2. Franki
two
Do other people get a jolt of dread every time they get a phone call?Because phones are now the bane of my existence.
Hair still dripping and towel wrapped around my chest, I eye mine like it’s a snake. The phone, in its pretty black and silver star-covered case, vibrates on the tiny desk in my hotel room. I turned the ringer off three days ago, but it still buzzes, and that’s enough to make me jump with a jolt of adrenaline.
Oliver, my little brown dachshund, lifts his head from where he’s been napping in the corner, then dismisses my mother’s call the way I wish I could.
It’s time to deal with her, get today’s meltdown under control, and move on with my life. This is better, really. I’ll get it over with before I meet up with the other bridesmaids for the wedding, rather than having it hanging over my head.
I answer the call and leave it on speakerphone as I move to my suitcase. “Hey, Mom. How are you?”
“I thought you were dead. You didn’t answer your phone.”
Her last call came less than twenty minutes ago. “Dead” is a pretty radical leap of logic. I drag on my clothing as we speak. “I was in the shower.”
“I need you back in California. My schedule is falling apart without you. The personal assistant you hired for me is a joke.”
“Give your PA time. He’s still learning your habits,” I soothe.
“A PA isn’t my child. A PA doesn’t care about me. I don’t trust him the way I trust you.”
I squeeze my temples with one hand. “You made it without me all those years when I was a kid. You can do it. This is just a transition.” I keep my tone upbeat and encouraging. All “Atta girl” with none of the frustration I feel bleeding through.
“My life was hell without you. I made sacrifices for your sake; the least you owe me is some gratitude and appreciation now.” She’s ramping up to anger. Zero to sixty in the space of six sentences.
“I am grateful. I know it was hard for you to be away from me when I was a child. I’m sorry you went through that.” The words are rote. Something she’s expected me to say my entire life.
“You’re still trying to punish me for something that isn’t my fault.”
This is an old conversation, recycled and rehashed. I’m tired of it. I have things to do today, and catering to my mother’s fragile ego isn’t on my list. “I’m not punishing you. I’m doing what normal people do when they grow up. I’m trying to build my own life.”
“You’re not normal. You can’t expect to do what other people do.”
I clutch the air in a silent expression of fury, then speak calmly. If I escalate her, it only gets worse. “I’m not abnormal.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth and act like I’m attacking you when I’m trying to help you.”
I need to steer this conversation back on course. “Why don’t you ask David for help? You don’t have to be alone. You have support. He loves you.” She’s been in a quiet relationship with David Vance for years.
“I can’t do that, and you know it. I don’t get to be sentimental about these things. It’s about public perception. The people like to imagine I’m in love with my co-star, not banging a stunt actor they’ve never heard of.”
Ugh. Gross.
“Just come back, Franki. You only have so long before the money you stole runs out,” she says.
I roll my eyes. “I didn’t steal anything. I saved the money you insisted on giving me because you didn’t want me to get a job while I was a student. I’ll find one now.”
I tried to find employment before I left and applied for all sorts of positions in New York. None of them responded…until one did with a kindly worded email telling me best of luck since I’d withdrawn my application. When I wrote back, they’d already filled the position.
My mother had sabotaged all of my applications. When I confronted her, she said those jobs would have been “too hard” on me. There’s no reasoning with her. The only thing I know how to do is work around her “good intentions.”
“That money was for your daily expenses, so you could pay for lunch and put gas in your car. It wasn’t meant for you to hoard so you could sneak off.”
“I didn’t sn—”
“I’ll pay you to be my PA and let you go back to grad school. Then you can say you have the independence you want so badly.” She uses her coaxing, reasonable voice, as though autonomy is a silly, selfish goal for a twenty-three-year-old woman.
This is her backing down from her latest ultimatum, then. “No amount of financial assistance with school is worth my self-respect.”
“I can’t understand why you chose this hill to die on. I wasn’t criticizing you.” Anxiety leaks through her words.
I scrub my forehead with my fingers. “I don’t want surgery for the sake of meeting some beauty standard I don’t even care about. It doesn’t matter to me what size my breasts are, and I have more important things to worry about than weighing a few pounds more than what you think is my ‘ideal weight.’”
“Seventeen is not a few, and it’s not what I think. It’s what our trainer agrees is the healthiest weight for you. What’s the difference between this and when I paid for your surgery for that terrible overbite? I’m helping you to be the best version of yourself.”
