The Comeback(3)

When we get to her car, she hands over the keys, even though I can’t actually recall ever having driven my mother anywhere in my life. I pull out of the driveway before switching on the radio, which she immediately turns down.

I glance over at her and she frowns.

“Watch the road, Grace, and stop rushing. Remember, one stop sign at a time. Who taught you how to drive?”

I try to remember who did teach me to drive, but it’s lost somewhere in the blur of faces and locations that make up the latter part of my teen years. It wasn’t her or my dad, is the point she’s trying to make. I slow down extra early for the stop sign, to make her happy.

“So, next week it will be a year you’ve been staying with us.” My mother rifles in her bag for something as she talks.

“So it will be,” I say, rolling through another stop sign.

“And obviously your sister will be back in a couple of weeks for Thanksgiving break.”

“I’m aware of that too,” I say, even though I hadn’t remembered. My sister, Esme, returns home from her boarding school in Northern California four times a year, and we are all forced to spend the duration of her stay pretending to be marginally higher functioning than we are, with nightly trips to various chain restaurants, where slices of anodyne predictability are served up alongside the pizza. Everything we say has to be bright and constructive, and I have to try not to feel envious of the way my mother disguises her indifference to us all only for Esme’s benefit, her interest fading again the minute my sister’s left.

“So, any danger of you having figured your life out by then?”

“I’m taking a break, Mom,” I say. “Who would pick up your HRT if I wasn’t here? Esme can’t drive.”

My mom raises her eyebrows at my tone and I eventually have to turn away. I wonder if this was her big idea, to lure me into a confined space with her so that she can interrogate me about my future.

“I thought you’d like having me at home.”

“This hasn’t got anything to do with us,” she says. “It never has.”

I can’t say anything now because she has played her best hand early: I was the one who left them.

“You know it’s actually not healthy being back at home when you’re grown up. It’s called arrested development. Cynthia told me about it.”

“Mrs. Porter told you about arrested development?” This surprises me, mainly because I’d always assumed this particular neighbor was borderline senile. She wears a thick bathrobe covered in fluffy yellow ducks when she waters the plants lining her drive. “You know some of the Kardashians still live at home. At least I left and then I came back.”

“That’s not even slightly true. Kim and Kanye moved in with Kris while they were redoing their house, but even the younger girls don’t live there anymore. Kylie bought a house in Calabasas and flipped it for three million. Plus, she’s a mother now.”

“This is really sad, Mom. You know too much about them. You shouldn’t even know where Calabasas is.”

“Turn left here,” my mom says, ignoring me.

I take a left, promising myself that I can turn left again in three blocks. Thank god for the grid system. I slow down to let an old woman with a walker cross the road. My mom makes an impatient noise and I try not to smile.

“Grace, you have a house in Venice and you made 3.2 million dollars on your last movie. You can’t actually be telling me that you’re happy here.”

“How do you know that?”

“Google,” she says.

“Great, well there’s taxes and commission on that, you know,” I say, rubbing my eyes. “And you moved from London to a house the color of Pepto Bismol in Anaheim, but you’re telling me that you’re happy here.”

“We’re older than you. Happiness is no longer relevant,” she shoots back, and I wish she hadn’t because the phrase settles somewhere deep inside me. I open the window, and for once it’s cold enough in Southern California that I can see my own breath.

“Okay, little miss sunshine. Let’s try this. Tell me one time you’ve been happy since you’ve been back. And I’m talking genuinely happy. If you can do that, and I believe you, then I’ll leave you alone.”

I pull up at a traffic light and turn to look at her. My mom’s hair is still red, but it’s finer now and dusted with silver at the roots. Her beauty has become slightly distorted with age, as if her features are now too big for her face.

“I was happy last week when we went to Costco and they had the giant version of that hot sauce we both love.”

My mother looks at me like I’m insane, and I shrug.

“Can you pull in here?” my mom asks, pointing to the parking lot of a health-food store I’ve never been in, and after a moment I oblige.

“I’ll be two minutes,” she says, and I watch as she walks into the store. While she’s inside, I stare at the window display, where the same photo is repeated at least twelve times in various sizes. The photo shows a man holding an iron dumbbell, his neck swollen with engorged veins and his body angled into a deep squat. They probably could have chosen a different position.

My mom opens the car door and slides back into the passenger seat.

“They don’t have my pills here either,” she says.