by Mona Simpson
But I’ve learned to be at one with the world and to forgive. And since I’ve let go of my fear, lots of good things have just flowed into my life—all this furniture, the Tiffany, the Seth Thomas—it’s all just meant to be.
And I even see her coming around. She visited and I got a place at the beach last year, for all her kids, so they could party.
And I watched her with them. I just had to say to myself, leave her be, even with the hair and the bitten nails and all, and the underarms and the legs, ugh, that I really can’t go for. But those boys all looked at her, so I guess that’s just how they wear it now. I don’t think you have to, I think the really great girls now still have the long, thick hair and they wear a little mod jewelry or mod dress, not the punk hair that’s going to be out of style in six months, but I just shut my mouth and smiled. And I hoped and prayed that like I did years ago, she’d find her own grace, with her eyes closed. And I think maybe she is. They all danced out on the sand, with their music, and can she ever dance! Well, I suppose with the ballet and the thises and the thats, the cotillions, all I gave her as a child. But I didn’t recognize her at first, I looked down from the balcony and thought, who’s that? And then I couldn’t believe that it was me, I made that beautiful girl.
But she thinks too much, she’s so nervous, she has that anxiety, she’s got to learn to just BE. And for so long all I heard was bitch bitch, whine whine, that now sometimes, no always. Always her happiness surprises me.
I wish I could have brought her here when she was even younger, so she wouldn’t have all these various feelings and yearnings for the midwest and her middle-class roots, but that was her father, not me. I never wanted to stay there. But he left. And now I’ve got my station wagon ready for my grandchildren. They’ll be all this—all Beverly Hills. They’ll be born into it—thanks to me.
When I was pregnant with her, we lived in Egypt. I didn’t know anything, I was so young. But her father wanted to have a baby and so I thought, okay, maybe that would help him, settle him down. His family was there. They thought it would be wonderful. He had backing. Of course, later he changed his mind about that, too. But I’m over him now too finally. I think I could meet him again now and it wouldn’t mean anything to me.
I lost so much weight, I was down to eighty-six pounds at seven months and I flew back. I wanted to be home with my mother. And so I could have her here in America with the very best equipment and hospitals in the world.
You carry a baby in the womb for nine months and then, when they’re grown up, they call you collect, when they remember. She has her own life. And that’s okay. I’ve learned to be patient. “Teach only love for that is what you are.” The ups and down; I live with it. And I’ve got a lot ahead of me and a lot to be proud of. I know: she is the reason I was born.
ALSO BY MONA SIMPSON
A REGULAR GUY
A Regular Guy is the portrait of Tom Owens, a legendary, quintessentially American entrepreneur trapped by the age he helped to define. When his long-lost daughter reappears in his life, she helps transform his odd constellation of friends and lovers into a strangely cohesive family and helps him discover his true self.
“Stunning … Simpson takes on—and reinvents—many of America’s essential myths.”
—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Vintage Contemporaries
Fiction/0-679-73738-8
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