The Perfect Mom

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Emma grimaced. “Kind of. But it felt good to tell him how mad I’ve been. I don’t think he liked it. He hasn’t called again.”

  “Do you want him to?” Melissa asked, wide-eyed.

  “I don’t care.” She frowned in turn up at the ceiling. “Yeah, I guess maybe I do. I don’t know. I’m mixed up about him.”

  “I am about my mom, too.”

  The two girls lay side by side and listened to the singer with a deep, scratchy voice that gave Emma goosebumps sing about loving one girl and remembering another.

  “Girls!” Mom yelled up the stairs. “Dinner!”

  “I’m starved!” Melissa exclaimed, scrambling up.

  I am, too, Emma realized.

  The kids all ate in the living room, sitting on the floor around the coffee table, while the grownups— Mom, Helen, Jo, Uncle Ryan and Grandpa—ate at the table in the kitchen. Emma wished she could hear what they were saying, but she liked hanging out with her cousins. And Ginny, of course. Ginny was like a little sister.

  Emma had been surprised to see Grandpa. He mostly came on holidays. And, he’d just been here for Easter. But Mom hugged him and kissed his cheek and he patted her on the back when he came in. Mom looked out the window then and shook her head over his parking job—Emma came to see, too. Grandpa drove the biggest car she’d ever seen except for hearses and limos, and it barely fit their street. The front wheel was smack in the middle of the sidewalk and the rear bumper stuck out in the street.

  “I guess the neighbors won’t mind,” Mom whispered.

  “If they can get by,” Emma said doubtfully.

  “I can’t ask him to move it. He’d just say,” she deepened her voice, “‘You trying to tell me how to park? When I’ve been doing it for fifty-four years?”

  Emma giggled. “I think it’s okay.”

  Mom turned from the window. “Dinner smells good, doesn’t it? I love turkey and the works.” Her mouth formed an O when she remembered Emma wasn’t eating meat. “I did make some stuffing separately. For you.”

  She probably knew to a fraction of an ounce how much there was, Emma thought now as she dished up from her own special foil-covered casserole dish. Which meant she’d know exactly how much Emma ate.

  She wondered if Logan had a chance to talk to Mom before they broke up? He’d said he would, and she just knew he would keep a promise. Emma kept thinking he’d call, even though he and Mom had apparently had a big fight, but the week had passed without Mom saying anything. Maybe he wouldn’t call, she thought gloomily. Finding out that Mom was secretly embarrassed by his clothes and what he did for a living and everything must have really hurt.

  Mom had been weird all week. Somebody had mixed up all the cans in the cupboard, and Mom hadn’t straightened them out. She’d gone to the grocery store with a list, and still forgotten stuff. One night, she didn’t remember that it was her turn to cook, and Jo had to do it. Mom overslept one morning, and swore when Emma woke her and she leaped out of bed.

  She’d been making soap in a frenzy, every evening. Emma hated going in the kitchen, with Mom wearing a mask and goggles and stirring lye in a huge pot. The smell was gross!

  She and Helen were doing their first craft fair next Saturday and Sunday. This soap wouldn’t be cured by then, but they were both hoping they would sell their inventory and need lots more by July and August, when they would be doing fairs almost every weekend.

  While Mom worked, melting and blending oils to mix with the nasty lye solution, Helen sat at the table cutting regular size bars from the giant ones Mom made, then bundling some and tying them with a couple of colors of raffia. She’d slip a label under the bow, one she and Mom had designed together and that they printed off on the computer onto this heavy, pale amber paper. They had also found a cheap source for small baskets, and she arranged other bars artistically in them and tied them up with big lengths of the raffia. The pantry was totally stuffed now, and so were the shelves and cupboards Logan had built specially for soap.

  Emma hoped they would sell a bunch. Either that, or she’d still be using all this up when she was ready for a nursing home.

  After a while, Grandpa left. Emma knew he liked to watch sports on TV. He’d said something about turning on the Oakland A’s, but not even Uncle Ryan seemed interested, and when he saw the living room full of kids, he said goodbye.

  Helen declared that she was going upstairs to take a long, luxurious bath.

