Chapter Thirty-Three
Noah waits at the curb like the gentleman he is, stealing another little piece of my heart. I wave to show him I’m fine before twisting the doorknob and pushing inside.
Fifi doesn’t come to greet me, which means she’s likely hiding from our guest. I probably shouldn’t find it so funny the cat doesn’t like my mother, but I do.
I set my beaded clutch on the console table next to the billowing moon goddess diffuser, thinking of my other unexpected twist of the night.
Maddie of the hot pink pantsuit works for a publicity firm that’s searching for fresh, inventive ideas, and asked if she could share the community calendar and my info with her boss.
Like when she passed me her card at the event, I wait for the excitement to hit, but I can’t feel it through the swirl of giddiness over Noah and anxiety about my mom.
Still, the open house served as a much-needed reminder of how well I could plan and execute an event, despite limited resources and curveball surprises. By the end of the night, dozens of people had filled out interest forms, making me optimistic we’ll reach our 85 percent occupancy goal yet.
What more could I do here if given the chance?
For so long, my future’s been wrapped up in becoming a renowned publicist in a city I fell in love with the instant Grandma Helen collected me from the airport.
Sunshine and sandy beaches, museums and cultural diversity, plus a bustling nightlife—as long as you weren’t too busy working to pay to live there.
“Mia? Is that you?” Mom calls, and I’m ten years old and sneaking through the house on tiptoe so she won’t assign me more chores.
Steeling myself, I head into the living room and do a quick scan of faces and body language. We’re down to our original trio from the early years at the village, before Tia Rita moved in next door: Wanda, Grandma Helen, and me.
My mom always hated that, unable—or perhaps unwilling—to see those were the only stretches of my childhood I felt validated and chosen.
Fighting my inclination to sit as far from the drama as possible, I purposely choose a seat on the couch next to Mom, so she won’t claim it’s another case of us versus her.
She assesses me with the hazel eyes she, Grandma Helen, and I share. “Looks like you’ve been eating good while you’re here,” she says, her tongue the sharpest tool at her disposal by far, and I wind my arms around my middle.
“Eating well,” Grandma Helen corrects, and Mom flinches without acknowledging the remark, already reaching for my hair.
“I still think your skin is too pale for this reddish-brown shade. Not sure what you have against your natural color.”
My grandma chimes in, the tension in the room cranking higher with each “observation,” it seems. “Says the person who keeps dyeing hers too dark—that doesn’t cover up the gray any better, just saying.”
Oh my God, it starts.
They both did a lot of “just saying” and “sorry you can’t handle the truth,” and from the dregs of my overworked subconsciousness comes my body positivity training. “We’re all so much more than hair color or clothing size, remember? And I look exactly what I am: happy.”
“Of course you are,” Mom says, and she doesn’t sound ecstatic or congratulatory about it, either. “Whenever you stay here with Mother and her minions, you lose focus, forget your work ethic, and go completely off course.”
Forget. Your. Work Ethic.
Each word slams into me, hard enough to shoot holes in my happy. The off-course comment stings, too, and is that karma for declaring it her specialty?
Then again, an opportunity to possibly return to Miami just landed in my lap, and I didn’t jump up and down; I thought of losing my free time in the evenings and the high cost of living and the weekends I’d have to work, more exhausted than thrilled at the idea.
My skin grows too tight, an itchy uncomfortable sensation creeping through me. Maybe I have lost the ambition that kept me hustling for so long.
But wait, that’s selling me so short of everything I’ve done here. “I’ve worked my ass off repairing Lakeview’s reputation and boosting visibility so we have enough occupants to keep the retirement village running.”
“Hmm.” That skeptical noise expands in the space between us, bloated from years of using it to make me rush to fulfill every whim, but no more. “Is the goal to still return to Miami? Or are you giving up on that?”
Forget what I said earlier—this is the remark that lands true, an arrow to the heart that stops me dead in my self-congratulatory tracks.
Try as I might, I can’t out-therapy my mom, not in my head, not without the assistance of a professional, and not with the weeping organ in the middle of my chest.
Because I freaking love her, and it hurts so much sometimes.
“Mia can do whatever she wants,” Grandma snaps, and this time I don’t have it in me to suggest she be nice. “She’s an adult, and besides, it’s not like you kept her safe as a kid—I have no problem providing her a place to recover again and again.”
Oh damn, shots fired. My mom’s words slice, but Grandma’s can level buildings, and Wanda and I exchange an alarmed glance.
“Yeah, you did it for Mia, even though you never did it for me.” Occasionally Mom had dropped barbed comments about how her mom swooped in to save me but not her, something I experienced plenty of guilt over, on top of the distance I caused.
“That’s not true,” Grandma Helen says, raising her tone to meet Mom’s. “I told you not to marry that first idiot—I warned you he was too controlling, so afraid you were repeating my mistakes, but did you listen? You should’ve just trusted me.”
