Twenty-One
I stab my fork into mug cake, the lumpy mixture deflating a little. Just like me, when Ash called off our fieldwork after it took me over a week to get him to commit to one. We were supposed to go to the drive-in movie, and I’d put on a dress. I’d been so ready to watch Kate Hudson and her abs somehow lose a guy in ten days.
The cake sags a little in the middle, making me second-guess my decision to pour in maple syrup instead of sugar.
“Do I smell chocolate?” Momma blows into the kitchen, hurricane style, and drops her bag and mail on the countertop. “Look at my sweet girl in this dress!”
I let her wrap me up, hairspray and peony-pink lipstick pressing into my cheeks.
“Where are you off to?”
“Nowhere,” I mumble, and stab my cake again.
She purses her lips before sliding my mug across the island toward her. She eats a forkful and looks how I feel. “Well, this isn’t going to solve anything.” She drops the fork and leans in. “Hit me with it. Fight with the girls? AP assignment holding you up? Something to do with Josh?”
I don’t bother to bring Ash into the mix, because it’s clear she can’t imagine anyone but Josh even being a possibility.
I shrug and keep my voice light enough to give her an out. “No, just plans changing, no big deal.” Maybe his parents came back into town and decided a family dinner out was what they needed to make up for weeks away.
“So definitely boy problems,” she says, her smile knowing. It makes me want to sink into the floor. “I had a feeling we hadn’t seen the last of you and Josh.”
I’m sure that’s what she’s been hoping for, her and Stu both. My return to the parties, and football games, and phone calls and invitations—all things that reassured them yes, don’t worry, everything over here is completely normal. All green flags.
“This doesn’t look like Wuthering Heights.” She grabs my latest paperback romance off the counter, and I frown as my attempts at a pity party continue to be interrupted.
She flips it over, eyes skimming the back, and there’s no hiding what it is. A foulmouthed bartender and a librarian hatch a plan to help her save face when she’s invited to her ex-fiancé’s wedding (although seriously, who would do that), but the more time they spend together, the harder it is to pretend it’s all make-believe.
I watch Momma’s face: the slight arch in her eyebrows, the twitch at her lip, and finally her small nod.
“I didn’t know you liked romance.” She slides it back to me, and I shrug.
“I may have started picking a few of them up.”
She walks to the bar and pours a glass of wine, the rich purple swirling into a glass. She sits down, and I realize we’re in for the long haul.
“It started with your book Lady Jessica Conquers a Duke,” I volunteer. “I kind of got hooked.”
She laughs, and it lights up her entire face. Some crinkles pinch the outer edge of her eyes, and even though I see her frown at them in the mirror, I know she’s come by them honestly. They map out a woman who loves to laugh.
“Dear Lord, I forgot about that one.” She shakes her head. “That ball, the scandal with her—”
“—sister?” I finish. “I thought I would scream when that happened.”
“I did scream,” she laughs. “Your meemaw almost swerved into a light pole! She didn’t talk to me for a week.”
I smile, because it was just like Meemaw to hold a grudge and then forgive you when the spite was too inconvenient to maintain.
Momma’s smile turns a little wistful. “I suppose I was your age when I started reading them too. I would steal them from the library and return them with an extremely earnest apology letter tucked inside the cover.”
“You didn’t!”
“Oh, yes. Even if it wasn’t the sort of book your meemaw would have approved of, she at least taught me the importance of a nice note when someone does you a favor.”
I dissolve into giggles. “I’m sure they knew exactly who was stealing them.”
She sips her wine. “Oh, one thousand percent. Old Ms. McCreary would glare at me in church, and I know she knew. Still, that woman wasn’t going to get in the way of reading, no matter the cost.”
“I just can’t imagine you shoving a paperback under your shirt and running out the door.”
“It was a large purse, I’ll have you know, and what can I say?” She shakes her head. “I would sneak all my momma’s Redbooks and pore over every article in the bathroom. I just wanted to know everything. I wanted to hear everything there was to hear about love—” She drops her voice. “—and sex, and relationships, and how people connect with each other.”