  Emma grinned at her. “At least we have soap.”

  “We do indeed have soap,” she agreed, making a horrible face that made the girls laugh.

  After she left, Tyler asked, “Wanna play Uno?”

  Melissa and Emma looked at each other. Emma shrugged. “Sure.”

  Mom glanced in once they were sitting around the coffee table again, Tyler dealing. “Yell if you want cocoa or anything,” she said, and went away.

  Ginny played “with” Emma, who hadn’t noticed she’d left until she came back, plopping on the couch next to where Emma leaned.

  “They’re talking about you,” she announced. “Auntie Kath said, ‘I’ve been waiting for the chance to talk to both of you together about Emma.’”

  Both of you? Jo and Uncle Ryan, Emma realized. Why did Mom want to talk to them about her?

  She shot to her feet. “You stay here,” she hissed at the others, when Tyler started to rise, too. “And don’t cheat.”

  Still holding their cards, they stared wide-eyed as she left the living room. She wore only socks, so she moved silently on the hardwood floor. Upstairs she heard water draining; Helen must be getting out of the tub.

  Low voices came from the kitchen. Emma stood to one side of the open doorway and strained to hear.

  “…talked to Emma about this?” Uncle Ryan asked.

  “No,” Mom said. “The idea just came to me.” Then she must have moved, because her voice became muffled. “…you first,” she finished.

  Anxiety squeezed Emma’s heart. They sounded so serious, not as if they were discussing a cool trip Uncle Ryan and Jo might take her on, or something like that. More as if… She didn’t know, but she was scared.

  And then she heard it: just a few words from Jo.

  “…while she’s living with us…”

  Living with them?

  And then Emma knew. Mom was getting rid of her.

  JO AND RYAN DIDN’T SEEM totally opposed. They listened with grave expressions as Kathleen explained her rationale, nodded, asked questions. Neither of them said, “You’ve got to be kidding! You want us to take on your problem teenager?”

  Kathleen didn’t know if this was the answer, but the idea had been niggling at her for a few weeks and finally surfaced yesterday.

  What if Emma had the chance to concentrate on getting well, if only for a few months, while still living with people who loved her? She wouldn’t have the day to day conflict with her mother, but Kathleen could easily call or see her as often as Emma was willing. Ian wasn’t an option, but Emma’s uncle was.

  “We’d have to talk to Melissa,” Ryan said, frowning as he considered. “Let’s face it. We don’t have an extra bedroom. The two girls would have to share. That’s asking a lot of ’Lissa. She’ll have to be okay with it.”

  “I do understand that,” Kathleen agreed.

  Jo waved away his worry. “Melissa worships the ground Emma walks on. Of course she’ll go for it. I’m more concerned about how this will affect our relationships with her. While she’s living with us, we’d be the bad guys.”

  “Honestly, she’s very responsible,” Kathleen started to say.

  Her daughter’s angry voice came from behind her. “How long have you been planning to ditch me?”

  Kathleen closed her eyes in horror. Emma had overheard. If this wasn’t the worst way to bring up the idea, she didn’t know what was.

  Jo and Ryan rushed into speech together. “Honey, we were just talking.”

  “We thought you might like…”

  K
athleen turned and met her daughter’s eyes, blazing with betrayal.

  Over the top of the other two adults, she said, “I was going to talk to you tonight, if Ryan and Jo agreed. I’m not ditching you. I’m looking for a living situation that will make you happy.”

  “Me?” She laughed wildly. “I can’t believe it, after the way you talked about Aunt Wendy! You’re doing the same thing, aren’t you? If the kid’s too much of a hassle, get rid of her. Right?”

  The hurt on her daughter’s face pummeled her. “This is not the same thing…” she tried to say.

  Emma cried, “My mom doesn’t want me. How’s that different from ’Lissa’s mom not wanting her?”

  “It’s not that I…”

  “It is!” Her face contorted. “Fine! I’ll go pack right now.” She stormed from the kitchen.

  The silence she left behind resounded in Kathleen’s ears.

  “You’d better go talk to her,” Ryan said mildly.

  Kathleen nodded. “I…excuse me.”

