Come Back With a Bonus Excerpt: A Mother and Daughter's Journey Through Hell and Back

by Claire Fontaine

  Once I grew up, I was sure that marriage was the ticket to happiness. Oh, it’s gonna be smooth sailing now, I thought when I found Nick, I’ve finally boarded the right ship, the one with dancing and moonlight. Instead, I got the one with a hole hidden in the hull, the one that started sinking as soon as it lost sight of land. I’ve spent so much of my life paddling and holding Mia up to safety that I’ve forgotten there were any other kind of ships. Or that I could stop thrashing about and trust that the water would bear me up, because that is what water does, if you let it. And Mia could have learned to do the same by watching me. She could have learned ease, learned to trust, in herself and in the universe. She could have seen her mother know joy.

  I suddenly realize that I know exactly what it was like for Mia to have a mother like me. When I was growing up my biggest fantasy was not to be a smoky-eyed secret agent or Ginger on Gilligan’s Island. What I fantasized was this:

  I’m in a fabulous department store, trying on pearls, in my hot pink Twiggy dress. I have stick-straight hair and no glasses. A beautiful, elegant woman in a pink pillbox hat, à la Jackie Kennedy, joins me at the counter and says, “I see you like pink, too.”

  I notice her accent is familiar. I ask her if she’s from Hungary and she is! We get to chatting and more things sound familiar—she had a brother named Leo, too! And a big sister named Leah? Oh, my God! we both exclaim, raising our fingertips to our lips just like Audrey Hepburn in Charade—she’s my mother’s sister, the Nazis didn’t kill her after all! She throws her arms around me and I’m overjoyed! I have a brand-new, glamorous aunt who likes me immediately and a lot! I run home and tell my mom I found her sister, she’s right here, mom, look! She’s alive, you have a sister again, Mommy, aren’t you happy? Are you happy now, Mommy, are you happy?

  I share last night’s thoughts with Debbie and John. Debbie throws up her arms.

  “God, Claire, you don’t get it, do you?! We don’t want your thoughts about the past, that’s just a reporting of events! That’s all you do! How the fuck do you feel about any of it?” she says passionately. “Can’t you cut through all that blather and connect with me heart to heart?”

  I feel like I’m being jabbed with a cattle prod. “What, just because I’m not crying, this isn’t my heart? I’m not you, Debbie!”

  “I’m crying because I’m letting go of a lot of shit! I think I intimidate the hell out of you because I’m strong enough to do it and you think you’re not!” she challenges.

  “Strong enough to do what, whine all over the place?”

  “No. Strong enough to admit you feel like a failure. As a mother. Just like I do,” she says bluntly. “You’re too afraid to admit it, because you don’t want to ruin your image. I’ve been sensing in my gut that you are full of shame from the first time I saw you.”

  I sit. And stare at my hands. The floor. Listen to myself breathe. Try to will myself out of here. I have a moment where I’m someone else watching a film of myself.

  “Claire, the only way out is through,” Annie says quietly.

  A voice says so softly I can hardly hear it myself. “I failed three times. When she was little, when I told her about the visitation, and now. I can’t even stand to see other mothers and daughters together. Mia’s not the fuck-up. I am.”

  I don’t know what I sound like, or look like, for the next twenty minutes. Letting go of “a lot of shit” can’t be pretty. I don’t care. And neither do they. I feel safe, I feel surrounded by love. It feels like hearts and flowers.

  Today is Stretch Day. We’re to inhabit a persona that is a part of us we deny and given a song that we’re to create a performance around that embodies it.

  “Aaarrrgghh!” John’s just heard he’s to be the Full Monty. He drops to the floor and goes fetal, only half mockingly. His mates, also very closed-off men, are nervous and up in arms—“Just how far are we supposed to take this?”

  Debbie and her vocal group are to be mimes, silent for a full day.

  Five really macho guys are to embody the beauty and elegance of the human soul. In tutus. Two are pissed and threatening to leave. The other two are asking them if they want their wives to tell their sons in the program that their dads wimped out.

