Chapter 2 - What Mrs. Feldman Had CarriedTeddy sat across from me, completely still. "She's my mother?" he whispered
I was devastated realizing the answers to all my questions had been sitting so close by, yet impossibly far away this whole time. Mrs. Feldman continued. "I stayed close because I genuinely loved Teddy, but also because I felt real guilt over it. I thought helping you was the only way I could possibly make up for my own silence." "What gave either of you the right to decide what I could actually handle?" "Nothing," she said simply. "I had no right at all."
Teddy finally spoke up. "So she left right after I was born? Did she even know my actual name?" The question silenced us both completely. "Yes," I said. "She chose it together with me." "Did she ever actually hold me?" I remembered Junie standing over his bassinet in the darkness that particular night. "Yes. When you were born, she genuinely did hold you." "So she didn't leave because I have Down syndrome?" "No. I thought so too, for years. But no, that's not why." My voice broke apart. "She was right, actually. I would have spent every waking hour trying desperately to save her, and I wouldn't have known how to properly balance that with taking care of you at the same time." His eyes filled with tears. "Would you have wanted her to stay anyway?" "I think we both would have wanted that." "Then why didn't she let you actually choose for yourself?" I had no real answer to give him.
Teddy stood and walked away from the table. I followed him out into the hallway. "I thought my mother had abandoned me, and you just simply didn't want me to know the truth," he said. "I didn't want you thinking you weren't loved. I love you completely, Teddy." "But you also genuinely believed she left because of me?" "Yes. And I hated her for eighteen straight years because of it." He wiped his face angrily. "I feel happy that she actually loved me. Is that somehow bad of me?" "No." "I also feel genuinely angry, though." "So do I."
We stood there crying together, relieved by the truth and wounded by it, both at exactly the same time. Then Teddy asked, "What did she actually look like?" That particular question broke something wide open inside me. In eighteen years, I'd never told him a single thing about his own mother. I'd told myself I was protecting him from it. The realization made me feel genuinely sick. Junie had decided I couldn't handle losing her. I had decided Teddy couldn't handle knowing her. The exact same kind of silence had simply passed down from one parent to the next.
"Come with me," I said. I led him out to the garage. At the back of one cabinet sat a sealed plastic box I hadn't opened since we'd moved out of our old apartment years earlier. I'd always found it too painful looking at what was actually stored inside it. Inside sat Junie's old photographs, university notebooks, a green scarf she'd worn every single winter, and a silver bracelet I'd given her on our very first anniversary together.
Teddy sat beside me on the garage floor. I showed him a picture of Junie laughing on some beach. "She genuinely hated sand," I said. "Complained about it all day long, then refused to leave because the sunset turned out so beautiful." He smiled at that. I showed him our wedding photograph next. "Was she funny?" "Very funny." "Did she sing?" "Absolutely terribly." "Do I look like her at all?" For years I'd deliberately avoided looking for Junie inside him. Now I suddenly saw her everywhere at once — the curve of his smile, the small dimple in his left cheek, the way one eyebrow rose whenever he grew confused about something. "Yes," I said. "You genuinely do look like her."
At the bottom of that box sat an old address book I'd stored away long ago. I'd told myself I'd need it someday, if I ever actually decided to find out where Junie had gone. I'd simply never brought myself to actually do it. Hate and lingering pain held me back, always wondering what good could possibly come from tracking down a mother who'd abandoned her own newborn son. Now that I finally knew exactly why she'd left, I genuinely had to find out what had happened to her afterward.
Junie's own mother's name and contact information sat inside that address book. Junie and Corinne had been estranged for years by that point. I'd only met Corinne twice myself, and Junie rarely spoke of her at all. I decided that now, finally, was the right time to reach out. I hesitated nearly a full hour before actually calling.
A woman answered. "Is this Corinne?" "Yes. Who's calling?" "My name is Grayson." A long silence followed. Then she whispered, "Junie's Grayson?" My throat tightened hard. "Yes." Corinne began crying before I'd even asked what had actually happened.
She told me that Junie had died seven months after leaving us behind. She'd contacted Corinne at the time, having genuinely nowhere else left to go. The cancer had been discovered after doctors spotted an abnormality in her bloodwork, late in her pregnancy. Further scans revealed it had already spread extensively through her body. All doctors could offer her, once she'd left us, was hospice care in her final months. Corinne had cared for her, right up until the very end.
"Why didn't you ever try to find me?" I asked. "She made me promise. Made me swear on my own grandson's name." "You should have let me choose for myself. All of you should have let me actually choose." "I know," Corinne whispered. "I have regretted it every single day since. I have thought of you and my grandson every single day, all this time."
Teddy spoke with her that same afternoon. Their first conversation lasted nearly an hour straight. He asked about Junie's own childhood, her favorite food, whether she'd ever spoken of him at all. "Every single day," Corinne said. "Right up to her very last breath, the two of you were all she ever spoke about."
A few months later, the four of us visited Junie's grave together. Corinne stood on one side with Teddy. I stood on the other. Mrs. Feldman placed white flowers beneath the headstone. For weeks after the letter, I'd barely spoken to her at all. Teddy kept visiting her regardless, and eventually I came to understand that her eighteen years of love had genuinely been real, even if her particular silence had been wrong.
May you like
At the grave, Teddy placed Junie's own letter beside the flowers. "I'm glad you loved me," he said softly. "But I wish you had stayed long enough to actually let us love you back too." Then I finally said what I'd carried around for eighteen full years. "I hated you, Junie." My voice shook badly. "I hated you because it was considerably easier than admitting I still loved you completely." Corinne reached over and took my hand.
Junie hadn't abandoned us because she was heartless. She had genuinely loved us. She had also made one terrible, devastating choice. Both things could be true at exactly the same time.
