Mom outdid herself at dinner, which was a lovely organic feast. She talked about how Bart’s boss’s wife got her into digital scrapbooking and how she’d been going through old photo albums and scanning in pictures. She wanted to know if I wanted some of the old albums when she was done with them, and I nodded. Now that I was in Joe’s apartment, I actually had the room to keep some things for sentimental reasons.
The three of us had a lovely visit, and Mom managed to get all the way through the meal without commenting on how much or little I ate.
“So are you all unpacked in your new place?” she asked, dishing out desert to both Bart and me.
“Yes.” I replied. “I have so much more space, I’m not sure what do with all of it. I may get an exercise bike for my spare room to use on rainy days.”
“You might want to save some of that space.” My mother lifted a knowing eyebrow. “Last time I called Annette, she mentioned that cool drink of water with the blue eyes was taking you out again.” I laughed, and when they continued to stare at me expectantly I was forced to offer some response.
“Don’t believe everything you hear,” I finally replied with polite deference. Meanwhile, I plotted Annette’s demise for betraying me.
“She also mentioned that he has a son,” Mom added, and I had a hard time keeping a poker face.
“He does, but Mac and I aren’t seeing each other anymore,” I replied, fighting to keep all emotion out of my voice. I could tell by the look on both of their faces that I wasn’t incredibly successful.
“So are you seeing somebody new?” Bart asked. “Your mother seems to think you’ve got some secret boyfriend you aren’t telling us about.”
“No,” I responded, forcing a smile. “It turns out I’m not a very good girlfriend.”
“I find that hard to believe, Kelly,” my mother insisted.
“It’s his loss,” Bart agreed, and his kind smile made me want to blab everything to them about Mac. In the end, I just couldn’t do it. Even though our fight in Mac’s kitchen had been weeks ago, his scathing accusations were still very fresh in my mind.
Thankfully, Mom and Bart seemed to understand that I was done with the topic, and they changed the subject. Both of them proceeded to grill me about my plans for summer vacation and my new school. Mom asked whether I planned to sign on for another year.
“I’m in love with Austin,” I replied, taking a small bite of mom’s vegan strawberry “cheesecake.” It was hideous, and I fought to keep a neutral expression. “I’ve already signed another contract. Frankly, I see myself staying permanently.”
They exchanged a heavy look, and my mother cleared her throat. “How are things with your father?”
I looked up at her in surprise. She looked genuinely curious, so I took the question at face value.
“They’re good.” Ignoring the weight of her gaze, I elaborated. “It’s taken some time, but we’re finally getting to know each other. It’s going to be odd living across the hall from him. We’ll have more opportunities to randomly interact. I haven’t decided if that’s a good thing or not.”
“Don’t let your guard down, Kelly,” my mother said. Bart shot her a disapproving look, and she held his gaze for a moment, then dropped her eyes and sighed. “I just hate to see you hurt if he falls off the wagon.”
“He’s doing really well, considering.” I said stiffly. I paused for a moment, trying to decide if I was ready to open Pandora’s Box. “He’s been filling in gaps for me…about his history and mine. It’s been pretty enlightening.”
There was a very long moment in which the air around us seemed to go rancid and thin.
“Excuse me,” my mother said, wiping her mouth and hurrying inside. Bart and I exchanged wary looks, and I sighed and tossed my napkin onto my plate.
“I’m sorry,” I said, though I felt like I shouldn’t be. She’d asked, and I’d answered. But I knew my mother, and she preferred illusion to reality nine times out of ten.
“Don’t be,” Bart replied, pushing his dessert away untouched. “I have some real cheesecake hidden in the freezer down in the bar. Turtle Cheesecake. You want some?”
“That would be lovely,” I replied.
We relocated to his basement bar, which was bigger than Ginny’s Little Longhorn Saloon. We indulged in a stiff drink and some proper cheesecake, and I explained my arrangement with my dad and how well it had been working. I gave Bart the broad strokes of Dad’s story, knowing that though he wasn’t exactly a neutral party, he’d never known my father and therefore had no real reason to get bent out of shape about things. As I was winding down, I noticed he seemed a little uncomfortable.
“I need to learn to shut my mouth,” I sighed. I hadn’t meant to upset Bart, and I shot back the rest of my drink.
“Nah,” Bart replied, shaking his head. “If you ask me, you spent a lot of time not speaking up when you should have. There were a lot of times when you were growing up that you handled your mom well. In fact, I was kind of taking notes at the time. I’ve used your techniques quite often, and they work well. Sometimes you seemed more like you were parenting her than the other way around, kiddo. I love your mother, but she’s only contented as long as she gets to orchestrate. Sometimes though, you have to rock the boat. If you never have the conversations that you want to have with her, then you will never get to really know your mother. She’s hurt, you know, because she thinks you are choosing him over her.” I started to protest, and he raised a hand to stop me. “I’m not saying she’s right or that she’s wrong. I’m probably saying more than I should. I just think you have an opportunity, if you are brave enough to take it, to really get to know her.”
I nodded, impressed by his uncharacteristic verbosity.
