a place to rest, compounded by the fact that she needed at least a thin veneer of normalcy for appearances, and she could not sever the relationship between our families -- especially since we lived across the street from her. So I think she did the next best thing.
“Rose aimed that girl into the heart of our family like a missile. She never stopped her from spending time with us, but she bent her will toward breaking her daughter, hoping to reach through her to us. She never could stand the thought that not 100 feet away, her daughter might have allies against her; it was not enough to punish her daughter.”
“She wanted to punish us as well,” he finished quietly.
She nodded, “Just so. I suspect that once she realized her daughter had become part of our family, she made it a point of trying to destroy ours through the poor girl. If she was not so crazy, she might have realized that we support each other, and that she might hurt us, but we would still be a family afterward. She wanted to punish us for offering santuario...and she tried do it through her daughter. After Nicolette ran away, we were hurt as she intended...but Rose was isolated. I suspect Henry found the strength to stand up to Rose after that.”
Daniel nodded, “Nikki’s little brother said something to that effect just after Rose died.”
He stared out the window over the kitchen sink, lost in thought for a long moment, “Thank you for telling me all this. I didn’t know.”
He hesitated before continuing, “But I don’t know if I can let it go, Mom. I don’t know if I can forgive her for leaving the way she did, leaving us all wondering and worrying. With no hope of closure. But I can’t let her go, either.”
Ramona nodded, but said nothing.
“I loved her, Mom.“
She smiled sadly, understanding.
“I know, mijo. I think we all did.”
Daniel knocked on the door jamb by his sister’s bedroom. Audrey was sitting on her bed, her laptop open in front of her, a book facedown on the coverlet, a pair of studio headphones in her lap. He watched as she lowered her phone, frowning at him.
“Hey sis...”
He was surprised when she met his gaze, then purposefully picked up her headphones, clearly intending to make a statement by shutting him out. He was surprised she was that upset, that she had taken their earlier rebuff that hard. Seeing his chance to speak with her slipping away, he blurted, “Nikki’s back!”
She hesitated, still frowning. For one instant, he could see the conflict in her eyes as anger warred with her curiosity. After a moment, her hands dropped back into her lap, loosely holding her headphones.
“That’s what we were talking about on the deck.”
She looked down, momentarily lost in thought.
“Audrey...I’m sorry for pushing you out of the conversation that way.”
She looked up, cocking her head to the side as she considered his apology, her dark eyes still veiled with hostility. It was unlike her to be so angry, so unwilling to let her anger go. He hadn’t realized at the time how upset she was.
After a long pause, she finally nodded, deciding she would have to accept his apology if she wanted to hear more. He suspected Ryan would be surprised the next time he visited -- he likely would have some reparations of his own to make.
There was nothing flippant in her voice when she finally asked, “What are you going to do?”
He sighed, relieved that she was willing to speak with him, her willingness to converse an indicator of forgiveness. He genuinely liked Audrey, and hated the thought that she wouldn’t be willing to speak with him.
“I don’t know, Aud. I’m still...reeling a little bit. Our first meeting didn’t go very well. I think I might have made a mess of things. I was surprised, I wasn’t ready to see her.”
She nodded, the black plastic in her lap creaking as she fidgeted with it. He was surprised when she lifted her headphones, clearly intent on putting them on. His heart sank as he realized she was still miffed, despite having made a show of accepting his apology.
He turned to go, but Audrey called him back.
“Dan...whatever you do, whatever anyone else tells you to do, don’t listen to them. Listen to your heart.”
He turned back, hesitating. He was surprised at her somber mien. He wondered what had been going on in her life that he wasn’t privy to. He stared at her searchingly, wondering if she was having romantic difficulties of her own. He wondered if he’d been neglecting her, mistaking her generally upbeat demeanor for something he wanted to see because he found it comforting while missing whatever was going on underneath.
She’s fourteen, he thought. Her life probably feels just as challenging as mine does to me.
He nodded slowly, realizing he had to stop thinking of her as a little kid and start treating her as a peer.
“I’m not sure what my heart is telling me with all the other noise.”
She shook her head, “Your heart, not your head. Your head is going to mess it up.”
“Thanks, Audrey,” he responded sarcastically, though he couldn’t repress the smile he felt tugging at his lips.
She unfolded her legs, then slid off the bed. He was surprised when she hugged him, “I’m still totally mad at you guys...but thanks for telling me what’s going on.”
He felt some of the muscles in his shoulders relax, “Sure thing, Aud. Sure thing.”
And what is my heart saying?, he wondered.
The Price of Failure