The Push by Ashley Audrain (motivational novels TXT) 📗

in the bathroom sink while you shaved for work. The feel of my unwashed hair. The ascending cry from the other room. That life, banal and stifling. But comforting. It was everything. I’d let it all go.

Maybe I’d let him go, too.

81

There had been half a bottle of wine consumed that night, yes. But I’d been thinking about calling you for days. I curled up on the couch while he slept upstairs. On your side of the bed. I wished he hadn’t stayed the night. It was nearly midnight.

I had talked myself through different versions of what I could say to you, but nothing felt right. I didn’t want to apologize for the mother I’d been to her – I wasn’t sorry. I didn’t want to say I was wrong – I didn’t know if I was. I just wanted you to know that something inside of me had changed. And I wanted to see our daughter more.

Gemma answered your phone the third time I called. ‘Is everything okay?’

Maybe it is, I wanted to reply. Maybe it finally is.

But instead I asked to speak to you. You were beside her in bed, I could hear the sheets move as you rolled over to take the phone.

‘I need to see her more. I want to do better.’

I asked you about the painting, the one you took from our bedroom when you moved out. I hadn’t planned to ask you about this, I hadn’t even thought about it that night. But suddenly I wanted it desperately. I stood up and paced the room while you let me sit on the line in silence. I imagined it hanging on a stark white wall in the hallway of your beautiful new home, Gemma touching the gold frame gently while she walked by, thinking of her own small child and the way he touched her face.

‘I don’t know where it is.’

82

I picked Violet up from school the next week. She was sitting alone on the cold steps, a boulder in the waterfall of children bounding down around her.

‘We can do anything you want this afternoon,’ I’d said as she buckled up. ‘You pick. But we’re going with a new schedule. Every Wednesday and Thursday night with me.’

I watched her text furiously from the corner of my eye.

‘I want to go home,’ she said eventually, looking out the window.

‘We will, but let’s do something fun first. What are you in the mood for?’

‘No, I mean home. To Gemma. And Dad.’

‘Well, you’re my daughter. And I’m your mother. So we’re going to try to act like it.’

I pulled into the parking lot of a gas station and stopped the car. I didn’t know where to take her. She was turned toward the passenger door, texting, and I realized I hadn’t known she’d been given her own phone.

‘Who are you texting?’

‘Mom and Dad.’

I didn’t give her a reaction – I knew she was looking for one.

Instead I filled the car with gas and drove us out to the highway.

Two hours later we stopped for takeout at the first drive-through off the exit ramp. I didn’t know she was vegetarian now – she would only eat the fries. She never asked where we were going, not for the whole two hours. Instead she leaned her arm against the window and slowly pulled strands of her hair through her fingers, flattening them out and running her hand along the silky ribbon like the bow of a violin. This was something I, too, had done as a girl.

My heart felt soft when I pulled into the lot and took a ticket from the machine. I hadn’t been there in a very long time. I got out of the car and waited in the cold for her to join me, but she didn’t move. I opened her door and put my hand on her shoulder.

‘There’s someone I want you to meet.’

She didn’t say anything as we checked in at the front desk. I handed over my ID and clipped the visitor passes to each of our coats. She followed me quietly to the elevator and down the hall of the fourth floor. The smell was stale and aseptic but for the waft of urine every now and then. It crushed me to breathe in that air. I knocked softly on the door of her room.

‘Come in.’

She sat in an orange slip-covered chair with her legs crossed, an empty crossword on her lap. The lights in the room were off and the pen in her hand had the cap on. A loosely knitted blanket hung around her shoulders. She opened her mouth to speak but then just sighed. She’d forgotten what she wanted to say. And then:

‘You’re here! I’ve been waiting for you!’

Violet watched as I hugged her gently. I turned on the lamp behind her and she glanced up at the bulb, surprised by the light. I gestured for Violet to sit at the end of the bed.

‘I’m so happy to see you.’ She reached her hand to me and I ran my thumb over her skin, as thin as rice paper. Her veins moved under my lips as I gave her hand a kiss. She smelled like petroleum jelly.

‘You look so beautiful today.’ She spoke so earnestly that I suddenly really did feel beautiful. I thanked her. Her lips were dry and I reached for the cup of water on her bedside table and offered it to her. ‘No, thank you, dear. You have some. You’re always so thirsty. Even as a little girl, you were.’

Violet looked at me and I could see by her twisting mouth that she was upset. She was feeling uncomfortable, in this strange building with this strange stench and this woman she had never met before. She shifted on the bed and