Chapter 13
I’m out of the shower and dressed when there’s a knock on my door. I wonder what Charlie is up to now, and am seriously questioning my overall judgement in men, but it’s not Charlie. I find my mom standing in the carpeted hallway.
Without saying anything I step to the side, and she saunters in. She’s carrying on the all-white theme with a fluttery sundress and white sun hat. She’s really leaning into this bridal thing.
She steps carefully into the room, examining the disaster zone with obvious distaste. “Daisy, this is horrible. I raised you better than this.” I ignore the comment as she removes her sunglasses and sits down in the armchair with a huff.
I think she wants to talk about what happened last night. The insanely uncomfortable dinner and my outburst, but no. It appears she’s moved past it.
“Michael is golfing!” she says with dismay. She looks as though she might have just said, Michael went to prison.
“O…kay?” I’m standing in front of her in bare feet. “I’m guessing that’s a problem?”
“He didn’t even tell me until this morning! He said he forgot.”
I sit down on the end of the chaise opposite her, “Mom, I don’t think this is a big deal. He probably just wants some time to relax before all the festivities.”
“He didn’t even bring Rob,” she says with despair. “Rob and Gabby are going for a city tour. So he’s just going by himself! Who golfs alone, Daisy?”
I don’t know anything about golf. Is that not something you do alone?
“Mom, I think you’re overreacting.”
She scoffs, and falls back into the seat. “I’m not overreacting. This is inconsiderate.”
Inconsiderate? I could tell her a few things about inconsiderate. But instead, I reach over and put my hand on hers consolingly. Her skin is baby soft, and her nails are freshly manicured, painted in a tasteful nude color.
“Should we hang out today, Mom?” I suggest. I had planned to go to the Smithsonian National Zoo, which I’ve read is supposed to be excellent, but my mom lights up at the suggestion.
“Yes! Let’s go do lunch before everyone arrives!” Her mood brightens considerably.
“Okay, let’s do that.”
Mom gets out her phone and starts tapping away. “There’s a fabulous restaurant just down the street that got a Michelin star last year, but it’s so nice out today. Have you been out yet?” She doesn’t wait for me to answer. “So maybe we should find something with outdoor seating.”
I’m nodding along with her, willing to do whatever she wants to do.
“Here it is.” She holds her phone out to me so I can see the Yelp reviews. “I’ll call them.”
Thirty minutes later we’re seated on a comfortable patio overlooking the water. Ivy climbs the brick walls on either side of us, and a glass balcony gives us an unobstructed view of the river. The sky drifts with puffy white clouds, and some of the humidity seems to have lifted, so we can sit outside without sweating through our clothes.
My mom’s hat protects her fair, unlined skin from any unwelcome sun exposure, and she has her hands folded in front of her. If there’s one thing my mom always is, it's the picture of tasteful, understated elegance.
Our server arrives and introduces himself as Ray. He’s a tall, handsome man with a tattoo that peeks out at the wrist of his uniform’s tuxedo shirt.
“Sisters?” he quips.
“Oh, stop.” My mother waves her hand, utterly delighted. “I’m her mother, of course.”
“You can’t be.” He feigns surprise, and my mom giggles and then leans in conspiratorially.
“It’s actually my wedding weekend!”
“Congratulations!” he says. “That’s terrific! So,” he says to me, “are you Mom’s maid of honor?”
I fidget with my cloth napkin. “Um, I—”
“I asked her!” my mom interjects. “But she didn’t want to be. She said she didn’t want to stand in front of everyone. Can you imagine? Not being in your own mother’s wedding?”
My teeth clench, and when the server disappears to go get our iced teas, I don’t say anything.
“Oh, I wish you had been in the wedding, Daisy. It would have been so much fun.” The look of disappointment on her face is genuine, and I feel a twinge of guilt, even through the undercurrent of resentment.
I can’t stop myself with my mom. She’s all I have. But even so, how, how can she be saying this to me? When she had asked, over a phone call shortly after the engagement had been announced, I’d almost sprayed coffee all over my tiny kitchen. My mom’s lack of self-awareness can be truly baffling, when you consider how charming and smooth she is on social occasions. It’s like all those social graces extend to everyone except me. With me, my mom is the center of her own universe. Even when she coddled me as a child, it was always sort of about her.
“Mom, you know I couldn’t have done that. It would just have been way too hard.”
Mom sighs impatiently. “Is this thing with Rob going to be an issue forever?”