Insurance paid most of my orthognathic surgery costs, and for the braces before and after to correct the problems caused by my upper and lower jaws growing at different rates, but if I say that, she’ll point out that she paid for the insurance. “My overbite caused jaw pain and headaches. It was a medical issue. I care about how I’m functioning. I exercise to stay healthy, and I stop when I’m causing more harm than good. This body is the only one I’ve got. I’m giving myself grace.”
She scoffs in disgust.
I don’t expect her to understand. My mother’s obsession with maintaining her own physical perfection is hard to watch without feeling pity. My best friend’s mother Charlotte was my true role model. Not that I was stupid enough to admit something like that in front of my mother. I’d have never been allowed to stay with the McRaes again.
Five years ago, Mom’s obsession with her own appearance expanded to include mine. I never figured out exactly what made her decide it was time for me to move to England with her. She simply showed up one Christmas break from school, and at the end of it, decided she was going to keep me with her for the last half of my senior year of high school.
I had chronic headaches at the time, and she took me to a doctor who recommended I see a surgeon for my jaw. She’d seemed to relish the process. She transitioned from love bombing to someone obsessed with what she felt she “created” when my new jawline emerged as a result of the surgery and braces. It was a power trip for her, and she set about transforming me from the awkward, bullied girl I’d been, into a clone of herself.
According to her, I owe her for my very existence. Guinevere Jones doesn’t quite see me as a real person, no matter what she says. I’m an accessory. Like a pretty pair of shoes. I exist to boost her ego and be available for her needs.
When my best friend nearly died in a stalker attack and Mom didn’t even want me to see her, I knew I had to come back to the East Coast and get away from my mother for good. Bronwyn’s recent brush with death put things into perspective for me. I’m done living as my mother’s possession.
One thing after another kept me at her home in California, but I’m here now, and that’s what matters. “I’m looking for work. I explained—”
“The McRaes are not your family. They kept you during holidays and summer breaks from school as a child out of pity. I’m your mother. I don’t mind keeping you, but you can’t go there and expect to stay with them indefinitely while you look for a job. You’re taking advantage of them. I have secondhand embarrassment just thinking about it.”
I grit my teeth. How she manages to zero in on my every fear and insecurity, I’ll never know. “When Jonny gets back from Paris, I’m sure he’ll let me crash at his place.”
I’m sure of no such thing. To say my father is inconsistent in his affection or availability would be generous, but Charlotte swore she wanted me here. If she hadn’t, I’d have found another way to leave my mother.
“Do you think I don’t know you’re there because of Henry McRae?”
I heave a silent sigh. “I was eighteen when I told you I had a crush on Henry. It’s ancient history. I haven’t even spoken with him in almost five years. I got over the puppy love, Mom.”
“You tried to go back there within six months to return to people who didn’t want you. Every time you decide to leave, it’s with some insane plan to return to New York.”
When I initially left with Mom, I didn’t have insecurities about the McRaes or my friendship with Henry. As time passed, however, her words wore a groove in my memories until I got to a place where I didn’t know if I’d been oblivious to the fact that they simply tolerated me or if they really did care about me. I distanced myself emotionally, unwilling to be an unwanted fifth wheel or an object of pity.
Regret sits like an unmoving ball of lead in my gut. If Bronwyn hadn’t been the kind of person who would track me down, and Clarissa and Janessa hadn’t been the kind of friends who insisted on including me in group texts even after I’d withdrawn, I’d have become completely isolated.
I’ve been trying to find a way to extricate myself from living with my mother since nearly the beginning. My surgery, then later my rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis, my education, the constant need for bodyguards, even Oliver’s vet bills, have kept me wrapped in silk cords that look like she’s providing care and protection from the outside, but from the inside feel like a cage.
Mom also isn’t wrong that I still have feelings for Henry, but she doesn’t have any way of knowing that. Most people don’t hang on to teenage crushes the way I have.
“You were assaulted less than six weeks ago. There’s no reason to rush this,” she says.
“I was shaken up. I wasn’t hurt.”
“Someone tried to kidnap you. Don’t dismiss this as if it’s nothing. This is the third time someone has gone after you in the last two years,” she says in horrified tones.
