Page 38 of Her Perfect Gift

“I have met people in worse places than a motel parking lot, believe me.” She laughs mirthlessly, which has me wondering about what it must be like to be a journalist. I have always viewed them as vultures who relish in the idea of taking more successful people than them down, but now I’m not so sure. Seeing it through Jasmine’s eyes I kinda realize that there is a lot more to it than that. It isn’t very easy at all. “But yes, this is where I met Cressida the first time around and this is where she said that she would meet me again.”

“For a follow up.” I suck in a deep breath of nervous air. “Not to meet her son.”

“I do think that you might be right though,” Jasmine agrees, sounding much more on board with my line of thinking than Darcy was. “That she spoke to me to get your attention. I mean, I didn’t know that she wasn’t in your life the whole time or I might have gone with that angle. It does seem really strange…”

“You did promise that you won’t publish that story,” I remind Jasmine. She did, but I don’t know how much I believe her. I guess time will only tell if she intends to follow through with that. “So, where is she?”

“You wait here.” Jasmine presses her hand to my chest. “I will speak to her first. Once she sees me from her room window, she will come out and speak to me. Then we can bring you into the picture.”

I do as she commands even though I don’t know if this is the right move, and I wait in the shadows for her to make her appearance. Her first in my whole life, that I can remember anyway. While I pause, I conjure up the image that my father in his love-struck manner has created of her for me. This free loving hippy chick with long flowing blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes who always had a smile on her face and could make anyone laugh. He has always told me that she lit up every damn room that she went in to, and it was impossible not to fall for her. But that her free spirit and flower child attitude made it impossible for her to stay in one place at a time. She was a butterfly who can’t have her wings clipped. I have always thought of her as this ray of sunshine who would make me forgive her in a heartbeat without me needing to try.

Jasmine glances behind her giving me a little look to warn me. She’s coming. I stiffen, fear bolts through me as I roll my shoulders up near my ears. It’s about to happen. Twenty eight years has brought me to this point…

What the fuck? This isn’t right, it can’t be. As soon as I see the person joining Jasmine’s side, I fall apart inside because this isn’t the woman that my father described at all. This woman looks much older than I imagined, with mousy brown straggly hair that looks drug abused and not cared for. There is no smile on her gaunt face and her body is too thin for her to light up any room… this is someone else. Someone who I actually know. Or not know but I have seen before because she approached me at the New Year’s Eve party.

“I only want a moment,” she said to me, I remember it so clearly now. “This won’t take long. I just want to know about you. All of you. Your life, your childhood, what you are working on now, how you followed in your father’s footsteps… It isn’t for anything. I just want to talk to you that’s all.”

Oh God, I was so dismissive of her and now I know why she wanted to talk to me. I feel kind awful for the things that I barked at her when clearly, she was just trying to reach out to me, to talk to me. She went about it the wrong way, just like she has done here, but still… she obviously doesn’t know what to do.

“Talk to someone else. There are plenty of people here that you can harass before you get kicked out, so why not do that? I am sure that there will be someone who wants to talk to you. Someone desperate for the attention.”

My words make me flinch; I feel terrible. All I want to do is step closer to her and find the words to make it right, but, how can I? This is a fucking mess. One that I suppose she created…

“Seth!” Finally, Jasmine calls out to me, grabbing my attention back to the present. “Come here.”

It’s time. My mother is looking at me now with the same mix of recognition and fear for dealing with a stranger as well, which brings me closer to her. She isn’t the woman that I thought she was, and she isn’t who my father described either. I guess that it must be time for me to find out who she really is.

I kinda wish that I had Darcy with me. I don’t know why I turned down her kind offer to be honest, it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. But I suppose this is something that I must do alone, however much it kills me. I need to be by myself as I discover who this woman has become since she ran out on me.

“Hi,” she whispers with a strained smile on her face. “It’s you.”

“Yeah.” I nod cautiously. “And I suppose it’s you as well.”

Jasmine waits for a beat of silence before she jumps in. “Well, I guess I have done my part. It’s up to you guys now if you want to go inside and have a talk or whatever. A happy family reunion…”

Once Jasmine moves away from the pair of us while giving me a reassuring look, but also flooding me with nerves as she does. There will definitely be a story written about this, I just know it, but to be honest I might be beyond caring. I’m too much in the midst of confusion about this situation right now.

“Shall we go inside?” I feel like I need to be the one to take the first step here. “Talk some more?”

I don’t know what I’m expecting from a motel room, but as we go inside it’s the stink which hits me first. It’s smoky with a horrible hint of something that I don’t even want to acknowledge. It certainly isn’t a smell that I know personally, but it doesn’t take a genius to work it out. It might explain why my mother looks like she does and isn’t anything like the woman my father told me to expect.

“Take a seat,” my mother declares while waving her hand dismissively. “If you can find a place.”

I don’t bother. Instead, I look at her with confusion. “Mom, what the hell is going on here? What happened? I mean, I am looking to you now for answers, I need to know why we’re all of a sudden here.”

As I shrug hard, I shiver thinking about the word ‘Mom’. Even saying that is weird. Never mind the rest.

“I owe you an explanation.” She lights up what I hope is just a cigarette, but it does smell odd. “That’s why I have been trying to communicate with you. I didn’t do it right, but we’re here anyway. You… you probably want to know why I left. Or maybe you understand. You did grow up with your father after all. You know what his love is like. He’s overwhelming, isn’t he? He’s too much. Especially when you are a seventeen year old free spirit who didn’t expect a hook up with a rock star to turn into a baby and all that seriousness… sorry. I don’t mean to sound like I didn’t want you. It isn’t that, it was just a bit much.”

“Right… I see.” This is making me feel like shit. Her words are destroying me from the inside out.

“So, when my group of friends were leaving town, just after you were born, I went with them. It just felt like the right thing to do. I needed space, I had to breathe, I wanted to continue living my life.”

“Your life.” I sound all robotic. This reunion isn’t what I need it to be. I didn’t have any expectations coming in here, but it definitely wouldn’t ever be this. “Of course you did. Why wouldn’t you?”

“Don’t be all judgmental, Seth, I was only seventeen. I didn’t know any better… nor did I know that the people I left town with were going to get me into heavier drugs. You know, the real hard stuff.” She laughs raspily. “I didn’t know that it was going to steal all those years of my life. Take away so much time so I wouldn’t ever get to see you growing up or any of that stuff. I didn’t know that It would be three decades later…”