PART 5 — The table for two
The apartment was small, but warm and clean. Everywhere there were plants in terracotta pots, and framed photographs of Daan hung on the wall at various stages of his life: as a toddler on the beach, holding a wooden sword, and more recently in a sports uniform with a medal around his neck. Not a single photo of me. Nor did there need to be; I had, after all, organized my own absence.
Emma walked to the small kitchenette and put a kettle on the stove. The sound of igniting gas echoed in the quiet room. I stood in the middle of the room, my hands awkwardly in the pockets of my wet coat, knowing I couldn't sit anywhere without it feeling awkward. “Would you like to take off your coat?” she asked without turning around. Her back was to me.
“Yes... thank you,” I stammered. I took off the coat and draped it over the back of a wooden chair at the dining table. At that table stood an empty chair. Exactly like the one at home. Only here, the tableware was already set for two people. “Daan is at a friend’s,” she said, as if anticipating my thoughts. She took two mugs from the cupboard. “He told me you were at the door.
That you bought all his raffle tickets.” I felt a flush burn on my cheeks. “I didn't want to turn him away. He looks so much like... like his grandfather.” Emma’s hand faltered as she placed the tea bags into the mugs. She didn't look at me, but her shoulders tightened. “Yes. I hear that often. Sometimes I see him laugh in the mirror and it’s as if my father is back for a moment.” “Emma,” I began, and I felt the lump in my throat grow larger.
“I’m sorry.” Three words. Just three simple words I had been too cowardly to say for twenty years. I had practiced them in a thousand different scenarios in my head—in bed, while doing the dishes, on those lonely holidays when I sat alone at the table with my extra plate. But now that they came out, they sounded hollow and insufficient. What did three words mean after two decades of cold silence?
Emma turned around slowly. She held the tea bags by their strings; the water in the kettle began to hum. Her eyes were dry, but her gaze cut deeper than tears ever could have. “Do you know what the worst part is, Mom?” she asked with a calm that almost terrified me. “It wasn't even that you threw me out of the house. That was bad, yes. I was nineteen, pregnant, and terrified.
I thought the world was ending. But the real blow didn't come from that decision.” She laid the tea bags down and walked to the table. She sat down on the chair opposite the empty spot. “The real blow was that you never looked back after that,” she continued, her voice trembling just a little now. “No letter, no phone call, no secret message through someone else to ask if we were managing.
For twenty years, Mom. Twenty winters in which I wondered if you even still knew I existed.” I let my head hang. Tears now flowed unhindered down my nose and fell onto the wooden floor. I could offer no excuses. I couldn't say I had been busy, or that I thought it was better for her. That would have been a lie. I had simply been too proud. Too afraid of losing face before the outside world. “I thought you would be happier without me,” I whispered. Emma shook her head. A sad, bitter smile appeared around her mouth. “No one is happier when their mother banishes them, Mom. No one.”
