Free All That Lies Within by Lynn Ames

proud of myself, Dara. I know I wasn’t the mother you needed or the mother I should have been. Every day I looked at your unhappy face that was abundantly clear. You seemed so lost, so solitary in your own world. I hated being constantly reminded just what a failure I was at this nurturing thing. Often, I wondered if you wouldn’t have been better off if I had listened to your father and put you up for adoption.”
    Dara gasped as a renewed blast of pain bloomed in her chest. What kind of mother tells her daughter that she should’ve gotten rid of her when she had the chance?
    “Damn it.” This time the coughing lasted for several minutes and left her mother gasping for breath . “There I go getting off track again. I’d blame it on all these darned medications making me dopey, but the fact is, I’m old and I get distracted easily.” Her mother cleared her throat. “On with it, then. I didn’t decide to make this tape to justify myself to you. There are things I want you to know. Things you should know.”
    Dara’s heartbeat accelerated. She wasn’t at all sure she could take any more of her mother’s revelations.
    “I’m very proud of you, Dara.”
    “What?” 
    “There. I said it. I know I can’t take any credit for the woman you’ve become, but I want you to know that I burst a button every time I read about something you’ve done, whether it’s using your fame to raise money for charity, or conducting yourself in an interview. You have such grace and poise. I know that’s not just your acting, either. I know you well enough to know the genuine you when I see it. Of course, I’ve seen all of your movies. You really are quite good. In a way, you remind me of a young Kate Hepburn.”
    Dara nearly choked. Katherine Hepburn was her mother’s favorite actress. How many times had she sat with her mother watching Hepburn and Spencer Tracy or Hepburn and Bogie? It was the closest she and her mother ever came to bonding. Those were the moments when she first decided she wanted to act. She’d watched as her mother sat riveted to the screen and wanted nothing more than to command that kind of attention and evoke those types of emotions. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, there were moments in the middle of one of her movie premieres when Dara secretly wished her mother was in a theater somewhere watching with that same expression she remembered seeing as a little girl.
    The sound of her mother’s coughing and gurgling brought Dara back to the present.
    “I’d better wrap this up while I still have the breath to talk. I want you to know that I regret things turned out the way they did between us. I’m sorry that you couldn’t see your way clear to come home once in a while after you left for college. I’m not blaming you. I just wish it could’ve been different. I know that I’m as much to blame as your father for you thinking you needed to stay away. In case you’re wondering, he passed away eight years ago. But maybe you knew that. I tried to find you to tell you. I even contacted that friend of yours, Carrie. But… Well, I guess you didn’t want to be found.”
    Dara turned her head to look out the window. This day looked very much like the day she learned her father had passed away. Dara had been on her way out to an audition, when Carolyn unexpectedly showed up at her door. Carolyn wanted to tell her the news in person. They sat down on the front stoop of Dara’s small townhouse in Burbank and talked. Carolyn didn’t pressure her to go home for the funeral, a fact for which Dara was very grateful. She hadn’t shed any tears for the man who never treated her as more than an inconvenience and a tax deduction.
    In the end, she went to the audition, channeled her churning emotions into the scene, and got the part in her first major movie. After that, she’d never looked back. But now the past beckoned.
    “If you’re listening to my ramblings, it must mean I’m at the end of my rope.