The Perfect Mom

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Only, she always did eat something, and then it was as if she’d caved in. She was weak! Fat! Ugly! She’d exercise and exercise until she recaptured that sense of purity, but she always lost it again.

  Tonight she was ashamed to realize she wasn’t striving for that sense of ultimate control and purity. She just wanted to hurt her mother.

  Her anger fading—she’d known Mom would be mad about her cutting class—Emma lay on the bed debating whether she should go downstairs and say she was sorry.

  Only then, a knock came on her door.

  “Emma? Can I talk to you?”

  She sat up. “Come in.”

  Mom looked old or sick or something when she came in. The sight of her face sent a stab of repentance through Emma.

  Mom sat on the edge of the bed as if she was too tired to keep standing.

  “I won’t be seeing Logan anymore,” she said.

  Emma stared at her. “What?”

  Mom’s nostrils flared. “You heard me.”

  “But…why?”

  “You liked him that much, huh?”

  “He was cool!” She grabbed her pillow and squeezed it hard, not even understanding her own turmoil. “I thought you might marry him and everything!”

  So quietly her words were almost indistinguishable, Mom said, “I thought I might, too.”

  “Then…why?” Emma asked again. Begged to know.

  Pain showed on Mom’s face. “He thought I was embarrassed by him.”

  Understanding flooded Emma. Understanding, and outrage. She flung the pillow aside. It fell off the bed. “Were you?”

  Mom’s head came up. “Of course not!”

  “You were!” Tears burned in Emma’s eyes. Logan was so cool! “It’s just like with Uncle Ryan! And Grandpa. You wished he wasn’t your dad!”

  “That’s not true!”

  “That’s what you said. He didn’t go with your perfect life. Anymore than I did.” She scrambled from the bed. “So I bet Logan’s right. You were embarrassed by him.”

  Mom stared, not at her, but at the wall. Very softly, she said, “It’s hard to change all at once.”

  “I wish he was my dad!”

  Her head turned and she met Emma’s gaze. Her eyes were alive with pain, but her voice was dead. “And I wasn’t your mother? I suppose just about anybody would be better. Maybe you’re even right.” She pushed herself to her feet. Without turning, she said, “I’m sorry I lost Logan for you.” Then she left, gently closing the door behind her.

  A moment later, Emma heard her door, only a few feet away, shut.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  KATHLEEN PARKED at the curb in front of the house where she’d grown up in West Seattle. For the first time, she was struck by the resemblance between her own house and this one. Oh, hers had been grander in its heyday, but both had been built in the same era, each on a sloping lot with the one-car detached garage at street level. Steep stairs led to small front yards supported by retaining walls. Her parents’ house was sided with white clapboard instead of brick, but the porches were very similar, the peaks of the roofs, the leaded glass front windows.

  Perhaps, she thought bemusedly, she had been trying to go back to her roots since the day she left Ian.

  It was Saturday and her father had his morning bowling league. He’d told her to let herself in if she beat him here. She had made sure she did, wanting a few minutes to wander and maybe remember.

  Mom and Dad had always kept Ryan’s and Kathleen’s bedrooms just the way they were. Dad didn’t want a den, and Mom didn’t sew, so why would they bother remodeling either bedroom? Now, Dad must rattle around in the house.

  She went upstairs first, pausing to glance in Ryan’s room with the plaid bedspread, blue walls and simple desk. He had taken more furniture when he left home. She recalled a bookcase he had built in high-school shop class, when he discovered his love of woodworking.

  She’d curled her lip and said, “What? You want to be a carpenter or something?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Gee.” She had let sarcasm drip from her voice. “Why don’t you just become a welder like Dad?”

  Her brother, unfazed as always by her disdain, said simply, “Because I like wood.”

  Shaking off the memory, she looked in the one upstairs bathroom shared by the whole family, with predictable battles once she and Ryan both reached teenage years. Grout was aging but the bathroom was spotlessly clean.

