My mother did not talk like this, and she certainly didn’t talk like this with me. We weren’t equipped for it, either of us.
“You can’t dream someone else’s dreams forever, Hannah. And when you finally stop, it’s no good for anyone.” She clapped her hands together, plastic again with a Teflon smile, as if I’d simply imagined that, for a moment, she’d somehow melted into a real person. “Let’s get going. We wouldn’t want them thinking we’re rude.”
“Who cares what they think? They treat you like crap.” I didn’t say it to hurt her; it didn’t occur to me, then, that I could hurt her.
Framed in fake gilt on my mother’s bureau was a photo of the girl she’d once been, posing at a ballet recital with her younger sister, who, unlike my mother, was actually built to be a ballerina. The two of them were frozen midpirouette, my aunt’s form perfect and her smile beaming, my mother sullen and dumpy with a familiar thicket of frizz—her hair had gone limp after pregnancy, something else to blame me for. If this had been a movie, we would have bonded over our mutual ugly-duckness; of course, in the Hollywood version, my mother would have blossomed into an intimidating swan rather than simply expanding into a slightly taller, substantially thicker duck, one who sometimes didn’t seem to like me very much. For which I couldn’t blame her: She probably didn’t enjoy the daily reminder of her yesterday any more than I wanted the glimpse into my tomorrow.
She climbed out of the car and smoothed down her bathing suit cover-up, a blue terry cloth drape I was sure looked nothing like anything the other mothers were wearing. “Just because you leave high school doesn’t mean high school leaves you.”
I had to laugh. “That may be the most depressing thing you’ve ever said to me.”
She laughed, too. “Then I suppose I’m doing my job.”
“Mother of the year.”
I could see it on her face, the moment she decided to press her luck and go for it, a mother-daughter moment. “It’s nice to see you smile, Hannah.”
“Tell me we can get back in the car and go home. I’ll smile like I’m in a toothpaste commercial.”
“Tempting,” she said, pausing just long enough for me to get my hopes up.
Then we went to the party.
BEDECKED IN FULL-ON RICH GUY Leisurewear—Ralph Lauren khakis and a polo shirt—Nikki Drummond’s father opened the door and grunted us toward the pool deck. I crossed through the house head down, not wanting to spot some domestic artifact—an ancient finger painting on the fridge or a therapist’s appointment on the calendar—that might render Nikki human. We padded across fancy tiles, the kind with barely perceptible swirls that make you feel like you’re walking on water, and stopped short in the back doorway, a mother-daughter pair in matched contemplation of their dark fate.
Mothers wore artfully draped sarongs or Esprit tracksuits, nails manicured and hair dutifully bobbed into Hamill-esque mom cuts, like they’d sworn a sacred pact to go frumpy at forty; daughters frolicked in designer cutoffs, tan, coltish legs poking through artfully frayed denim. Pink or purple jellies squished on manicured feet; oversized T-shirts belted low or tied in a knot just above the belly button, except on those girls who—despite the absence of any Y chromosomes to impress—had bothered stripping down to bikinis. Nikki’s usual crowd was absent, replaced by scattered clutches of second-tiers dangling their feet in the pool or poking suspiciously at plastic Jell-O cups of shrimp cocktail.