Chapter Four
I woke up early on Saturday. The vintage mirror on the dressing table made me look gauzy and witchy, but not in a good way.
My highlights had grown out and my hair had been a general mess even before I fell asleep after swimming in a pool. I could
hear Marlon snoring next door, the hum of the white noise machine in Kate’s room. I stared at my warped reflection. Who am I without work? Am I this fuzzy bitch on the inside, too?
I grabbed my phone and cursed the unreliable Wi-Fi while waving it around. But when it finally appeared to be working well
enough to receive six junk mail notifications, there was no hope therein. No apology from the director. No call sheet for
Monday. No over-flattering emails from the producers who had once claimed I was a “real lifesaver!” and “the romance queen!”
I really was fired!?
I pulled on a clean sundress, choked down a glass of water and an Advil, and went to work prepping breakfast. It’s easy to sleep when you’re not filled with existential dread, I suppose.
I poured pancake mix into a plastic bowl, looked around for a wooden spoon.
The rental house looked very fancy and was spotless, but as soon as you pulled back the cupboards, the dishes were dollar store quality.
The bright green plastic bowl was scratched and a bit greasy to feel, even after I rewashed it.
I checked my phone again. Nothing. The bowl reminded me of when I realized my father didn’t know how to wash dishes properly.
He sort of rinsed everything half-heartedly, and I was forever rewashing the cups and bowls I pulled out of the cupboard after my mother left.
When I moved home briefly for a few months after university, I thought he’d figured it out, and then on Wednesday morning I found an older woman named Marsha vacuuming the rugs.
This was the same summer that Jeff got me my first job in film working on a Christmas movie.
The teen TV show I’d started on as a script coordinator, essentially as a paid intern, had wrapped months previously and I
was back behind the bar at the café I’d worked at all through university. I was particularly demoralized to be back because
they’d thrown me a big goodbye party celebrating my first real job in my industry, and now I was shooing flies out of the
muffin display and scowling into the steamed milk again. I left my post when Jeff called, despite a whole lineup of angry
coffee customers, and his first words were, “How do you feel about Christmas movies?” I had two weeks to read a script and
give notes, and if the producers liked my ideas, they would hire me for a rewrite. He said, “It’s not that much money but
you’ll get a writing credit and a production fee on the first day of shooting.” I took the week off work, fake sick, watched
forty Christmas movies while editing the script, and handed in a file of the most useful notes I could think of. Jeff forwarded
me the email a producer had sent back, calling me “extremely thorough,” which I don’t think was a compliment but it got me
the rewrite job and a shared writing credit. I hadn’t had a gap in contracts longer than a few weeks since. Though I still
frequently dreamed about making lattes.
I whisked the pancake batter. Don’t fall into self-pity. Do acts of service. This was something my dad used to say we should do when we felt sorry for ourselves growing up, and I repeated it to myself
when necessary. It’s how I started volunteering at the food bank.
My dad saw me watching Donnie Darko for the millionth time, and he made me get in the car and dropped me off at the church.
“Make yourself useful,” he said. I felt like this was a backwards way of trying to help your child deal with the emotional abandonment of her mother, but nonetheless, it’s advice I still followed.
I didn’t know at the time that it was a 12-step mantra.
I didn’t realize my dad went to a 12-step program or that he’d had any kind of drinking problem.
I didn’t notice because until my mom left, he was somewhat of a peripheral parent, the money-maker who worked long hours and was mostly only present on Sunday afternoons when he’d emerge to mow the lawn.
I didn’t love to cook, but it was a skill I learned when my mom left and my dad started eating sardines on toast for every
meal in his office. My mom wasn’t a great cook but she could do all the suburban basics—Kraft Dinner, frozen lasagnas, pre-made
burgers, frozen peas. After she left, I would make pancakes every weekend for Katie and we’d eat them watching nineties rom-coms
in the den. I taught her how to shave her legs and created her first email account and made sure she ate more than green apples
and Diet Cokes for lunch. And now she was getting married to a woman who knew how to rewire a house and change a tire and
cook a five-course meal. She hadn’t been my responsibility in a decade, but I don’t think that had shifted in me yet.
I kept my phone in my pocket, willing myself not to look at it, hoping my agent would call. I set the table. Then checked.