  Her father hadn’t lifted a finger to clean house when his wife was alive, but after her death he’d taken over her chores without complaint, at least to his grown daughter.

  When she had remarked one time on how he must have just waxed the wood floors, he had shrugged. “Don’t have much else to do.”

  Her parents’ marriage hadn’t seemed a love-match to her youthful eyes, but now she wondered. Dad hadn’t remarried; hadn’t even seemed to consider doing so. Perhaps they had loved each other more than she’d realized. There was so much about them she didn’t know.

  Her bedroom was across the hall from theirs. Unlike Ryan, she had taken scarcely a thing when she left home. After college, she had married, and Ian had always had money. She hadn’t needed the garage sale desk her mother had painted white and trimmed with gold, or the twin bed with bolsters. At some point, Kathleen had taken down the posters on the pale pink walls herself, afraid—she supposed now—that they didn’t support her image of who she was and always had been.

  Funny how well she remembered the day she and her mother together had painted her room. She’d been…oh, twelve or thirteen. They’d had fun, just talking and admiring the clean pale sweep of walls as they worked.

  Of course, when she was sixteen she had decided pink was too silly and feminine, but her parents had balked at repainting so soon. Some of her friends had redone their bedrooms every year or so, and she couldn’t believe her parents weren’t willing to spend the money for a can or two of paint.

  She sat on the bed and remembered hiding up here, reading and talking endlessly on the phone with her friends, dreaming of escape.

  What if she’d known her mother would die so young? Would she have taken better advantage of the time they had as a family?

  The front door opened downstairs and her father called, “Kathleen? You here?”

  “Upstairs, Dad.” She smoothed the bedspread with her hand, stood and went to the stairs. “Don’t come up,” she protested at the sight of his foot on the first step. “I’ll come down.”

  He backed away and watched as she descended.

  “How was bowling?”

  His seamed face brightened. “Bowled a 240 today.” He mimicked a swing. “No bad for an old man, eh?”

  “You’re not so old.”

  “Seventy,” he reminded her. “That’s no spring chicken.”

  She kissed his cheek. “Forty is looming for me, you know.”

  “Happens.”

  “Are you hungry yet? I brought lunch.”

  Usually when she came she took him out—or he took her, insisting on paying. Today she’d liked the idea of them staying home. She hoped he didn’t mind.

  He exclaimed over the thick sandwiches she’d made and the homemade minestrone soup she set to warming.

  “Helen made it,” she said over her shoulder. “She’s the best cook of all of us.”

  “You, living with a bunch of women.” Her father shook his head.

  Laconically, she imitated him. “Happens.”

  He laughed and popped open a beer from the refrigerator. “Want one?”

  Kathleen shook her head. “Why is the idea of me living with a bunch of women so strange?”

  “You weren’t the artsy type.” He shrugged shoulders that were still strong, although he’d retired several years ago. “You wanted a fancy condo in Bell-town or what you got, a rich husband and a mansion.”

  “Got and threw away.”

  His eyes were shrewd. “You never did tell me what happened.”

 
She hesitated, then sat down at the table. “Ian had no patience with Emma’s anorexia. He tried to force-feed her one night. I had to drag him away. It was a horrible scene, and the last straw.”

  Her father nodded. “I never liked him, you know.”

  She knew. He hadn’t tried to hide how he felt. Her father was a blunt-spoken man who had undoubtedly sensed Ian’s condescension.

  Dad belched contentedly and reached for the sandwich. Chewing, he said, “How’s Emma?”

  “Good.” She smiled with difficulty. “Constantly mad at me, but eating.”

  He shook his head. “Teenagers.”

  So everyone said. Kathleen thought—knew—that Emma’s feelings toward her mother were far more complicated than the usual teen angst. But she only nodded.

  Her father still wore his brown bowling-team shirt with dark blue polyester slacks, snagged in a couple of places and sagging in the knees and rear, but still in good shape, he’d tell her, if she suggested shopping for new ones. He had apparently shaved this morning, which was something. Most days he sported gray stubble.

