Jennie
Just then, there was a knock on the door. We all exchanged glances but I was the one who went to answer it, while wiping the tears from my cheeks along the way. When I opened the door, my heart stopped. It was my mother, holding a rolling suitcase in one hand and her enormous handbag in the other.
"Mom?" I gasped, while just staring at her in the doorway. She had never come to visit me before. Not once in six years. I could hardly believe that she was standing here now.
"Are you going to invite me in?" She asked. "I'm an old woman who just flew across the country. I'd like to find some form of comfort before I start in on you, for leaving your spouse."
"The Calvary has arrived!" Jimin mused, while watching my mother with a grin as she entered the apartment.
"I didn't leave my spouse, mom. You don't understand..." I started.
"You're here and she's there. A week ago, you were both there. Then you left. That's leaving your spouse, sweetie. Now, where's the kitchen?"
Jimin and Chahee chuckled as I pointed her in the direction of the kitchen.
"Who wants cookies?" My mother asked as she rolled her suitcase away and moved to preheat the oven. "I bake when I'm stressed and my daughter has just about killed me."
"I'll have some cookies." Jimin said with a shrug but Chahee slapped his shoulder.
"Actually, we have somewhere to be." she lied, giving me a look that said you two need to talk, alone. Then she pulled Jimin out of the apartment.
"Now, what don't I understand?" My mother asked, while turning to the cabinets and starting to pull out ingredients as if she hardly noticed that my friends had left. "Because I've been on Lisa's side of things myself, so I think I would clearly understand what it is, when one spouse leaves another."
"Mom, our marriage isn't like yours. It's..."
"Complicated." she finished for me with a wave of her hand. "Yes, I know. You've told me. You both have. But you'd do well to stop responding to me with platitudes and listen to what I have to say. I've been on this Earth for over fifty years now and I've learned a thing or two in that time, if you'll listen."
I shut my mouth and sat at the island, waiting for her to continue.
"There are two types of partners for life in this world, sweetheart. Those who put everything on the line for you and those who don't. Your father, God love him, loved me dearly. For twenty five years, he loved me. But he wasn't the sort to stick around when things got hard. Straying to that woman wasn't the first time he ran away from a problem and, I'm afraid, you seem to have gotten a bit of that in yourself." she told me.
I looked down, totally ashamed.
"But Lisa doesn't."
I looked back up to see her waving a wooden spoon in my direction, with her gaze meeting mine.
"That child has stuck with you through thick and thin for the last ten years. When things got hard, and they have been hard, she was always there for you. Can you deny that?" She asked and I blinked at her. "A marriage isn't easy, sweetie. No matter what it is that you seem to think I don't understand about yours. They're all different but they are all the same in this: they all take work. And you can't run away from them."
I hesitated, while letting her words wash over me, and then I sighed, totally deflated. I closed my eyes.
"Mom, there's something I have to tell you." I said. She had turned back around to continue her baking but my voice brought her attention back to me. "It's important, mom. Can you put down the spoon for a minute?"
She did, while wiping her hands off as she turned around to face me.
"When Lisa and I got married after graduation, it was because she was being deported." I finally confessed. Six years of keeping that secret and I simply couldn't do it anymore. I spoke the words aloud and felt the weight as it lifted off of my shoulders. My mother stared at me as if she didn't understand. But there was more that I had to tell her. "They were going to send her back to Thailand, so I agreed to marry her so she could stay. We signed the papers. It was a marriage in name only, legally only. We weren't in love. I mean, I cared for her but it wasn't exactly your standard engagement. Then, two weeks ago, I got a call from a Homeland Security agent saying that they were looking into our marriage. If they could prove that it wasn't legitimate, that we didn't actually love each other, then they could still deport her. So I flew to California to meet with the agent and devise a new plan with Lisa. But she confessed to me that she had feelings for me, that she was attracted to me, and that she always had been."
I was blushing. This wasn't something that I ever thought I would be confessing to my mother but I found that I needed her advice more than I cared to admit. Because she was right. If there was anyone in my life who understood a broken marriage and what it took to fix it or let it go, it was my mother.
"She was different. She was more... confident, more sure of herself. But she was still Lisa. I forgot how much I missed her, how much I loved talking to her and being around her and then... other feelings started to develop as well and we decided to give our marriage a real shot, to see if there was something real between us."
"So what happened?" She asked, while leaning over the counter now, listening to me.
"She told me about Irene." I said. "About how she's been helping Irene pay Dad's medical bills all this time."
My mother blinked at me as if waiting for more. When none came, she pushed away from the counter and looked me over.
"That's it?" She asked.
"What do you mean?" I replied.
"Sweetheart, please tell me you didn't leave your spouse because she was kind enough to provide for your family."
"She didn't tell me! She knows that I haven't spoken to Dad or Irene and..."
"Ah, that's a whole other problem I want to discuss with you. Sweetheart, you've been so angry for so long. You've let your anger consume you. You've turned it into hate for the people who love you the most. Jennie, I don't hate your father. I don't even hate that woman he's married to now. And I certainly don't hate your sister. You are the only one holding onto this hatred and it is eating away at you. And now you're misdirecting it towards your spouse."
I frowned. Was that what I was doing?
"Don't live like this, baby girl." my mother said gently, while reaching across the counter to cup my cheek in her palm. "Don't let your hatred overshadow your love."
I didn't respond. I couldn't. I just sat there, thinking about her words.
"Now." she spoke suddenly, turning back to the oven. "Cookies?"
