You should have told me.
I was going to.
When?
Soon.
What if it got worse?
It didn’t.
That isn’t the point.
Then what is the point?
The point, I realized too late, was that we were each fighting a different battle.
I was fighting risk.
She was fighting erasure.
And when people are fighting different enemies, they can stand in the same kitchen saying the same word and mean opposite things.
Help, for me, meant stepping in sooner.
Help, for her, meant being allowed to ask before someone assumed.
The fight that finally broke us open happened two weeks before Christmas.
I wish I could paint myself better in it.
I can’t.
I came over after work.
Mom was getting ready to go to the Thursday supper, only this time the roads were slick from a cold rain and the sky had gone dark early.
Her car keys were on the table.
That bothered me more than it should have.
She had not been driving much at night.
Mostly by choice.
But still.
“You’re driving in this?”
She buttoned her coat.
“Yes.”
“Mom, the roads are wet.”
“They are not made of ice.”
“It’s dark.”
“It is winter.”
“You can miss one supper.”
She looked at me.
“No.”
Just that.
No.
I heard my voice harden.
“I can take you.”
She reached for the keys.
“I’m going myself.”
“Why?”
The word came out sharper than I intended.
Why.
Not can I help.
Not what do you need.
Why.
As if she needed to justify leaving her own house on a Thursday night.
She heard it.
Of course she did.
“Because I would like to arrive as myself,” she said.
I put my hand over the keys before she could pick them up.
I can still see it.
My hand.
Her hand.
The keys between us.
All the love in the room and none of it gentle.
“This is ridiculous,” I said. “You could have trouble seeing. Somebody could hit you. You could slide on a turn.”
“And you could stop talking to me like I am a court order away from losing my life.”
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