Lunch

He had regretted agreeing to it the second he did. Keep quiet and let the time pass, he thought. It will be good for her if not for you.

“Dan, I want to apologize.”

“For what?”

“I’ve been reading this book about how much mothers effect the way you are as an adult. And I was thinking about it, and it’s true. I think I didn’t express my feelings enough, and now you don’t know how to express yours. But my mom was cold to me too. I remember when I was a kid your grandma sent me to pick up some milk. And when I got to the cash register the man asked me if I wanted a candy. And I was just a little kid I didn’t know any better so of course I said yes. So I got a pack of Rolos, and when I got back your grandma was furious. She said, ‘Stupid girl, we can’t afford that.’ Then she took the Rolos and went to the neighbors and told them how I had bought them when I was just supposed to get milk, and she let them eat them in front of me. And I didn’t even realize it, but to this day I can’t stand Rolos.”

She was already crying by this point, but she went on. “And I just think I didn’t show you enough love as a child because I didn’t know how to love, and I’m sorry.”

He felt bad. And he felt bad that he felt bad. Once again she was only thinking of herself. She wanted to make herself feel better. Why would you take someone to a public restaurant just so you could break down and cry in front of them? What was she expecting other than making him feel extremely uncomfortable?

She had gotten it entirely wrong. It was not a lack of love that she needed to apologize for. If you really want to apologize, he thought, you can apologize for moving out into the middle of bumfuck nowhere, where the schools are full of retarded hillbillies, and the churches are full of insane cultists and militia men. For putting me in positions where my intellect was chained by the authoritarian whims of idiots. For making me feel bad for understanding the world better than you. For pulling me out of school so I lost all my friends. For making me a local pariah and turning my former friends into my enemies. For keeping me in complete isolation in that shithole house without any contact with the outside world for several years. For discouraging any kind of thought and imposing a blind obedience of the stupidest kind. For sitting in your room talking on the phone for hours while I taught myself algebra. For sending me to that shit Jesus freak high school. For borrowing money from me to fund the whims of your other children. For preventing me from having any kind of friends or social life. For putting other people’s view of you as a mother over the actual welfare of your children. For ignoring everything that was wrong. For lying in order to trick me into going to that stupid Jesus freak college. For trying to prevent me from doing what I want to do. For ignoring all the times I was telling you there was something seriously wrong with me. For lying to me about everything and teaching me that I can’t trust anyone, explain anything to anyone, and that communicating with other people was a useless waste of time. For unleashing within me the deepest darkest sort of pessimism, that would remain the unshakable core of my being for the rest of my life.

Of course, there was no point in apologizing now. It would only make him angry. Not that these things are unforgivable, but that she was incapable of knowing how wrong what she did was. How can you apologize for ruining someone’s life.

“It’s okay.” He said. He asked for the check and went home.