Mothered (64)

“Mm. Scrumptious!”

“It is, isn’t it,” Jackie agreed, again with that innocent, delighted grin. “And there’s enough for days.”

Grace hadn’t had many Girls’ Nights (unless Miguel counted), and maybe her mother hadn’t either. Is this what I would’ve had with Hope? But as soon as she thought it she knew the answer was no. She and Hope had never been equals. Grace had been at her beck and call; Adult Hope would have dominated Adult Grace, just as it had been in their youth. Jackie was bossy back then, too, but hadn’t she also been in Hope’s service? Grace looked at her mother’s profile. There she was—Grace—in the contours of her mother’s nose, chin.

Growing up, Grace had felt invisible, overshadowed by Hope’s unique charisma. Now she understood how invisible Jackie had probably felt too. Their problem, after all, might not be one of too many differences but too many similarities.

Could they work with that? Use their common ground to navigate toward an enduring peace? When she’d awakened that morning, Grace would’ve insisted the answer was no. But now she felt the embryonic stirrings of hope.





39


For the first time in months, she started the day without the feeling of being at war with something. Well, except for a slight headache. Coco greeted her with a chirpy meow and followed her to the bathroom. When Grace got out of the shower, the cat was sitting on the closed toilet lid, a feline ballerina licking one extended leg. It made Grace laugh, thinking how the girls in the house were getting in sync.

The morning was heating up fast, and as Grace went downstairs she was grateful that Jackie had thought to turn on the dining room air conditioner early enough that it was already cool. Grace paused in front of it for a second, letting the cold air billow the long fabric of her maxi dress.

“Good morning,” she said to Jackie, en route to starting a pot of coffee.

“Someone’s in a merry mood.” Her mother sounded surly. Jackie chopped fruit next to the sink, seemingly intent on keeping her back to Grace.

“Didn’t you sleep well?” Grace poured water into the coffee maker.

Jackie shot her a scowl. “Why are you all dressed up? It’s not like we can go anywhere.”

“I like to wear flowy dresses when it’s hot out.” She fanned the material against her legs. “Keeps me cool.”

For the sake of the previous day’s progress, Grace opted to overlook her mother’s sour, skeptical expression. She empathized with how a bad night’s sleep could tarnish a person’s ability to function. While the coffee maker did its magic, Grace got out a microwaveable plate. They’d gotten lucky that it hadn’t been a scorcher the previous day, or they might not have wanted the oven on for hours. Grace faintly remembered a dream about eating more lasagna, and it had been a driving factor in getting her promptly out of bed, showered, and dressed.

“I’ll just have a little piece for breakfast,” she said, half to herself, as she opened the refrigerator. “And lunch. And dinner.”

She’d expected to see the big stoneware dish hogging up the middle shelf, but it wasn’t there. Just as she’d searched for the cat in impossible places, she pushed aside the containers of berries, checked the top shelf and the bottom shelf, looked in and around the leafy greens as if the lasagna were merely lost in a refrigerated forest. It wasn’t visible through the produce drawer. It couldn’t fit on the door.

Grace snapped her fingers, reasonably sure that her mother had already cut the casserole into meal-size portions and stored them in the freezer. The fog of icy air felt lovely . . . but there were no Pyrex containers of lasagna in the freezer, just partial loaves of old bread and the less-desirable remnants of her too-lazy-to-cook eating habits.

“Where’s the lasagna?” she asked her mother.

Jackie spun around from the dishes she was washing. “The what?”

“The lasagna—big cheesy masterpiece, meals-for-days . . .” Jackie gazed at her, uncomprehending. “The amazing sauce you taught me to make? The pasta?”

Oh fuck. A new war was underway—a scrimmage of staring, a battle to see who would crumble in doubt.

“Mom, please don’t fuck around. Yesterday was such a good day, we made so much progress—”

“Yesterday you threatened to kill me.”

“What?”

“Over that damn cat.”

“That wasn’t yesterday. Mom, we spent the day cooking, and watching a movie, and we apologized for all of that.”

Her mother stared at her long and hard. Finally, she dried her hands and turned to Grace, her body stripped of its taut combat readiness. Jackie sort of melted against the counter, like she needed something to hold her up.

“What’s wrong with you?” Jackie asked with solemn wonder.

Grace knew what was happening: her mother was trying to convince her, by exaggerating her maternal concern, that the previous day hadn’t happened—and that Grace was nuts. Wow, Jackie was a sublime actor, but the attempted manipulation was unforgivable. This was what Grace had been expecting, in some form, when her mother first presented those pancakes.

“Are you a sociopath?” Grace asked, deadpan.

“Are you?”

“Did you put it in the garbage?” Grace whipped open the cabinet door beneath the sink, forcing her mother to scoot out of the way.