Chapter 7 - The Mother Behind Every Laugh
I stared at my father.
For most of my life, I'd thought Mom was simply following his lead.
Dad made the joke.
Mom supplied the punch line.
Dad dismissed my accomplishments.
Mom told me not to take it personally.
I'd imagined that if Dad had been kinder, Mom would have been too.
Now he was suggesting she'd played a much larger role.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Dad gestured toward the painting.
“When you won that competition, I wanted to hang it in the front office.”
Jason turned toward him.
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't you?”
Dad pressed his lips together.
“Your mother said it would create problems.”
I felt cold.
“What problems?”
He looked toward the door.
“You should ask her.”
I stepped closer.
“No. You don't get to do that. You kept my painting in a box for twelve years. You can tell me why.”
Dad's shoulders sagged.
“Linda thought displaying it would make Jason and Megan feel overlooked.”
My brother stared at him.
“That's ridiculous.”
Dad looked at Jason.
“Your sister had just won a statewide award. The business was growing. Everybody was talking about what Rebecca might accomplish.”
I looked between them.
“So Mom thought the solution was to hide my painting?”
Dad didn't answer.
I picked up the old pencil drawing.
“And what about this? Was Mom responsible for you pretending you didn't know how to draw?”
He took the picture from my hands.
For a moment, his fingers rested against the edge of the frame.
“My father hated this,” he said.
Ruth had told me part of the story.
Now Dad supplied another piece.
His own father had run a small building supply business.
He expected his only son to take over.
When Dad received an opportunity to study drawing in Albuquerque, my grandfather laughed at the idea in front of his friends.
He called his son's sketchbooks a waste of good paper.
Eventually, Dad stopped applying for art programs.
Then he stopped drawing.
By the time he married Mom, he had decided that practical work was the only kind worth respecting.
“Your grandfather never let me forget how foolish I'd been,” Dad said.
I looked at him.
“So you decided I should feel foolish too?”
He flinched.
“That wasn't what I intended.”
“But it's what happened.”
Jason leaned against the workbench.
“You could have been proud of her.”
Dad looked at my mountain painting.
“I was.”
The words hurt more than I expected.
“Then why didn't you say it?”
He swallowed.
“Because I didn't want you building your whole life around something that could disappear.”
I considered that.
Then I asked, “Did mocking me make my future more secure?”
He didn't answer.
I wrapped my painting carefully.
Jason helped me carry it to my car.
Dad followed us into the parking lot.
“Rebecca, wait.”
I stopped.
“I wanted you to have options,” he said.
“You wanted me to have the options you approved of.”
His face tightened.
“I was trying to protect you.”
I looked directly at him.
“From what happened to you?”
He said nothing.
“Dad, you were hurt when your father laughed at your dream. You knew exactly how that felt.”
His eyes lowered.
“And you spent twenty-one years making me feel the same way.”
I drove away before he could answer.
That evening, I went to my parents' house.
Not because I expected a miracle.
I wanted to speak to Mom without Dad beside her.
She was sitting at the kitchen table, sorting leftover anniversary decorations into cardboard boxes.
The silver number thirty lay beside a stack of unused place cards.
She looked exhausted.
“Rebecca.”
I set a photograph of my recovered mountain painting on the table.
“Dad says you wouldn't let him hang this.”
Mom stared at the picture.
Then she pushed the decorations aside.
“He told you that?”
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes.
“I knew this conversation would happen eventually.”
I pulled out a chair.
“Then let's have it.”
Mom folded her hands.
“When you were little, Jason was always helping your father in the workshop. Megan loved sports. I understood those things. I knew how to encourage them.”
“And me?”
She looked toward the window.
“You were different.”
There it was again.
The word that had followed me since childhood.
“Different how?”
“You were always drawing. Even at family gatherings, you would disappear with a notebook. When someone praised your work, you became completely absorbed in it.”
I stared at her.
“I was a child who liked drawing.”
“I know.”
“Then why did that bother you?”
Mom's eyes filled.
“Because sometimes it felt as though you didn't need us.”
I couldn't speak.
She continued.
“When Jason won something, he wanted your father to explain what he could do next. When Megan won, she ran straight into my arms. But you would sit quietly with your paintings. You seemed perfectly happy in a world I couldn't enter.”
I remembered all the times I'd asked her to paint with me.
All the times she'd told me she had laundry, shopping, or something more important to do.
“You could have asked me to show you,” I said.
She looked down.
“I know that now.”
I touched the photograph.
“So you kept my achievements out of sight because you felt left out?”
“Partly.”
“What else?”
Mom hesitated.
“When your father saw that painting, he talked about it for days. He kept comparing it to things he'd drawn when he was young.”
For the first time, she sounded almost resentful.
“He was so proud of you. And so angry about everything he'd lost.”
I looked at her.
“So you protected him by letting him hurt me?”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I thought if we treated your art like an ordinary hobby, it wouldn't become the thing that divided everybody.”
I stood.
“It didn't become the thing that divided us. You made it that.”
Mom covered her face.
But I still had one question.
“Did you know Dad turned down the Taos program?”
She lowered her hands.
“Yes.”
“Did you agree with him?”
Her silence answered before she did.
“I thought you were too young to go away.”
“It was only a few weeks.”
“You were sixteen.”
“And you told me the program was canceled.”
She began crying harder.
“I was afraid you would never come home.”
I shook my head.
“I spent twenty-one years trying to earn a place in this family. Why would you think I wanted to leave it?”
She looked at me with an expression I'd never seen before.
Not annoyance.
Not impatience.
Shame.
I picked up my bag.
Then I remembered the photograph from their business lobby.
“Mom, whose idea was it to schedule the family portrait on my gallery opening night?”
She went completely still.
I waited.
Finally, she looked up.
“Your father wanted the photograph for the company,” she whispered.
May you like
I didn't move.
“But I was the one who chose October twelfth.”
