2. Two
Two
Sara
Years of tropical sun and ocean wind distorted our beautiful, thick wooden front door of our house and when I come home and the door scrapes against the floor, it sounds like a screech.
I have never figured out how to ease it open quietly, so even in the middle of the day, even barefoot, even when I am trying to slip in unnoticed, there’s no way to avoid the announcement that I’m home.
Honey, I’m home!
Despite the relentless front door’s animosity, I never truly know which version of my mother awaits me on the other side, and I’d take a screeching door repeatedly over the anxious rotting feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I walk through that damn door.
Will I face the half-loving spirit or the grieving, resentful shadow?
Hesitantly, I linger in the entryway in case she is home.
I don’t want to fight with her again about dating Joe, and I’ve quieted my own needs to be mothered at the risk of weighing her down.
She exhausts me. She’s the epitome of class, even when she’s drowning, that should tell you something about her expectations of me.
Always dressed in black and white Chanel style, her hazel whiskey eyes intensified by black kohl, eyes that could kill with a glance, concealing years of pain, mystery, and untold strength.
She’s one of the most brilliant minds I know, a force not to be crossed, but she’s also as toxic as a radioactive field.
Despite hearing her sob countless times over the haunting strains of Patsy Cline’s “Walking After Midnight” echoing through our walls, which turned the song into a chilling and vulnerable anthem, I’ve learned over the years that my presence never made her feel better.
And that’s not a feeling I want to cling to anymore.
The living room is lit by a single lamp made from a Greek sculpture.
The walls are white, with long beautiful beige linen curtains dripping over the floor, which creates a breeze and an illusion of sterile oxygen in the room, but my mother sterilizes nothing.
She swims, she drowns, she climbs, she crawls through it all…
drags me with every ripple she makes and intends to keep her promise of never letting me forget; she lost my brother, not me. Regretfully.
A mug, still steaming, balances precariously on the edge of the coffee table in the center of the room, resting on a coco rug that always hurts my feet whenever I walk over it. Even the rug reminds me that each step I take around her has to be calculated.
She stands by the window, arms crossed, face invisible except for the white line of her jaw and her perched cheekbones.
She’s been waiting for me. Maybe I should ask, 'Did you see the moon tonight?
' or 'We need more milk.' But my throat is tight, so I just stand there and wait for her bomb to go off.
“Where were you?” she asks with a glacial tone, her back turned to me.
“Out.”
“With whom?”
“Artemis.” My voice is tired, and my best friend is coming in handy for an alibi. I have never lied to my mom, but I can’t make myself tell the truth.
She blows out a breath, and the sound is sharp enough to slice the air.
She hates Artemis. Well, let’s back up — hate is a strong word.
She loves to hate and hates to hate her.
Artemis is my weakness, and she knows that I’d ride at dawn with her.
I’d jump if she did. Call me foolish, but she and I have not exactly had the easiest life so far.
She took a place in my heart when everyone else abandoned me.
“You’ve been sneaking out almost every night for the past few months, Sara. Don’t you think I notice? And I doubt it’s with her, even for Artemis it’s a little much.” She stares back at me, her eyes as dark as her eyeliner.
I'm dying and burning to say, 'Maybe you should try noticing other things,' but the words hang in my mouth, bitter. The last thing I need right now is a name-calling contest. I shake my head instead, as if maybe if I move fast enough the conversation will evaporate.
She approaches me like a cat, her hair a dark auburn cloud, whiskey eyes with something that’s not quite anger.
“You think I don’t care, but I do. I’m still your mother, no matter how old you think you are.
” She sips her tea and takes a breath, readjusting her posture and smiles.
“I thought I told you I didn’t want you to see him anymore? ”
No answer comes from me because I won’t ever stop seeing him.
“I don’t think you’re safe with him —” she continues her word vomit.
“But I am! And based on what?” I bite out. Tired and fed up that we have to go through this again.
In a few weeks from now, I’ll be done with high-school, and hopefully move out as soon as I can.
She crosses the room and sits on the sofa, putting her mug down on the coffee table. She stares at the opposite wall, the one where we used to hang the family pictures. Only the hooks remain now. Her voice is small. “I worry, Sara. I can’t help it.”
I hover near the metal dining table, silent, holding my arms to my chest.
“Why?” I ask, determined to hash this out.
She rubs her temples, exhausted. “For many obvious reasons, you should not date him. Do I really need to explain myself? They have this bad boy thing going on. Their father died— I don’t think you need more grief, and I don’t want you to get on a motorcycle!
