“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Our conversation is interrupted by the server, and we quickly place our orders. Neither of us takes time to look at the menu. We go with the french toast we ordered last time even though it’s lunch.
“What do you mean?” I repeat once they’ve left.
“As long as you agree with her and go along with everything she has to say, then she’ll be your best friend in the whole world. But disagree with her? Go against what she says? God forbid, hurt her? She’ll turn on you so quickly you won’t know what hit you. I’m warning you—she’s vicious.” Her voice goes cool.
“I’m not afraid of your mom.” Not the way she is, anyway.
“You should be,” she says. “Genevieve is a terrible person.”
“You’re the only one who thinks that,” I blurt without thinking, but she doesn’t seem to mind.
“What kind of a mother drops their own daughter after they decide they don’t want to do beauty pageants anymore? Because that’s what Genevieve did to me when I was ten years old. Ten.” She holds up her hands, five fingers spread out on each one. “She dropped me like I never existed. Like we had never had a relationship. Much less a close one. All the attention? Gone. Affection? Gone. Love?” She laughs, but it’s filled with so much raw pain I can feel it. “She ripped out the emotional plug and left me like I’d never meant anything to her. I got dumped by my mom.” She works her jaw, struggling with her emotions before going on. “But that wasn’t the worst of it. I had to live in a house with someone who didn’t want me around. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a ghost in your own house? To be treated with complete indifference? I despised every second I was there. Each time that I was around her. Have you seen my high school transcripts?” She snorts. “I was involved in everything. Anything that kept me out of the house. You should worry about the kids who never want to be at home.”
“That sounds awful.” Who would’ve thought that a three-thousand-square-foot house with a private theater in the family room and a swimming pool coupled with a tennis court in the backyard would be a home you needed to run away from? Her body is rigid with repressed emotion.
“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be ten and abandoned by your mom? Overnight like you never meant anything to her?” Her eyes fill with huge tears. The wounds still so fresh. A mother’s rejection cuts to the core. It’s impossible not to feel her grief. “All her focus became about Mason. That’s when she got all obsessed with getting him diagnosed. She—”
I raise my hand to stop her. “Wait. That’s when your mom started taking Mason to doctors? After the two of you had a falling-out?”
“I was ten, so I don’t really think I can be responsible for being abandoned by my mom, but yes, that’s when Mason’s health took over her life. It’s been that way ever since.” She wipes her face with her sleeve, smearing mascara underneath her eyes. “He became her project.” She laughs, then quickly adds, “And her prize.”
“What do you mean by that?” I hand her my napkin since she doesn’t have one, and she quickly blows her nose. She takes a deep breath before going on.
“She’d never admit it in a million years, but I think part of her liked Mason being sick. She loved all the attention she got for all the sacrifices she made for him and how hard she worked taking care of him. There’s nothing she likes more than being the center of attention, and she got more attention the more messed up he got. She had all these new mom friends. Joined all these parent support groups and was always volunteering to speak in them. She started lugging Mason to conferences the way me and her used to go to pageants.” She twists her napkin in front of her on the table.
“What kind of conferences?” I can’t imagine how hard that must’ve been for Savannah on so many different levels, especially when she was that young.
“Anything that had to do with autism. There were so many of them, and it’s been so long that it’s hard to remember.” She looks up at the ceiling while she tries hard to pull and sort through memories. “She did lots of conferences and events on social skills, and for a while, she was super obsessed with giving him all these special vitamins and supplements. I remember those months because she was like a speed freak, running around the house and frantically ordering them from all over the country. Such a strange obsession, and then one day she just stopped. Didn’t give him another pill. I think after that she went on the green-smoothie kick for his intestines or something like that. It was always something.” She brings her elbow to the table and props her chin on her hand. “There are others I remember, too, like conscious discipline and potty training. How crazy is it that she spent an entire weekend talking about potty training?” She shakes her head, then quickly snaps her fingers. “Oh, and all the therapy stuff with horses. They did all that too. You name it, she probably went to it.”
“Did your dad go too?” He’s still such a mystery to me. He was never at any of Mason’s testing sessions. Genevieve was always the one who brought him and provided the parental report. When I first went through the reports, I thought nothing of it. Sometimes one parent will take over all the management of the child’s care when there’s an illness, especially if there’s a more controlling person in the relationship, or if one is overwhelmed by the problem and would just rather the other spouse handle it. Other times a parent is too busy or not in the picture at all. There are so many reasons why a parent would be absent, but it stands out here in a big way now.
“Nope. He was stuck home with me, but I’m not sure he would’ve gone even if it hadn’t been for me.” Her tone shifts the same way it did the last time we met and her dad was mentioned. She’s instantly somber.