She said, “You better not be trying to get into my brain, little missy.”
But I was already in there. Deep. Judging her. Judging what kind of repugnant person abandons her own son and then manipulates him for the rest of his adult life.
I knew Gertrude had hated all of Jason’s girlfriends, including his high school sweetheart, Cindy, who she felt wasn’t good enough for him, even though she barely knew Jason himself and had never even met the young lady. But I realized as I stood in her living room that she was especially scared of me not because I was “the one” for Jason, the one he actually was going to marry, but because I was a psychologist. She feared I could see what lurked inside her and that I would use my skill to diagnose her and uncover her bottomless pit of wretchedness. She was right. But in order to keep the peace and try to mend and not tear apart this precarious relationship, I turned toward her and lied to quell her worries.
“I’m not trying to get into your brain. Therapy doesn’t quite work like that. I’m not like an FBI profiler. I have to talk to people to get to know them, to then be able to help them. And only if they want to be helped.”
“I don’t need your help.”
“Well, perfect, then. Because I’m off the clock.” I smiled.
But she couldn’t just stop there.
“As far as I can tell, therapy doesn’t work at all, for anyone. Whining about things incessantly makes people weaker. Not stronger. Where I come from, the past is the past. Move forward, already, is what I say.”
I listened, and said, “Moving forward is healthy. I agree. But without a solid foundation, everything crumbles eventually.”
She wasn’t sure if that was a threat or just the plain truth. She retreated into her breakfast nook to organize her thoughts and plan her retaliation.
Gertrude had not yet offered us anything to eat or drink. Jason planned on sitting her down and giving her the good news, but she noticed my engagement ring immediately. So within seconds the information had been received. And now we were all sort of at a loss for what to do next. So Jason asked if I wanted something, and I mentioned coffee might be nice. He poured himself some diet soda, which Gertrude had liters of in her fridge, and started to make me coffee in her standard drip pot. Since Jason didn’t drink coffee, making it did not come naturally to him. Gertrude didn’t offer to help, so I stepped in and said I would make a nice fresh pot for us. I told her I liked mine really strong. She snapped back with, “So do I.” But I knew by the shade of light brown water left in the pot from earlier that her Georgia idea of strong was not the same thing as my Miami raised-on-Cuban-coffee idea of strong.
I used three scoops of her grocery-store-bought, already-ground beans, keeping in mind not to overdo it. I truly wanted to make this woman happy. As the coffee dripped into the pot, I wondered about the theory that we pick mates who are just like our parents. Oedipus and Electra complexes urging us to continue the cycles of our childhoods. Did that mean that somewhere in the depths of Jason’s unconscious he thought I was similar to his mother? I might be way more cobra than pit bull, but I was nothing like Gertrude. I was loyal to those I loved and wanted them to be happy on their own terms, not mine. I was also in touch with my flaws, had spent hundreds of hours discussing and dissecting my own strengths and weaknesses, motivations, and feelings. I was not perfect, certainly, but I was aware of myself. Gertrude, it seemed, was so locked in her own denial that she wasn’t aware of anything but her need to remain unaware.
But then I remembered how after my first big fight with Roman, the one about me enjoying when others knew my name when I didn’t know theirs, he later put his make-amends note in my textbook, in the narcissist section. I always assumed he was admitting that he was a narcissist, flaring obliques and all. But maybe he was poking fun at the fact that I was the narcissist. Which would put me a step closer to Gertrude. Who now sat in her dining room area with Jason, who was dutifully saying that the next time he came over he would fix the creak in the back screen door.
I found mugs in the cabinet above the coffee maker, and brought in two cups of hot coffee. I put one in front of Gertrude, asking if she wanted anything else. Sugar? Cream? Not that I knew where any of that was. It was odd that I was playing hostess in her home, but it was another way to put me on edge, while she maintained control.
She said no, she liked her coffee black. She took a sip and then spit it back into the cup. I thought maybe it was too hot, so I took a sip of my own, to test it. It was the perfect temperature.
She looked at me and calmly said, “You did this on purpose.”
I looked at her. “Excuse me?”
Jason jumped in, “Mom?”
Gertrude said, “She made this coffee so strong it’s undrinkable. Just to prove some sort of point.”
I sighed. Sadly not surprised by her paranoid outburst.
Jason said, “Mom. I don’t see what point that could possibly be.”
Jason was trying. I knew that. But the intense love I felt for him was draining from me. If my devotion to him was oxygen and I wore a space suit that had a rip in it, my low-levels warning siren would be blaring. The feeling that Jason and I were on the same team was also plummeting, so I quickly regrouped my insides for my own self-preservation. I felt like I was in enemy territory, the hundreds of frogs inching forward to attack me, their buggy eyes turning from kitschy to menacing. I needed to get out of Gertrude’s house immediately. I stood up from the table.
“Jason, can I speak with you privately?”
I wanted to tell him this was a big mistake, coming here to his mother’s house. She hated me and that was that, but I wouldn’t stick around and be accused of making coffee too strong on purpose, especially when I made it weaker than I normally would have to appease her! But I didn’t have a chance to say any of those things, because Gertrude wouldn’t accept me speaking to Jason privately. She gently turned to her son as he was about to stand and said to him, “I won’t have her turning you against me. If she wants to say anything in my house, she can say it to my face.”
Sure, there were many things I wanted to say to her face. I wanted to call her a big cunt with bad taste in art, to accuse her of being a horrible mother, a despicable, manipulative, damaged snake of a person. I wanted to take a coffee mug and break it against the table and use a shard of thick mass-produced ceramic to cut open her jugular.
But my training in dealing with the mentally ill kept me calm, and I knew nothing I screamed at her would make me feel any better in the long run, and it would only give her proof that I was the problem. She could report back to her friends that I had the nerve to call her a cunt in her own home, in front of Jason and her frogs! I refused to give her any more ammunition to use against me.
So all I said was, “Gertrude, this visit clearly isn’t working out. I’m going to leave now. Goodbye.”
I grabbed my purse, which I had left near the front door in the living room. She was delighted to see me going, and she stood to slam the door behind me. But she didn’t expect Jason to also stand and start to leave with me.
She spat out, “And where are you going?”
“Mother, your behavior is not okay. We can talk about it another time, but right now I’m leaving with Ruby.”
And with that the love level in my tank bolted up past the emergency low mark and the warning sirens in my head quieted. I think I must have smiled at Jason. And my smile pushed Gertrude over the edge. “Then get out!” she screamed. “Get out!” And she kicked me. Right in the shin. Jason was shocked. I was stunned. Mostly that the cobra in her had turned a little pit bull.