I nod because I feel it too. One more page and I’ll understand this thing that grows between people. I’ll understand it enough that it will make sense.
She takes another sip of wine. “No more mug cake, let’s watch a movie!”
“A movie?”
“Don’t sound so thrilled,” she says, laughing. “Just the two of us. Stu will be in a little later, Blue’s at Hailey’s, and I just found out my daughter loves love stories. Watch a rom-com with me.”
I hesitate, inclined to say no and wallow in my room, but I’m physically incapable of disappointing the woman in front of me. “Is there a good one that you have in mind?”
She grins and grabs my hand, the wine sloshing a little over the rim. She drags me into the den and is scrolling through titles before my butt hits the couch. “There was this one that looked so cute the other day. Wait, here it is!”
“Portland Promise,” I read, as a beautiful woman with dark hair and a streak of blue paint on her chin fills the screen. “When Katie Bell gets dumped by her husband of five years out of nowhere, she decides to start over at an artists’ residency in Portland. Soon, this children’s book illustrator and a grumpy widower who makes incredible pottery are spending more and more time in the studio. Can Katie find inspiration and love in the overcast streets of the Pacific Northwest?”
“I bet she can!” Momma says, tucking a blanket around her legs.
I press play, and we’re immediately sucked into Katie’s life. Her third-floor walk-up in Brooklyn (so chic, Momma declares), the implosion of her life following the breakup, and her tumultuous first meeting with Bryant, the potter who’s trying to mend his own broken heart.
“It looks like his nose has been broken in a few bar fights,” Momma says, before eventually deciding, “I like it.”
Their fights mellow into conversations and then kisses, and soon Christopher the ex is knocking on her door filled to the brim with excuses and apologies.
“Kick him to the curb,” Momma yells from her blanket nest.
“Yeah,” I echo. “Send him and those old bowls back to Chicago!”
“Wait!” Momma lurches up, pressing pause. “Are you rooting for the ex?”
“Christopher? The love of her life? Of course I am.”
“The one who broke her heart?”
“For which he has already apologized! People make mistakes.”
She shakes her head, mystified. “Baby girl, he’s the bad guy.”
“Why? Because he made a stupid mistake, which he quickly realized? Does that mean it’s over forever?”
“Oh, honey.” I hate the way she’s looking at me, like she can just pull up the hood and see all the ugly and damaged pieces rattling around inside.
All the fun and lightheartedness is sucked out of the room in a moment. “If we spend so much time and effort on something, aren’t we supposed to try to save it?”
“Is that what you’re doing? Trying to save things with Josh?”
“I don’t know. Maybe?” I confess to my lap, unable to look her in the eye. “That’s part of the reason I’ve gotten interested in romance novels. I’m trying to learn to be a more romantic girlfriend.”
“A more romantic girlfriend? What does that even mean?” Momma’s sitting up now too, and we’re perched on the edge of the couch, all hint of relaxation gone.
I’m sick to death of explaining this, but it rolls off my tongue with minimal stomach pangs this time. “That’s the reason Josh ended things. I wasn’t romantic enough, or ‘good’”—I throw up air quotes—“at love. But that’s something I can fix.”
“He said you weren’t good at love?”
“To paraphrase, yes.”
She rockets to her feet, pacing around the coffee table. “Marlowe Amelia Meadows, if I ever see that boy again, he better start running immediately, because if I catch him—”
“Momma!”
“Don’t you bring him into this house again. How dare he say that to you!”
I’m up and shouting to be heard over her. “What if it’s true? Isn’t it healthy that he realized his needs weren’t being met and shared that with me?”
“Healthy?” She laughs, but it’s an outraged sound that rings hollow through the den. She grabs my hand and pulls us both down onto the couch. “You listen to me right now. This boy does not deserve this level of effort from you.”
I pull my clammy hand out of hers. “Why can’t I want to be better? Do you think it’s preferable to just drift along and end up like Dad? Having lost the love of his life and all alone?”
