by Sarah Kleck
She’d rearranged all the dishes in the years I’d been gone, and this increased the feeling I had of being out of place in a familiar space. I had to keep asking where to find things. Opening the cupboards and drawers seemed intrusive—almost as if I were rummaging in her purse. I was so slow that my mother probably would have preferred setting the table herself. I felt better when Holden and Dad came back from the garage joking with each other and covered in motor oil.
“You’re right on time,” my mother said.
Dad gave her a kiss. “We’re just going to wash up.”
I watched them with astonishment. It wasn’t easy to win Dad over. He just wasn’t the buddy type and normally kept to himself. He also saw through falseness pretty quickly. But with his open and welcoming nature, Holden had managed to win his affection quickly. Probably not in the least because he had the gumption to ask a total stranger for his daughter’s hand. He didn’t have to, but it showed old-fashioned decency to ask my father for permission.
“What are you up to today?” my mother asked when we sat down at the table and she served the scrambled eggs. “Are you going to visit your old friends?”
“Yes, we’re going to meet Corinne in Portland around one.” I turned to Holden. “She’s looking forward to meeting you.”
We still talked regularly, so she knew plenty about Holden and me.
“Corinne Mason?” my mother asked.
I nodded. It was just like her that she had to confirm the name of my former best friend. That’s how little interest she had in me—or, rather, had had? I didn’t really know because the way she acted since our arrival last night, you’d think she had done a complete U-turn during the almost six years I was away. I looked at her intensely. Is this for real? Had she really changed? Did one of her seminars or some self-searching effort really bear fruit? Or was it only for show? Was she being nice to me for Dad’s sake or to show Holden that I alone was responsible for our strife? If so, she was successful. Holden seemed to be trying to reconcile the Ruby from my descriptions with the Ruby who was refilling his coffee. He repeatedly cast me a glance as if to say: Was this woman really as bad in your childhood as you claim?
I should probably have been happy that this meeting, about which I had been so worried, was going so harmoniously. But something deep inside warned me to be cautious.
Don’t let her hurt you again, my inner voice said.
“What?” I asked when I noticed I was being addressed.
“Do you want more coffee,” my mother asked frowning, holding up the pot.
“Um . . . no. Thanks.”
“Have you set a date?” she continued the conversation she seemed to be having with Holden while I was lost in thoughts.
“Not yet,” he answered. “But we’ve decided on autumn.” He took my hand and squeezed it.
“Yes,” I agreed. “We were thinking early September next year.”
“Oh, September is beautiful. That’s when your dad and I married.” When he didn’t react, she gave him a slight nudge in the side.
“Hmm,” Dad grumbled as he drifted off in thought again. Probably back to the fuel injection for his 1977 Corvette.
“You’ll get married in Boston, I presume?” Her voice was far too high for a harmless question.
“Yes,” I answered. “All our friends and Holden’s family . . .”
She snorted briefly. “Well, then we’ll just have to fly to Boston.” It sounded as if she thought it an imposition.
“Yes, I guess you will,” I said, picking up on her wording and tone.
She raised her eyebrows. “No reason to get snippy.” Her mood changed from one second to the next. Even Dad awoke from his fuel-injection daydream and looked back and forth between my mother and me. He was all too familiar with situations like this. He’d had to play the buffer between my mother and me hundreds of times to keep us from fighting.
When my mother realized he was watching her, she put on a smile. “I’m just saying.” She had control of her tone again. “Your family is in Lakewood after all.”
“But my life is in Boston now,” I said politely but firmly.
“That’s just the way it is,” Holden interjected, trying to defuse the situation, “so many more people would have to make the trip from Boston to Lakewood than the other way around. More than eighty percent of our guests will come from the East Coast. And wouldn’t it be nice for you to see where Annie lives? We can show you the town then.”
