The Hero + Vegas = No Regrets

The farther I am from New York City, the more anxious I feel. It’s not that I hate going back home—of course I don’t. I love my family. I had a picture-perfect childhood in Cincinnati, Ohio. My two older brothers still adore me, my mom still bakes cookies on Saturdays and works at the library three days a week, and my dad was and is—and has always been—my best friend. He’s always worked so hard to provide for us, and even now that his kids are grown, he still spends a lot of time on the road for work. When he was home, though, I had the world’s best dad.

It’s just… I love New York. I love that everything’s always changing and there’s a different story around every corner. In Cincinnati, no matter how much time passes between my visits, everything’s exactly the same as it always was.

I don’t know what has me feeling uneasy about being back this time, but as I round the corner onto Silver Streak Drive, my pulse quickens. I take a deep breath trying to head off what feels like a panic attack—which doesn’t make any sense at all. Home is a place I love. I shake my head and put my car into park outside the house I grew up in. Maybe it’s delayed altitude sickness or something. Once my bag is unpacked and Oliver has told me I’m looking old and I’ve threatened to knee him in the balls, things will be just fine. We’ll quickly revert to our teenage selves and everything will be back to normal within the hour.

Mom’s is the only car in the drive. Dad must be on the road. I wonder if he’ll struggle to stay in one place for long when he retires.

As I slam my rental car door shut, Mom appears on the stoop, beaming. She’s wearing a blue frilled apron I made her for Christmas when I was eleven. How that thing hasn’t disintegrated, I don’t know. Underneath, she wears jeans and the pink sweater with red hearts I bought her last Christmas.

I grab my bag from the back seat and head over to her.

“Hello, sweetheart.” She scoops up my face and looks at me for a beat, her eyes gleaming or glassy, I can’t tell, then pulls me in for a hug.

“Hi, Mom.”

Her hug goes on a little longer than usual, and I drop my weekender to wrap my arms around her. I come back three or four times a year for birthdays and holidays, but I’m here now because Mom asked me to come back. She said she hadn’t seen me for the longest time. I didn’t think anything about it at the time, but now, standing here in a longer-than-usual hug, it hits me that I’m here for a specific reason I don’t know about. The temporary reprieve from that anxious feeling in my gut ends abruptly.

“Good to have you here,” she says.

“Is everything okay?” I ask.

“Of course, sweetie. Your brothers are inside and I’m just—” The oven timer interrupts her. She laughs. “I’m about to take some cookies out of the oven.”

Noah appears in the doorway and takes my bag, just as I bend to pick it up. “I’ll take it upstairs,” he says, kissing me on the cheek.

I shrug, a little unnerved that he’s acting so nice. “Sure. Thanks.”

I glance at Mom. She just raises her eyebrows. “You’re all growing up. There was a time when if you’d left him alone with that bag, it would be full of slime when you saw it again.”

“I still wouldn’t put it past him to have a bucket of slime waiting upstairs.”

She laughs and leads me into the kitchen. It’s just the same as it was when I was last here for Noah’s birthday back in August. Pretty green-checkered curtains at the window, yellow walls, and cabinets that look slightly more chipped every time I visit. There’s even the same vase of gerberas on the counter. I distinctly remember thinking they were new on my last visit, and how nice it was that Dad bought Mom flowers. I reach out for the petals and I realize they’re not real. Wow, I really thought they were fresh.

“Where’s Dad?” I ask.

Mom pulls out a tray of cookies and slides them onto the counter. “These smell absolutely delicious. I’ve added coconut.”

Oliver appears and goes to the refrigerator, where he pulls out a beer. “You want one?” He takes off the cap and offers it to me.

“Sure, thanks.” I take the bottle.

“I’ll have one too,” Mom says.

Oliver and I exchange a look. Mom never drinks, apart from a glass of champagne at New Years and a glass of wine on her birthday and Christmas.

“You want a beer?” Oliver says as I hand Mom my drink. She wipes her hands down her apron, takes the bottle, and has a swig.

Shit, is that what she’s going to tell us? Does she have an alcohol problem now?

“Mom—” I’m interrupted before I can ask her if she’s about to enroll in a twelve-step program.

“Are you all getting hammered?” Noah says as he appears out of nowhere. It wouldn’t surprise me if we found out one day that Noah is in the CIA. He’s everyone’s friend, but I wonder if anyone really knows him. We exchange a quick hug, he ruffles my hair like I’m a dog, and I push him away.