“No,” I say, pushing down my annoyance, “It’s okay, Mom. I can be your maid of honor in spirit tomorrow, okay? And I’m giving that toast tonight. It’ll still be great,” I console her.
Our salads arrive, and Mom cuts her lettuce into pieces before she spears it with her fork and puts it carefully into her mouth and then chews twenty times. This is another thing she does to maintain her figure, in addition to daily Pilates and never consuming carbohydrates.
After my monstrous breakfast this morning, I’m not very hungry, so I move my food around on my plate while she eats.
“I’m glad you’re taking care of yourself,” she says as I sip iced tea and don’t eat. “You look better than the last time I saw you. You've lost weight.”
“Thanks,” I say, not mentioning the fact that I was a fine weight the last time she saw me, and the reason for the weight loss is a protracted episode of post-breakup depression.
“Have you been exercising?”
“Yep, three times a week,” I answer.
“Good.” She nods in approval. “You know women lose muscle mass as they age.”
“I’m twenty-six, mom. I’m not exactly shopping for nursing homes.”
“Nevertheless, Daisy,” she says. “It’s good to keep up these habits.”
We sit in an awkward silence. I’m struggling to bounce the conversational ball.
“So,” she goes on, “is there anyone special in your life? It’s been a while since you dated.”
My lip tries to curl, but I maintain my composure. I haven’t dated because my engagement ended, and I haven’t really been up for it, Mom.
I’m about to say no, and then pause. I don’t have to say no. Thanks to Charlie, I can say yes, in fact I am dating someone, and he happens to be terribly handsome.
“Actually,” I begin, “I was meaning to ask, is it alright if I bring a date to the rehearsal tonight? And to the wedding? I know it’s really last-minute but—”
“Oh my goodness, Daisy!” My mom lights up. “Of course it’s alright! It’s more than alright! I’ll let the wedding planner know, right now.” She gets her phone out of her little Chanel bag and taps at it as she speaks. “Who is he? Tell me everything! Why didn’t you tell me before?” She looks pointedly at me. “Why didn’t he attend last night’s dinner?”
A flicker of uncertainty passes through her eyes. So subtle that only I would notice it. The only person who has been a constant in her life for the last twenty-six years.
“It was sort of last-minute,” I answer. “He had some work stuff to deal with. But he was going to be in DC anyway for some meetings, so I figured, why not?”
Inside, I take a moment to send a mental apology to the wedding planner who is no doubt going to be spending the rest of the day rearranging seating charts and notifying caterers to accommodate Charlie.
“What’s his name? What does he do?” She leans in as she asks.
“His name is Charlie. He’s an attorney.”
“An attorney!” she repeats happily. My mom has stars in her eyes already. Attorney is an approved profession as far as my mom is concerned. In college I dated a guy, Ryan, who was studying Environmental Science, and she said she wasn’t interested in meeting him because “it couldn’t go anywhere, anyway.” Environmental science was not an approved profession. The joke’s on her though, because Ryan founded a tech startup dealing with upstream plastics production and he was recently listed in a BuzzFeed 30 under 30 list, which labeled him as the Future CEO to look out for .
“How did you two meet?” Mom is asking me.
“Um…” Charlie and I forgot to rehearse this bit. “On an airplane. We were seat mates.”
“That’s a great meet-cute.” She points her fork at me. “Is he from Denver too?”
“He is.” I nod. I’m going to have to get a detailed backstory together with Charlie before tonight. And fill him in on whatever I come up with during this lunch.
“How long have you been seeing each other?”
I press my lips together as I try to work out what to tell her. It can’t be too long, because then I would have added him as my plus-one on the invitation. But it can’t be too new, or I wouldn’t have invited him at all. “I guess it’s been, like, six weeks?”
“Well,” Mom says as she brings a bit of endive to her lips, “I can’t wait to meet him. I wasn’t looking forward to introducing you as single.”
My stomach drops although I’m not sure why I’m even surprised by this sentiment. Of course Mom has been worried about introducing me to her friends as single. It’s utterly predictable.
“Does he know what you do for a living?” she asks.
“Of course.”
“Well that’s good, I suppose,” she says. “Not everyone would be comfortable with a spouse in a not-for-profit job.”
“Non-profit job,” I correct her. “Saying not-for-profit job makes it sound like I’m working for free.”
She gives me an arch look that says, you might as well be.
“I like my job. Money isn’t the only thing that matters, you know. It’s important work.”
