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I sent off the rest of the drafts shortly thereafter, and while I thought I could hear Erika’s frustrated screams in the distance, I wasn’t bothered by it. This was what she wanted, after all. And much like an outwardly helpful but inwardly malevolent spirit, I had twisted her wish into its worst possible form. That was her mistake, or so I could call it.
So instead of worrying about it, I went in search of something that vaguely resembled breakfast. There’s an art to that meal, but I was content just getting something into my stomach that had some calories in it and was in my apartment’s fridge. When the bar is that low, you end up eating clementines, chocolate frosting, and leftover pizza. If you want to consider that combination a three-course meal, first of all, you need to raise your standards. And second of all, it was during the third course that my mom called.
As a general rule, I hate phone calls, but phone calls with my mother were in a category all their own. There was something about our conversations that wore into my nerves no matter what we were talking about. And maybe that thing was her voice. I hoped it wasn’t. But there was always that chance.
I knew I shouldn’t answer it, that nothing good was going to come out of answering. But I couldn’t help it. Or I could hypothetically help it, but a part of me was a glutton for punishment. In another life maybe I was one of the self-flagellators of the Middle Ages. Obviously, there’s a lot of nonsense in that thought. But given that I answered the phone despite knowing it was a bad idea–an action that goes against the self-preservation impulse all people have–whatever half-hearted explanation I can throw together is just going to have to do.
“Hi Mom.” I groaned.
“I talked to Agnes the other day,” she said.
As always, she spoke with an urgency that negated all social etiquette. There was no time for greeting me or asking about the weather or some other minute detail of my life. There were no words so important that they had to come before her point.
“She was asking me if she can get your book in Vancouver,” she explained. “I told her I’d ask you.”
I flinched instinctually and without any awareness as to why I was reacting that way. It went back to that earlier question of a discomfort I couldn’t name. After all, this was a good thing, right? Another book sold was another victory in whatever ledger my publisher was keeping. It didn’t matter that it was being sold to my mother’s old high school friend who was likely just purchasing it out of a perceived obligation. Maybe it was even better that way. It meant she likely wouldn’t read it and wouldn’t see all the flaws I knew were there.
“It should be,” I answered. “I know there’s some distribution in Canada. I can text Erika.”
“Okay,” she said. “Just ask her and let me know. Agnes calls me every week.”
She then proceeded to go into how their weekly call came to be as well as sharing all the news Agnes had delivered last week about their classmates and the happenings in those many households. None of which mattered to me. I didn’t know those people. I didn’t want to either.
I didn’t have to keep listening. I could have put the phone down and walked away or finished my meal or anything at all. But I felt trapped there, for some reason, duty-bound to end the conversation before I did anything else.
“Yeah,” I muttered in response to something she said. “Mom, I’ve got to go.”
“Okay,” she initially agreed, but true to form, in that moment between acceptance and actually ending the call, she was seized by another thought, another question that could not wait until she could somehow get me on the phone again. “How’s George, by the way?”
I should have seen it coming, right? It was just like at the diner with Ellie: there are some questions that you know will be asked, no matter how hard you try to ward them off. But even in this second round, I didn’t know what to say. In some ways, the default answer was more straightforward. He and I broke up. But at the same time, this was the woman who spent a good chunk of her time as a widow making excuses for her husband’s infidelity.
So I knew it wouldn’t go well, but even still, I said, “We broke up, Mom.”
She gasped lightly. It was still loud enough for me to hear, but it didn’t sound dramatic or exaggerated. “Why?”
“He’s still cheating on me. Or not cheating anymore since we aren’t together. But he was. He was still seeing Charity, Mom.”
Uncharacteristically, she got quiet. But in the silence, I could see her face, or I told myself I did. It was just my imagination. I imagined her features falling in the same way they did when I told her about Dad and the messages I had found on his computer. The emotion would drain out of her as her carefully crafted illusion fell apart. And so, I could practically hear her say “it is what it is” without her saying it.
Instead, she said, “You can’t expect things to go smoothly all the time, Mia. Nothing in life is perfect. People aren’t perfect.”
On the one hand, she wasn’t wrong. No one was perfect, and there was something more than a tad inappropriate about expecting perfection. It may be a valid point, but it was an irrelevant one. Someone does not have to be ‘perfect’ to be faithful. And so, you couldn’t wait for the perfect person to come along before you entered a relationship. You just found someone who was mostly good.
In my mom’s mind, my dad was a great example of this. He was mostly good. He was good at providing, parenting, and even cooking. Just not staying faithful. So maybe the best I should have been hoping for was that my hypothetical future husband does all the straying he would inevitably do discreetly and safely. And ideally, he would keep it out of the family, though I wasn’t supposed to know either way if he did or not. But George (or whoever my partner was) would stay as he was, and I should demand an arrangement that could bring me some sort of peaceful but not quite blissful ignorance, the same type that she had until Dad died. And I was the dumbass who wanted more.
But this dumbass was as proud as any donkey or jackass out there. Or I was in that moment.
“I don’t care,” I snapped. “I don’t care if you think George’s good or bad, and I don’t care if he actually is.”
She waited for a moment before she responded. And I sat there waiting for whatever manipulation tactic she was going to pull out next. I was waiting for some emotional appeal, some guilt, some knife plunged into my chest and twisted deep into my heart.
But to my shock, she sounded genuine when she said, “I’m just worried about you. Sweetheart, you can be impulsive and reckless, and you don’t do well on your own.”
Normally, when she brought her emotions and her worry into any scuffle, out of filial loyalty, I’d back down. Immediately. I would forgo my hurts to soften hers. But at that moment, my brain was already so full and so weighed down by my many miseries that I couldn’t even do that. And so, there was no comeback. There was no rebuttal. I didn’t see the point to one.
“I’ve gotta go text Erika about something I sent her. And the Canada thing. I’ll text you with her answer.”
I didn’t wait for Mom to reply. I didn’t wait for her to try to stop me or to try to ask me about my first book, Erika, George, or anything like that. I just hung up the phone before anything else could be said. It was a fairly simple and undramatic conclusion.