by Frankie Rose
AMANDA ST. French, formally known as Mom, is leaving home when I finally reach Manhattan. I catch the flash of her bright blonde hair, brilliant gold against the drab greys of the overcast day, as she pauses on the doorstep, probably hunting for her keys. I tip the cab driver way too much, not hanging around for my change, and run down the street to reach her before she climbs into her Lexus. I nearly don’t make it. She’s opening the passenger door when I skid to a halt in front of her. An awkward moment follows where she sees me, I see her, and the woman she is holding hands with sees me, too. How did I not notice she wasn’t alone? How did I not notice she was holding hands with a woman?
Her eyes flash, wider than I’ve ever seen them go before. “Avery?” She shoots an embarrassed look at her…at her friend? The woman is in her early thirties—far too young to be one of mom’s staple lawyer friends. Her dark brown hair is pulled back into French braids that just brush the tops of her shoulders. She’s wearing a Led Zeppelin t-shirt that’s obviously brand new, which makes me distrust her instantly: people who buy retro rock t-shirts in order to look hip rarely ever are. In the three-second gap where my mom stands silently opening and closing her mouth like a fish out of water, I’ve categorized the stranger (freckly) and also my mom (horrified).
“What are you doing here? Didn’t you get my email?” she hisses. She angles herself so that the hand she’s holding with the other woman is hidden between their bodies.
“Which email?” Maybe she’s sent me a message that explains whatever is going on here. I furrow my brow and try to work it out myself, but I only come up with one conclusion and it’s too weird to be true.
“About your allowance. Christmas,” she says through gritted teeth.
“Christmas?” My brain takes a little longer than it should to piece together what she means. Then I get it. If I’ve received my allowance and I know she isn’t going to be available to spend any time with me, ever, then she really can’t foresee any reason for us to interact.
It’s truly shocking that, after the past twenty-four hours, I could possibly feel any worse than I already was. But here I am, feeling like utter shit.
“Mom, Maggie Bright was on campus. She…” I glance at the woman, not sure if I’m going to get torn apart for breathing a word of what happened in front of her. The brunette gawps back at me like I have three heads. Her astounded gaze travels from me to my mom, who has adopted her trademark scowl. Except this time she looks even madder than usual.
“Mom?” the woman asks, raising an eyebrow.
“I was getting around to telling you,” she says crisply. It is her lawyer voice—the one she uses to distance emotion from words, like she’s presenting cold, hard facts.
“I see.”
“We can talk about it later. Why don’t you go on ahead? I’ll meet up with you for lunch.” Mom’s used the same clipped dismissal with me a hundred times before, but the brunette clearly isn’t used to it. She shakes her hand free from my mom’s and holds it out to me.
“I’m Brit. It was lovely to meet you…Avery, was it?”
I shake her hand and nod. “Avery.”
Brit gives me a warm smile that makes her somehow seem even more freckly and walks off down the street, making sure to throw a pissed off glower over her shoulder at my mom as she goes.
“What the hell?” Mom spits, grabbing hold of my arm and pulling me up the steps to the house, rooting for her keys again in the trench coat she has slung over her arm.
“Ditto!” I snap. “Brit, Mom? Brit? Are you a lesbian now?” She casts a wary look about us as she fumbles to get the door open and then shoves me inside.
“Yes, I’m a lesbian now, Avery. I’ve been a lesbian the past three years.”
“What?” I raise my eyebrows and blink, trying to force the words she just said to make sense. They won’t.
“This is why I didn’t tell you,” she announces. She points at my boots. “Take them off. I just had the boards waxed.”
I pull my boots off angrily, throwing them on the floor as hard as I can. “What do you mean by that—this is why you didn’t tell you?”
Her mouth turns down at the corners, an expression that adds to her severity. “I knew you would judge me.”
“Judge you? What the fuck, Mom? Do you think I’m a homophobe or something?”
