Chapter 16
Balancing the wrapped dog puppet box in one arm and the cookie box in the other, Claire headed through falling snow toward the Christmas market to purchase more cookies.
Lured by a display of grapevine wreaths decorated with miniature birds made of wine corks, she wished she had brought a bigger suitcase.
A group of parents and children swarmed a carousel, and moms and dads helped their kids hop onto the magical creatures. Santa, pulling a donkey wearing a red-leather harness decorated with silver bells, jingled his way through the crowds.
Attracted by the bright, hand-painted ornaments glittering from a stall overflowing with glass icicles, bells, and angels, Claire wandered down a quieter lane. As she stood before a grouping of hand-sewn, felt gingerbread men, storks, and hearts, a memory she’d held tightly in her heart unspooled.
Disoriented and a bit dizzy, she collapsed onto a nearby bench, hugging the puppet and cookies to her.
The scent of pine pulled her to her boarding school in Vermont.
The laughter and chatter of girls erupted around her.
She had organized an ornament-making day, and all the girls sewed ornaments out of felt, fabric, and ribbon scraps for the school, convent, and church Christmas trees.
Claire embroidered silver sequins outlining a white dove’s wing, stitched orange glass beads around a goldfish’s tail, and gathered lace for a bespectacled mouse’s collar.
Each of the nuns had a favorite, and the girls embroidered the nuns’ names on the back of their chosen ornament.
Spotting a tan and black felt dog kindled a memory of Claire’s favorite ornament, a pink poodle on which she’d sewn pink pompoms at its ankles, ears, and tip of its tail.
She’d attached a string of rhinestones for a leash and circled them around the dog’s neck as a collar.
She fashioned the dog after her mother’s favorite brooch.
Claire had been so proud of the creation, she thought that if she gave the ornament to her mother for Christmas, her mother would love it and love her for making it.
During Thanksgiving weekend, Claire wrote a letter to her mother asking for permission to come home for Christmas.
Her mother sent her written permission to Mother Superior.
The nuns begged her to remain with them, but Claire convinced them, claiming she was sixteen, nearly an adult and old enough to make the trip on her own.
She was so proud of the ornament, she cradled it in her lap the entire bus ride to Connecticut.
When Claire arrived, there were no carols, no tree, no lights. Her mother ordered in Chinese food for dinner. Claire attempted conversation as they ate, but her mother responded only with, ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ When they finished dinner, her mother went to bed.
Some Christmas Eve, thought Claire. She stayed up watching and crying all the way through, It’s a Wonderful Life.
But She was determined to have a nice holiday, so she got up early to cook breakfast, but all she found in the kitchen was instant coffee and seven TV dinners stacked in the freezer.
No milk, no bread, no orange juice. She made coffee and poured herself a cup, but it was terrible without cream.
Her mother didn’t even have sugar or Coffee mate.
Mother came downstairs at ten, turned on the TV, and lit up a cigarette. Claire ran and got her coffee, and, when she returned, Mother dug into her robe pocket, pulled out a check, and slid it across the coffee table.
Claire assumed it was her Christmas gift and thanked her. She lovingly presented her beautifully wrapped poodle.
Mother didn’t even look at it. She pulled off the paper, said, “Nice,” and tossed the poodle on the coffee table next to her ashtray.
Claire remembered Sister Francine clapping in delight when she saw the poodle, and Claire now understood that the nuns tried to dissuade her from coming because they were trying to protect her from her own mother.
She missed them as much as they said they would miss her, so she decided to return to the convent the next morning.
When she was packing to leave, she found the poodle, covered in cigarette ashes, in the garbage.
Mother hadn’t even waited to throw it away until Claire left.
Something inside Claire shifted. She no longer wanted her mother’s love. She wanted the truth.
She waited until Mother got up and sat on the couch.
She wore a pin-striped navy suit, a white silk blouse with a bow tied at the neck, stockings, and heels.
Her poodle brooch twinkled from the lapel of her jacket.
She pressed her knees together and tugged her skirt to cover them.
Claire wondered if she was going to the office—the day after Christmas.
Claire put a cup of coffee on the table in front of her mother, placed the ash-covered poodle ornament next to it, and sat opposite her.