“I did, Mom. All throughout my childhood when you assured me I was better off without a father. But telling me that didn’t change how much I wanted one. I was so desperate for any male attention, I married the first guy who showed me any.”
“Oh, so now it’s my fault you married the man I told you not to?”
“No, I don’t mean it like that.” My mom is so flustered it’s hard for me not to try to fix it, and I forgot how much they constantly bickered, neither of them hearing the other’s point before more accusations and counterpoints were flung.
“I just wish you’d understand that it left a hole, not knowing anything about him.
Being so desperate for nuggets of information you refused to give me, like I didn’t have a right to my own story. ”
Shit, things are getting heated, but I’m kind of afraid to get between the two of them right now, not sure whether it’ll be good for them to get it out or not.
“And I wish you’d understand that everything I did was to protect you. Your father was a violent man we were both better off without. I did the best I could as the only parent, and I worked a lot, yes, but Wanda and I, we showed up to school events and concerts and proms…”
To the point my mother’s classmates thought she had two moms, and as this was back when that was almost unheard of, which she’d lamented only made her stand out more.
“And when you needed out of that marriage, I jumped in my car and drove halfway across the country to collect you and Mia so you’d have a place to stay.”
My mom opens her mouth, but Grandma Helen grips the armrests on either side of her, scooting to the edge of her recliner cushion and pointing a shaky finger.
“You’re the reason I gathered the strength to leave that abusive, awful man.
I stayed through the beatings, bruises, and broken bones, but the night he attacked me with you in my arms, everything within me turned to protecting you.
That’s what gave me the strength to leave him. ”
There’s a big difference between hearing the details and hearing them through my grandmother’s fear and awakened survival instincts. I’ve never heard about the abuse happening while she was cradling my mother from the blows, either, and the revelation leaves me reeling.
I think of her in the hospital, so pale and uncharacteristically subdued, connecting the dots and bleeding empathy for the physical and mental pain she was put through by someone who promised to cherish and hold her dear.
Grandma Helen sniffs, her quaky voice sinking like a dagger beneath my ribs.
“I kept you from him and the ugly person he was for forty years, then you had to find him and bring him back into all our lives, because the only person you think about is yourself.”
Ouch, ouch, ouch all around. I instinctively reach for my mom’s hand but hesitate to grip hold—in the past she’s lashed out, even when I’m trying to help, so here I sit feeling like a timid child again, no clue how to repair the damage from a bomb that’s already gone off.
“He’s my dad,” my mom says in a tiny voice, no longer my hypercritical mother but a daughter struggling not to break under her mother’s disapproval. “I wanted to meet him and see what he was like.”
As much as I love my grandma, she can be harsh and judgmental, especially when it comes to my mom. It clearly hurts, so I’ll never understand, why then, did Mom turn around and do the same to me?
I also know better than to point out I don’t have a relationship with my own father due to similar reasons, my mother’s oft repeated response, “He’s an asshole who didn’t deserve us.”
“Yes, well reliving my years as an abused housewife and the lawsuit he threatened me with for taking you away were a real treat, so thank you for that.” Flustered in a way I’ve never witnessed, Grandma Helen launches herself out of her chair, shaking her head as she storms into the hallway, calling over her shoulder, “I’m too tired for this shit.
You’ll have to blame me for your shortcomings in the morning, after I’ve rested up. ”
See? Harsh.
I’m hiking my shoulders up to my ears, bracing for retribution I remind myself I don’t deserve. Hurt people hurt people, and any time my grandfather’s brought up, everyone seems to get hurt.
All he brought into our lives was chaos, trying to take legal action against my grandma and then borrowing $5,000 from Mom and Larry before changing his number and disappearing.
Wanda leans across the arm of the couch and takes my mom’s hand. “Let’s give Helen her space to cool off. Diane, Mia has a lot going on at work and often stays up late, so I’ve set you up in my room with me.”
Bless her forever, she gets my first unborn child.
Wanda pushes to her feet, pulling my mom along with her. “Come on, we’ll regroup in the morning.”
I should let them go, but I’ve held my tongue as long as I can. There’s something about delivering it sitting down that doesn’t feel as powerful, so I go ahead and stand, too. “I’m not giving up on Miami. But I’m also allowed to change my mind.”
Mom’s laugh is sarcastic, with a sharp snort of derision that, no surprise, hurts my feelings. “How do you think I ended up in small town Indiana?”
You moved there is the answer that springs to my lips, but I’m trying to get closure on this conversation, not rip open old wounds.
“Because of Larry,” she says, pausing beneath the archway, her eyebrows raised sky-high. “I sense a pattern. What was the name of that handsome gentleman you were so starry-eyed over from the open house again? Noah?”