Mothered (13)

“What the actual fuck,” Grace mumbled. Louder, to her mother, she said, “Did you rearrange my cabinets?”

She hoped the tone said, “How dare you rearrange my cabinets! You’ve done a bad, bad thing.”

“Yes, indeed, I rearranged your cabinets.” Her mother sounded happy about it, as if she’d done a good, good thing.

“Why? Where are my glasses?”

Jackie left the stove long enough to pop open a cupboard and reveal their new location. It came with a game show gesture, Ta-da! Grace snatched a glass, filled it with water from the pitcher in the fridge. Her movements, brusque and annoyed, should have been easy to interpret. Yet her mother continued beaming with a sense of accomplishment.

“It made more sense to have all of the dishware on that side of the kitchen”—Jackie pointed toward the sink—“and all of the food stuff on this side of the kitchen, closer to the stove and refrigerator.”

If it had been someone else’s kitchen, Grace might have agreed that it was a sensible arrangement. The puttanesca sauce bubbled like boiling blood. Jackie turned it down and put a lid on the pan. Grace couldn’t figure out what to do. Her instinct was to scream, but she’d worked on smothering her temper over the years, mindful of how scary her mother had once been. It hadn’t bothered Hope—maybe the yelling had never been directed at her—but Grace had experienced her mother’s raised voice as a weapon, sharp and painful, lacerating her spongy insides. In an effort to not be similarly scary, she’d practiced denying her voice the volume of anger.

And what of Jackie’s complete obliviousness to the entire situation?

“Mom.”

“Yes, hon?” She got three plates out of the cabinet.

Grace rolled her eyes. Who was the hon for? Was that what she’d called Robert or maybe the helpful pothead?

“Mom!” Louder but not too angry. (Could she call her Jackie to her face now given their years apart and advancing ages?) Her mother turned to her, innocent eyed. Fake innocence? This whole thing was a lie, a charade. Jackie knew exactly what the problem was here, yet she smiled through the salt in the wound of forcing Grace to spell it out.

“If we’re going to live together,” Grace said, summoning her last reserve of patience, “cohabitate peacefully, we have to respect each other’s boundaries. Remember? We talked about that.”

Jackie blinked, uncomprehending. Was this part of the torture? Acting like she’d lost the capacity to function in any normally accepted way?

“I’m saying you can’t just change my home without asking me.”

“Oh. Oh.” It was like watching a festive beach toy deflate. In the dream her mother had been oversize, and now Grace watched her shrivel. “I thought I was helping. I’m sorry.”

And just like that, Grace’s bitterness melted into a sloshy sort of guilt. She pressed her thumb into her temple; she rarely got headaches, but she felt one coming on. Maybe her blood pressure was the problem, not her temperature.

“Okay, we’re just . . . still getting used to new ways of . . . Thank you for making supper—I’m sure Miguel will really appreciate it. I’ll clean up the dining room a bit and set the table.”

“Okay, hon.”

Jackie turned back to her cooking. Grace descended to the basement landing, where she kept an assortment of bulky cleaning products, and slunk off to the dining room to clean up her mess.





9


Grace started to feel like her old self—her prepandemic self—the instant Miguel crossed the threshold. He smelled as expensive as always, a mixture of hair products and aftershave, and wore ass-hugging jeans and a black T-shirt—his work “uniform.” Today, instead of a few stray pieces of human hair, some of Coco’s orange fur clung to his shirt. It made her smile; he loved that damn cat so much, even when he complained about constantly wearing or inhaling her long orange fur. She was glad some things never changed.

“Look at you, lovey!” He went in for a hug, squeezing with his elbows, a bottle of wine in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other. “Oops, I’m sorry, two seconds in and I’ve broken the social distancing rule.”

“It’s fine, oh my God I’m so glad to see you—in person!”

They gushed and giggled as Grace held the flowers to her chest with schoolgirl delight. “Come in come in come in.”

Just as he’d done in her various apartments, he left his shoes under the little table by the door. “I’ve got a mask in my pocket, if you’re worried about where I’ve been all day.”

“No worries, I have the windows open, good ventilation.”

“Look at this place,” he said, poking his head into the living room. “So homey. Can’t believe I haven’t been here since you were house hunting!”

“Social isolation is the worst,” said Grace. In a parallel universe, she and Miguel would have gone to Target and IKEA together to shop for new decor. Instead, she’d only been able to shop online and show off her design additions via FaceTime.

With his back to the television, Miguel admired the paintings hanging above the sofa. “Very nice taste in art, my compliments to the artist.”

“I have more rooms now, which means more wall space. Hint, hint.” She opened her arms reverently toward the wondrous walls.