“Come on, kids,” Mom says. “Let’s all sit.” She pulls off her apron and takes a seat at the small white kitchen table. Today there’s a chair for all of us, since Dad isn’t here. When Dad was home, we’d fight to the death not to have to sit on the stool. The obvious solution would have been a fifth chair, but Dad was home for dinner so infrequently that it never seemed worth crowding the kitchen with an extra seat.

Mom pulls a pizza menu from the drawer and we all sit. Noah grabs a beer from the fridge and comes to join us around the table. “I thought we’d order pizza. A treat. It’s good to have you all home.”

I glance at my brothers to see if they’re finding my mother’s offer of pizza as strange as I do. Not that we don’t eat pizza, but the first night we’re home, she always cooks.

“Good to be home, Mom,” Oliver says from opposite me. “I’ll take a pepperoni.”

Oliver doesn’t seem to think it’s weird that Mom isn’t cooking. Maybe it’s nothing, and I’m just overthinking everything.

I download a delivery app on my phone and place all our orders. Mom insists on proof the order has gone through because the only time she ordered through the app and didn’t call, the pizza didn’t turn up. I hold up the order confirmation and Mom nods her approval.

“I have some news,” Mom says, as if this announcement is the next thing on her agenda after gather her children, have a beer, and order pizza.

I knew it. I knew something was off.

“What’s up?” Oliver asks.

“I’m divorcing your father,” she says matter-of-factly.

As my brain catches up to what she’s saying, Oliver topples backwards off his chair and hits his head on the basket of potatoes stored by the refrigerator. He’s an athletic guy. How did he just take that kind of tumble?

I stand as Mom and Noah both pull him up.

“Shit, are you okay?” I ask.

He rubs the back of his head and nods. We all retake our seats and refocus, staring at Mom. Was she joking?

“You’re not serious?” Oliver asks.

“I am,” Mom says. “It’s time I start treating you like the adults you are now. I’m divorcing your father.”

What does us being adults have to do with Mom divorcing Dad? Like we’re not meant to feel anything because we’re over eighteen?

“How does Dad feel about this?” Oliver asks.

“I haven’t seen him since I told him.”

I let out a strangled yelp. “You told him over the phone?” My mom is always so empathetic. It seems totally out of character for her not to at least tell my dad the devastating news face-to-face. “What did he say?”

She shrugs. “I don’t remember exactly.” She doesn’t remember? How is that possible?

“But he doesn’t want a divorce?” Noah asks in a quiet voice I know means he’s keeping his feelings submerged under the surface. The more upset he is, the quieter he gets.

Mom sighs. “I don’t know. I haven’t known exactly what your father wants for a very long time. I’m not sure I ever did.”

My anxiety is back. My breathing is labored and I’m feeling lightheaded. What is she saying? “Why? After all these years?”

“This is the next phase of life,” she says, tilting her head and looking at me with pity in her eyes. “The next chapter.”

“But there must be a reason,” Noah says.

Mom glances down, picking at the label on her beer bottle. “I wanted you to have the best possible childhood. The best memories. The most loving home. I hope that’s what I was able to give you. Your father too—” She stops speaking and shrugs. “In his own way.”

“And we did,” I say, glancing at my brothers. I silently urge them to agree, like if we’re effusive enough in our positive recollections, she might change her mind and not break our family apart. “I have the best memories of being a kid. There wasn’t anything about it I would change.”

“Really?” Mom asks. “Nothing at all you’d change?”

“Well, it would have been nice if Dad hadn’t had to work so much, so he was around more, but—that’s life, isn’t it?”

“It didn’t stop us from having the best childhood ever,” Oliver says.

I glance at Noah, urging him to agree, to encourage Mom not to give up, but he’s looking at Mom. “Tell us why,” Noah says.

She presses her lips together and looks up at him. Something passes between them, like they know something Oliver and I don’t.

“I want something different for myself,” she says. “Now that you’re all making your own way in the world. I want something more.”noveldrama

“More than Dad?” I ask. My dad is the most charming, funny, charismatic man, and he’s worked his ass off for this family. What’s the more she wants? Does she want to move to London and shack up with Idris Elba, or whoever a woman hurtling towards sixty sees herself shacking up with?

“You need to be honest,” Noah says. “We need to understand.”

A long silence settles on the table. We’re all waiting for Mom to tell us what she wants, what’s happened, and why she doesn’t want to be married to Dad anymore. An ember of anger starts to simmer in my gut. How can she do this to him—to all of us?

“Will you keep the house?” My voice is a twisted shriek as I imagine the For Sale sign in the yard. All the memories we made here would disappear if she sold the house.

Noah reaches for my hand. I can’t remember him ever holding my hand before. My mouth goes dry. I’m staring at Mom, willing her to give me the answers I want to hear.

