She Chose Him Over My Dying Mother

3: 3

3

The weather service issued a red blizzard warning.

Malcolm was curled up on the couch, not even lifting his head.

"Edith, I feel like the breakfast pudding from that old place on the south side today."

Mom froze for a second, then looked out at the raging wind.

That diner was an hour and a half away by bus.

Mom only hesitated a moment, and Malcolm's face changed.

He turned to Hope, his mood dropping.

"Hope, does Edith not like me?"

"I just wanted one bowl of breakfast pudding, and she won't even give me that."

"Living here in your house, am I just a burden? Am I in the way?"

Hope's brow furrowed, her voice cold.

"Mom, you're a grown woman. Can't you be a little more considerate?"

"Malcolm spent all those years abroad, and this is the one thing he's been craving. Can't you just go along with it?"

I was about to speak when Mom cut in first.

"All right, I'll go get it."

"Mom!"

"It's fine, I was thinking of getting out for a walk anyway."

The wind outside was fierce.

It tore her hair loose and knocked her thin frame this way and that.

Watching her walk off, something in me ached that I couldn't put into words.

I kept looking out the window, and after a full three hours and more, Mom finally came back, limping.

Her face was flushed raw with cold, her lips purple, frost caught on her brows and lashes.

"Malcolm, I got the breakfast pudding. It's still warm."

Malcolm opened it and glanced inside.

"Ugh, took too long. I've lost my appetite."

Mom froze.

"I, I got back as fast as I could."

"Never mind, never mind, I won't eat it."

He tossed the thermos into the trash.

The pale breakfast pudding spilled out.

Mom stood there, mud and snow on her knees, head down like a child who'd done something wrong.

I grew up in a single-parent home.

On our wedding day, Hope held my hand.

"Gerard, for the rest of my life I'll treat your mom like my own and be good to her. I'll never let either of you suffer again."

But every hurt now came from her.

My voice shook, and I couldn't stop it.

"That's my mother, not a servant you hired."

Malcolm's eyes went red.

"Hope, I didn't say a word. Why is Gerard always coming after me like this?"

Hope glared at me.

"She went on her own. Nobody forced her. And she lives here free, so doing a little something is only right, isn't it?"

I was shaking with anger, and for a moment I couldn't get a word out.

Malcolm cut a sideways look at my mom, pinching his nose, disgust all over his face.

"Ugh, so filthy. It reeks."

"Edith, go rinse off in the bathroom, right now. Don't get the place dirty."

My mom nodded, flustered, and quietly turned toward the bathroom.

I followed her in and watched her carefully roll up her pant leg. The skin underneath was one big bruise, purple and blue.

My voice broke.

"Mom, how did this happen? Does it hurt?"

"It's fine, I just slipped and fell. It'll heal in a couple of days."

"Mom, I want a divorce."

Her voice was worn out.

"Silly boy, Hope's pregnant. Where would you go?"

"A baby needs a whole family. How can a child do without a father?"

"It doesn't matter if I have it hard, if I'm worn out, if I take some hurt. As long as you're happy, that's enough for me."

The heart of a parent is much the same the world over.

All her life she'd been proud and stood on her own.

The year my father walked out on the two of us, she wasn't even forty.

Relatives and friends all urged her to remarry, said raising a child alone was too hard.

She refused, and gritted her teeth, and raised me, and put me through college.

When the neighbors picked on us, a widow and her boy, she stood in the doorway with a kitchen cleaver and cursed them up and down three whole streets, and after that nobody dared bother us.

And now, in this house, for me and for the baby in Hope's belly, she had ground down every scrap of her pride and dignity, until she didn't even dare raise her voice.

My happiness shouldn't come from her swallowing everything.

That night, I texted the lawyer.

"Please draw up a divorce agreement for me as soon as you can. I'm willing to leave with nothing."

"If Hope wants the baby, I'll pay double child support. If she doesn't want it, I'll raise it myself."