Mother just sat there, staring at the ashtray. Her cheeks were flaccid, her hair streaked with gray, her hands riddled with age spots, as if youth had never graced her.
Claire dragged her fingernails across the couch cushion. “Would you look at me, please?”
Mother shook out a cigarette, lit it, inhaled, and gazed at Claire with half-opened eyes, like she was trying not to notice her daughter—a smudge on the décor.
Anger pulsed through Claire, giving her courage. ‘Why do you hate me?”
“Because I chose to have you.” A smile wavered.
Her answer dizzied Claire. Was her mother happy, or angry, or smug for having chosen to have her, or for hating her?
Mother flicked the lighter open and closed, open and closed, open and closed. “When I gave birth to you, I lost everyone else in my life.”
Although she had expected her mother to deny her hatred, Claire wasn’t surprised. She was angry and hurt, but she was calmer than her mother was, which made her brave.
If she couldn’t have her mother’s love, she wanted the whole truth.
“Who is everyone else?”
“My parents. They kicked me out. Told me if I didn’t give the baby up for adoption, they’d disown me.’ She drew deeply on her cigarette, exhaled smoke, and with nonchalance said, “So, I disowned them first.” She flicked ashes in the tray.
Her reply snuffed Claire’s anger. “How could they not want their daughter and grandchild?”
Cold as frost, she replied, “To my parents, what other people thought was more important to them than their daughter.”
Compassion warmed Claire’s heart. “You must have felt very alone.”
“Alone was better than their constant judgment and criticism.” Her heavy-lidded eyes dulled.
The realization that her mother treated Claire the way her parents had treated her rolled through Claire, fueling the tangle of anger and compassion. But her quest for understanding burst through. “What about my father?”
“Everything was beautiful until you arrived.” Her eyes sparkled for a second—Claire thought in memory of him—and then her eyes darkened.
She was so quick to answer it seemed to Claire she had wanted to tell the tale for years.
“Two days after you were born, he said he wasn’t having any fun.
The reality of caring for you was too much for him.
He went out that night to get a pizza and didn’t return. I never heard from him again.”
Claire couldn’t imagine abandoning a mother and infant. “How terrible. Did no one else know what happened to him?”
Mother dropped her head, resting her chin on her chest. And at that moment Claire realized how despairing and unloved she must have felt.
She wanted to comfort her mother, but the woman was as rigid as she was cold.
If Claire got close, her mother might shatter like a piece of glass, or worse, stop talking.
“He was from Canada, and I imagine he fled across the border.”
“Did you report him missing?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t want him back. If he left me once, he’d do it again.”
Claire felt like she’d been kicked in the stomach. Neither of her parents had wanted her. She’d let that sink in later. She wanted the whole story, now. “But how did you support us?”
Mother sat back, taking a deep drag on her cigarette and shot the smoke out toward the ceiling. “He left a few thousand dollars on the dresser—he could afford it—he was a musician. When that ran out, I took in typing jobs until I could afford a babysitter.”
“You blame me for losing everyone in your life.” Claire thought that would have pricked some emotion, but her mother just gave a half smile.
“I was happy before you came along.”
Claire didn’t let that sting for a second. “How could you be happy with people who controlled and abandoned you?”
Mother stared at a place far away, beyond Claire.
She wasn’t going to let her mother ignore her. “You could have given me up for adoption.” She raised her voice. “Why didn’t you?”
“I wanted to defy my parents. I’d gone to college while living at home, working part time, and taking care of them.
I’d done everything that was expected of me.
When they threatened to disown me, I wanted to hurt them, show them what if felt like to be ignored, as they had ignored me, my dreams, my hopes. ”
“So you used me to spite them.”
“Yes.”
Claire’s voice erupted before she had time to think. “You didn’t want me.”
“No.”
Claire’s fingers tingled with cold. She had cushioned her heart with all the kindness the Sisters had shown her.
But her mother’s malice chipped away at Claire’s heart like a pecking bird.
Try as her mother might, Claire would never allow her to destroy the Sisters’ love that Claire secreted in her heart.
She wanted her mother to know what being hated felt like. “Giving birth to me was a big price to pay for getting rid of all those losers—losers who you say made you happy.”
Mother’s lips opened, but no words nor smoke escaped her gaping mouth.