Authors: Kristen Kehoe
Chapter Sixteen
Cora
I spend every Monday from ten a.m. to one p.m. giving my mother her weekly salon treatment, just like the one she drove herself to for the last twenty-five years. Only I do it in the home she still shares with my father, the one she’s made herself a prisoner inside. She doesn’t leave the house anymore, despite the fact that the doctors have said that in moderation, exercise and entertainment are necessary parts of battling back some of the time her disease is trying to steal from her. They say that getting out, as long as it’s with someone safe, someone who can help her, is good, but she won’t.
According to my father, she stopped leaving the house the day she left it ten months ago and forgot where she was going and why. She ended up at the grocery store, a place she hadn’t been in years since our housekeeper has always done all of the shopping, and after an hour spent in the parking lot, sitting in her idling car while she tried to get her bearings, a stranger had knocked on the door and she had to give in and let them help her. That was the first time she acknowledged that what the doctors were telling her was true, and it was the last time she went further than the backyard.
She now lives one hundred percent of her time inside of the beautiful and sprawling estate that she and my father purchased almost twenty years ago, wandering the halls and the grounds, doing what she calls “correspondence” and verbally sparring with Sassy, her full time caregiver. Sassy is younger than my mother but older than me, with beautiful Italian skin and thick hair that she keeps pulled back off her face. She calls me
Cara
(a name I originally thought was a mispronunciation of my own until she noticed my frown one day and told me it was an Italian term of endearment), chats nonstop during my visits no matter how silent her ward is and ignores my mother’s anger, serving her like a longtime friend and patting her on the shoulder after an outburst and exclaiming, “Oh Suzie, go on,” an act which has my mother lashing out even more.
The first time I came over almost three months ago, I was horrified at their rapport, but now, as I’m here more regularly, I’m beginning to understand that Sassy, while a stranger to my mother, is also the only person she really engages with, even if it is to snipe at her. I don’t think my mother has visitors, not just because she would keep them out, but because she never inspired the kind of loyalty visiting a sick friend would require.
She had acquaintances and allies in her social world, not friends.
Which reminds me of my night out with Liam and A.J., when I realized that other than Mia, I was truly alone when it came to friends and shared memories. Which also then reminds me of the fact that Jake’s my friend, in a weird, we kiss like teenagers one minute and laugh like besties the next kind of way. Whatever our relationship is, I can admit in my head that Jake is good for me as I’ve become increasingly aware over the last eight months or so that I am my mother’s daughter, no matter how much I try to ignore it or change it.
Living with Jake is an experience. Whether it’s a good or bad experience, I’m still not sure (though, truth be told, there are certain parts of me that are already one hundred percent on board with this experience. They would also like to one hundred percent take it to the next level. I’m ignoring them as best I can). He just makes me jumpy — everything he does, from his questions, to his patience, his absolute awareness of the effect he has on me and his goddamn likeable personality. It’s all so much when I’ve spent the last little while working to make certain that I create a life, and a person, I can be happy with. Maybe even proud of. Someone who isn’t dependent on other people to make her feel good.
I called Mia again the other day to talk to her because she knows who I am, who I’ve been, and what I want, and I needed to talk to someone. Her answer was less helpful than I wanted, as it all boiled down to being careful and trusting myself, and also trusting Jake. That was the point she was stuck on. Whoever Jake was, whatever he was, I could trust him.
And I believe her. I just don’t know if I can trust myself.
After our trip to the zoo last week, I don’t think it’s going to matter though, as he was abundantly clear he won’t be backing off anytime soon, and I’d be a liar if I said I wanted him to. So, I took a small piece of Mia’s advice and trusted myself, enough that we ended up making out in the rain on our way inside from the car, and then eating tofu stir fry (not his favorite meal, which he was more than happy to say even though he finished twice my portion in half the amount of time) and then watching a movie — which was code for make out and try to get to second base. I blocked him, but not before my clothing was significantly rumpled and my lips more than swollen.
By the time we’d gone to our separate rooms, I had to admit the night had been fun. More than fun, it had been amazing. Even at bedtime, when I expected him to push and come into my room with me, he pushed me up against my door, kissed me like a madman and then stepped back, brushing my arm lightly with his fingers before turning and stepping through his door and closing it behind him.
I want badly to be unaffected by him, to be levelheaded and in control of what we’re doing, but since it’s obvious that’s not the case, I’m treading slowly. Last night he made dinner, and though it was a little on the manly side with French fries and cheeseburgers, he did make concessions that I know were for me. The fries were sweet potato, and the burgers were from an organic meat market that I’ve never heard of, but he made sure to leave the paper wrapping out so I could inspect it.
We ate while watching
The Voice
and it was really nice.
Now, he’s off doing what he does during the day — training, working out, studying — and I’m just finishing up my mother’s nails. We haven’t spoken in the almost two hours I’ve been here. Not a word. Sassy let me in, directed me up to “Mrs. Whitley’s private room” (the first master, which overlooks the grounds) and then disappeared somewhere. The fact that I wanted to chase after her when she walked out shows me that no matter how strong I think I am, there are still things that scare me.
After my initial panic at the thought of being alone with my mother subsided, I went in and set up as I normally did. My mother walked in looking smaller and thinner than normal in a pale blue bathrobe that she kept tied tightly around her, gripping the collar at her neck every now and then while I was foiling her hair.