  A group of women with body issues will belly dance in full costume. Two are very heavy, two are very thin, all are in full panic.

  “But, I’m very ladylike,” I protest. “I wear dresses all the time!”

  “Always an argument with this one,” Lou muses. “Claire, being a Lady in Red is not about being “ladylike,” that’s external. It’s about the very essence of feminine beauty and grace. And that’s the last thing you project. I think if they still made chain mail, you’d wear it. You have no clue how much beauty and grace you’re covering up. I assure you, you will remember this day for the rest of your life. Let go, my dear.”

  By noon, I’m standing in a darkened room, wearing a sexy red gown and red lipstick. The transformation of sixty people I will witness is miraculous.

  Aging Barbie has slicked her hair off her forehead for the first time in years and projects a very different, powerful kind of sexy in a fabulous cone bra as Madonna.

  By the time John and his gang are bumping and grinding to “You Can Leave Your Hat On,” it’s been a day unlike anything I could have imagined. I can’t believe I’m watching the same dark, serious man lip-syncing and flinging his pants at us. His entire face has opened up, and for the first time I can see that he’s a very handsome man.

  I’m so paralyzed by stage fright that when our music starts to play, my brain is in lockdown. But my body isn’t. It decides to leave my brain behind. My arms feel light as air and my body comes alive in a way I’ve never felt before.

  I hear my neck and my back and my hips singing as I move around the room. Men. I’m suddenly aware of men watching me in a way that feels beautiful. Some are crying as I dance slowly past them. I feel myself as a gift.

  While the last group is stretching, I start to feel uncomfortable, light-headed. I slip out to go to the ladies’ room. I hurry into a stall and sit down, and being a Lady in Red becomes far too literal. I’m having a miscarriage.

  27.

  “Mia, come on in, I’ll grab you in a second, Brooke.”

  Chaffin pulled us out of class and had us wait in the library. I’m back up on junior staff and have been doing great so I have no idea why. Samantha just left his office. Her eyes were red from crying and met mine for a second before darting away.

  I sink into the oversize chair in his office.

  “So, you can’t even go two weeks on Level 4 without pulling some sort of crap?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No inappropriate conversations lately?”

  Ohhhh. Now, I understand Samantha’s look. Two days ago we were all canoeing and inevitably, boys and sex came up. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but now I remember how much trouble we could get in for that. Fuck! I just got back up here!

  “That was nothing, Chaffin! We talked about boys and sex, but nothing that bad.”

  “Who’d be good in bed? Who’s ‘hung’? That’s nothing bad? You hate when guys view you as a piece of meat and you’re doing the same thing to them! Seems the boy’s family was a bad idea if all you did was research who’s hot enough to sleep with!”

  “That’s bullshit! I got a lot out of being in there, ask Mike. And I never thought about those boys like that, the people we talked about weren’t even in Unity.”

  “Like it matters?”

  “I hate it here! You want to take away normal thought and feelings, it’s not human to never think about sex!”

  “Of course you guys think about sex, that’s normal. But you know you’re not allowed to talk about it like that. Having integrity and respect means using self-control. How would you feel if a group of guys compared your chest to the other girls’?”

  Like they don’t. They’re just smart enough not to get caught. I can’t believe this, one stupid
conversation.

  “Samantha’s the only one of you with any accountability. You’re acting like you didn’t even do anything wrong!”

  “Fine, so what’s happening to us? Are we getting dropped?”

  “Well, Samantha’s going home today—”

  “Samantha’s WHAT?” Why would she rat us out before she’s leaving?

  “Her mom came to pull her this morning. You and Brooke are both Level 1, zero points.”

  “You fat fuck!” explodes out of my mouth.

  Chaffin takes a deep breath, no doubt to keep from swearing right back at me. I storm out of his office before I have to listen to any more of this shit.

  “Mia. Mia! This just came for you,” Miss Kim says, handing me a thick letter.

