Believing
I don't believe in love.
I used to think that love was what my mom and dad had. (I mean, they were married. Married people loved each other.) Then they got divorced. My seven-year old self couldn't understand what was going on. I knew what a divorce was. Tons of kids at school had divorced parents. Like Mille. I asked her what a divorce was once.
"Well first, your parents stop loving each other so they fight all the time or stop talking to each other. Then your mom does sex with the neighbor. Then your dad moves out and your mom sends him papers to sign. Then they're divorced."
When my parents sat me down to tell me what was going on, the first thing I asked was "Is is because you're doing sex with the neighbor?"
In retrospect that was a stupid thing to bring up. My dad blew up. My mom was flabbergasted.
"You're screwing the neighbor?"
"No!"
"Well Jonathan seems to think so.
"But I'm not!" She turned to me. "Jonathan, sweetheart," she tried to remain calm. Hold onto some shred of dignity. "Whatever gave you that idea?"
"Well Millie said that parents stop loving each other when the mom does sex with the neighbor."
Mom and Dad shared a look. Then she took my hand and looked me in the eye.
"Neither one of us if doing anything with the neighbor or with anyone for that matter," she paused for a moment. She was probably trying to find a way to explain it in a way that made sense. "Your father and I, well, we just… changed."
I like to think I handled it alright. I understood… to an extent. That didn't stop me from hoping (like every other child of divorce) that my parents would maybe, one day, get back together.
They got back together.
It was a disaster. Mostly because I missed Tony.
Tony, the greatest housekeeper ever, came knocking on the door when I was about seven.
Not only would he clean and cook the most delicious meals, he'd also play ball, teach me gymnastics, and give me fantastic girl advice. And he made mom smile.
Plus, Sam got to live with us. While she did think that I was a dweeb, and we fought a lot, she was fun to play with, and we always had each other's backs. And she was the only one who I could talk to about my mom and her dad. She was the only one who got it.
When I was about ten (a year after my parents officially broke up) I asked her about their relationship. She was rushing to get her makeup done before school and I barged into her room.
"Hey Sam?"
"What do you want?" she snapped. "I'm busy here."
"I have a question."'
"Ugh. Alright. Make it quick.
"Do you think my mom and your dad will ever fall in love?" I blurted out.
She immediately stopped applying her mascara and turned to look at me. "Where did that come from?"
"Well if they fall in love, they'll get married and then we'll be a proper family."
"You make it sound so simple," she said and went back to putting on her makeup.
"So do you think they'll fall in love?"
"Sometimes I wonder if they haven't already."
That was the first time we ever spoke about it.
As the years went by, I focused less on them falling in love and more on whether our current living arrangements would last. I soon gave up on matchmaking because I realized that it really didn't matter if they ever fell in love and got married. I liked things as they were.
But whenever there was a hint of a promise, that maybe things would change, Sam and I would sneak into the kitchen in the middle of the night, grab some junk food, and bring it to one of our rooms and we'd talk. We talked about so many things… mom's sleep-talking confession, their first date, her dad going to college…Jamaica…
"Jonathan, you should've seen them! They were practically eating each other's faces!"
"Ewwww… Sam! I didn't need to know that!"
She laughed, "Whatever Jonathan. I think this year will be the year."
Needless to say, it wasn't.
It would be another two years. In that time I saw men and women come in and out of mom and Tony's lives, but they never lasted long. There were some close calls, like Kathleen, but like every other venture into the dating scene, it failed.
When they finally got together, Sam and I were ecstatic.
"Angela and I are in love," Tony had explained something that we already knew so well.
A few months later, they were even going to get married.
My childhood hopes and dreams were going to come true.
But it didn't exactly work out as I had imagined.
I always thought that once they finally admitted they're feelings, everything would be good. That their love would be enough no matter what. It had always been enough before. They've been through so much, only to have it all come apart.
I don't know what happened. It was sometime after Tony came back from Iowa. To me, any other problems they had seemed insignificant. Tony was back, that's all that mattered. They'd work through their problems. They always did before.
I got home from school to find my mother and grandmother on the couch. Mom had been crying and Grandma seemed to be trying to console her.
That was one of the rare times that I saw Mona Ronbinson with a loss for words.
Like me, she expected it to last. And she didn't know what to say to make her daughter all better. Unlike my dad all those years ago, Tony was impossible to bash. She couldn't say tell her daughter that she deserved better, that he was an ass. And mom couldn't think that it was because she was young, naïve, and that it was rushed.
So mom cried, and grandma held her.
It's been five months since that day.
I stopped hoping for them to get back together at around three months-around the time when Sam got divorced.
Sam didn't take the breakup that well. They were her real life fairytale that got ripped away from her. The little Brooklyn girl in her needed the fairytale to believe in.
Hank didn't understand.
One day she woke up, and his puppets that had been so adorable had suddenly become annoying and childish. And she snapped. If her Tony and mom couldn't get it to work, why was she trying so hard?
I wish that their love was enough.
Last night, I finally got up the courage to talk to mom about Tony.
"Was it worth it?"
"Yeah, Jonathan. It was."
And I wanted to believe again.