Now, her foils are off, her hair freshly washed and dried with curlers sitting in it, and I’m almost done with her last coat of polish, a pale pink, barely discernable from her original nail color. I don’t even have to ask when I start — it’s the color she’s always worn, as light as one goes on the color spectrum while my almost-black is full throttle the other way, just like we’ve always been.
I can hear small echoes from downstairs and outside, the closing of a door, the starting of a lawnmower somewhere far off. I swipe the brush over her nail, staring at just below her freshly trimmed cuticles and making one perfect sweep before raising the brush off her nail and doing it again until the whole nail is covered. She’s watching me paint, her eyes never lifting, her hands never moving. If I didn’t know she was human, I would think I was practicing on a mannequin.
The silence between us is endless, and without our usual buffer of Sassy, it’s stifling and when I feel myself retreating, thinking of that familiar pull that comes with people — a bar, a club, a bedroom — my hands shake and I can’t bear it a second longer.
“I used to want to be like you. When I was little. I would watch the ladies who came in to get you ready for an event, the way they would pamper you while you sat there, approving of things with a small nod of your head, discouraging others with just a raise of your brow. I would sit on the floor by this very vanity and think,
that’s what I want when I grow up
, to have people pamper me.”
I don’t know where the words come from, but I do know that speaking is better than focusing on the familiar feeling of sinking, and that somehow the words I didn’t even know I needed to say are keeping me from standing and walking out and making a choice I know I don’t want to make, so I let them come and hope I’m strong enough to deal with them in the end.
“You were so strong the way you went after things, never taking less than what you expected, never backing down.” I switch hands, not looking at her as I study the delicate fingers in mine, so small, fragile even, as if they belonged to a small child instead of a woman. “I remember being little and watching you and Daddy go out, watching the way he would look at you and I thought,
I want someone to look at me like that one day, I want them to love me like he loves her.
He used to light up when you walked into a room; everything in him changed, I swear, as if the sight of you gave his heart a reason to beat. But after a while, it didn’t matter how much his smile was for you, because you could barely see it with everything else you focused on. I think maybe that’s why I never bothered telling you — you didn’t hear him when he said it, didn’t see him when he showed it, and you never gave the words back to him. Ever.”
My hand trembles slightly and I set hers down, putting the brush back into its polish and twisting it closed, never meeting her eyes, the pressure in my chest forcing the words out. “I was sixteen the first time you called me a whore. I don’t remember what I did to make you mad, but I’m sure it was on purpose. It seems like everything I did was to make you mad — or maybe it was just to make you notice me. Either way, I can’t remember what it was, but I remember you slapping me as I stood there, and then you told me I deserved to be lonely, that I was nothing but a disrespectful, spiteful, hateful daughter who had caused you pain your entire life. Maybe that was the day I realized love wasn’t enough, especially when the one person you wanted to love you told you that you were nothing like she wanted you to be.”
I stare at her fingers, focusing on those hands that had once struck me after I sassed her, the same ones that had once balled into fists and pounded the chest of my father as he soothed her during a tantrum. Now they do nothing, give no reaction, and that’s worse.
When I finally look up, she’s staring at me with those vacant eyes, still perfectly lined and lashed, the shadow I blended on the lids only moments ago standing out, highlighting the blue/green eye color that we share. But as I look back, I only see the glitter on the outside and the emptiness on the in; I only see what I physically put there myself and I wonder if I’m going to look in the mirror one day and see that empty hole that she’s retreated into, or if I’ll grow out instead of shrink in.
A few years ago, Mia told me she was watching her mother disappear. Aunt Margaret was growing smaller with every harsh word, missed dinner, and cold shoulder her husband gave her. Thinking of that I wonder if my mother’s eyes are vacant because of me; was it my cold shoulder, my desire to shock her, my need to replace her and be anything but her that caused her to become so small? Or was it her desire to change me, ignore me, be better than me?
Did I ruin my mother, or did our inability to grow outside of ourselves cause both of us to shrink into the people we are now? Did we ruin ourselves, or did we somehow do this to each other?
That question haunts me as I pack up my tools and leave, it stays with me even through my workout. My mother never answered me, never spoke, and I wonder if she ever will again. I’m still wondering when Jake gets home and comes to sit next to me on the couch. I know I should have been in my room, gone for a walk, been anywhere but here when he arrived because the mood I’m in isn’t a healthy one, or a nice one. After an afternoon of feeling shitty over something I can’t quite explain, I want to draw blood from someone else, just to see if I can.
He leans in to kiss me, but stops when I lean back.
He raises a brow. “Problem?”
Too many to name, let alone understand. “I think Ryan plays in Corvallis soon. I was going to go down, meet Mia there and hang for a while. I didn’t know if you wanted to come and watch him.”
I see the blow hit him, and though I want to reach out and make contact, I don’t. The non-conversation with my mother has left me raw and annoyed, angry at Jake and everything he stands for. Suddenly, I need very much to see if he’s human, if he can bleed like I can.
“I understand if you don’t want to see your teammates, since you aren’t playing anymore.”
Direct hit. I see his eyes darken, his body tense as he shifts away, but rather than the relief I was hoping for, guilt settles like a nasty ball low in my stomach. I block it and watch him, seeing the expression in his eyes that was lacking in my mother’s as I spoke to her, the pain, the irritation and the wonder. But he doesn’t slap back, and though a part of me is disappointed, I stay still and stare at him.
After a moment, he nods. “Yeah, I know when the game is, so why don’t I call and get us tickets that are better than general admission? You can talk to the team afterward.”