  Trying to look at him objectively, she decided he had probably been a good-looking man when he was young, strongly built and the possessor of a devilish smile. By most people’s standards, he hadn’t been a bad husband. She couldn’t imagine he’d ever strayed from his marriage bed, for example. He’d brought home a paycheck most weeks, unemployment in down times. Neither had paid for extras, but they’d owned a house and managed bills and raised kids. He was surviving now on his retirement and a little he’d “put away” once those kids were grown.

  “I’ve been a lousy daughter.” Her eyes filled with tears.

  He pushed back from the table in alarm. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve never had you over often enough. I’m always so busy with my own life.”

  “I’ve got my friends.” He nodded toward the sink. “Paper towels over there, if you want to blow your nose.”

  She gave a choked laugh and fetched one. “I’m sorry. I’ve just been…looking back at my life and discovering I don’t much like myself. I cared about all the wrong things.”

  He looked wary. She and her father never talked about things like this. And he’d never wanted anything to do with womens’ tears.

  “You were a good enough kid. Just set on having a life better than your parents’, that’s all.”

  “Better? How?” she asked bitterly.

  “Not scratching for money to pay the bills. So you could have nice things.”

  “It’s not as if Ryan and I were deprived. Why was he happy with our life and I wasn’t?”

  She didn’t expect an answer, and was surprised when she got one.

  “Your mother.”

  “What?” she exclaimed.

  The lines in his face deepened. “Your mom wanted better for you. You were so pretty and so smart, she always said, you could have it. She was so proud of you. The friends you had, going to college, your wedding being so fancy. That’s what she wanted for you.”

  “Mom?” she said, dumbfounded.

  “Your mother, now, she was a real pretty woman. You look a lot like her.” He gazed into the past with a mix of grief and joy that answered her question about how much he had loved his wife. “Didn’t have the chances you had. If she could have finished school, your mom’d have done better than me.” He shook his head. “She always said she didn’t mind working, but that’s not what she wanted for you. ‘Being on your feet for an eight-hour shift, that’s hard,’ she used to say. And having to smile even when some jackass didn’t leave a tip or complained to her boss about her or pinched her…” He cleared his throat. “And then she took care of me, too.”

  “I never knew…”

  “That she was proud of you?”

  “I knew that.” Kathleen fumbled through memories as clumsily as if she held a fat pile of snapshots in her hand. “But not that she encouraged me to be the ‘princess,’ as Ryan liked to put it.”

  “I wasn’t sure she was doing the right thing, making you believe you were too good for your own parents.” He shook his head. “But she’d have her way.”

  You can make nicer friends than those. Mom shut the door firmly behind departing playmates, her expression disappointed. You can be one of them popular kids.

  You don’t belong here with us. Mom stood at the foot of the stairs and watched her come down in her prom dress. You look like Princess Grace tonight, honey. Don’t you think, Dad? Like she oughta live in some palace?

  Setting down her half-eaten sandwich, feeling queasy, Kathleen asked, “Didn’t Ryan mind?”

  “What would he care?” her dad said in surprise. “He was a boy. He’d just make fun of you when you got too uppity.”

  She smiled ruefully. “Yeah. He did. He still does.”

  His eyes were grave and even anxious. “Your mom meant well.”

  “I know she did.” Kathleen blinked away a prickle of tears. “She gave me confidence in myself. I just wish I’d used it to tackle a career instead of believing I was entitled.”

  Princess Grace. She’d stood in front of mirrors and posed endlessly, tilting her head this way and that, smiling graciously for the adoring masses. Mommy said…

  Kathleen sighed deeply, then reached across the table and gave her father’s hand a quick squeeze. “Ryan and the kids are coming over for dinner tomorrow. Can you come, too?”

  “Short notice.” He frowned, but failed to hide that he was pleased. “What time did you have in mind?”

  “Oh…noon. One o’clock? I’ll bet Ryan would pick you up.”

  Dad drew himself up. “Nothing wrong with Harriet.” Harriet was a massive Buick he’d been driving for fifteen years or more. “Or my driving.”