  It’s bothered me far more than I expected, losing this teensy almost-baby that wasn’t meant to be. Part of me is relieved because I’ve finally come to enjoy having my time to myself for the first time in sixteen years. Most of me is sad, though, because even with everything I’ve been through with Mia, being a mother is nothing short of bliss. The things we’re called upon to do for our children are not sacrifices, they’re privileges. What else could make a person say, with gladness, “You mean to save my child’s life all you want is my arm? Take it! My other arm? Where’s the axe?” Space travel, the Sistine Chapel, splitting atoms? Small potatoes next to growing a life. I would have liked to do it again. And I would have liked to give a sibling to Mia.

  I hadn’t told Paul I was a month late because I wanted to be sure myself. I don’t know if he’s more bothered that I miscarried or by the fact that I didn’t tell him I was pregnant, or both, but he’s anything but supportive; he’s withdrawn and testy. It doesn’t help that Mia’s so excited that I went to Focus that she’s bugging him to go, too. Fat chance.

  I could intervene and push him to go, but one of the biggest lessons I got from Focus was that control is an illusion. I watched Debbie try to control others, with good intentions, and I saw myself in her. He’ll do what he’s going to do, and Mia will handle it how she handles it.

  Of course, all this is easier with support from Debbie and John in daily emails. Debbie’s finally told her son to get over it. He’s angry, she writes, because now it means he has to focus on himself. And now that John’s opened up his heart to his son, his son’s gotten off Level 1 for the first time in months.

  Mia’s just had a huge drop and fully expected me to be angry or give advice on how to improve, succeed, change. “Hmm, what did you learn from this experience?” totally threw her.

  Till now, my emotions have been a function of her behavior. She succeeds and I fly; she drops, I plunge. I see now that my reactions have been her heaviest artillery. Which makes me both her target and the arms supplier.

  One of the parents I read most on the Link, David Stoker, a psychologist whose son is in Samoa, has made me realize that my past reactions have had an even more insidious effect on Mia, something I think all parents are guilty of without realizing it. He recently wrote:

  “My experience of these program kids is that every one of them is or was terrified of growing up and fearful that they would botch up their future. So they kept delaying the maturation process by remaining unaccountable, immature, and rebellious. When we parents collude with their low self-esteem by pointing out their shortcomings, criticizing their lack of progress, or in other ways invalidating them, we buy into their deep-seated fears about themselves, and they then hate us for seeing that side of them and focusing on it.”

  I wait several hours before opening the letter. It’s a thick one from my mom, probably telling me all about college and the things she’s excited to do together once I graduate. I just wasn’t in the mood. Not that I am now because I don’t see how it’s humanly possible for me to ever leave this place. I open the letter:

  Mia, I love you very much, no matter where you’re choosing to be…I love you beyond the circumstances, the choices, the image, the lies, the manipulations, the self-delusion, all that surface stuff you get stuck in. Because who you are is not that. You need love at this point most of all…

  This is what she writes me after hearing I dropped? She should be furious, dismayed that her daughter can’t simply be good. She’s actually asking what I learned from it—why is she being so supportive, so…neutral? It’s great to not get bitched at, but it’s making me nervous.

  Coming home will be hell if my mom gets into the program hard-core, it’ll be just like living here. I can just see it now, I’ll pour too much cereal and she’ll ask me how taking more than I can handle is a reflection of my life. What kind of idiot was I, pushing her to go to Focus?

  But I keep reading and I think she’s changed on a deeper level. Mail from my mom is always one of three things: educational, upbeat, or angry. But this is so real, it’s like she accidentally sent a page of her journal.

  I wish I had you here to become friends with, to feel support and truly unselfish love and empathy from you instead of me always being the giver…Sometimes I wouldn’t share things with you because I was afraid of how it would affect you.

  I know exactly how she feels. That was the main reason I pushed her and Paul away, though my silence hurt them more.

  I’m going to share something with you. I had a miscarriage earlier this year.