“That’s an ugly word,” she says, but she doesn’t deny it. I shake my head, completely confounded. Where on earth did she ever get the idea that I would react badly to her being with another woman? I search back through the handful of conversations we’ve shared about relationships and sexuality and can’t think of a single thing that would have led her to believe anything so preposterous.
“I’m not a homophobe! I can’t believe you’d think that!”
“Well, what was that face for, then?” she argues, stalking off towards the kitchen. I follow her, at a complete loss.
“The face? You mean my confusion? Maybe because you just announced that you’re gay and you have been for three years, and you didn’t think to tell me!”
“Oh, grow up, Avery.” She turns her back on me and pushes her shirtsleeves up to her elbows, an indicator that she’s ramping up for a fight. An even bigger fight. “Just tell me what Maggie Bright has been up to. I have a ten o’clock I can’t miss and traffic’s going to be hell.”
“Great, I wouldn’t want you to miss an appointment on account of your hysterical daughter. Don’t worry, I’ll make it quick. Everyone at Columbia knows about Dad. They know I lied about who I am. There are posters everywhere with my name and face all over them. They’re calling me—”
“Avery, stop!” The look on my mom’s face is classic. Denial. She leans forward and braces against the marbled counter top of her twenty thousand dollar kitchen island and yells, “This is so typical!”
“Sorry, Mom. There’s not much I can do about it.” I am under no illusions that she is upset on my behalf. She’s undoubtedly panicked that people might figure out she is connected to me.
“How long have you been seeing Brit?” I mutter, suddenly needing to know.
“Nine months,” she grunts.
A manic laugh itches at the back of my throat, begging to be released. I manage to keep it at bay, but Mom still sees my lips twitch. “Why is that so entertaining to you?”
“You were getting around to telling her you had a daughter? She’s never going to forgive you.”
“Whatever, Avery.” She pushes back and runs her hands over her perfectly neat ponytail, not a hair out of place. “What do you want me to do about Maggie?”
“I don’t know.”
“I can file for a restraining order, but that could take some time.”
“Luke offered to do that already but I don’t know if the offer still stands, so yeah, I guess so.”
Mom’s face twists into disbelief. “Luke Reid?”
“Yeah.”
She looks horrified. Disgusted, in fact. “You’ve been seeing him? When? Why?” she spits.
Her reaction is completely unexpected. “He’s been helping me. He’s always kept in touch. What’s the big—”
She stalks across the kitchen and jabs her index finger into my chest, hard. “You’re not to see him again, you understand me? I don’t want you anywhere near that boy!” She moves over to the sideboard and pulls open a drawer, from which she produces a silver key. She doesn’t give it to me; she puts it down on the marble and stares at it resentfully.
“You can stay here for the night, I suppose. I’m going to fix things at Columbia.”
I’m so stunned from her outburst over Luke that I can’t breathe a word. I know my mom well enough to know she means she’ll fix things right here and now. She isn’t one to put something off. Unless it involves telling her daughter or her girlfriend about their respective existences, of course.
I pace nervously around her kitchen, trying to find something even vaguely familiar or homely about it, while she rants for a full
twenty minutes to the Dean of Columbia. She paid a small fortune to ensure my entry into Columbia—even though my grades were good enough to do that all on their own—and she isn’t afraid of reminding the administration of her ‘charitable donations’. By the end of her one-sided conversation, she has obtained a guarantee that the posters will be down by the end of the day and anyone found to be harassing me will be dealt with accordingly.
Just like back in high school, my mother thinks a sharp phone call with someone who has absolutely no contact with the student body will solve all my problems. Or solve them adequately enough that I can’t say she hasn’t done anything about it.
“I’m going out to dinner tonight. I probably won’t come back after work so if you decide to stay here I won’t see you until tomorrow at some point. Don’t worry about making a mess. Consuela comes in the morning.”
She flies by me in a cloud of vanilla perfume and then she is gone. The front door slams behind her, and I’m left standing in the cold, unfriendly kitchen, still staring down at the key she’s finally given me to her house.
******
Noah: Avery, can you please pick up your phone? I feel like a complete fool. Please, just talk to me.
