Laura does not look at me when she speaks. I have been waiting for her to ask me, as she always does, and when she finally does, the words slide heavy and defeated out of her mouth before falling out in a rush, as if to make up for her initial hesitation, as if she meant it all along, the question.
"Mom, I'm going to see Jared. Do you want to come?"
"When are you going, honey?"
"Right now. After I leave here."
"I'm sorry. I can't. I have to go to the store and get things for the cookout tomorrow."
"Mom, I'll take you to the store when we're done."
"Honey, you don't have to do that---it's Saturday night; I'm sure you have plans."
"Mom, really, I'm free. Why don't you just come with me? I know he wants to see you."
"He…I can't, honey. Not today. I just can't. It'll upset me too much and I have to go to the cookout tomorrow---maybe next week, okay?"
"Mom, you say that all the time." She lights a cigarette and brushes her pageboy out of her eyes. She has such beautiful deep brown pools of eyes and soft, soft lips, like her father's lips. I always envisioned how those eyes would look through the delicate latticework of a bridal veil, but more often than not they are hidden behind a pair of sunglasses and cigarette smoke. I put an ashtray in front of her and consider having one myself. Cigarette smoke damages the skin, Dr. Englestein told me last visit. Take more vitamin C, Mona. It helps to reverse the damage. And quit smoking. The more you smoke, the older you look. Oh, to hell with it. I reach for her pack. I'll have a glass of orange juice with lunch.
"Mom, I know this is hard on you, but it's hard on all of us." Laura takes a sip of the tea I made her, the noncaffeinated zinger that I keep around for her. "It's hard on me, it's hard on Dad, it's hard on Kim, it's hard on Jared's friends. But ignoring it doesn't change anything."
"Laura, I can't do it right now, okay? I'm sorry, but I can't. And I guess that makes you and your father and everyone else stronger or better than me and that's just fine, okay? I just can't do it right now."
"Mom, I don't want a medal for going to see him. It's just important for you to go. It may help. He's still your son."
"I know, Laura, I know." Know what? I look away, groping for the explanation that doesn't make me look heartless, selfish, undeserving of my motherhood. There isn't one. Aside from the fact it would destroy me? No, there really isn't a reason. "I just can't right now. I'm not strong enough."
"Mom, you'll never be ready, but Jesus, he has feelings. He knows who you are. He may not realize that you haven't been to see him, but he'll be so happy when he does see you. And that's the most important thing. And you'll realize he's still your Jared, regardless of what has happened."
Jared, my shining star. I cannot look at your pictures, your awards. I cannot bring myself to throw out the bridal magazines and designer patterns and vacation brochures that Kim and I poured over in anticipation of your wedding together. Kim didn't mind her extra mother. She seemed to understand that I would not be able to enjoy the same things with Laura and asked me over for dinner, soliciting my opinions as the one who "knew Jared best." You, my Jared, live somewhere along these remnants, an indefinite honeymoon in the Caribbean or Barcelona or Greece, away on business, living your life in another part of the country perhaps. Not here, not in…this way. Sometimes, and this is so horrible, so terrible, that I cannot even admit it to my therapist---I wish you were dead.
"I'd better get going." Laura stands up. "Have fun at the cookout."
"Laura." I want to ask her to come but I think it will be too hard for me. Always the questions about who she's seeing and what's she's doing with her life and no Jared, no Jared and Kim to act as a buffer, to balance. That poor Mona, they pity behind my back. First Jared, and look how Laura turned out…
"Yes?" She peeks out over the top of her sunglasses and I remember when she was five or six, looking at me over the top of her plastic Holly Hobby sunglasses that she loved, a little demure smile on her lips, what a beautiful child she was. Do I ever see her smile now? Perhaps she smiles at other things when we're not together? But what? I do not know.
"Give Jared a hug for me." I crush out the cigarette and stand to see her out. I could ask, but maybe I'm afraid. I don't want to know. I want to know about the Laura and Jared I thought they'd be, that I was assured they would be, living in the right neighborhood, having the right schooling, the right connections. No, the reality is always something quite different. Such a crapshoot, regardless of what they all say. I watch Laura get in her car, the beat-up Volvo her father, the dermatologist, used to drive, years ago. Your children have such perfect skin, Sylvia and the others used to say. If Laura is involved in a car accident on her way back to the city, if she survives but it is a vegetable, will I regret not telling her I loved her, loved the essence of her, regardless of the specifics, the blanks she fills in with things I don't understand, don't care for?
"Laura." I call after her. She rolls down the passenger window and peeks her head out. The sun shines on her cheek, its creamy whiteness a baby bottom, a saucer of milk on the table. I wave her on, and she disappears back into the dark compartment of the Volvo, her father's once. It now rolls heavy, congested, down the street. In its absence birds chatter, the wind lifts the tree branches, the sounds of regret.