“Ask away,” said my mother. “No secrets over here.”
“What did you want?” I asked her. “With your life.”
“You mean did I want to be Miss America or something?”
“We grew up thinking you hated us the whole time,” I said. “Like you could have been something better, something fancy, if you had not had us to drag you down, to keep you in Nebraska.”
She finished her cigarette and dropped it on the ground and stamped it out with the bottom of her shoe as if that cigarette had done her some wrong in life. She was thinking about what she was supposed to say. The words were not coming so easy. I did not know if that meant I was about to hear a lie or the truth.
“All I wanted was the two of you,” she said. “All I wanted was to be married and to have children and to love my husband. That’s how I was raised. I know I kicked up every so often—”
“Uh,” I said.
“Okay, more than every so often,” she said. “But to have happy kids who were healthy, that was my job, I knew it.”
“I know you wanted something more,” I said.
“What does it matter anymore, Catherine?” she said. “You got out. You and your sister both. Somebody did something right somewhere.”
I looked right in her face to see if she was lying, but I do not know if that mattered either. It was enough for me that she wanted to believe it was the truth.
FOR NOW, I AM A SINGLE WOMAN, not alone in the world, but single anyway. I see how people look at me. They think they know exactly who I am because I am on my own. But I look back at them, too, with my single woman eyes. There is no one else telling me what to think but me. I am open, but careful. I pay attention. I am learning all the time. There is a lot to learn. I have a lot of work to do. Because I want to become the best version of me. The version I do not even know yet.
Someday I will be ready to look for love again. That is what I wanted forever, love, pure and simple. I could not find it with Thomas nor with any stranger I have met yet. And when I am ready to emerge from this cocoon of doctors’ offices and ledgers and the strong scent of roses and orchids, I think I will rise like the sun. Brilliant and mighty, I will blind someone with my love.
But I am in no hurry.
This book would not have been possible without the generosity of Art Farm Nebraska and Ed Dadey. A million thanks to this wonderful residency program hiding out in the cornfields of Marquette, Nebraska.
Thanks also to the following co-conspirators who help me to be a nicer person and a better writer: Whitney Pastorek, Sarah Balcomb, Cinde Boutwell, Wendy McClure, Kerri Mahoney, Bernie Boscoe, Kate Christensen, Catherine Hopkinson, Sunil Thambidurai, Mara Jauntirans, Rosie Schaap, Emily Flake, Hana Schank, Maura Johnston, Pauls Toutonghi, Amanda Eyre Ward, David Goodwillie, Joni Rentz, Aimee Lee, Samantha Pitchel, TD Sidell, Ryan Walsh, Kevin Keck, Timothy Schaffert, Lauren Cerand, Janice Erlbaum, Summer Smith, Sarah Bowlin, Megan Lynch, Doug Stewart, and Jon Stuyvesant. You are all an inspiration to me.
With love, as always, to my family.