My mother snorted again. Holden’s arguments were plausible, and she couldn’t really object. But I knew her well enough to know that wouldn’t change her opinion one iota. Basically, she was only bothered by having to come to me rather than me coming to her—the way it’s been all my life. But if she wanted to be at our wedding, she’d have to get off her ass and literally take a step toward me. Holden’s percentages made no difference. It wouldn’t have mattered even if she were the only one who had to get on the plane. There was a reason she never visited me in Boston.
“Of course, we’ll pay for the flight and hotel,” Holden added.
I almost laughed out loud. That was the worst thing he could have said. He’d obviously misinterpreted her hesitation and thought it was about money. It surely must have played a role—I mean it wasn’t as if my parents could afford much luxury—but what Holden had just said with good intentions bordered on sacrilege.
My mother’s look confirmed my suspicion. An imperious How dare you flashed at us from her eyes. “You think we can’t afford it?” she hissed through clenched teeth.
Holden didn’t quite know what was happening. “No . . . I only meant we’d be happy to make it our treat.”
Dad put his hand on my mother’s arm. “He didn’t mean it that way, dear,” he said in a conciliatory tone.
“Oh, he did,” my mother insisted and fixed on me with her ice-cold green eyes. “What did you tell him? That we’re broke? That we’re paupers who can’t even afford a miserable flight?”
I vacillated between laughing and crying. She was back—my real mother.
“Ruby,” Dad attempted to avert fate, but it was too late.
“Just because the two of you studied at Harvard,” she said in a tone so dismissive that I almost took it as a personal insult, “doesn’t give you the right to think you’re better than us.”
I glanced at Holden. I wanted to say, “May I introduce you? This is my real mother.”
“You’ll see soon enough that Ivy League isn’t everything in life.”
I frowned and swallowed despite my tightening throat. “I never said that.”
I felt Holden’s eyes rest on me, then he closed his hand around mine, telling me with this small gesture that he understood, that he was by my side, that I’d never be alone. I knew he was there for me and that he’d protect and defend me—even against my own mother. I almost broke down in tears.
“Thank you,” I whispered when only he could hear it.
“I love you,” he whispered back, holding my hand even more firmly.
Corinne shook her head when I told her about the incident that day. We had driven to Portland immediately after that ever-so-lovely breakfast to visit her and her artist boyfriend, Damien.
“Some things never change,” she said with a shrug, putting her arm around me. “Let’s change the subject. How long are you staying?”
“Just the weekend. We’re flying back tomorrow.” What devil was riding me that I wanted to spend two nights in Lakewood? It was completely predictable this would happen.
“We’ll phone, alright?” Corinne said as we hugged goodbye. “We’ll see you next September. Then we’ll party.” She hugged Holden, too. “Great to finally meet you,” she said before hugging me one more time.
“See you soon, Annie, I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“I love the lot of you,” Corinne’s artist mocked us, wrapping both of us in his arms.
“Stop it!” Corinne snarked at him. He looked worried when he saw s
he had tears in her eyes, he pulled her close.
“We could just fly to Boston one of these days,” he suggested. “I’ve got an artist buddy in New York. I’d like to see him again. We could make an East Coast trip of it.”
“Really?” Corinne’s eyes widened. “That’d be fabulous.”
“You can visit us any time,” Holden added.
Corinne and I grinned blissfully while we were mentally running through our calendars. We agreed on February, only four months away, which would give me something to look forward to in the winter.
After visiting Corinne, we dropped in on my grandma, who offered us limp cookies and weak coffee. The time had come to return to the dragon’s lair. Just one dinner to get through, I told myself. Then we’ll be gone.
When we arrived at my parents’ house, we were received as warmly as the day before. Dad must have had a talk with my mother. But as much as she tried to put on a friendly, relaxed tone—even Dad chimed in with something occasionally—the evening wouldn’t get going. Holden had learned his lesson by then and decided to cover himself. There was no more than some polite conversation.
“Well, I see you have no interest in civil conduct,” my mother concluded from the evening—and probably the entire weekend—when we helped her clean up the kitchen.