  She what?! She wants another kid? What happened to me? No wonder she’s in no rush to have me home!! Hell, her life’s gotten nothing but better since I came here! Her career’s picked up, she’s become a regular jet-setter, and now she’ll have a clean shot at motherhood. She’ll finally get her “normal” child.

  And she said earlier this year—it’s August! What was she waiting for? She bitched about me not being open with her before coming here—well, dear mother, where would I have possibly learned that from?

  Jordana’s getting antsy for the rewrite and, knowing my propensity for distraction, has asked me to Provence for the month to finish it. She spends August with her partner in a farmhouse in the Luberon, outside a tiny mountaintop village. Like Colette, I’ll have no choice but to write. She’s not giving me the car keys.

  “Interesting you chose to see it that way, Mia.”

  She’s obviously gotten my letter about the miscarriage. I couldn’t decide if she’d be upset because she’s always wanted a sibling or because she would have been jealous of one. I decided not to do what I’ve always done, assume she couldn’t handle emotional challenges.

  “What do you mean, ‘interesting’?” she snips. “What’s interesting is that the minute you put me in this hellhole to rot, presto, you decide to have another kid.”

  “Actually, what I figured is that being your mother has been such a joy, another child would be just as wonderful. We also wanted you to have a sibling, so when we’re old, you won’t have to wipe our drool all by yourself,” I say, hoping to humor her. Right after I say it, I realize I’ve done it again—I tried to make her feel how I want her to, rather than accept whatever she really is feeling.

  “Nice try, Mother.”

  “Mia, I can hear that you’re hurt. You’re making it mean we’re rejecting or abandoning you. That’s your stuff, not ours. I also recognize that my feelings about it are still tender, so I’m choosing not to talk to you about it until you’re ready to be more respectful. You can be hurt or have fears without being rude.”

  “Fine!”

  “Au revoir, ma fille, je t’aime.” (I love you, my daughter.)

  “Je t’aime aussi et bon voyage,” she says sarcastically. (I love you, too, and have a great trip.)

  28.

  Each step outdoors in the Luberon valley is redolent with scent—thyme, lavender, honey. Provence smells like pleasure. It’s a perfect place to write a love story.

  And to continue discovering what began when I danced in a red dress—a genuine, visceral awareness of my physical presence in the world. Till that day, I wasn’t really aware that I’d been walking around like a brain on a stick. I feel so
physically present now, I can feel the air on my skin when I walk in the woods, my fingers notice my face when I wash it.

  Of all the things I’m feeling blessed with in this beautiful place, what makes me happiest is that my voice returned. I sit on the deep window ledge and sing a lullaby out to the stars to carry to my girl in Montana who’s struggling right now. I feel the kind of crazywild love for Mia now that I did when she was little.

  The ancient farmhouse sits on a hill, with a plum orchard and old stone walls. I perch my laptop on my knees and work on the screenplay beneath a giant fig tree, and my pleasure infuses the work. John and Charlotte’s scenes together now have a vibrance and intensity they lacked. You can feel their hunger for tenderness, their impatience for joy.

  If I write enough hours in the morning, Jordana deigns to let me walk to the village, where I have as many mishaps and commit as many faux pas as I did in Brno. Only the French are much more vocal. Czechs stare; the French huff, argue, and publicly chastise. How am I supposed to know you don’t squeeze your own tomatoes here or that you’re supposed to jump in the roadside ditch to let a car pass? For a dog or a bicyclist they’ll swerve fifty feet out of the way. A pedestrian? Forget it—des animaux tués par les voitures (roadkill).

  When they’re not yelling at you or ignoring you, however, they’re very tender and sentimental, a national character I find familiar and endearing, not unlike my mother’s.

  I vary my route to town, discovering paths once walked by Romans and revolutionaries. Along the way, I often gather fruit, thyme, lavender. While I walk, I let my mind wander back to my childhood without Morticia’s dark glasses and I’m rewarded with happy memories. One afternoon, as I stoop to pick up fallen plums, I see the veins on the back of my hands and think of my mother’s hands in an old photo I have.