  She saw the other kids staring at her from the living room. They’d heard, and in their eyes was judgment.

  Oh, God, she thought. What have I done?

  Upstairs, she brushed by Helen, who had emerged from the bathroom in a robe with her hair wrapped in a towel. She turned in astonishment to watch Kathleen hurry down the hall, face her daughter’s bedroom door, raise her hand to knock…and then let her fisted hand drop to her side.

  She was too shell-shocked to cry. Too dismayed at her own stupidity in taking the awful risk she had today. No, not just stupidity, her condescension, in letting Emma be the last to know. Of course she felt betrayed!

  Finally Kathleen made herself knock.

  “Go away!”

  “I can’t.” Her voice hitched. “Emma, I have to talk to you.”

  “No!” her daughter screamed. “I’ll talk to Uncle Ryan!”

  Kathleen turned the knob and walked into Emma’s room.

  Emma, curled on the bed hugging a pillow, rolled the other direction. “Go away!” she cried again, in a tear-thickened voice.

  “I love you,” Kathleen said. Whispered. Tears rained down her cheeks. “I love you so much.”

  “You don’t!”

  “I do.” She sat on the bed and laid a hand on Emma’s thin shoulder. “I would do anything in the world for you. Including let you live with someone else, if that would make you happier.”

  Emma scooted away from her hand. “You don’t care what makes me happy.”

  Vision blurred, Kathleen said, “All I know is, I can’t seem to. I won’t let you kill yourself because I’m being selfish. I’m not ready for you to grow up. You’re my little girl, and you always will be.”

  “Then why…” Emma whispered. She rocked, still lying with her back to her mother. “Why?”

  “Because all of your eating problems are my fault, aren’t they?” She gazed dully at her daughter’s bedroom wall and felt the tears fall. She didn’t recognize her own voice. “I don’t blame you for not loving me anymore. I don’t even like myself very much. But I need you to know that I have always, and will always, love you.”

  Kathleen felt movement beside her. She turned her head to see Emma rolling over and rising to her knees.

  Her face looked as awful as Kathleen knew her own must, wet with tears and snot, her eyes red and swollen and her hair wild.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  A sob shook Kathleen. “I was…so arrogant…”

  “I love you, Mommy.” Emma flung herself at her mother, and Kathleen’s arms closed around her.

  She buried her face in her little girl’s hair and cried, even as Emma cried against her breast.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  KATHLEEN WENT DOWNSTAIRS long enough to tell Ryan and Jo that everything was okay and thank them.

  “She’ll be staying home,” she told them, accepted their hugs, then went back upstairs as Ryan gathered the children to leave.

  She and Emma talked for hours, eventually going downstairs when they heard Helen tucking in Ginny.

  Both washed their faces and changed into pajamas on the way. They sat at the kitchen table, sipping cocoa until the dregs turned cold.

  “I think, if my wanting so much to be slim and pretty is anyone’s fault, it’s Dad’s,” Emma insisted. “I mean, I wanted to look like you, but it was him who always said stuff. And just looked so disgusted or disappointed in me.” She reminded her mother what he’d said when she started to diet, about how maybe now he’d have two beautiful women. “Except, no matter how skinny I got, he never said, ‘Emma, you look beautiful.’”

  That bastard, Kathleen thought.

  “I know I’m not,” Emma said. “Beautiful, I mean. But wouldn’t you think he could have lied? Since I’m his kid?”

  “But you are beautiful!” Kathleen exclaimed. “Sharon says you have a distorted body image, but I wish you could trust me on this one.”

  Her daughter wrinkled her nose. “You’re my mother.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “You lie.”

  Kathleen couldn’t help laughing, in a choked kind of way. “About this, I’m not. Just…look at yourself. Honestly.”

  Emma’s forehead puckered. “Then how come no boy ever asks me out?”

  “You have been awfully skinny, honey. Also…” Kathleen hesitated, then chose honesty. “Until recently, did you notice or care? You’ve seemed really self-absorbed. All you thought about was not eating and whether you were fat. Did you ever just talk and laugh with other kids?”

  Emma bowed her head and stirred her cocoa vigorously. “Maybe not,” she mumbled. “I guess… I mean, I don’t really have any friends.”