She pulls in a deep breath. “I discovered some time ago that your father was having an affair.”

It’s like someone’s reached down my throat and pulled out a lung. I can’t breathe.

An affair? Dad was always devoted to my mother. Wasn’t he?

My brothers are silent, and Mom doesn’t say anything else.

That can’t be it. I want to know everything.

“Okay,” I say. “But relationships survive affairs, don’t they? I mean, you’ve been together for so long. Is it worth throwing everything away for?”

She offers me a pitiful smile. “The affair never ended. In fact, it might have started before we met.” She shakes her head. “I really have no idea. But your dad wasn’t on the road for work all the time.” She emphasizes on the road, like it’s code for something.

Maybe it is.

My vision starts to blur, the image of Mom and my brothers merging in front of me.

Oliver’s jaw is slack and his mouth is open, but Noah doesn’t look as shocked. He’s got one hand on mine and the other around Mom.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Noah says.

“No, it’s not okay,” I snap. “Can you stop giving us bits and pieces of I don’t know what and tell us what’s going on?”

Mom squares her shoulders. “Your father has been seeing a woman in Dayton for years—twenty-five at least. He splits his time between here and there. He’s done it for most of our marriage. When I found out, you were three years old.” She nods at me. “I had a young family and a part-time job. So I made it work.” She shrugs. “Sometimes I’d pretend it wasn’t happening and that he was on the road for work. Most of the time, I convinced myself that you can’t get everything you want out of life, so I should be happy with my wonderful children and my beautiful house and my generally happy life. I just didn’t get a whole husband. Other times, I’d cry myself to sleep at night.”

My head is spinning and my stomach turns inside out. I pull at the collar of my sweater, desperate for air. I don’t know which mind-blowing revelation to focus on. It all seems so bizarre, so completely removed from the reality I grew up with.

“Are you sure?” I ask. It seems so farfetched that Dad—our father, who’d chase us around the yard with the hose in the middle of summer, who would stuff broccoli into his ear to try to make us laugh if one of us had a bad day at school, who cried when I left for college—could spend his time around someone else’s dinner table too.

“I’m sure,” she says.

“Does he know you know?” I ask.

She lets out a cynical laugh. “He’s known since the day I found out. She was pregnant by then.”

“The… mistress? Pregnant?” Oliver asks.

“You have half-siblings,” Mom says. “Two, I think. A boy and a girl.”

“You’re telling us Dad has another whole family in Dayton?” Oliver asks, but Noah stays quiet.

Completely quiet.

“Noah,” I say, my voice laced with suspicion. “Did you know?”

He pulls in a deep breath. “No, I didn’t know.”

Well, that’s something. At least my brother wasn’t lying to me, too.

“I suspected something,” he adds. Even though my stomach is on the floor, it drops further.

Mom reaches for Noah’s arm and he pats her hand.

“I saw him once,” Noah says. “In Dayton. Danny’s mom had taken us to a skatepark there while she went to Costco, and he was there, on the other side of the bowl. I was practicing my drop-ins, and there he was.”

Mom lets out a strangled, “Oh god.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have seen it,” Noah says. “He was holding some kid’s hand. A girl, I think. They both had ice creams. I was frozen for… I don’t know how long. Eventually I called out to him and pressed down on my board. But when I got up the other side, he was gone.”

My mom’s hand slips across her lips and she shakes her head.

“Next time I saw him, I expected him to say something but he didn’t. So neither did I. I’ve thought about it for years. Almost asked him about it so many times. Something always stopped me before I could get the words out. Like I knew I’d be breaking the spell if I spoke it out loud.”

My insides pinch. I’m so sad Noah’s had to keep this to himself all these years.

“I had no idea,” Mom says, which totally pisses me off, because it couldn’t have been beyond her imagination that something like this could have happened. Why couldn’t she have been honest? With all of us. With herself.

“Why didn’t you just divorce him?” I spit the words at her like darts.

“And then what?”

“And then you don’t live a lie,” I say. “Then you tell your children the truth.”

Noah squeezes my hand like he knows my anger isn’t anger at all, but deep wounds, raw pain, cuts so deep I don’t know they will ever heal. Every fragment of childhood memory is disintegrating, like someone’s erasing my hard drive. I can feel the deletion in my brain. Washing Dad’s car with Oliver and having the world’s best water fight in the middle of it. Family holidays on the lake, where the five of us would pose outside the cabin every year, each picture taking a spot on the hallway windowsill. My parents at my graduation, holding hands, tears in their eyes.

None of it was real.

And now it’s all gone.