“Oh? And why’s that?”
“This room’s being used for patient care at the moment. And this patient made it very clear that she doesn’t want to see anybody.”
Oh, I bet she fucking did. She comes all the way out here on the basis that I didn’t go and see her in New York, and then immediately tells everyone that she doesn’t want visitors. She doesn’t want me to see her. It suits her down to the ground to act as if she’s had to drag herself across three states just to fight for a scrap of her indolent son’s attention, while she’s dying no less, and then make it as difficult as humanly possible for me to actually get in and see her. Classic Meredith.
“Hmm.” I grimace at the nurse. “Tell her that her son’s here. And tell her not to bother with the metric ton of makeup while you’re at it. I’ve seen her without ‘her face.’ She’s just as terrifying with or without it.”
“I—” The nurse glances back over her shoulder, mouth open. To her, the prospect of going back into that room and facing my mother is a fate worse than death. I know how she feels. “I—”
“Never mind.” I step around her, barging into the room, smiling sourly at the situation on the other side of it. “Hello, Meredith.” Sitting on the end of her crisply made bed, my mother tucks a neatly curled wave of golden hair away from her face, though the action doesn’t really do anything. She’s perfectly styled, her makeup is flawless, and the gesture is all for show.
“There you are. I’ve starved myself half to death, waiting on you,” she says.
Lord above, help me survive this woman. “What are you talking about?”
She smooths her hands over her loose grey linen pants. With her elegant white blouse and the little navy-blue scarf tied at her neck, she’s a picture of effortless grace, just like she always is. Heaven forbid she might actually be caught still drawing breath and in a hospital gown. “When poor Peter told me about what happened last night, I knew to expect you. I thought we could go to lunch. Make the most out of the visit. I assumed you’d show up promptly at one, so I refrained from breaking my fast. The nurses have been fussing over me, trying to make me eat for the past hour and a half, but I told them no. I had to wait. Aren’t they just darling girls, Pax? So thoughtful. So caring. Impossibly friendly.”
To her, maybe. She must be paying the hospital handsomely to put her up like this. I’m just an inked-up piece of shit with a perma-scowl who looks like he’s spoiling for a fight. Meredith’s impossibly friendly girls will no doubt be suspicious and scathing when they interact with me.
“I was thinking we’d go to that one place. What’s it called? Harry’s?” she says, getting up and looking around the room for her purse. I try to remember the name of that woman who called me in Corsica and told me that my mother was dying. Far as I can tell, she was lying, because Meredith seems A-okay. A little thinner than usual, I guess. Her skin looks a little…papery? But other than that, she’s sharp as a fucking tack, well enough to wear four-inch heels, and her no-nonsense attitude is in perfect working order.
She finds her purse and loops the gold chain strap over her shoulder. Then she looks at me. “Well? Are we going to go or not? I’d hate to have to repeat myself, but I really am rather hungry, sweetheart.” She cups a devilishly cold hand to my cheek. “And while Harry’s is hardly a New York standard eatery, I assume they’ll still be busy at this time of day? I’d hate to inconvenience them by showing up right at the end of lunch service. I’m sure they’ll want to give the servers time to set up for dinner service.”
See, this is the trouble with Meredith. The trouble with being angry with her specifically. She does the shittiest, meanest, most careless things, and then acts entirely like herself—charming, sweet, engaging, and innocent—and you forget why you’re mad at her. I’m wise to her tricks, though. It took me years, but I finally figured out that the only way to deal with Meredith without feeling like you’ve been cheated out of some very justified emotions is to be direct as hell with her.
“We’re not gonna go and eat steaks, woman. You’re dying.”
She straightens like she’s just been hit with a fifty-thousand-volt charge. Her pale blue eyes, as cold and distant as drifting icebergs, cut into my skin like scalpels. “I’m sorry. I fail to see the problem. Do restaurants in Mountain Lakes discriminate against patrons with terminal illnesses? Or can dying women not eat steak in particular? Because if that’s the case, darling, I’ll just have the chicken.”
Of course she was going to act like this. Dying? No big deal. Don’t make a fuss, darling. The staff are watching. I want to shake her, so that she drops the bullshit and unleashes the river of emotion charging beneath her stoic façade. I want to see her sob at the unfairness of it all. I want to see her bargain and plead. I want her to feel something. Only thing I’ll accomplish by shaking her is getting tossed out of the building again, though. There is no deep river of emotion crashing against the mile-high walls my mother has so expertly constructed. If I dug down deep enough, I might discover a weak, pathetic trickle of emotion, but nothing more. Meredith did a bang-up job of damming her feelings away back in the late eighties. To elicit more than faint disapproval from my mother, a person would need a degree in psychology, a degree in archeology, and the proper excavation equipment to dig down that deep.
“All right. Fine. Have it your way. Let’s go to fucking Harry’s. Eat the steak. Eat whatever you fucking feel like. I don’t even care.”
She steps closer, chucking me under the chin like I’m five years old. “Y’know. I might even have a glass of wine, I think.”
Any normal parent might have chided me for the profanity, but not Meredith. She’s never once curbed my language. I think it’s because she never really hears what I’m saying; she’s far too busy thinking about what she’s going to say next.
Harry’s is despicably busy, even though it’s late in the afternoon. Meredith pecks at a berry salad like a bird while slamming back three glasses of red in quick succession. I’m impressed by her stamina given her prognosis. I order the most expensive steak on the menu and order a hundred dollars’ worth of sides, and then I do not touch a single morsel of the food. Couldn’t eat it if I tried. The slab of meat (extra bloody, I ordered it blue), and the broccoli, potato gratin, mac and cheese, and the three different side salads are a pagan offering to the witch sitting on the other side of the altar-like table. One I hope that will satisfy her before she feels the need to ask me if I’ve developed an eating disorder on my European shoots. I’m eighteen, for fuck’s sake. I’m a runner. I’m packed muscle from head-to-toe. I’m about as far as a person can get from wasting away from bulimia, but Meredith read an article in Holistic Healing for Empaths Magazine, and she’s been obsessed with the idea that I have a negative relationship with food ever since.
We sit in silence. I mark the passing minutes by the steady lowering of the wine level in Meredith’s glass. When she flags down the waiter, pointing to her glass, asking for yet another, I snap. I give the waiter a foul look that perfectly communicates what will happen if he dares bring another bottle of wine over to top off this mad woman’s glass.