  “You did. Until you started to diet.”

  Her head came up. “They were jealous of me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Emma opened her mouth as if to make a heated retort, then closed it, frowned fiercely, and finally said, “I don’t know. I did sort of brag about how much weight I was losing. I mean, I wanted everyone to see how strong I was being!”

  “Being, um, self-righteous is not the path to friendship.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “I guess not. Now, it’s like, I don’t know how to make friends any more.”

  “And yet, Ginny and Melissa adore you,” Kathleen pointed out.

  “That’s different,” Emma grumbled.

  Kathleen stirred her own cocoa, reflecting. “You know, I lost most of my friends when I left your dad. Did you notice?”

  Her daughter frowned, her eyes thoughtful. “Yeah. Sort of. But…why?”

  “I can’t be sure. Then, I thought they’d just dismissed me because I didn’t have enough status anymore. Now, I think it was partly that I was unavailable. I couldn’t have lunch with them, I wasn’t at the health club, I didn’t even call some of them to let them know my new phone number. But I also realize in retrospect that none of them was especially close. We were friends because of circumstances. We didn’t share real problems or feelings. For example, when I started worrying about your eating, I didn’t tell anyone.” She snorted. “I had to maintain our image, you know.”

  “The perfect family?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Why did you care?” the sixteen-year-old asked, gazing at her with honest puzzlement.

  Kathleen tried to explain everything she’d been learning and thinking lately, about her mother’s dreams for her and her father’s almost complete lack of involvement in her day to day life. “But honestly,” she concluded, “I don’t know. Maybe at some point I found the ‘right’ friends, and Mom was pleased, and then I let myself be swept along. My father just shrugged, and he says my mother was thrilled that I no longer belonged with my own family. Ryan was the only one who ever gave me a body check, and I resented that, of course.”

  Emma was quiet. “Um, do you miss Logan?” she asked after a long moment.

  “Yeah. But I’ll survive.” Kathleen tried to smile in reassura
nce.

  But after tonight, and everything with Emma, and her grief about that last scene with Logan, she didn’t know if smiles would ever come naturally again. Her whole face felt stiff, her eyes puffy.

  “Can’t you talk to him?”

  “I think maybe we passed that point.” Despite the rivers of tears she’d shed tonight, they threatened again. She cleared her throat and said briskly, “I’m feeling like it’s bedtime. What about you?”

  A yawn stretched Emma’s face. She laughed, picked up her cup and pushed back her chair. “I guess I am tired.”

  They flipped out the lights and started up the stairs.

  “You know,” Emma said, “the can cupboard is a mess. Do you want me to straighten it out tomorrow?”

  Kathleen found she could smile after all. “I messed it up myself,” she told her daughter cheerfully. “Let’s just leave it that way, okay?”

  Looking awed, Emma nodded. “I guess. I mean…sure.”

  “Can I tuck you in?”

  Emma nodded, a little shyly.

  The ritual had mostly been abandoned in the past few weeks. Always, on the nights when Emma’s door slammed, punctuating their most recent fight.

  Kathleen waited while Emma brushed her teeth and climbed into bed, then smoothed the covers up under her chin. Kissing her forehead, she said, “We may fight again tomorrow, but promise me you won’t forget I do love you.”

  Emma nodded sleepily. “Me, too. I mean, you, too.”

  “For better or worse, we’re a team.”

  “For better…” Emma repeated, the words slurring as her eyelids drifted shut. Her lips kept moving, but Kathleen couldn’t tell if she’d finished.

  Going on to bed herself, Kathleen thought, in defiance of the inevitable tomorrows, Who needed the rest of the vow anyway?

  PRIDE WAS AN UGLY THING, Logan discovered. The woman he loved had come to him, against all odds, and said, “I’m sorry. I love you.” What had he done? Taken her at her word?

  Hell, no! He’d taken her sexually, and then sent her away. As a result, he was alone in a house that no longer felt like home without her. He could see the nights stretching ahead of him, quiet but for the tinny blast of the television set. The beer a night he allowed himself might become two, then three. Why not blur his bitter knowledge that he was responsible for his own aching loneliness?