fifteen

Once upon a time, my mother and my sister looked a lot alike. Both had longer noses, and they shared the same shade of auburn hair. Amanda inherited Mom’s more voluptuous shape, a very Marilyn Monroe-ish figure. Catherine and I were built more like our father, rather boyish and not so hippy. We all wound up with Mom’s curly hair, but mine was the most unruly. Catherine’s changed from platinum at birth to a lovely strawberry blond. All of my sisters were three inches taller than I, as was my mother.

Time had whittled Mom down to size.

Now I could stare down onto the top of her scalp and see how thin her hair was. Mom had not aged well. Deep marionette lines bracketed either side of her mouth. Her lips had become so thin that they nearly disappeared. Or maybe her constant state of unhappiness kept them under wraps. Added to this, her nose curved downward, which resulted in a witch-like appearance.

She had been a beautiful woman, but over the years, Mom’s sour outlook robbed her of her good looks. As Abe Lincoln said, “Every person is responsible for his own looks after forty.”

Of course, my mom wasn’t big on responsibility. Her strong suit was blame.

Shaking free of Amanda’s arm, my mother stormed me the way the Huns must have attacked the Roman Empire. Her index finger led the charge. “You ran off and left me! I was alone in that big house! How could you? Do you know how frightened I was? Didn’t the doctor tell you that I was sick? What did I ever do to raise an ungrateful, unkind daughter like you? I will never, ever forgive you. You’re lucky I’m even talking to you.”

Lucky. Yeah, I sure was lucky.

My mother hadn’t even noticed I wore a bandage and sported a multi-colored bruise.

“Mom, she was kidnapped at gunpoint. Give her a break,” Amanda said. “If she hadn’t sidetracked that crazy woman you might have wound up dead. Come on, let’s go home.”

“Home? Ha! You call that woman’s house ‘home’? I miss my antiques. I want to go back to Arizona. Where’s Claudia? What did you do to her, Kiki? You ran her off, didn’t you?” Mom’s lipstick covered most of her two front teeth, turning her mouth into a big red maw that mesmerized me as it flapped open and shut.

“Mrs. Montgomery, the woman you knew as Claudia Turrow was a con artist. Her real name was Beverly Glenn, and she specialized in stealing from lovely people like you.” Robbie Holmes stepped between my mother and me. With his huge mitten of a hand, he gently pushed her angry, pointed finger away from my face.

At his touch, Mom simpered and did a little “pshaw” move of her hand. “Oh, that’s just the kind of nonsense I’d expect Kiki to tell you. The truth is that Claudia loved me more than she loved anyone on earth. She told me so. I was the mother she never had. A con artist? You must have heard silly rumors. Of course, my friends were very, very jealous of me—and my relationship with Claudia. They probably made up stories about Claudia to drive us apart.” Mom batted her skimpy eyelashes at Robbie Holmes.

“Yes, ma’am, I can certainly believe that people would be jealous of you. Beauty runs in your family. And you have a wonderful daughter who risked her life to make sure you didn’t come to any harm.”

Mom smiled at him shyly. “Isn’t Amanda wonderful?”