Gee, thanks for reminding me, Mom. “Obviously, they thought I was you. That isn’t going to happen when we aren’t even on the same side of the country. I changed my hair color, and I’ve gained weight. If I’m not coming and going from your house, no one will make the connection between us.”
To my way of thinking, it’s one more reason to want to put distance between us.
“Distance won’t make a difference. The only reason you weren’t hurt was because David was there to save you. You don’t have anyone to help you like that in New York. I spend every moment visualizing you murdered or worse,” she says.
“The McRaes have security out the wazoo, and I’m headed back there tomorrow.”
“What if Oliver gets sick again? Or you do?”
“We’ll be fine.”
When Charlotte called to tell me about Bronwyn, I’d tried to leave immediately to go to her. Before that could happen, someone tried to drag me into his car. Then Oliver got into something, and I had to turn to my mother for help with the vet bills. Then some jerk stole my car. Between stress and the immunosuppressants I take, I got sick. Finally, when Oliver and I were well enough, I managed to get on that plane.
It was a mess for me. For my mother? It was proof that I wasn’t ready to live away from her, let alone on the other side of the country.
She takes a steadying breath. “You can’t take advantage of the McRaes forever, and you can’t live like a normal person. Every single time you try, sooner or later, some sick asshole thinks you’re me and comes after you. The only reason nothing terrible happened in the past was because I provided you with protection. I know it’s not fun, believe me. And I know it’s my fault that people target you, but you can’t live on your own. For so many reasons. You can’t.”
“Can’t you understand that living with you and covering for you all the time only makes that situation worse for me?” It was convenient for her to have a live-in double. It allowed her privacy, as I distracted the paparazzi for her. I stuffed my bra, wore her clothing and sunglasses, and kept my head down as I hustled with a bodyguard from our house or car to another location. Photographers rarely caught on that it was the daughter they were following.
Mom takes a shuddering breath. “When you can’t find a job because you got a useless degree and realize you need to finish grad school, you let me know. I’m removing you from my health insurance until you come to your senses. If you’re the ‘adult’ you like to say you are, then you’ll find a way to deal with it. I won’t punish you when you come back. We’ll forget this ever happened.”
I knew she was going to do this. Hoping she wouldn’t use every tool she has to control me would have been an exercise in futility. “Jonny will put me on his insurance if I need it, I’m sure.”
With any luck, I’ll find a job with benefits soon and won’t need his help at all. I’ve been hoarding my meds by taking less than prescribed in case she did this. It’s a bad idea, but I will chew my own leg off like an animal in a trap before I move back in with her. “I’m not coming back to California.”
“I’ll be here when you need to come home.”
Beep. Beep. Beep.My shoulders relax, and I let out a slow breath when she hangs up.
When I sit on the edge of the bed, Oliver rises from his corner, stretches, then trots over to me. I smile and lean down to pet him. In response, he stands on his back legs to lean against me.
I give him a rub behind his ear. “Don’t let her get to you. I’ll find a job. Then I’ll find a place to live. It’s going to be great. It’s exciting.”
His tail swishes in response, his long, skinny body raised up like a prairie dog and his chin held high. I call it his “majestic wiener dog” pose.
My cousin Finn is providing this hotel room after I accepted the last-minute position as his fiancee’s bridesmaid when one of them dropped out. I’m the right size for the dress. The shoes are half a size too small, but I’ll make it work. After that, I’ll go back to Bronwyn’s parents’ place for a couple weeks while I look for a job and apartment.
I click on the banking app on my phone to check my balance. I’m extremely lucky that my parents paid for my education to this point. So I don’t have that anvil looming over my head, at least. I don’t take it for granted, for a moment, but I have zero credit. In an absolute emergency, I could ask Clarissa or Bronwyn for help, but the thought makes me shrivel inside.
According to the bank app, my account currently holds $548.72. Not desperation-level, but not enough for even one month’s rent, let alone first and last.
It’s been less than a week since I loaded up my luggage with everything I could manage to fit and booked a one-way flight for me and Oliver. I saved for six months, and it’s nearly gone already.
“I’m a strong and capable woman. My education isn’t useless, and needing physical accommodations doesn’t make me unemployable.” I lift him, carefully supporting his back. “This is another one of our adventures, Oliver.”
He lays his head on my shoulder and sighs loudly. If I didn’t know better, I’d say my wiener dog is telling me I’m full of bologna.