I WENT INTO THE KITCHEN AND WATCHED MY MOM AS she
cleaned out her cabinets.
“What were you and Dante talking about?” “Stuff.”
I wanted to ask her about my brother. But I knew I wasn’t going to ask. “He was telling me about his mom and dad, about how they met at graduate school at Berkeley. How he was born there. He said he remembered his parents reading books and studying all the time.”
My mom smiled. “Just like me and you,” she said. “I don’t remember.”
“I was finishing my bachelor’s degree when your father was at war. It helped me take my mind off things. I worried all the time. My mom and my aunts helped me take care of your sisters and your brother while I went to school and studied. And when your father came back, we had you.” She smiled at me and did that combing-my-hair-with-her-fingers thing.
“Your father got on with the post office and I kept going to school. I had you and I had school. And your father was safe.”
“Was it hard?”
“I was happy. And you were such a good baby. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. We bought this house. It needed work, but it was ours. And I was doing what I had always wanted to do.”
“You always wanted to be a teacher?”
“Always. When I was growing up, we didn’t have anything, but my mom understood how much school meant to me. She cried when I told her I was going to marry your father.”
“She didn’t like him?”
“No, it wasn’t that. She just wanted me to keep going to school. I promised her that I would. It took me a while but I kept my promise.”
That was the first time that I really saw my mother as a person. A person who was so much more than just my mother. It was strange to think of her that way. I wanted to ask her about my father, but I didn’t know how. “Was he different? When he came back from the war?”
“Yes.”
“How was he different?”
“There’s a wound somewhere inside of him, Ari.” “But what is it? The hurt? What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know, Mom?”
“Because it’s his. It’s just his, Ari.”
I understood that she had just accepted my father’s private wound. “Will it ever heal?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Mom? Can I ask you something?” “You can ask me anything.”
“Is it hard to love him?”
“No.” She didn’t even hesitate. “Do you understand him?”
“Not always. But Ari, I don’t always have to understand the people I love.”
“Well, maybe I do.”
“It’s hard for you, isn’t it?” “I don’t know him, Mom.”
“I know you’re going to get mad at me when I say this, Ari, but I’m going to say it anyway. I think someday you will understand.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Someday.”
Someday, I would understand my father. Someday he would tell me who he was. Someday. I hated that word.
