“Finally,” said J.A., tapping the printouts with her pen. She rose from her seat in her tiny office, applauding slowly and dramatically in a golf clap. “We’ve arrived at the first person. I was wondering when you’d start telling the story from inside the Anima.”
“You could have given me a hint.” Penny was bushed. Drained. Completely wrung out.
“Come on,” said J.A., smiling. “Professors don’t give cheat codes.”
Penny shambled home. The light was too bright, and her body, which had been fine in the AC of the classroom, now felt shellacked in a sticky film. She was thrilled at the prospect of blowing off her afternoon labs.
When she arrived at Kincaid, Celeste was waiting for her in the lobby. Sunglasses, hat, shorts, alone. Penny almost wept from disbelief. She wanted to sleep for a year.
“Hi,” said Celeste, standing up shakily and removing her shades. Her eyes were ringed in red, and her mouth was already twitchy with imminent tears.
“Jeez, Mom,” she said. “Are you allowed to drive in your condition?”
Penny felt the familiar crawl of brittle rage. She knew it came from concern and love, except it made her want to shake her mother and the nurses and doctors and Michael for letting her travel an hour out of town on her own. When would this woman stop scaring the living daylights out of her simply by existing?
Celeste glanced at her tentatively, as if she was unsure of whether or not she was allowed to touch her daughter, and Penny’s resolve broke. Her heart splintered into smithereens.
“Happy birthday, Mom.” Penny hugged her.
“I love you,” she said raggedly in Penny’s arms.
“Let’s go upstairs,” Penny said. Celeste sniffled and nodded. Penny corralled her into the elevator.
“Mike said you came by the hospital last night,” Celeste said when they got inside the room.
“Yeah.”
“That’s Mike, by the way.”
“I didn’t know there was a Mike.” Penny handed her mother her mini go bag. Celeste nodded appreciatively, grabbed a tissue, and sat on her bed.
“You would have if you’d asked. He said you didn’t want to see me.” The waterworks picked up steam.
“I should have come to your dinner,” Penny said, pacing. “Maybe if I was around I could have stopped you and your ridiculous friends from doing something so . . .” Penny shook her head violently. It still boggled her mind that her own mother was dumb enough to screw up marijuana. It was so embarrassingly juvenile, yet somehow also old and clueless.
Celeste’s dark eyes scanned her daughter’s face. “Penny, why are you so angry with me?”
“I’m not angry with you.” She perched on her desk, refusing to sit next to her.
The words felt hard and foreign in her mouth. Her brain raged.
Penny imagined herself telling Celeste everything, spewing out all the shame and confusion about what had happened downstairs as Celeste slept. Penny wanted to deposit the pain where she felt it belonged—with her mother. Penny longed to see Celeste’s face contort in shock or disbelief or guilt and watch her eyes change as her thoughts locked in place and she understood once and for all that it was her fault. And that she could never look at her daughter the same way again.
“Why do you get to be the irresponsible one all the time?” she asked.
“I don’t know what to tell you.” Celeste sighed. “People make mistakes. I can’t make every decision in my life based on whether or not it’ll upset you.”
“Oh, I know,” Penny told her. “When have you ever made any decisions based on my feelings?” Penny wanted nothing more than to power down. “Why are you here?”
“Because you don’t come home!” Her mother stood, finally getting mad. “And God forbid you ever call. I thought you were going to school an hour away so that I could still see you once in a while.”
“Mom.” Penny cut her off. “I have homework. I can’t do this now.”
“No. I want to talk about this,” Celeste said. “While you were growing up I waited for it, waited for the day you’d hate me, because I know that’s how it goes with daughters and their moms. There’s this phase.”
“I don’t hate you, Mom.”
“But you do. I don’t know when it happened and I don’t know what I did. I only know you don’t like me very much.” Celeste’s voice broke. “I know we’re different,” she continued. “I don’t make the kinds of jokes that you find funny. I get motion sickness when I read comic books because I can’t read and look at pictures at the same time. But I’m tired of you treating me as if I’m this nuisance in your life.”
Celeste sat back down. “I paid for all this.” She gestured toward the room. “I work hard to make sure that you have everything you ever need. I know I mess up all the time. I know you’re mad that it’s only the two of us, and I get mad about that too. You can think whatever you want about your dad skipping out on me, but you know what? He’s crazy for missing out on you. Because you’re the best. But you don’t get to hate me for it.”
It was the most Celeste had ever said on the topic. Tears coursed down Penny’s cheeks.
“I know things are bad,” sobbed Celeste. “But you don’t get to punish me if you don’t tell me what I did, if you don’t tell me how to make it right.”
Penny eyed her mother and felt her heart harden. The desire to protect her and the impulse to hurt her were mystifying. Penny’s head throbbed.
Celeste reached out to touch her hand. Penny let her and her anger deflated. Finally, she wept.
“I did my goddamned best,” Celeste said.
“Do you know how terrifying it is to be your kid?” Penny bawled. “I don’t know if you’re going to make rent. Or if you’re going to get murdered by some stranger that you’re being way too nice to. I had to be the adult. I had to fend for myself and for you. It was so stressful all the time. Why do you think I had an ulcer in middle school?”
“Oh, honey.” Celeste pulled her in for a hug. “Penny, at a certain point I don’t know how much of that’s me and how much of it’s you.” She rocked her daughter. “You were an intense kid. So smart and thoughtful and so far into your own head. During your first week of school I got a note from your art teacher saying you had an anxiety attack when you couldn’t finish your drawing.
“I said to myself, man, this kid has to lighten up. Only I didn’t know how to make you do that. The thing is, being your mom feels an awful lot like having a roommate move in. Ever since you were an infant, you were fully formed in what you liked and didn’t and what you wanted to spend your days doing. Most of the time it had nothing to do with me and I had to get over that.”
“Well, not everyone can be a hippie-dippy free-flow freak show,” Penny lamented. “Do you know how it is to live inside my head? Do you know how much worry I carry around? The amount of math I’m constantly doing to make sure that we’ll stay alive and be safe?”
“You know you’re still alive, right?” Celeste said, clutching Penny’s shoulders. “That I kept you alive even when you were a baby and hadn’t yet developed these incredible instincts that you think saved you these past years and this magical computer brain of yours? It’s a team effort, Penny. It has been since the start.”
Penny’s sinuses stung. The pressurized anger that had built up at the bottom of her heart to push up against the backs of her eyeballs was finally out. Her electrolytes would be shot when this was over.
“You’re not some miracle of science, Penny,” said Celeste. “You have to give me some credit.” Celeste continued to cradle her. “And look at us. We’re fine. We’re a little messy, but we’re so great.”
With Celeste’s smeared makeup, she resembled a watercolor. Penny could feel her own heartbeat in her eyes.
“No, we’re not,” moaned Penny. “I don’t have anyone other than you.”
Her mother sighed. “That’s your favorite complaint,” she said. “Even when you were teeny-tiny, you moaned that you didn’t have any friends.”
Celeste rocked her slightly. “But there were loads of kids who wanted to be your friend that you disqualified for one reason or another. Remember Allison Spector? In second grade you were friends, and then one day you dismissed her after you decided she was boring.”