I answered with a quiet sigh.
“Annie, when is our plane leaving?” Holden asked though he knew perfectly well.
“Just after seven thirty.”
“That’s early. Let’s get to bed so we don’t oversleep. It’s been a long day.”
“Yes,” I said meaningfully and exhaled. “It’s been a really long day.”
Chapter 16
Despite our original plans to the contrary, we had a big wedding. On September 15, just over a year ago, more than two hundred guests came to be with us on our day. The location was a textile factory remodeled into an upscale restaurant. It was beautiful, the food was grand, and the guests celebrated and danced with us late into the night. It was a dream wedding. Our friends and family talked about it for a long time. Only Ruby, as I found out later, thought too little attention was paid to her as the mother of the bride. According to Aunt Jane, she expected me to apologize. Some things never change.
Holden had finally been promoted, meaning he was so locked into his job that our honeymoon was only a long weekend on Martha’s Vineyard.
“We’ll make it up another time,” he promised.
At first, I was disappointed because you only have one honeymoon—well, most people do. But I understood. It was such an important step in his career, and, at that point in our lives, it took precedence. But he wasn’t the only one with professional successes. I’d finally moved to R&D. My work on the heartburn drug was my breakthrough, and then I started running the project for a new flu vaccine. For the first time in my life, I had managerial responsibility. Initially, I oversaw two employees, then three, then four, and then, finally, I had my own division with several projects and seven employees on my team. Along with the R&D work, I immensely enjoyed running my division. I felt I’d arrived both in my professional and in my private life. Well, mostly. As with any shared lives, there were booby traps in our first year of marriage even though we’d lived together for five years before the wedding.
“Damn it! Will you finally put down the toilet seat? I’m going to bust my ass one of these days!”
“Oh, calm down.”
“I’m supposed to calm down? I’ve asked you a thousand times. It can’t be that hard. And while we’re at it . . . about your cereal bowls. When you’re done eating, put the bowl in the dishwasher, not on it. I don’t get it. If you’re going to carry it into the kitchen, why not put it in the dishwasher?”
“I forgot,” Holden said without much interest.
“Maybe you should get checked for Alzheimer’s. You’re forgetting a lot lately.”
“Will do,” he mumbled while he scrolled on his phone.
“Are you even listening to me?”
“Alzheimer’s,” he said without looking up.
I stood in front of him with crossed arms and a beet-red face.
“What?” he asked, taking note of my penetrating look.
“Put. Your. Cereal. Bowl. In. The. Dishwasher. Now!”
“Fine, fine.” He raised his hands in surrender, stood up, and went into the kitchen.
It’s not as if we argued all the time. No, we still had a wonderful relationship in which we both were happy. It’s just that everyday life was catching up with us. I was annoyed by toilet seats and cereal bowls. He was frustrated when I was late and by—what did he call it?—my “continuous nagging.” That’s how we got into fights occasionally. The bright side was that the more intense the argument was, the better the inevitable makeup sex. Sometimes I wondered if Holden irritated me on purpose—just so he would get laid afterward.
The only topic on which we’d probably never see eye to eye was his mother. My mother-in-law, Angela, had become a fixture in my life. Which basically meant she was always—and I really mean always—dropping by. She did us the dubious honor of visiting us two or three times a week. Always with perfect hair and makeup, often on Sunday mornings when I was lounging around on the couch, without having brushed my hair or done my makeup. What she thought of my appearance was obvious from the disparaging glances she gave me. That wasn’t all that got under my skin.
“Would it be possible for your mother to take off her damn shoes in our apartment?!”
“But they’re always clean,” Holden replied soothingly, settling in on the couch to watch TV.
“Then what is this stuff I’m sweeping up now?” I could have wrung his neck—and his mother’s, too.
“She was only here for a short while,” he said unfazed.
