Chapter 13
The next morning, my eyes are barely open and Mother is hovering over me again, making me jump in fright. ‘Yea-ahhhh…!’
‘Good morning, love! Did you sleep well? You sounded like you did. Come, come, wash your face with cold water to get rid of those wrinkles.’
I sit up, groaning inwardly. Wrinkles, too, now? I’m not even thirty-five yet.
‘Oh, and speaking of plastic surgery,’ she said (which we weren’t), ‘did you know that Lucy Jones had a facelift? She looks at least ten years younger.’
Facelift? Here we go, always searching for ways to be even more beautiful than she already is. Some people are just greedy, greedy, greedy. Unless she’s suggesting that I have it? With her you never know.
‘Of course, it’s expensive, but worth the pain, I suppose. No pain, no gain and all that.’
I sigh. ‘Mother, you heard your friends the other night. Why would you even consider something so dangerous? Aren’t you happy enough? You live in a beautiful villa by the sea with the love of your life, why do you need to be the most beautiful person in every room you walk into?’
‘Who said I’m considering it? Why would I want to look any different to what God gave me?’
‘Oh, I get it. So you want me to get a facelift or something? Is that what they do here? I’ve seen the pulled faces at the dinner table, but I hadn’t put two and two together. Is that why you dragged me all the way here? Is that what this place is?’
She blinks. ‘I didn’t drag you. I only wanted you to feel better.’
‘Not to look better?’
‘You are already beautiful, Olivia,’ she says. ‘But I sensed that you needed to change the way you feel.’
There she goes again, with her superior state of knowledge in every single field. ‘Did you really?’
‘Of course.’
‘No other reason?’
‘What reason could I possibly have, besides spending some quality time with you?’
Please. Don’t go there. Please don’t start with the quality time spiel. We had spent quality time together as a family, but then you broke that family up when you chose to leave us.
I bite my lips to keep from saying any of this. Last night was emotionally exhausting enough as it was, without getting into it all over again this morning.
So I take a deep, deep breath. Those always keep me from doing or saying anything too drastic.
Markus always says I’m too dramatic and maybe he’s right.
I should tone it down and avoid any confrontations.
And that’s precisely why I haven’t kept in contact with her all these years, precisely why I let her and Dad organise the kids’ trips to Italy.
And even that is only because he insists it isn’t fair that my children and my mother grow up without even knowing each other.
That alone for me is a loaded gun, because I could come up with at least twenty years’ worth of why it is extremely fair, and actually more than that. It’s generous, because my instinct would be to let them be strangers. I groan to myself. ‘Moving on…’
‘What?’ she says innocently. ‘What have I done to upset you now?’
I look at her, with her fine features, rounded chin and shoulders.
But it’s her bright turquoise eyes that steal the show.
They attract you immediately, and you would have considered her beautiful even if her other features had been less than perfect.
She looks like Grace Kelly at an ashram, with all her charm.
And she’s driving me nuts. To think we had an almost pleasant conversation about Cassie last night.
We’d almost connected, yet here we are back to square one.
But I’m okay. I won’t tell her how I feel about her.
I’ve done well for all these years, why break the tradition of submission now?
Believe me, it’s so much easier to nod and grit my teeth rather than escalate to something I just can’t handle.
Her mobile rings and she jumps up. ‘It’s Aldo,’ she informs me, her face lighting up as if it was George Clooney. ‘Ciao, amooooreee,’ she breathes, reverting from her act of concerned mother to her usual, frivolous self.
I don’t know what annoys me more, her girly voice while on the phone with him, or the fact that she is always on the phone with him.
I mean, what’s the point of coming all the way up to the Alps if you’re going to be talking to him all day, every bloody day?
If you need a break, then for God’s sake, just take a bloody break.
I get that Simon and I are on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, barely managing one call a week despite the fact that we have kids and a household in common, but this is ridiculous.
Their love is so… in your face. There. I’ve said it.
It’s like only their love matters in this world.
It’s the kind of love… that I wish I had.
I keep my mother’s wedding invitation in my wallet. It had arrived the day of Mitchell’s funeral. I kept it. Not as a lovely keepsake, but as a constant reminder of what she did to me. I know it off by heart. It says:
My Dears,
Aldo and I are getting married! Would love it if you could make the trip. I have so much to show you and to tell you as I embark on the second half of my life!
Mum/Susan xxx
My mother got married in the spring. The ceremony was performed in the private chapel of the groom’s villa in Sicily. There were three hundred guests. The menu included all the local dishes but with a modern twist. The bride wore a cream-coloured dress of organza and was radiant.
I know all this not because my family attended (we didn’t) but because of the letter containing photos of the ceremony and reception. And yes, my mother did describe herself to my father as ‘radiant’.
I still don’t understand why she felt comfortable inviting us or sending us information even after we (my father) politely declined because he didn’t want to leave me on my own. Nor do I understand how my father could have forgiven her for walking out on their family, the one they’d built together.
All I know was that my father seemed genuinely happy for her. I didn’t understand him.
Wasn’t it ironic? My very first boyfriend had died at the age of seventeen just when my mother was getting married again.
Even now, just as my marriage hits a low point, she is running off with her phone to speak to her perfect husband.
The more deeply I fall, the more my mother flourishes.
As Mitchell used to say in that American drawl of his, Life sucks.
As I’m pondering this, my mobile rings too.
It’s Simon. I’m praying it’s nothing serious as he never calls me unless he needs something.
I hope the kids are okay. They should be, because only half an hour ago Joe responded with three hearts to my hug emojis.
In any case, it’s only early afternoon and Simon’s always at work at this hour.
‘Hello?’ I say, bracing myself.
‘Hi,’ he says brightly.