And he’s twenty-five years old! You’re eighteen! ”
“Yes, and I’m a consenting adult, Mom! Fuck!” I raise my voice, she makes me see red. The rage I feel around her is debilitating. She turns me into someone else, a consuming ball of anger that burns between my lungs.
“Sara, language.”
“Spare me. With all the things you’ve said to me… really, Mom?” I jab her with the truth she ignores or simply forgets the next day from blacking out.
She let her hands fall, exasperated. “You’ve seen enough with those pretty eyes of yours, but I've seen more than you could handle. I will not let my daughter make a spectacle of herself, like your chipped nails. Fix them.” Her voice is stern and cold.
I look down at literally only one of my chipped fingernails and roll my eyes.
“Mom, I get why you don’t want me to see him, but tough luck.” I stand tall, serious. I’m sick of her grief, sick of her control, sick of her.
“Well, as long as you live under my roof, you will not see him again. That’s all there is to it.” She walks by me, fuming, and goes to her bedroom, leaving me enraged.
After that argument with my mom, I needed to step out of my house and go for a walk.
Clear my head. When I called Mimi and apologized for canceling our errand, which was having coffee on the port, she sighed, “It’s okay.
No worries.” But beneath her words, I sensed her unspoken frustration and she was fed up with how much time I spent with Joe.
Mimi, Artemis, and Anne, these girls were my world, and I had been putting them aside lately.
I needed to be a better friend, but I enjoyed exploring my new relationship with Joe as well.
This gnawing fear every time I imagined too much distance between him and me made me want to spend every waking hour with him.
I couldn’t help it. I was afraid of not being by his side and felt anxious about everything I experienced when I was with him.
I walk down Rue Clemenceau, past the famous yellow and orange facades. Cafes, clothing stores, and bikini boutiques line the narrow streets. Flower boxes overflow from weathered windows, a pulsing charm I’ll never tire of.
In the distance, the sea breathes against the harbor, where tourists with cameras drift past designer boutiques while locals pretend not to notice.
Nearby, the village’s luxurious nightclubs and exclusive beaches prepare for the night, their guest lists packed with the most notorious names in the world, but Tropéziens are not easily impressed by fame.
They are impressed by the scent of scandal.
Some are more like bloodhounds driven by a complex mix of disdain and fascination for one’s hidden truths.
I’m one of the few who doesn’t gossip and minds my own business.
And my business gives plenty to talk about with dating Joe.
It’s a pleasant change of subject from the perpetual gossip surrounding my mom picking up her son’s car-crashed, mauled body, delivered on a plane from Tahiti back to Saint-Tropez.
That is the kind of cargo that haunts the deepest, most somber part of your nightmares.
If anything, my mom should be grateful for the distraction, I darkly muse to myself.
Though my reflection in the mirror doesn’t.
After I got home, I tried on a dress I mindlessly bought on my walk, and it cannot convince me.
I look like a scarecrow abandoned in a lavender field.
I’m so hard on myself, the only person who reminded me of my worth was my brother.
He would always remind me and say, “Little sis, I’m going to protect you forever because you’re too pure for the wilderness out there. ”
Somehow the wild world consumed him instead, amid his promises.
Swallowing the pit of heaviness, I focus on my breathing but I can barely get rid of it.
With my nerves too raw for stillness, my hands are shaking now.
I keep telling myself it’s the caffeine, or the novelty of recent happiness replacing the suffocating loneliness but I know I'm half lying to myself. I really want to be the version of myself that’s already survived the worst, leaving behind me the urge to vanish into the same thin air that swallowed my brother… it’s just really hard sometimes.
On my way out, my mom emerges from her bedroom, determined to make my life harder.
“Where are you going?” she asks, already furious, and no lies will calm her need for control.
“To see Joe,” I reply, trying to hide the tremor in my hands as I put my sneakers on before she spots one of my anxiety attacks. I opted for denim shorts and a black t-shirt, and I feel cute. I won’t let her ruin my night.
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am. What are you going to do? Physically restrain me?” I ask with barely any patience left in me.
“No. But step out of this house? Don’t bother coming back!” She raises her voice enough to shout. She’s one drink away from unleashing her wrath on me. I should serve it on the rocks for her.
“Fine!” I yell, slamming the door behind me without another glance.
I close my eyes, imagining what it would be like, to let the world shrink and stay with Joe, and not go home.