On the Rocks(36)

Aunt Patrice hugged me and planted a kiss on my cheek before taking a seat across from me. “So, let’s save the pleasantries for later. What happened? Are you and your mother at it again?” she asked as she removed her scarf and hung it over the back of the chair.

I mindlessly traced circles on the tablecloth with my finger. “Not really. It’s just more of the same stuff, you know? More of Mom being Mom.”

“Your mother simply being your mother wouldn’t have spurred you to text me, and certainly wouldn’t have brought me down here for lunch. Did something happen? No one knows your mother better than I do. Whatever it is, I’ll understand.”

I grabbed the ends of my hair and twisted them, trying to quell my brimming tears. I was used to my mother’s incapacity to love me the way a normal mother would. That wasn’t what was bothering me. What was bothering me was my realization that history might be repeating itself.

I folded my hands in front of me as I spoke. “I’m so scared of becoming her, you know? I’ve spent my whole life trying not to be her, and all of a sudden I find myself being bitter and angry and skeptical of men and of life in general. What if I end up like her? Thinking that if I spend enough time loving myself I won’t notice that no one else does?”

“You’re being crazy. Lots of people love you, and lots of people love your mother. She’s just a little selfish, and her brain is wired differently. She doesn’t see the world the same way you and I do. I know sometimes she says and does things that are a little, how do I phrase this, unorthodox, but she doesn’t mean to hurt you. Her heart is in the right place. It’s her mouth that gets her into trouble.”

“I know. What’s bothering me is that I’m noticing some similarities these days. She never got over Dad leaving, and certainly not him dying. If he had stayed around, maybe she’d be different. If Ben had stayed, I’d be different too. For starters, I wouldn’t be living in elastic pants. I look at her and I feel like I’m seeing myself in twenty years, and it terrifies me.”

“Women get divorced every day. Your mother isn’t the way she is because she’s divorced—she’s divorced because of the way she is. Your mother has spent her entire life refusing to grow up. Even after she had you guys, she was always selfish. Ultimately that’s what ran your father off, God rest his soul. You didn’t chase Ben away. He ran on his own because he’s a coward who’s not good enough for you. He never was.”

“What if people start to say that about me?” I asked. “ ‘Once upon a time Abby was cute and fun and pulled together, but after Ben left she went to hell with herself and now she needs a crane to get out of her house.’ It’s not a far stretch. I’m just so scared that I’m going to spend all of my energy pretending that I’m fine to the point where I start to believe I really am. That’s what happened to her. She drank her own Kool-Aid.”

“Cut your mother some slack. She went through hell trying to figure out how to raise you girls on her own. Being a single parent isn’t easy, and your mother did the best she could. You didn’t see how scared she was. I don’t defend some of the coping mechanisms she developed to deal with her divorce, but you have to at least try to understand her. Anyway, you don’t have to worry about repeating her mistakes. When you’re ready to move on, you will. I’m not worried about you,” she said forcefully as she rested her elbows on the table, sunlight dancing off the gold bracelets on her wrist.

“What if the choice isn’t mine to make? I’ve been thinking a lot about that kind of stuff lately,” I admitted. It felt good to say it out loud.

“What stuff?” she asked.

“How life can surprise you. When you’re little, you just assume that everything will work out. You think one day you’ll look up and there’ll be your Prince Charming on a white horse with a full head of hair and a dazzling white smile.”

“There’s a reason those fairy tales are geared toward little girls and not grown women who know better,” she said with the authority of a woman who was wise enough to have relinquished the concept of perfection a long time ago. “In real life that hair is a toupee and that smile is a veneer. And for the record, the princess in that story is wearing Spanx and a Wonderbra. That’s why those stories are called fairy tales and are not the headlines on the six o’clock news.”

“I know, but now look at me. At my age, finding a guy who hasn’t gone prematurely bald is like hitting the dating jackpot.”

“You know, baldness never bothered me,” Aunt Patrice said, tapping her manicured nail on the tablecloth. “At least you know what you’re buying. What’s infuriating is when you marry a guy who’s in great shape and then ten years later he can’t even see his toes. I knew I married a bald man. I had no idea there was a fat man hidden in that bald-headed body. Good thing I never loved your uncle Mac for his pecs,” she said.

“You’re missing my point,” I said with a smile. “I can’t help but feel like this fairy-tale nonsense that society beat into my brain when I was younger is partially responsible for my problems now.”

“A cartoon didn’t make Ben leave, Abby,” she reminded me. Just in case I needed a reminder.

“No, not that. I’m just realizing that I’m so quick to judge people, you know? It’s easy to find flaws in real live guys when you constantly compare them to the animated characters you watched when you were five.”