38. Claire
38
CLAIRE
“S o, you’re here, hm?”
It would be inaccurate to say I don’t know this tone of my grandmother’s voice. I’ve heard it my whole life. Except typically she uses it to talk to my mother.
Bracing myself, I walk in. “I told you I’d come at five. Did they check you in all right?”
She was admitted at four, and I know the private care Keller arranged for her means that she would have been shown to her room right away.
“Yes. They’ve been pleasant this time—none of that waiting around for hours I get when my insurance is footing the bill. I’m truly blessed to have been chosen for this grant. But none of that. You, young lady, are getting yourself into some trouble, I can tell. What sort of person stops talking to her family and breaks up with her boyfriend of four years mere days after moving away? Something’s very wrong with you.”
It’s a struggle not to roll my eyes. Maybe I would have called if she were interested in speaking to me about something other than Noah. “Noah and I didn’t fit. I’m glad it’s over. But I didn’t come back to discuss him. I’m here so you have company before and after the operation. I understand they’re taking you in at six?”
“Yes. Bit late for a procedure, hm?”
It is. Likely so I could be here without missing classes. Keller is the kind of guy to think about everything. “Maybe.”
She’s not to be deterred, determined. “And well, I want to talk about Noah. His grandparents are my friends. How can I face them after what you’ve done to the poor boy?”
Jesus .
So far, I’ve enjoyed wine and cocktails and champagne because they tasted good in fun, social settings. For the first time, I understand people who drink as a copying mechanism when dealing with stupidity. I could down a glass of Pouilly-Fumé right now. Where’s Arlo’s chilled wine selection when we need it?
“You can tell them people break up all the time. Noah’s not that bothered.”
And that’s true. After a few days of insults, he gave up. I didn’t even have to block him.
“That’s not what he told me,” she snaps.
A knock interrupts us, thank god. Grateful, I turn, expecting a nurse, but it isn’t. Instead, I find myself face to face with my mother.
I don’t see her very often. When I do, it’s hard to really think of her as a parent. She’s too young, too pretty, too confident and aloof. Like a cool aunt. And that’s the role she’s had in my life in any case.
She’s holding a bouquet in one hand. “Oh, here you are! Glad I didn’t get lost!”
Striding in, Hyacinth Fairmont seems to bring in sunshine with her.
She’s my height, my body type, and my face. Her hair’s a warmer blonde. She assured me it used to be as crazy as mine, but her hairdresser tames it into well behaved curls instead of my cloudy mess.
Back home, I used to braid it. But Keller likes it, and loves to run his fingers through it. I’ve started to keep it loose, and I no longer mind it.
“Oh, Claire, you’re resplendent,” she tells me, giving me a hug, made slightly awkward by the flowers.
She uses words like that, my mother. Resplendent. It’s funny, coming from someone as magnetic as she is.
“You too!” I assure her.
“I guess you had to get it from somewhere, huh?” she says without an ounce of false modesty.
“And I guess I’m just part of the decor,” my grandmother sneers.
“If that were the case, you’d be silent.” Hyacinth snorts. “Hello, Mother. I brought you flowers. Please don’t die on the operating table, I can’t afford a funeral.”
I’ve always half admired, and half been outraged by the way she talks back. After Keller, I just laugh.
Frankly, her presence is a huge and unexpected relief. She’s the object of my grandmother’s constant criticism, so typically, I fade back to the background.
Not today.
“Did you hear what happened? Your daughter left, and not one week later, broke up with her boyfriend and cut off all contact,” my grandmother says.
I never thought I’d see the day I’d be more the focus of her ire than her own daughter.
“Oh, that boy Noah? Good for you! I didn’t like the way he talked to you.”
My grandmother breathes in sharply, and I smile at my mother.
It’s not the first time she’s said so, and before, I dismissed it. He talked to me normally. He paid attention to me, unlike anyone else. Looking back, I know she was right. The constant little jabs about my clothes, my drawing habit, my interests, my hair, putting me down slowly, weren’t how a boyfriend should act. Not how anyone should act, really.
“Noah is a good boy, from a good family—” my grandmother starts.
“You mean, from your parish, with grandparents who show up at mass. In case it’s escaped your notice, Claire, like me, doesn’t share your faith, or your ideas on what’s good for us.”
This isn’t new. Their arguments about what I believe in, what I want. Usually, my grandmother wins by pointing out that Hyacinth left me for her to raise, and my mother shuts up. But this time I actually hear her. She’s right. I didn’t want to stay close to home. I didn’t want weekly religious meetings. I’d rejected her idea of heaven for people like her and hell for everyone else years ago. I didn’t know why, exactly, but suddenly I think I understand.
Hyacinth did not raise me. But she brought me books, enrolled me in classes, expanding my horizons where she could, so I’d acquire a taste for the world outside of what her mother wanted to teach me.
“Noah was perfectly?—”
“Boring,” she finishes for her.
“He wanted to marry her! Right out of high school, rather than living in sin like young people nowadays.”
That’s true. I’m the one who said no. I didn’t even want to think of anything like that before I finished college. The idea of being married to a guy on the other side of the country was stupid.
I wonder whether I wasn’t just rejecting the very idea of Noah, rather than the distance, our age, and other things.
“You mean control her. Trap her with a bunch of kids, keep her home.”
“What’s wrong with that? Strong family values are important. And I went so wrong with you, God will not forgive me if I fail another girl.”
Hyacinth laughs. “Of course it’s about you. Your redemption. You’ve always seen Claire as another chance at making a little clone, huh?”
She turns to me, shaking her head. “I’m so damn sorry you had to deal with that.”
I realize something. My grandmother has been talking crap about me for the last twenty minutes, yes, but I’m no longer tense and stressed. It’s not me she’s shouting at.
I wonder why Hyacinth is here at all. She doesn’t like her mother. She doesn’t get along with her. Come to think of it, every single time she came home, wasn’t it just to do this? Reassert my rights, my freedom, my choices .
It never truly worked before. Except…I chose Rothford. I chose California. I applied there in the first place.
When she heard my grandmother was getting an operation, she probably just shrugged. If she’s here, it’s not for herself or her mother. It’s for me.
At long last, a nurse comes in, interrupting the shouting match. I’m glad she tells us my grandmother needs rest, so we have a reason to step out.
Awkward as fuck, not really knowing how to voice it, I reach out to my mother and take her hand. “Thanks. For coming.”
She seems surprised. “You’re welcome. Although, next time, you could just not show up, and save both of us the trip.”
I chuckle.
And suddenly, I clear my throat, making a definite decision. “Can you come to the cafe? There’s someone I want you to meet.”