“You’re pretty smart for a Broncos fan.” I teased him as I held up the bottle, silently asking if he wanted a refill. He shook his head and rolled his eyes.
“Don’t tell me you’re a Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader now. I may have to disown you.”
After listening to my mother talk about my second cousin’s wedding in enough detail for me to know what color her bra and underwear had been, I was relieved when our tandem massages were over. I wasn’t sure if she thought I’d catch wedding fever like a venereal disease, but whatever her plan was, it wasn’t working.
I got thirty minutes of solitude for a facial, and I managed to relax while my aesthetician exfoliated me with some orange-peel concoction. As the spa music lulled me into a peaceful state, my thoughts immediately ended up with Mac. I’d been up in the middle of the night looking at his Facebook again, and I was seriously thinking of blocking him for my own sake. I was torn between wanting to call him and needing to get over him.
Mason had posted to Mac’s wall about picking out tuxes with Joe. There were about seven pictures, one of Mac Junior and Mason’s son trying on top hats, one where Joe’s mother was holding up a charcoal jacket with tails and Joe was looking on in horror. Mason had tagged Mac and Joe in a picture where they were shirtless, wearing just their bow ties and tux pants. They looked like drunk male strippers, and dozens of people were liking and commenting with obnoxious approval. The familiar sight of Mac shirtless tormented me, and I flipped my phone upside down and covered my head with my pillow.
Thrusting Mac from my mind for the thousandth time since I’d arrived in Colorado, I focused on my breathing. Since that day at his house, he’d only called me once, but it was in the middle of the night. I chalked it up to a butt dial or a beer-fueled booty call. Luckily, I’d slept through it, or we probably would have ended up repeating our poor decision making, and things would have been even harder for me.
I needed to move on, and to do that I had to quit obsessing. It was time for me to stop trying to breathe life into an almost-relationship that was past the point of saving. If there was one decent piece of advice I’d received from my mother since my arrival (besides “cut out all dairy”), it was not to live in the past or with an eye to the future, but to focus on
the now. What my now entailed was to have a very uncomfortable conversation with my mother, and I was trying to decide how to start said conversation.
I’d finally worked myself up by the time we were halfway through getting our hair done. After listening to my mother brag about how she’d treated me to this spa day for the sixth time, I was ready to pull the ripcord. She didn’t bother being quiet about it. She simply spoke about me like I wasn’t even there, as if I were a prop in her life. When she started in about how I was a school teacher (even though she’d encouraged me to go to med school) and how all of this was a luxury I couldn’t often afford, I clenched my back teeth together to keep from screaming.
“Is she always like this?” My hairdresser whispered, blinking at me in astonishment as he checked my foils.
“Pretty much,” I replied.
“Want a glass of champagne?” he asked, and feeling I could use a little liquid courage, I opened my mouth to accept when my mother chimed in.
“She’ll pass. She’s training for a marathon,” she beamed, as if I was a toddler who’d just taken her first step.
‘“Half-marathon,” I interjected. “And yes, I think I will have a glass, thank you.”
“Kelly…do you really think that’s a good idea? I mean, Bart said you had cheesecake and drinks with him last night. I know the race isn’t for six months or so, but still…that’s not much of a training plan.”
A strange calm settled over me, yet the terrified expression on my stylist’s face told me just how psychotic I looked.
“Why don’t you focus on your appearance, Mother, and let me focus on mine.”
“I’m just trying to help, Kelly.” She turned to her stylist conspiratorially. “She’s always been thinned skinned about her looks. She was a chubby girl in junior high, can you believe it?”
“She’s right. Food was my friend,” I said to my own stylist, who was staring at my mother in disbelief. “God knows I needed one since I had to leave all mine behind when the bank repossessed our house.”
The expression of scandalized horror that my mother wore was incredibly satisfying.
“Yes…well…,” she sputtered, trying desperately to recover and find a way to spin the facts so that she could keep her cosmopolitan reputation. “At least you had one parent who was there to make sure you had a roof over your head.”
“Maybe if you’d paid as much attention to what you spent back then as you did my caloric intake, we wouldn’t have ended up in that mess in the first place,” I shot back, and the gasps from both stylists were like music to my ears.
“Why you ungrateful little shit!” My mother was on her feet, and pointing her French-manicured finger at me. Her foil filled hair made her look like a red-faced alien life-form. “I’m the reason you had food to stuff your face with! You’re where you are today because of my sacrifices.”
“What sacrifices?” I asked, not even raising my voice. “Actually having to get up in the morning and go to work?”
She seethed. “You have no idea the things I did for you.”
“Oh…I have an idea or two about your sacrifices,” I replied, noticing that everyone within earshot had turned to watch the show that was our mother/daughter smack-down.
She took a step closer to me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I just find it very convenient how easily you replaced Dad with a new dance partner,” I glowered at her. “Or was that just trading up? More long term financial planning?”
“I cannot believe you’re talking to me this way,” she growled, going back to her chair. She sat down and folded her arms. “It’s obvious you’ve been brainwashed by your good-for-nothing father.”
“He was good enough when you were cashing his checks,” I spat, and that shut her up. I wasn’t quite finished. “And for the record, Dad refuses to say anything bad about you.”
