Chapter Six – Silent Partner
"And you're speaking from experience."
My mother was married once.
She was eighteen years old and the man was my father.
She fell for him instantly. He had a motorcycle, and a leather jacket and a million grievances for a world that simply didn't understand him.
My mother liked that. She understood it, and consequently understood the complexities in him other girls shied away from. And when he promised her the world with those soulful eyes of his, things they would do, the places they would see. Promises of everything she'd always wanted, she had no reason to disbelieve him.
There were two weeks of wedded bliss in which my mother shared her world with the man who held her fragile heart carefully in both hands. Her hopes and dreams, her fears, her past hurt. He was privy to it all.
She couldn't seem to stop herself when he looked at her the way he did, begging with his eyes to share the deepest, most well buried parts of herself with him. He had unlocked a heart closed to the world for far too long and he had climbed deep inside, burrowing into corners of her that no other living soul had been granted the power to see.
His promises were short-lived though. And I wonder how naïve my mother could have been to think at eighteen a man could promise a world he had yet to see himself.
I forgive her naivety because in a way that's what being young is all about. Learning who to trust. Learning right and wrong. And ultimately learning that what a man promises and what he is capable of delivering are two entirely different things.
It only took four months for Samantha Spade to lose her faith in men. Four short months to start her on the tormented path of doubting every promise, of distrusting the world and of closing her heart to any future pain.
The man that knew all my mother's secrets left on a cold wet fall day. He was never one for confrontation, and a note scrawled on her own powder pink writing paper was the only farewell my mother was to get.
She read it three times. Then a fourth and a fifth and with a sinking heart she realized what it all really meant. She cursed herself for allowing him to break down the walls and fences she had spent years meticulously constructing. And it had been so easy for him. He had said he loved her. It was the first time anyone had ever said those words to her. And it had only taken moments after that for him to crumble defenses she had spent a life time fortifying. She despised him for his power.
She crawled into bed that night tired and lost. A renewed sense of being, an identity she had created for herself as his wife, snatched away from her in a single heartbeat. Who knows, maybe he had taken it all with him, a souvenir for his travels, wherever they took him.
My mother's anger manifested itself in a torrent of tears that soaked her pillow. Her dreams had been shattered in the blink of an eye by a man who knew her intimately, knew her better than anyone ever had before.
It was that night a decision was formulated in that lonely bed, in that barren apartment. A decision never to let another man have that sort of power over her. The power to take her heart when he went on his way and to leave her drowning in loneliness. Completely vulnerable. A shadow of who she really was.
She would go somewhere new. She'd always liked California with its promise of eternal sunshine. She could start her life over again where the memories and the past were as scarce as the rain.
Samantha Spade left Wisconsin behind two days later without so much as a glance behind her.
Eighteen years old, completely alone and unsuspectingly pregnant.
Two bags by her side.
And one very broken heart.