You're Not Special

by Meghan Rienks

  When I could hear the familiar laugh track of Modern Family coming from the living room, I texted Mats. I told him my parents were getting a divorce. I didn’t offer an explanation. He called me and stayed on the line while I cried.

  She didn’t bring it up for the rest of her trip. My mother kept getting frustrated with me, because I was acting all “down” and was “not fun”—as if our prior conversation and her lack of empathy were things I had no right to be upset over. In a way, I was kind of relieved. Which is probably an odd thing to say, but it’s true. For my entire life, I had felt obligated to tolerate all my mom’s toxicity. I was supposed to love her unconditionally, when I never felt that in return. For the first time I didn’t feel like I was reading too much into things or that it was all in my head. It was as though I had been waiting all this time, internalizing her criticism and resentment, until we reached this point. It wasn’t about the divorce. My parents hated each other; there was no perfect family image to shatter. It was the fact that she put a voice to all those negative thoughts I tried to push out of my head. I wasn’t crazy. I finally felt like I could be done with her.

  My dad visited me the following week. I waited for him to bring up the divorce, but he never did. Not only did he not mention it, he acted like they were still together, referencing her schedule for the week, speaking in terms of “us” and “we,” and going on as if nothing had changed at all. I set up dozens of opportunities for him to tell the truth, but he didn’t take the bait. The week ended and he didn’t say a damn thing.

  For more than a month, Mats was the only person who knew. Bear in mind that we hadn’t begun dating at this point, yet he was still the first person I told. Next I told a friend who had been staying with me. She noticed I seemed a little off and asked if anything was up, so I filled her in. Again I left out the gritty details, generalizing it as just a standard divorce. It was easier to tell people who didn’t know me too well or didn’t know my mother. They had fewer questions and required a much less detailed story. I put off telling my best friend Sydney for nearly two months. The second I told her, it would be real. It would no longer be something I refused to think about. It would be something I would be forced to explain. She called me one day in November, asking what days I was going to be home for Thanksgiving. I answered the call while I was at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. “Oh, my parents are getting divorced and my mom has officially turned into Dina fucking Lohan.” As I said it, I made eye contact with an extremely uncomfortable-looking barista. “Swedish Berries?” he asked timidly. I was unfazed. “That’s me,” I said as he handed it to me, and I made my way toward the door. “Have a… um… Have a good day!” he stammered after me. You too, buddy. You too.

  * * *

  I pulled away for a while. I dodged their calls, until finally I just asked them to give me space. I assured them I would come to them when I was ready to talk. I was startled at how liberating this distance was. I felt lighter. I no longer vested my self-worth in the hands of people who I felt I couldn’t trust with it. I was excited about succeeding again, and I didn’t have that constant worry of what strings were attached, or that I didn’t deserve it. I wasn’t sure where my relationship with my mother would go; I needed that time and separation to figure it out. I didn’t speak to them again until Christmas Day. I had been staying at my friend’s parents’ house for the holidays, and I sent both my parents an email asking if we could meet up for coffee later that week. I said I wanted to get the whole truth and the full story. The only way I felt like that would happen is if we all were able to sit together and talk about it. They declined.

  With an afternoon free, I made plans with one of my best friends, Sierra. Sierra was my oldest childhood friend. You’d be hard-pressed to find a baby photo of one of us without the other. Our parents had all been friends before we came along, and when I was born, a six-month-old Sierra was at the hospital to meet me. We had always considered each other sisters, which was ironic, because she then told me that my mother was dating her dad.

  At this point I thought myself unshockable, but apparently, I was wrong. That night of December 25 was the last time I talked to my mother. She had sent me a slew of texts that sent me spiraling, so I called her. I asked Sydney to stay in the room for moral support, and frankly, I needed someone else to hear the version of my mom that she reserved almost exclusively for me. That call was the nail in the coffin. I watched Sydney’s eyes widen as she heard how my mother talked to me, refused to take responsibility, and continued to villainize me and my dad and deflect the blame onto us. The conversation veered into territory that was just inappropriate and cruel, and that shouldn’t have been shared with me. It was another “light switch” moment for me. The kind of moment where someone shows you their hand and the proof is right there. I was done. And I told her that.

  After I hung up, Sydney and I just sat there quietly for a while. I knew she was waiting for me to make the first move. She knew me well enough not to hug me or touch me, because I would burst into tears. She handed me a pillow and asked if I wanted to scream into it. I said yes. I screamed. Then I started laughing. Hysterically. This was becoming a habit of mine in times of crisis, and I couldn’t hold it in. I couldn’t stop laughing, and soon Syd was laughing with me. We laughed because it was better than crying. Our fit of hysterics halted when my phone vibrated with a new text from my mom. After that call I didn’t know what I expected her to write, but I hardly made it two lines in before the tears came. I kept reading. For the first time since all of this started, I didn’t respond with an eye roll or laughter. This time I broke down. Sydney grabbed the phone to read it, and her eyes filled with tears too. She dropped the phone on the bed and put her arms around me. She didn’t say anything. We were both crying too hard to form words, and there was really nothing to say.