I made a big pot of coffee and poured juice with a little leftover champagne into a glass pitcher. I rehearsed how I would
apologize to the director. I rinsed the strawberries we bought from a roadside stand the day before and sliced them into tiny
hearts. Then I checked my phone again. I put on an episode of This American Life.
The sun got brighter and higher in the sky.
No one stirred. I ate one of the hot pancakes with my hands over the sink like a raccoon before putting a stack into the warming oven and going outside to gather wildflowers for the table vase.
The phone felt heavy in my pocket as I grabbed handfuls of black-eyed Susans, magnolia blossoms, buttercups, and these cute little purple flowers I didn’t know the name of.
The flowers were beautiful enough to snap a photo for Instagram stories, and I finally checked my phone.
Nothing. I threw it on the couch. Slowly, everyone emerged, with pillow-creased faces and stories from the night before.
When I handed Marlon his pancakes, he said, “Thanks, Mom,” and a chill went down my back.
I hated when I was Mom-ed for doing domestic things.
Katie came down the stairs last, a blanket
curled around her like a towel.
“Pancakes, Elise! You’re the best sissy in the world.” She kissed my cheek and brought her plate over to the couch.
When I got up to put on more coffee, I heard the sound of shifting gravel as a vehicle pulled in. Katie jumped up.
“Shit.”
“Is Sarah coming early?”
“Elise, I’m so sorry, but I called Mom from the winery last night. I knew she was mad not to be invited. And I caved.”
“She was invited. She just didn’t RSVP like a normal adult.”
“Why did you keep that from me?”
“We just didn’t want any upset feelings if she didn’t come through,” Marlon said, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder.
“I’m not a child,” Kate said, and before I could reply, Marlon shot me a look.
I watched Katie run out onto the driveway to greet my mother, trying to hide my face but still peer out of the window above
the kitchen sink. Katie’s body language changed into that wiggly, submissive little kid wanting scraps of love.
“She wanted Katie to beg her to come, it’s so sadistic,” I said.
“Well, let’s hope she was just forgetful again,” Marlon said, but I knew he agreed with me.
My mother followed Katie, who was struggling with the suitcase.
Marlon grabbed it as they came through the door.
She’d cut her hair into a sensible, now fully grey bob, and she was wearing one of those long linen dresses that seem to be given to post-menopausal suburban white women as a uniform.
I pretended to wash an already-clean dish as I tried to compose myself for any passive-aggressive comment coming my way.
“Elise, so good to see you! You’re usually way too busy to see family.”
Bingo, first of many.
“Well, Mom, I just got fired. So maybe I’ll come over every day. How would you like that? Want a pancake?” I handed her a
plate without waiting for her answer. I knew she would pick at it and comment on the carbs. Everyone sat down at the table,
sipping water and mimosas and coffee.
“You got fired?” Katie said, shocked. “You literally never get fired from anything.”
“It’s a long story.”
“Well,” said Hazel, cutting up her pancakes, “it sounds like we all need a beach day. Let’s leave in an hour, OK?”
“I’ll call the driver,” I said.
“I was hoping to go see some birds today,” my mother said, absently. Kate resumed her place at the table, and I offered my
mother my place.
“Sit down here, Mom. This is a whole planned weekend. We do all the activities together. For Katie. Sit down, have a coffee
or a mimosa.”
She slowly lowered herself into the chair, as though we were kidnapping her. She sipped at her drink and smiled weirdly at
every hungover face around the table.
“Well, I don’t much care for just lying on a beach getting skin cancer.”
Marlon gave me a look that said, What’s with this bitch?
“We’re actually going to practise the group dance surprise Katie wants to do for Sarah while we’re at the beach.”
She looked bewildered. She’d invited herself here, she’s killing the vibe, and then she’s complaining? Marlon stepped in to save the moment.
“You’re gonna be a team player this weekend, right, Arlene?”
My mother loved Marlon. Even though she referred to him as “my daughter’s delightful black AND gay friend” behind his back
to seem cool, and he knew it.
“You know, I’m not much for teams. Just like Elise. We do our own thing.”
I shuddered again, in a way that I’m sure was actually visible.
“No, Mom. We’re all celebrating Katie and doing what she wants to do this weekend. All of us.”
“My girls, they’ve always bossed me, even as little kids. They team up against me. Not a lot of room for one’s own life or