She sits back, her heart on her sleeve and all over her face. “Marlowe, I don’t know why you would think that, but I’m not the love of your dad’s life.”
I snort, picking at the tassels of Blue’s favorite throw pillow.
“I’m not,” she insists. “That’s you, and his patients.” She takes my hand again, trying to anchor me to her. “I’m so proud of him, and so grateful for the time we had together, but sometimes pride, family, and the sheer want of something are not enough.”
My response is caught in my throat.
“I needed someone to come home every night and fight me for the covers and fill out the morning crossword with—and let me keep pretending I’m a good speller. I wanted sweet words, and surprise takeout, and a man who makes me belly-laugh just to hear me make that sound.” She sighs, looking more drawn than I’ve seen her in years. “Your dad’s the most brilliant man I’ve ever met, and dear God, I made him my entire existence. And when he would wake up and drive off in the middle of the night, I would feel so thankful that he walked this earth and was able to help people.”
Tears leak out of the corner of her eyes, and everything rises to the surface. A teakettle pressurized with two decades of hurt.
“But after four years?” She swipes at the tears forming. “Four years of marriage, with a sweet girl in my arms, a million things to do, and me fighting tooth and nail just to capture a few seconds with the man I chose to spend the rest of my life with?” She shakes her head. “After too many of those moments slipped by, and too many promises were broken, I realized I was never going to be his priority. We couldn’t just go on like we were—him turning gray from the stress of trying to make me feel loved, and me wasting away in front of him and trying to pretend it was working.”
Her beautiful face blurs and hot tears track down my cheeks.
“I had to cut us loose to save us both. Oh, he fought it for sure. Your dad has never failed at a single thing in his life, but he couldn’t see it was my failure too. I couldn’t be what he needed—someone strong and independent enough to build a separate life. Family was all I knew, all I wanted to know, and I just wanted to sit in this room with the wallpaper my grandmother hung and always be surrounded by my favorite people.”
“It felt like you rejected him, and we’re so similar in so many ways.” My face and neck are slick, and everything rushes out in the deluge. “I know the autism can be—”
“Marlowe!” Her face is stricken, her words rapid and frantic. “Don’t you ever say that. How could you think that?”
“How could I not? What if I fixate on the wrong priorities too? Or can’t see or understand what the person I love needs until our relationship has withered away?”
“Your father is a workaholic, Marlowe. Yes, he’s also autistic, but do not reduce him to just one thing. He deserves more than that. He’s also a Virgo, but we’re not even going to touch that.”
A jagged laugh rips out of me.
“You see the world and navigate it a little differently from me, and I hate that I don’t have the ability to give you a road map to make it any easier, but I’m so grateful that every day I get to try.”
My glasses are fogged, I’m producing snot at a truly alarming rate, and I wipe my hands in the skirts of my dress. “I thought you’d be happy about Josh,” I say. “I thought you were relieved by how normal it was when I was with him. I thought you and Stu found it easier to relate to me—”
“Lord have mercy, we hated him.”
“What?” I fall back onto the pillows. “No, we’re talking about Josh.”
“Hated him, Marlowe.” She’s dabbing the corner of her eyes with the throw, and still manages to look glamorously misty, while I’m a mucus monster. “He would strut around here, try and shoot the shit with Stu, and every sentence out of his mouth was ‘Marlowe should really get an organizer’ or ‘Marlowe’s going to need a navy prom dress to match my pocket square.’ He was so bossy, and full of himself, and we couldn’t stand him.”
With that, I burst into tears again. “How am I so bad at this? I can’t read anything right.”
She tucks me into her arms and the pressure around me eases the ache. “I’m southern born and bred. Nobody was going to know how little I cared for that peacock until I told them, but I was hoping you’d move on from him sooner or later.”
“And if I decide I want him back?” The words taste strange in my mouth.
What do you want, Marlowe?
I feel her sigh in my bones, and she smooths my hair back from my forehead. “It’s your life, Marlowe, and I’m not my mother. I don’t believe in forcing my opinions on my children, but don’t expect me to let him inside the house anytime soon.”