  The rest of my trip to Marin was spent being honest with my friends about my home life, and trying to get some answers for myself. After some digging, I found out my parents weren’t officially divorced, but they hadn’t been together for almost two years (which translates to roughly eight trips back home, where they kept up the facade). Also, it turns out that my mom and Sierra’s dad actually had had an affair when we were kids. That came out in passing over brunch, and my friends and I were equally shocked—me, at the news; them, at the fact that I didn’t know. Surprise, surprise, I didn’t. I shouldn’t have been taken aback. Being in the dark was a common occurrence in my life. When I was thirteen or fourteen my mom nonchalantly told me she had had cancer a few years before. The next day at school I asked my friends if they had known; they did. I spent a chunk of elementary school wondering why I had visited her at the hospital, why other moms packed my lunches, why teachers looked at me with pity, and why my classmates seemed to treat me like a charity case.

  I went back to LA at the end of the week. I emailed my dad when I landed. I told him that it was shitty for him to choose hatred over love on Christmas of all days, but I would get past that when I got some honesty. When he finally responded, I left the email unread in my inbox for three days. When I finally opened it, it wasn’t much, but it resembled an apology, and I accepted it. I responded a few days later, telling him that I wanted a fresh start—how I felt that I hardly knew him and so much of what I knew was memories tainted by my mom. He said he’d like that too. Sometimes it’s really good, like when he sends a text telling me how he has watched every episode of Freakish, albeit a few months late. It was good when Mats and I came to Marin and had dinner with him. He drew a sign that said “welcome home, meggy” and pinned it on the doorway. It was great to watch Mats and my dad meet and get along and pretty much cut me out of the conversation. It made me smile to get a text from him that night, saying that he loved Mats and loved how much Mats loved me even more. Then sometimes it’s not so great, like when he chooses to work on a Saturday rather than see me on my last day in town. That stuff hurts, but it’s like the hurt you know is coming. The kind that makes you feel stupid for
thinking you were in the clear. It took him days to even respond to my message about it and acknowledge how shitty that was. And, honestly, his “apology” was more frustrating than the act itself. He’s not a bad guy, he’s just a workaholic, and he can be a bit self-righteous. He’s dedicated his life to social justice reform and being a father figure to countless kids who never had one. It just so happens that he sort of missed being that to his own daughter. A part of me still really resents him for leaving me alone with my mom. He knew how terrible and toxic she was, and he just left me there. Maybe he worked so much because he couldn’t bear to be around my mom, or maybe my mom was right, and he valued his career more than his family. I try not to dwell on his motives, because at this point it’s moot—it was what it was. I remind myself that I’m a grown-up. I am no longer a sad kid wishing her dad put her first. If I kept thinking like that little girl, I would always end up disappointed. Instead, I will accept whatever my dad wants to give and expect nothing more.

  So where does that leave my mom? Well, for one thing, she began DM-ing my manager. Super appropriate, right? You know, bringing in somebody I work with professionally who has zero clue about all of this shit happening in my personal life. The contents boiled down to my mom saying that she was sure the quality of my work was slipping, and she gave the impression that without her, I was lost, unpredictable, and unstable. Naturally, this forced me to have an awkward and far more personal talk with my manager on the matter than I intended to. My mom then took to Twitter, sloppily sub-tweeting me and responding to my followers about our relationship. She sent me a birthday gift of some childhood toy that was supposed to spark some feeling of nostalgia in me, but I didn’t even remember it. She was essentially text-stalking Sydney until Syd told her it made her really uncomfortable and that she would appreciate it if she stopped contacting her. Which she hasn’t totally, but we’ll take it.

  * * *

  When I moved in January 2017, I never publicly announced it online because I didn’t want my mom to know. A few weeks later an orchid arrived: a housewarming gift from my mother. In the past three years I’ve received Christmas and birthday gifts, including (but not limited to) clothes (size XL), foods I’m allergic to, things I already have, blown-glass figurines, baby shoes, and gift cards for more money than she’d ever gifted me before. In every package she also includes a check to “cover the return if you see fit,” but she also adds that “some of these are from local artisans, so just contact me directly if you don’t want them.” Sneaky. She throws in gifts for Mats as well: sweaters, socks, matching XL footie pajamas. For a while the most memorable mommy moment was when she sent me flowers on Mother’s Day with the note “Are you thinking about me today?” So fucking creepy.

  December 25, 2018, marked three years since I had spoken to my mom. Despite having blocked her number years ago, she still manages to leave me voice mails from random and unknown numbers. They’re triggers for me, so I rarely listen to them. On a good day I can compare them to a badly written student film; on a bad day, they send me straight back to childhood with feelings of manipulation and gaslighting. One that particularly stood out to me was her downright insistence that we watch the Gilmore Girls revival together. I actually laughed out loud when I heard that. For two people who hadn’t spoken in nearly a year at that point, she expected that we watch six hours of television together. My mother maintained the impression that she had done absolutely nothing wrong, and that I was just being a drama queen or “a brat” (basically my childhood nickname). So this insistence that we watch Gilmore Girls together was not a white flag or even a sad excuse for an apology: it was just something we must do. I still get a kick out of the delusion of that one.