‘Hi!’ I chirp, surprised. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Not too bad,’ he says, but he already sounds distracted, as if he was only calling to make sure I was still alive, and seeing that I am, he’s lost all interest again. Why is he calling me at this hour? He never does. He only remembers I exist when he needs something.
‘So what’s up?’ I say encouragingly, hoping that my mother has witnessed his effort to call me. And I certainly don’t want to scare him off if he’s planning on making these calls regularly. It must never be for my lack of trying.
‘Not much,’ he says and I can hear tapping. ‘Just finishing a report.’
‘Right.’
‘I need to run something by you.’
I glance at my mother, who is smiling into her mobile like the Cheshire cat and playing with one of her curls, completely oblivious to the fact that I’m on the phone with my husband as well. ‘Tell me,’ I say.
‘Well, there’s this conference in Manchester my boss wants me to go to.’
‘Right…?’
‘It would be for a week.’
‘When?’
‘In three days’ time.’
Now, normally, I never had a problem with Simon going away for work, but what with my being gone and my father being frail lately… ‘Can’t he send someone else?’ I ask. ‘Or at least wait until I get back?’
I know the minute I say that he’s not going to take it well. He already thinks I’m being selfish by accepting my mother’s invitation to Italy for the best part of two months.
Simon sighs. ‘It’s not up to me to decide when or where, Olivia. Unlike you, I’m not my own boss. I can’t just leave everything at the drop of a hat whenever I feel like it. I have responsibilities.’
‘And I don’t?’ I counter. ‘It’s because of all my responsibilities that I’m here in the first place. I need a break.’
‘And you’re having one.’
‘Fine. But how can you be comfortable leaving the kids with my father? He isn’t as strong as he used to be, you know?’
‘This is rich,’ he says. ‘It didn’t stop you from leaving, did it?’
‘That’s because the kids had both of you looking after them, but if you go to Manchester, it all falls on him. That’s not fair.’
‘Then why don’t you come back?’ he suggests.
‘What?’
‘For the week. As soon as I return you can go back if you so desperately want to.’
‘I can’t just leave now,’ I say. ‘I made a commitment. And it would be rude to my mother. It’s not that I was dying to come here in the first place.’
‘Well, I suppose I should be impressed that you managed to tear yourself away from Markus in the first place.’
‘Okay, Simon,’ I snap, getting hot under the collar now as Mother laughs at something Aldo’s said. ‘First of all, I have told you time and again that Markus is practically family. Dad and the kids love him.’
‘And you?’ His question hangs in the air.
‘Of course not. I mean, I love him, of course, but not the way you seem to think.’ What else can I say?
That he’s spot on, that I miss Markus like crazy?
I haven’t got the heart or the courage to tell Simon that.
Because that would really be the end of our…
thing that’s been dragging on, like roadkill on the tarmac.
Dead. Finished. I can’t bring myself to do it. Not while the kids are still young.
He sighs. ‘It doesn’t matter. So I’m going, okay?’
‘Fine, go, do whatever you want,’ I answer. ‘I have to go now.’ And I hang up before I give him a piece of my mind.
So much for atonement. I tried. I really did.
I’ve been trying for years now and all I’m doing is failing, time after time.
He might be a piece of work, but I’m not that much better.
What kind of a mother leaves her kids for two entire months?
What the hell was I thinking? I want to call him back to tell him I’ll go back while he’s away.
But then he’ll think I’ve capitulated. I don’t want that.
For years I’ve been trying to earn my stance.
I’m not letting him walk all over me again and again.
Mother starts blowing kissie-kissie bye-bye noises and for a good two solid minutes they negotiate on who will have the heart to hang up first. She sighs, content, but then she remembers I’m still there.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asks. ‘That was Simon, wasn’t it?
Did you have a fight? You fight often, don’t you?
It’s easy to tell when people are used to having fights.
They are less articulate than younger couples who still make an effort to communicate despite their differences.
You and Simon don’t do that, obviously. You use the word “fine” a lot.
“I’m fine, it’s fine. Fine. Everything’s juuuuust fine. ” But is it?’
Well, not only have I got Shrink Severini on my case, now I’m being psycho-analysed by my mother as well?
But she is right about the fighting thing.
Simon and I stopped trying to make the other see our way a long time ago and we have been at the Fine-do-whatever-you-want stage for some time now. For once my mother is right.
Maybe she would understand me if I told her? She seems to know about arguments, even with her own happy marriage. But of course, she knows from her previous marriage to my father, no doubt.
It would be so good to be able to talk to my mother and explain to her how I’m feeling, and how I’ve been feeling for the past one hundred years.
Confessions from woman to woman regarding matters of the heart, motherhood, financial struggles, self-esteem and body issues.
You name them, most women have them. Yes, it would be nice.
Only she can’t relate because she really doesn’t have any of these problems.
Because after all these years, not only are my mother and I still strangers, we also have absolutely nothing in common. There is no way on earth that she could ever understand my real-life problems while she’s living in a mansion by the sea, with the love of her life.
They have everything for a good life: cleaning, cooking and gardening staff and picnics on the beach and formal parties and fêtes where the entire village is invited. She is practically a queen in someone else’s country.
In comparison, my life is an absolute failure.
I’m married to a man I don’t love anymore and who obviously couldn’t care less about me.
My daughter isn’t speaking to me for the sole reason that I exist, and I have a mother I’m not speaking to for the sole reason she exists.
My father is aging faster than lightning and I worry about him all the time.
I would love to tell my mother all these things, everything I’ve been through and all, but once I unleash the truth about my own personal hell, then what? You can’t put Pandora back in the box once it’s out, can you?
‘It’s fine, Mother.’
‘There you go,’ she sighs. ‘The F-word again.’