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I took a deep breath as my parents crossed the lawn towards me at a rapid clip. My mother was wearing a dress that looked like she was still taking fashion tips from Jackie O., and it appeared that my father had been bullied into his best pinstriped suit too. They were both perspiring under the hot sun, but grinning.
Mom greeted me with a brief spasm of a hug before pulling back and immediately launching into a lecture: “Is that really what you’re wearing, Allison? It’s entirely the wrong color for spring, what can you have been thinking? You can’t let the little things slide like this, you’ve only just got Hunter back in your clutches again, you need to lock this down before he—”
Without warning, my anger bubbled over, a pot left on boil for far too long. “This is not the time for this, Mother!”
Mom stopped mid-sentence. What was this, someone questioning her interpretation of reality? “Allison, I know this is hard to hear, but you do have an unfortunate tendency to squander perfectly good opportunities. Now, I’ve brought a nice selection of pastel skirt-suits in the car that should fit you, so you can change quickly and discreetly and it probably won’t be too late—”
“I’m not a child!” I snapped.
“You’re certainly acting like one at the moment—”
“Mom. I will not go to the car with you.” Each word was short and sharp and bitten off with cold, fierce precision. “I am my own person, making my own choices, and if you don’t like them—any of them—you can bite your tongue or you can go somewhere where you don’t have to see them.”
I could hear my volume rising, but I couldn’t seem to stop it, all the years of accumulated resentment breaking through like water through a faulty dam. I went on, “I’ve been working and working and working, trying to make you proud—” my voice broke, “but nothing makes you proud! You act like nothing matters except getting me married off and baking pies and popping out babies!”
Mom stumbled backwards a step, her face blanching deathly pale. My father caught her elbow automatically, but still she faltered. Dad’s eyes were wide, verging on panic—it had been so long since any of us had really talked back to my mother, I think he had no idea how to deal with it now that it was actually happening.
My dad’s eyes helped me rein in my rage slightly, just enough to lower the volume and keep from making more of a scene: “I went to a great college. I graduated with honors. I got a great job. I made a difference in people’s lives. I made an entire life for myself, but I’m still a failure—” my voice cracked, but I soldiered on—“in my own mother’s eyes. As if I have no worth at all, unless I can find a man to value me first. Can’t you see what you’re doing? Can’t you see how you’re making me feel? Don’t you care at all?”
There was a long, tense silence. My dad looked more thrown than a Super Bowl football. Paige looked like she expected a bomb to go off.
My mother sniffled. “I—I—”
“What?” I snapped. I could feel my shoulders going up around my ears. She was going to start in on how ungrateful I was, I just knew it. She was going to get defensive and dismissive and act like nothing I said mattered. Like always.
“I am proud of you,” my mother insisted.
I thought for several seconds that I must have misheard her.
Mom took out a delicate pink silk handkerchief, and blew her nose. Her voice shook as she continued. “I’m proud of you every single day, my dear. I thought you knew. I thought you had to know—you do so well, how could I not be proud?”
Dad placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, another on mine. The weight of it pulled me down, letting the anger start to seep out of my body.
“I just want you to be happy as well,” my mom went on. “I want you to find someone to be happy with, find someone who treasures how bright you shine. I know—I know I can’t be around forever. I know how quickly things can fall apart when—when someone who’s been a part of your life has suddenly gone.”
I remembered suddenly and with shame that Mom’s own parents had died when she was nineteen. She had been considering pursuing a career onstage before that happened and funds had become suddenly too tight to consider it.
She’d always loved ballet.
I remembered the wistful look on her face when we came across some old recital photos in the attic, talking about how Grandma and Grandpa had always supported her.
“I just want you and Paige to have someone to look after you when I’ve gone,” she finished in a quavery voice, dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief.