I said, “Mom I’m not going to forgive you for the best night of my life.”
She gave me a small smile and said, “Oh sweetie…then treat it as a onetime experience and take something positive out of it.”
I said, “Mom…” and started to reach for her.
She shook her head and said, “No baby…maybe you should go.”
I felt bad. She seemed so wounded and I’d never seen her so vulnerable. I said, “I want to stay here tonight.”
She said, “Paulie, we’re not going to have sex.”
I said, “I heard you mom, okay, I just want to stay with you. Why don’t you get dressed and we’ll go to the diner and get something to eat.”
She let out a deep breath and said, “I…oh okay, yeah, I’ll get dressed…okay.”
We sat in the diner for about two and a half hours, talking. Mom said, “Thanks for staying with me tonight Paul; it makes me feel a little better that you don’t hate me.”
I said, “How could I hate you? You’re my mom.” She smiled. I said, “I don’t know if I should tell you this, but I went to this party this afternoon and I was different.” She asked me how and I told her how confident I was and how I saw things differently.
She said, “I’m glad baby. I guess we’re not going to erase what happened last night, but maybe it can help us get to know each other better. I guess after that, we can talk to each other about practically anything.”
I said, “Sure mom.”
She said, “What I was trying to tell you about intimacy is that it’s what makes things worthwhile. It’s a sharing of, well, everything. You’re together with someone in a way that connects you all the time, even when you’re apart. I’ve had very little of it, but I know that it’s what I want.”
“It sounds great mom.” I said. “I guess talking like this is something like that.”
“Yes Paul it is. When you can open your heart to someone and trust them with it, yes, that’s an important part of it.”
So we shared a chocolate cake and lots of things we’d never told each other. I learned about her relationship with my father from another perspective than I’d grown up with, and I told her about my fears with girls and what I hoped to do with my life. She took my arm as we walked home and said, “Thank you for this Paul. I didn’t think I would feel good ever again.” Whatever she had taken had worn off and she was clear eyed again. When we got home, we went to sleep, in separate beds.
In the morning, I checked the computer; bad news on both fronts. Nothing between Em and mom, and Unitech said they had more applicants then they could handle and weren’t setting up interviews at present. I told mom, and after thinking for a minute she said, “I don’t know if this would work, but maybe you could put up ads to fix computers.” Mom lived in a development with three big buildings with hundreds of apartments.”
I said, “I don’t know, I guess I could fix most of the usual things that go wrong.”
She said, “Give it a try.”
I told her I would and then I said, “Mom I want to tell you something, after talking last night, I felt bad about something I did. I read your e-mails.”