Burn Our Bodies Down(53)

Mom’s face goes to stone. “Excuse me?”

I have to ask for it. “Can you wait?”

“Margot.” She takes a deep breath. I can see her trying to keep herself in check. It won’t work. “Margot, get in the car.”

“No.”

“Get in the fucking car, Margot.”

“I’m not going right now,” I say. I can’t help smiling. Usually it’s Mom going quiet and calm while I’m losing my grip. This feels better.

Mom shuts her eyes, and I hear her let out a disbelieving laugh, brittle and cold. “You have got to be kidding me,” she says, before looking at me again. “This is what I get? I come back for you, I come to Phalene for you, and I get—”

“What you get is me,” I say, every ounce of bitterness bleeding through. That calm I thought I had in my pocket disappears in an instant. “What a letdown. What a disappointment. I’m so sorry for you. Is there a support group you can go to? A hotline you can call for mothers with horrible daughters?”

Mom only looks at me for a moment and then purses her lips. “I’m not doing this,” she says. “That’s it. I’m done.”

“You’re done?” My voice rises. This whole thing has a hold on me so tight I could choke. “You started it.”

She doesn’t respond. Just goes to open the car door, and I feel myself start to disappear. She doesn’t get to do this. To break me open and then act like she doesn’t care, like I’m the only one feeling anything at all.

“Hey,” I say. “Hey, you might be done, but I’m not.”

She swings the door open. “If you want to stay with your grandmother, that’s fine.”

I lunge toward her, close the distance to grab the handle. “No, we’re not finished.”

“I said we are, Margot.”

“I said we’re not,” and I slam the door shut. My arm hurts from the force of it, but it doesn’t matter, because at least Mom is looking at me. And it feels good, because she looks afraid. Just like Katherine must have, that day in the grove.

“You don’t get to call me ungrateful,” I say, starting quiet. “Not when I’ve never asked you for a thing, not when I’ve taken care of myself for—”

“I didn’t say that,” Mom cuts in, with an exaggerated confusion. “Do not put words in my mouth.”

“It’s what you meant.” She came back for me and I’m taking it for granted—I know how to translate her when we fight.

But she’s shaking her head. “You can’t tell me what I meant.”

I struggle to take a deep breath. “But it sounded that way to me. Doesn’t that matter? Doesn’t it matter how you made me feel?” It’s like I’m throwing myself at a brick wall. Mom barely blinks. “I don’t just stop feeling bad because you didn’t mean it.”

I swallow the tears that are closing my throat. I can feel them pricking at my eyes, and I know they’re about to fall, but please, please, Margot, get a grip. Mom doesn’t care when I cry. It doesn’t soften her. It only makes things worse.

“It’s not my fault,” Mom says, “if you can’t hear what I’m saying without adding your own insecurities.”

“I know,” I say. “I know.” We always end up this way. Me crumbling to pieces. “But doesn’t it matter to you that you made me feel that way?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Answer me, Mom. Please.” She just keeps looking at me like she’s confused, and I can feel myself getting hysterical. My voice breaking, sobs starting to build up in my chest. “Doesn’t it matter? Doesn’t it matter to you?”

Nothing. Just quiet. Quiet, quiet, quiet, nothing coming out, and she’s not even here. She’s not even listening, and I can’t feel for both of us. I just can’t, and I scream, scream, “Answer me!” so loud it tears at my throat.

“Margot.”

It breaks over me. The world gone like glass, cold and clear. I turn.

Gram. She’s a few feet behind me, hands in her pockets. Relief, for a moment. That it’s over. And then indignation, because even now Gram’s not looking at me. No, she’s looking at Mom, a frown etched so deep into her forehead that I wonder if it’ll ever come out.

“If she wants to stay,” Gram says evenly, “you can’t make her leave, Jo.”

Mom suddenly looks about two inches tall. She looks like the girl in the field, scared and lost. “She’s my daughter,” she says.

“And you’re mine,” Gram answers. “I couldn’t make you stay. And you can’t make her leave.”

Mom looks back and forth between me and Gram. I can see everything now, every eddy of emotion across her features, like Gram is laying her bare.

“I’ll be in town,” she says at last. “Margot, I’ll wait in town, okay? You asked me to wait and I’ll wait.”

I won’t ever tell her what it does to me to hear that. How it makes my chest ache. How it makes me want to go with her after all.

“Okay, Josephine,” Gram says. “It’s time for you to go now.”

We stand there in the driveway and watch Mom get into the car. We watch her reverse out onto the highway, watch her ease toward town, slowly, like she’s hoping I’ll call her back. I don’t.