I’m feeling an edge of irritation now, and I take another sip of my tea, like the cold will also cool my temper. We’ve had variations of this exchange over and over again. Her little barbs, my attempts at defending myself. Sometimes the urge to grab my mother by the shoulders and tell her to wake up is overwhelming. Earth to Diane. Please reply if you are receiving transmission!
“Sometimes I don’t know if it’s me you’re trying to punish, Daisy, or just yourself,” she says after she’s finished chewing another lettuce leaf.
“You think I’m trying to punish you?” I ask, baffled.
“I’m only saying that I hate the thought of you not living up to your potential. You could be whatever you want to be, Buttercup.”
“I think I am fulfilling my potential,” I say, feeling incredibly small.
“Please, darling, don’t sell yourself short. You can still be active in charities. You know I am, don’t you? I sit on several boards. You could take advantage of the circumstances I’ve provided you with. It’s quite frankly a little bit strange that you don’t. What do I tell people when they ask about my daughter?”
My jaw tightens at her words. At the reminder that I’m not the person she thinks I ought to be. I’m less than.
“You mean the money my father left me?” The way I say it makes it sound like he’s dead, but he may as well be.
She nods. “I don’t know why you’re so recalcitrant about it. You weren’t always. You let me buy you that car of yours in college.”
“I’m not recalcitrant,” I say. “I just don’t need that money. It’s not really mine, and I have a job that pays me. I never knew my dad and I don’t want to, and—”
I stop myself. If I were to finish that sentence, I would tell her that half of the reason I don’t acknowledge the money is because I don’t want to live a life like hers. The sort of life that my father’s money has paid for. I’ve seen enough ennui and restlessness among the wealthy to know that money is not a panacea. It won’t give you a purpose, or a family, or a sense of self. I want to do more than float—I want roots, and a life with meaning. Things that money can’t buy.
But I can never tell my mother that. It would crush her. Even the thought alone makes me crumple with shame—that I’m not grateful to her for raising me, that I’m not loyal to her, when for my entire life it’s been only the two of us. She would never understand that it’s not about her. It’s about me having the choice to be who I am. All she would see is rejection. And so, I hedge and plead for her to try to understand that we are just different. And that it’s okay—it doesn’t mean I don’t love her. I just wish she would love me as I am, rather than attempt to mold me into the girl she wanted me to become.
“And what, Daisy?” she asks, looking at me intently.
I lick my lips nervously, “I’m just happy with the way things are,” I say. “You should just tell your friends that I’m happy. It’s all that matters, right?”
She sighs. “I suppose so, but I will never understand how it makes you happy. You could have such a wonderful life. An easy life. There’s no reason for you to work so hard.”
I close my eyes for a brief moment and center myself, and then change the subject to wedding decorations, and my private moment of agony is over.
When lunch is finished, my mom decides we should go see the Natural History Museum. I mention the zoo as an option, but she vetoes it.
“Oh no,” she says, “I don’t want to ruin my hair.”
She gets us an Uber to the National Mall, and we walk into the tall atrium of the museum where a large, proud elephant greets us. Architecturally, the space is beautiful. Around the perimeter of the circular room, several stories high, arched doorways each lead to different exhibits.
“Come on, Daisy, let’s go see the Hope Diamond.” My mom takes me by the wrist, leading the way.
We walk through a doorway marked Halls of Gems and Minerals . The exhibit is dark, with sharp spotlights directed at glass cases displaying rainbows of colored gems and crystals. A glowing purple geode the size of a small refrigerator stands proudly in the front, and jewels of historical significance lie on velvet, glimmering enticingly.
“God, would you look at this one?” Mom says in front of a case displaying a necklace of rubies and diamonds with a matching tiara. “Can you imagine opening your closet and putting this on before the opera?”
Then, we get to the main event—the Hope Diamond, circulating slowly, within its own freestanding case. The enormous blue diamond glimmers and twinkles, luring us in as we gaze into its depths. It’s remarkably beautiful and, with its dangerous past, a little bit frightening. Every owner has come to a bad end. It’s said to be cursed, supposedly even worn by Marie Antoinette before she met Madame Guillotine.
My mom continues to fawn over the jewels, and I wander over to the geodes. I’m fascinated by how such ordinary-looking rocks can be cracked open to reveal such immense beauty. That the things around us aren’t what they appear to be, and that something the world might write off can harbor secrets that no one would ever suspect.
I wonder if I’ve ever passed a geode without even knowing it, on the occasions when I do go out on the trail. If I’ve ever stumbled across something precious and failed to even appreciate it.