My mother burst into sobs, and I just spun in my chair so I didn’t have to watch her display.
“Let’s go put you under the dryer,” my mother’s stylist said, pulling her by the arm toward the next room.
‘You’re ready to rinse,” my stylist interjected, a wide smile on his face.
“I’m so sorry.” My face burned, and I realized just how many eyes were on me.
“Honey.” He grinned, looking as giddy as a school girl. “I wanted to give you a standing ovation. If she weren’t paying the bill, I totally would have.”
Unsurprisingly, I got the silent treatment all the way back to the house. I’d even complimented her new hairstyle to no avail. She went straight to her room and didn’t come out for dinner. Bart was a trooper; then again he was as used to her moods as I was. Rather than sit down and eat without her, I went to find the drama queen.
I found her, firmly ensconced in one of the cavernous bedrooms she’d converted into her scrapbooking room. Even knowing her like I did, the multi-table crafting mecca was beyond my imagination, with racks of ribbon, paper, glue sticks and every conceivable artistic tool lining the walls. Sitting in a high backed, ergonomic, silk-upholstered chair, my mother didn’t look up as I entered. The sound of small whimpers came from her as she vigorously wiped her nose.
Guilt echoed vacantly in the back of my head, but it felt more like a ghostly obligation rather than the emotion itself. She’d been like this all of my life. Whenever we argued, she retreated. I was always the one forced to seek her out.
I wondered what she’d do when the day came that I didn’t come after her.
That thought, childishly viscous, did give me a pang of true guilt. Because I knew that day wasn’t far off and I didn’t want to lose one parent to gain another.
I waited, leaning against the inside of the door frame, for her to acknowledge my presence. When she finally did, it was prefaced with a dramatically deep sigh.
“Kelly, I don’t know what I ever did to deserve to be treated this way. Only worked my fingers to the bone to make sure you had what you needed. And what do I get for all my sacrifices? A daughter who humiliates me in public! I will never be able to show my face in that salon again!”
I held my tongue, though it was a near thing. Sucks to be on the receiving end, doesn’t it Mom? But of course, this isn’t about your horrible behavior toward me. Taking a breath, I ran through a mental exercise to calm my racing heart before I replied. When I spoke, I was proud of how calm I sounded.
“It needed to be said, but doing so publicly was counter-productive. It’s unfortunate that our personal business was aired that way. I don’t enjoy fighting with you.”
She glanced at me over her shoulder, narrowing her eyes.
“Don’t try to handle me, Raquel. I’m not some difficult student you need to reason with.”
I managed to wait for her to turn around before I rolled my eyes. She only used my given name when I was really at the top of her shit list. Her description was strangely apt, except my students were small children and usually grew out of their behaviors. Still, I’d come in to diffuse the situation, not start round two, tempting as that was. She fiddled with the scrapbook in front of her for a moment, then tossed down the book and wheeled in her chair.
“Why can’t you just apologize like a normal person?” she asked. Rising from the chair, she walked away from me to a table near the far wall. “I never asked to be a single mother. When your father abandoned us, I did everything I could to provide for you. I was there when you needed me. I was the one who raised you. Is it too much to ask that you be on my side?”
The tears running down her cheeks tugged at my heart. Even so, I refused to enable her by actually apologizing. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I had only been defending myself from her constant verbal attacks.
“It’s easy,” she said quietly, “to look back on my choices and be critical. I was raised to believe I’d go to college to meet my husband. My parents groomed me that way. Things were different back then. Men were expected to be the bread winners. Most women were still at home, taking care of the ho
use. When your father left us, he humiliated me on every level possible. I had to deal with losing everything we’d worked for, the house, the car, the piano, and our club membership. Everyone we knew had front row seats for my embarrassing descent. I had to face all of that, by myself! Your father just ran away, like the coward he was. I was left to explain to you why we had to leave it all behind and move to a dingy little apartment. You didn’t understand any of it then, but you’re old enough to understand now. It’s unthinkable that you would not take my side after all we’ve been through.”
She was revving up for a full on tirade, but I’d listened to enough. Before I could stop myself, I stepped forward until I was standing face-to-face with her. I did it so quickly that she actually blanched a little, as if afraid I was going to slap her.
“I was a kid. I never should have had to pick a side. I still shouldn’t. He’s my dad. I shouldn’t have to choose between the two of you. I shouldn’t have to listen to you constantly disparaging every feature of mine that reminds you of him. I shouldn’t have to feel like my mother despises part of who I am. I’ve never been sure if you hate me because I remind you of him…or of yourself.”
She pressed both of her hands to her stomach as if I had physically struck her there. “I did my best! It wasn’t easy,” she began. I cut off her excuse. Unwilling to listen to the same old song and dance from her.
“Dad refused to say a single bad thing about you. At all. But I have eyes, mom. I remember. The shopping trips, the vacations, the lavish parties thrown almost monthly at the house. As a kid, I never gave it a second thought. Now I realize that we were living outside of our means even when dad was at his most successful. He had to be out on the road half the time just to keep up with your spending. When things slowed down for him, there was no safety net.”
Wood U (Carved Hearts #4) Page 18