  “I didn’t say there was.” Taking a sniff, she said, “Oh, no! I forgot the soup! Do you have room for some, if I didn’t burn it?”

  “Just as soon save it for dinner.” He pushed away from the table. “Won’t have to cook, that way.”

  “Baseball game on?” she judged, from his sidle toward the living room.

  He looked abashed. “It can wait.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’ll pop the soup in the fridge and be on my way. You go ahead and watch your game. I’ll stick my head in and say goodbye.”

  “That’s fine,” her father said in relief, and escaped, as he had for most of her childhood.

  But not before he’d told her what she wanted to know.

  She looked around her mother’s kitchen and thought, Mommy, I wish you’d told me to become somebody important. Not somebody who was most famous for who she married.

  SUNDAY DINNER WAS predictably chaotic. Emma thought it would have been perfect if Logan had been here, too.

  This spring, Sundays had become a day to gather, usually in this house, but sometimes at Uncle Ryan’s. Uncle Ryan and Jo wanted to be together all the time anyway, but they were waiting to get married until summer.

  “When I’m out of school, and can be completely free-spirited,” Jo claimed, but Emma knew that really she and Uncle Ryan were waiting so that Melissa and Tyler had their dad to themselves for a while.

  They’d come to visit him for Christmas, expecting to go back to Denver where their mom lived, now that she had remarried. Only she’d called and asked if they could stay with Uncle Ryan.

  “Her marriage is in trouble,” Uncle Ryan had said, looking grim around the mouth. “She doesn’t want to involve the kids in any uproar.”

  Emma had overheard Jo telling Mom that he was being charitable, that Wendy had chosen her new husband over her kids. Emma had shivered at the thought. Having your parents divorce was scary enough, but being ditched by your mom? Wow.

  Emma could tell that Tyler didn’t mind as much, that he’d rather live with his dad anyway. But Melissa had seemed really sad at first.

  Today Emma grabbed her and said, “Want to come up to my room? I got a new CD.”

  Melissa’s exaggerated expression of relie
f was funny. “Thank you! Tyler is driving me crazy!”

  The girls flopped on the bed and listened to music, but mostly talked.

  “I can hardly wait to start middle school,” Melissa confided. “The boys in my class are so juvenile. Maybe the eighth graders will be cooler.”

  Emma doubted it. Dances in middle school really weren’t that much fun. A few couples wrapped their arms around each other and swayed, and otherwise girls danced in clumps because boys never asked them. But she remembered how excited she’d been, too. By sixth grade, you were so tired of being treated like a little kid. Middle school, with different teachers and classes all day, was more like high school. You could hang out with friends between classes, and you had a locker and there were dances and sports teams and a choir—Melissa, Jo had said proudly, was an incredible singer.

  She was pretty, too, delicate and blond and blue-eyed, looking, Uncle Ryan said, like Emma’s mom when she was a girl. Like Emma, too, he’d added, really quick. It was nice of him to say so, but at eleven, Emma had not exactly been delicate. Those were the days when she stuffed her face all day long and wore, like, a size thirteen or fifteen when her friends were all in ones or threes.

  “Do you miss your mom?” Emma asked.

  Melissa rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling, where Emma had glued stars that glowed in the dark. “Sometimes. She called this morning.”

  Emma waited, sensing she wasn’t done.

  “She and my stepfather are moving again. He was transferred. They’re going to Sacramento. In California, you know?” She made a face. “We’re supposed to go spend a month there this summer. I wish he’d gotten transferred to L.A.”

  “But it’s close to San Francisco, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” She was quiet again for a minute. “She calls every week. She asks about stuff—you know, what we’re doing—but then she doesn’t remember what I’ve told her. Not like Jo does. Or Dad, of course.”

  Emma nodded, although Melissa probably didn’t see her. “I saw my Dad this week. For the first time in over a year.”

  Her cousin rolled onto her side and propped her head on her hand. “Really? Were you scared to see him?”