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Show Inside Out, 155 Wow. "And not only that, but while she was married, she got pregnant and then miscarried. Something went wrong with the miscarriage and they had to remove her uterus. She will never have kids. But she's always wanted to be a mother, more than anything." I thought about how Leslie had acted while Paul was sick. Desperate, as if her own life might end. The bus was just pulling up. "I asked her if I could tell you these things. She felt funny about it, because she wanted to tell you herself, sometime. But I begged." I had to get out or the bus would leave me. "Thanks for telling me, Dad," I said, and then slammed the door. I sat on the bus, dazed. I had to admit it to myself-I had made terrible assumptions about this woman who had married my father. In thinking she was shallow, I had only proven my own shallowness. And why was it that now that I knew her life had been hard, she was suddenly more of a person to me? Was I assuming that pain was the only qualifier for a genuine person? Couldn't she be a genuine, whole person even if she hadn 't gone through those hard things? When Terra got on the bus, I thought about telling her about Leslie and my disgust with myself. Maybe later, I decided. You have to go slow when you're just getting to know someone, like rationing M&Ms. What if I gave them all away only to find out she didn't like chocolate? And I didn't want to scare her. Man, this really was like getting to know a guy. And now it sort of felt like I was on a date. |