I suddenly know that if this woman, who happened to give birth to me almost thirty-five years ago, takes my picture in this moment and seeks to benefit from my grief, I will be done with her forever. I will not speak to her again. I will refuse to see her under any circumstance, deathbed scenarios included.
Of course I’ve had this thought many times before, but I have never followed through. I always cave, not for her sake, nor because I need or want a mother, but because I don’t want my mother to define who I am, and not talking to her would do that in some bizarre sense. Whenever I read of a celebrity estranged from her mother (Meg Ryan, Jennifer Aniston, Demi Moore; I know these women by heart), I think it says something about the mother and the daughter. No matter how atrocious the mother’s offense, it still marks the daughter as unforgiving, self-righteous, cold.
My mother is a nuisance and a trial, but she is not important enough to write off in any bold terms. Still, despite my general feelings about avoiding total estrangement, I have the sense that I am at a crossroads. This time I mean business. If I can get a divorce from a man I love, I can cut off this woman.
I watch my mother furrow her brow and give me her standard look of sympathy. Her best funeral expression. I know what you’re going through. I’m here for you . All of that bullshit. She has a deficiency of empathy, even for her own daughters, but has mastered the art of appearing to care. She is a fraud. People outside her family might find her engaging, intriguing, compassionate. Sometimes she even fools Daphne. But I know the truth about her.
My rage gives way, in small part, to curiosity. How bad is my mother? Will she take my picture again, even after I’ve come to the brink of tears? Even after I warned her in no uncertain terms? I almost want her to take one final photo. I almost want this to be our defining mother-daughter moment. I watch her as she freezes, then lowers her camera to her lap. Nobody ever stops my mother from doing what she wants, and I can’t help feeling triumphant. And very surprised.
She presses her lips together and says, “I’m sorry.”
I am both relieved and disappointed by her apology. I can’t think of a single time she’s ever apologized to me for anything, despite scores of occasions she owed me one. At least she’s never apologized without blaming someone else or adding a but . I don’t want to let her off the hook so easily, but I am completely drained. So I say, “Okay, Mother.”
“But is it okay?” she asks.
I roll my eyes and say yes.
We are both silent as she awkwardly packs up her camera equipment. When it is all stowed at her feet, she looks at me and says another quiet but sincere, “I’m sorry.”
I look away, but can still feel her eyes on me. I can feel how much she wants me to say something. Absolve her. Embrace her.
I do none of these things. I just sit there in silence.
A long while later, my mother says, “I need to tell you something, Claudia.”
“What’s that?” I ask her, expecting something frivolous. The sun will come out tomorrow. The sky is darkest before dawn. Look for the silver lining . Why are there so many trite expressions involving the sky?
But my mother clears her throat and says, “I want to tell you something I’ve never told you before.”
“Go ahead,” I say to my mother as I see Jess’s shadow in the doorway. She isn’t really eavesdropping; she’s just saving me the trouble of repeating everything later.
“You were an accident,” my mother says. “An unplanned pregnancy.”
“I know that, Mother,” I say.
She never tried to hide the fact, it was something I knew at a very young age. She’d tell people right in front of me, “I thought I was done. But Claudia here was an ‘accident.’” She’d whisper the word accident , but of course I heard it every time. And even if I hadn’t heard all the whispers, I certainly heard her when she shouted the word at me after I told her I was boycotting her lavish wedding to Dwight and that she could shove my lavender bridesmaid dress where the sun don’t shine. (My favorite expression involving the sky.) “Please,” she says now. “Let me finish.”
I shrug, thinking that she sure has a hell of a way of apologizing.
“So you weren’t planned,” she continues. Then she raises one finger in the air as if poised to make a grand proclamation. “But just the other day, I was reading the acknowledgments in one of your novels. The one about the guy with the harelip?”
“Cleft palate,” I say. She is referring to John Skvarla’s memoir. John’s birth defect was such a miniscule part of his life story that I wonder if she ever made it past the first page. My mother postures herself as well read and buys hardcover books all the time, but they typically go straight to her living room shelves, unopened. All for show.