“Why in the world would you apologize to him? And apologize for me?” I can hear the blood rush to my head and feel an angry vein begin to throb in my brain. Neil took her call and not mine, and she called to apologize for me?
“I just know how you can be sometimes.” She waves her hand airily. “But I see now that this is Stacey’s fault.”
I take a deep breath and press my fingers to my temples trying to stop them from pounding. “Let’s be clear. This is all Neil’s fault. Neil cheated. Neil broke it off. Neil is the one to blame.”
“You’re still wearing your ring though.” She points to my hand. “Perhaps this is a blip? A case of last-minute jitters? It happens with men. Though you’ll have to get a new maid of honor. What about Jordan? I like that girl. She’s a straight shooter. She’d probably shoot Neil if he did something stupid again.” My mother laughs at her own joke.
The only reason she is still talking is because I’m speechless. Luckily, our server saves me from saying something I might regret by bringing us our salads and giving me a moment to collect my thoughts.
My relationship with my mother has always been complicated, but right now a serious boundary has been crossed.
I take a deep breath. “I’m not getting a new maid of honor because there isn’t going to be a wedding.”
“Oh, darling. I know you’re hurt. It’s an outrageous thing that he did, but you’ve been together for so long. This is a stupid mistake that he’s probably sorry about, and you won’t know how he feels if you don’t talk to him.”
“Mom,” I say sharply, not bothering to hide my exasperation. “I know how he’s feeling. He felt like calling it off. He said he didn’t love me. He hasn’t tried to contact me since. It’s over.”
My mother leans forward. “Honey—”
Holding up my hand to interrupt her, I retort, “I’m sorry, Mom, but your Big Day isn’t happening, and you’re just going to have to get over it.”
Though I’m not hungry, I take a forkful of salad and stuff it into my mouth.
Unfortunately, my words are not enough to stop my mother from prattling on about the wedding and Neil. But I refuse to engage her and ignore her suggestions for couples counseling or a quick weekend getaway to hash things out. There’s no talking sense into her, so I just remain quiet and nod (my standard operating procedure when dealing with her brand of crazy) for the duration of the meal. After lunch and outside the restaurant, I say goodbye on the sidewalk. “Thank you for taking me out today and for the bag, but I better get back to job hunting.”
“Think about what I said about couples counseling. It can’t hurt. It’s not like it’s going to make anything worse at this point.”
I don’t point out that the “worse” is that my mother wants me to marry someone who cheated on me and told me to my face that he doesn’t love me. Feeling betrayed by the two people who were supposed to love me unconditionally, all evidence is pointing to the fact that there is obviously something wrong with me.
ON MY WALK home, I reflect on my relationship with my mother. There’s no saying “No” to Theresa James, which is why it wasn’t even worth it to argue about her suggestions for patching things up with Neil, who effectively took an Uzi to our relationship, obliterating it beyond repair. As an adult, I’ve learned it’s just better to nod along and then send my mother on her merry way.
I’ve read enough pop psychology in women’s magazines to know that her needing to control a situation, or, in this case, my life, is her way of worrying about me. Now, why she is like this, I don’t know (and I don’t dare ask). But, frankly, her anxiety about my life mirrors my own right now. And, I must admit that my mother’s advice isn’t always bad and has sometimes served me well. In fact, the truth is that following my mother’s “rules” is what got me through high school and into adulthood pretty much unscathed.
My mother is petite, but I was a tall kid taking after my father’s side of the family. And while five foot seven isn’t that tall as an adult, it felt that way growing up, as I shot past the boys in grade school until things eventually evened out my freshman and sophomore years in high school. But while I was always the tallest kid in my grade school classes and endured nicknames such as Big Bird, I was secretly proud to always be picked first in gym class. (As a child, I was more of a tomboy and was always running around outside or playing basketball with my brother and his friends.)
When I was in eighth grade, my family moved into a bigger house and better suburb with a great public high school. Unfortunately, in my mind, the new school wasn’t going to be so great since none of my friends would be following me there. Also, what was called “bullying” at my old school was mild since we’d all known each other since preschool; but through the grapevine, I’d heard the horror stories of freshman hazing at my new high school and couldn’t help but wonder what was going to happen to me there.
When my mother took me shopping for new school clothes at the local shopping center, we walked past a group of teenage girls standing outside of The Limited. I noticed them giving me the collective stink eye, and one even rolled her eyes at my unfashionable cut-offs and T-shirt borrowed from my brother. I wish I could say at fourteen I had the self-confidence to shrug it off, but it worried me. The mean girl’s sneer probably indicated that there were going to be worse things in store for me than being called a lovable Sesame Street character.
My mother took in the exchange without saying anything, and when we went into the next store that the girls had been coming out of, she went directly up to the saleswoman and said, “Whatever those girls were buying, pull it for us.” Right there and then I realized that my best bet was to fit in with the right “uniform”—the right clothes, the right shoes, and the right look—and my mother knew this too. And, weirdly, ever since then shopping has been the one activity that bonds my mother and me.
On my first day of high school, these efforts were rewarded. After first period, a girl approached me after class and said, “Oooh, I love your purse. I’m Megan.”
Megan and I walked to our next class together. Thanks to my mother, the right “uniform” was all it took for me to be invited to the popular table in the cafeteria.
From then on, I knew my mother had my best interests at heart; and though she still annoyed me, while other teenage girls were rebelling against their mothers, I was listening to mine. For example, fretting about my height, my mother forbade me from wearing heels to my high school dances. By that point, most of the boys had surpassed me, but even so, my mother’s concern about my standing out made me want to blend in more in whatever ways I could. If I look too closely, what I considered “dieting” in high school was probably closer to a mild eating disorder because god forbid I should grow anymore—up or out. Even today, my build is more athletic than willowy, and that’s with constant vigilance. During high school, rather than joining track, I was a cheerleader like my new friends and, at my mother’s urging, I was even a debutante. I know. But the way that some girls reveled in their uniqueness, I wanted to be invisible and not invite comment, and “fitting in” seemed to do just that. We didn’t have the terminology back then, but I’m sure “basic bitch” sums me up.