“Like always,” I replied in that overly sweet tone he detested, “She comes in, walks around the entire apartment—in street shoes—looking for something to criticize me for, refuses any food or drink offered to her, leaves after a few minutes, and then I get to sweep up after her.”
“Don’t get worked up again—you know her,” he said absentmindedly, surfing channels.
“Oh, now I’m getting worked up again,” I said, emphasizing the words with imaginary quotation marks.
He gave me an irritated look and returned to the TV.
“You couldn’t give a damn, right?” I asked in disbelief. Maybe I did get worked up too much, but that was only because Holden claimed I was getting worked up. His disinterest drove me batty. I’d told him a thousand times how much his mother’s performances got on my nerves. I didn’t mind her visiting us—but she could at least call first, take off her shoes, sit down, and accept some hospitality. Like any other visitor would. But no—she arrived unannounced every time, brought street dirt into our home, refused with an expression of disgust to drink from a glass or—God help her—even eat something I had cooked, and then left. But not without first hugging and caressing her son for a while. One’s own partner being caressed by his mother—a sight endearing beyond measure to any woman and bound to liven things up in the bedroom!
“Good housewives don’t let the garbage sit around like this,” Angela pronounced, and her eyebrows rose.
“Well, then it’s a good thing I’m not a housewife,” I replied. I bit my tongue behind a friendly smile. “I just finished a fifty-hour week. Taking out the garbage isn’t at the top of my list of priorities.” I was boiling inside.
This type of conversation was typical for Angela and me. Holden always gave me this oh-you-know-how-she-is look, for which I felt like slapping him, and kissed his mother on the cheek to get her to be quiet. However, if you know a little about operative conditioning, you know a kiss does not necessarily lead to a behavioral change—on the contrary! Over the years the situation intensified to the point that I got stomach pains as soon as I heard Angela announce her arrival by ringing the doorbell three times.
“That’s how she is. You know that,” Holden said, his ey
es firmly fixed on the baseball game on TV.
I’d lost count of the number of times I’d heard that damn line. I exploded.
“You know what?” I barked. “Why don’t you go over to your mother’s. Maybe she’ll give you a bottle.” I grabbed the car keys from the counter and slammed the door shut behind me.
Driving around a little has always been the best way for me to cool down after an argument. When it was really bad, I headed for the freeway and floored it. Usually, an aimless drive around town was good enough for clearing my thoughts. It hadn’t been so bad that day, so I just stayed in the area. When I saw the KFC on Beacon Street, I couldn’t resist. I headed straight for the drive-through and ordered a huge bucket of chicken all for myself. Then I drove to the harbor, found a parking spot with a view of the water, and started to eat. Sometimes it just takes a car to shield you from the world. Like a mobile retreat. A small piece of home you can take anywhere. I gorged on one piece after another with delight and licked my fingers. Why does the unhealthiest stuff always taste best? I had to watch it a bit. I’d gained four pounds recently. I’d become more susceptible to junk food in the last few weeks than I used to be. Odd, because sports and a healthy diet had become a fixed part of my life. For years, I’d rarely eaten fast food or candy, but I’d already given in to temptation four times this week. The burger on Monday (OK, it was two burgers), the pizza with extra cheese on Wednesday, and only two days ago the gummy bear binge on the couch. Now I was sitting in the car with a family-sized bucket of deep-fried chicken on my lap. While I was chewing on another wing with greasy fingers, lightning struck. Eyes wide open in disbelief, I slowly let the wing drop, swallowed what I had in my suddenly dry mouth, wiped my hands on a napkin, and fished my phone from my purse. My index finger trembled a little when I opened the menstrual cycle app. Four days marked in red told me when to expect my period—a week ago.
“That’s fifteen thirty, please,” the drugstore clerk said in a monotone voice.
I put a twenty-dollar bill on the counter, hastily dropping the three-pack of pregnancy tests into my purse before anybody could see them. Now I had to find a place where I could pee on them undisturbed. I wouldn’t have survived waiting to do it at home.