  But one rainy night in March 2017 is the biggest standout.

  It was about nine o’clock on a Sunday, and I was cooking a late dinner for Mats and myself, when we heard a loud knock at the door. This was a rare occurrence, not only because I’m antisocial, but because we have a front gate with a doorbell. Most people, upon arrival, ring the doorbell outside the gate; they don’t walk through the gate and bang directly on the door. To be fair, should the gate have been locked? Yes. Was it? No. Mats and I looked up at each other, wordlessly asking if the other was expecting someone, but clearly neither of us was. It was too late for mail, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Scientologists, and the only logical explanation I could settle on was that it had to be our neighbors. So while I continued to cook, Mats went downstairs to answer the door. I had turned the stove fan on, and combined with the sounds of turkey burgers sizzling, I couldn’t hear who it ended up being at the door. As minutes passed I started to feel guilty: it was obviously our crazy neighbors and Mats was being roped into their drama. A few minutes later he came back up with this odd look on his face. “Um, your godmother is here?” he half stated, half asked. What the actual fuck. “What did she say her name was?” I asked him, holding my breath. “Karen,” he replied. Again, what the actual fuck. Honestly, it would have been less alarming if it had been a random person claiming to be my godmother. No, it actually was my godmother. Who lives in Connecticut. Whom I hadn’t spoken to in about seven years. Out of nowhere about a month prior, she texted me to let me know that she was going to be visiting family in LA and wanted to know if I was free to see her. She had to sign the text with her name; I didn’t even have her phone number. Considering Karen was my mother’s best friend and the woman she had spent the last few holidays with, naturally I ignored it. In hindsight I should have been on high alert when I first got it, considering there was only one person she would have gotten my number from. But she wasn’t supposed to have my address.

  “What do you want me to tell her?” Mats asked, adding, “She’s pretty rude.” I was fuming. “Tell. Her. I. Will. Text. Her,” I said with restraint. I was fucking livid. Her more recent texts were fluffed with things like “I miss you girl” and “I want to have a relationship with you.” When I first read those, I felt guilty that I was ignoring her. I wasn’t really in a place to turn away family, and I had always liked Karen. A part of me hoped it was an olive branch—an “I know your mother is crazy” branch—but I knew if that were the case, she would have said so. Here was the proof. My mom had clearly gotten to her. Mats went downstairs to deliver my message, and this time I could hear Karen snapping at him, asking him, “Who the hell are YOU?” as if she were the one looking out for me. They continued to exchange words until Mats came back upstairs, informing me that she refused to leave without seeing me. “She says she doesn’t have your correct number.” I rolled my eyes. “Tell her she has the right number; therefore, I have her number. I will fucking text her,” I said. He nodded, went downstairs a final time, and repeated what I said. (The jury is still out on whether he said “fucking,” but I like to think he did. Though, according to Mats: “I did not say ‘fucking,’ but I let my voice drip with contempt when I passed along the message.”)

  I heard the front door shut and lock, then heard Mats walking back upstairs. It took Karen another ten minutes to actually leave. Mats stood at our living room window, arms crossed, staring daggers down at the street until he was sure she had left.

  “Did she get in an Uber?” I asked when he called out that she’d finally left.

  “No, she drove. Dark silver car.”

  I nodded, noting the detail. I grabbed my phone to set a reminder to text Karen that next morning. I’d let her know that I had cut off communication with anyone who was still in my mother’s circle. Therefore I wouldn’t be seeing her, but I hoped she had a nice trip.

  It was gloomy and pouring rain the next day, a rarity in Los Angeles. I spent the morning running errands and catching up on emails, and around eleven I texted Karen. She replied quickly, trying to press for information, but I left it at that. Then my phone rang. I assumed it was Karen and was ready to send her to voice mail, but I realized it was my dad. I picked up, ready to tell him about the weird events that had transpired the night prior, but before I could even s
tart, he cut me off. “Jennifer is driving me INSANE!” he continued, explaining that my mother had skipped out on yet another mediation session and instead had gone to Lake Tahoe. I rolled my eyes. This was so very her.

  “Who did she go with?” I asked, knowing that her friends in Marin were now few and far between.

  “Your godmother, Karen,” he replied.

  Suddenly it clicked. I jumped up from the couch, took the stairs two at a time, threw the front door open, sprinted to the gate, locked it, secured the dead bolt on the front door, then raced to the back gate, locked it, and secured the dead bolt on the back door.

  My dad continued like he didn’t notice my panting. “She and Karen loaded up the car yesterday morning and drove down in the late afternoon.”

  Fucking shit. “Dad, they didn’t go to Tahoe. Karen showed up here last night.” I instinctively made my way around the apartment, turning all the lights off, erasing any signs that I might be home. Just as I started toward the curtains to shut them, the doorbell rang. I dropped to an army crawl. “I’m gonna have to call you back, Dad.”