Asking just for water, after small talk, Tom began. He told Kate that he had met Eileen only six months before but had come to know Suzanne and had no doubt that Suzanne was happy with Kerry. Suzanne had to be the one who told her more but that it was important for Kate to understand that Suzanne was in a good place. Eileen was reaching out to Kate, mother-to-mother.
Kate remained silent. Finally, “I’m so scared. I’m so, so scared.” And he reached over and put his hand over hers. “Just let yourself do what your heart tells you to do. That’s all any of us can do.”
Just then, Tom saw Eileen and Mary come up the stairs. He looked at Kate: “You ready?” and she nodded, turning in their direction. When they arrived, Eileen and Mary shook Kate’s hand. The waitress appeared promptly and each ordered a drink, Eileen happy with club soda.
After more awkwardness and more small talk Tom and Mary looked at Eileen. She had started this and it was up to her to move it along.
She pulled out her phone, opened her photo app, and scrolled until she had a picture of Kerry and Suzanne. It was her favorite, Suzanne holding a race trophy and Kerry smiling with her arms around her fiancée’s neck. She passed the phone to Kate. She did not know when Kate had last seen a photo of her daughter and she doubted that she’d seen a photo of the two of them together.
Kate looked troubled and after asking whether there were more Eileen told her to simply swipe through which, to Kate, opened a cornucopia of memories, of all manner of events, in which she had not shared. After looking at five or six, Kate put the phone down and excused herself.
Nothing of substance was said while Kate was gone, other than Tom whispering, “each worth a thousand words.”
When she returned, Kate shuffled around Mary and sat again between Tom and Mary and across from Eileen. The others waited.
“I have no idea what I’m supposed to say now. If you expect me to say I’m okay with this”—and she waved around the table, especially at Mary and she was breaking the promise that she made to herself that she would be calm and civil and conciliatory and she knew it and she could not help it—”because I’m not. You expect me to say I’m okay with Mary”—and now she was looking only at Eileen—”but I’m not and I never will be.” She was letting the fires burn out.
Eileen’s phone was where Kate placed it. Kate picked it up, and the photo app was still open and there were Suzanne and Kerry on either side of Mary and another woman who Kate assumed was Mary’s partner. Kate couldn’t have known it, but this was a photo taken five days before at Mary and Betty’s pre-wedding party, the one at which Tom had secretly proposed to Eileen.
Kate swiped again and there was another picture of Suzanne and Kerry, this time with Tom and Eileen, also taken at that party. And another swipe and another picture of the two girls and Kate began to wonder if every damn picture that Eileen had on her phone featured Eileen’s daughter and Kate’s daughter.
Kate placed the phone down again. She took a breath. And then a second.
“You all think I am a horrible person. Frankly, I’ve always tried to protect my children, to teach them to do what’s right and not to do what’s wrong. Right and wrong are important to me and I’ve always thought,” looking down at the phone now—”what Mary did was wrong.”
Eileen couldn’t let that go. “Kate, it’s not about what Mary does or doesn’t do. Or Suzanne or Kerry or Betty. It’s who they are. Until you see that you’re not going to be able to return to being Suzanne’s mother. Spare me the hate-the-sin/love-the-sinner crap. Don’t you understand that there’s no sin in this? There’s no sinner in this.
“You know, my Kerry stopped going to Mass one day, with all the scandals going on and the no-birth-control idiocy and the rest and she told me, I always remember this, she told me, ‘that god is not my God.’ She thought she was straight back then but couldn’t stand the bible-thumpers shouting that gay people are going to hell.”
Kate was now glaring across at Eileen but remained silent.
“And you and your husband pushed her out the door when she finally understood the hurt that the two of you put to Mary, and to Suzanne, when, and you want your Bible, when like Peter you denied that you even knew her. And you’re surprised that Suzanne saw the two of you for what you are and wanted nothing more to do with you?”
And with that Eileen threw down her napkin, grabbed her bag, and stormed out.
The others were stunned. To Tom, the woman who was so meek after her trip to Chicago was a thing of the past. To Mary, the woman was able to articulate things that she, Mary, had never been able to.
To Kate, she was a bitch.
Tom knew that Eileen would not expect him to come after her. He knew this because he knew that she hoped that with her and her emotions gone, he might be able to get Kate to understand. And it was true. Eileen was speaking hard truths that needed to be said but she was aware that the purpose was not to drive Kate away but to draw her in and that the only way to do that was to make her understand, however imperfectly, that the nonsense that had destroyed Kate’s family, although Kate would never admit it, was nonsense and that this was her last chance to save her family and that while it might not seem important to Suzanne now, eventually the Nelson family needed to be saved.