Room-maid(17)

A soft bell rang, followed by the sound of heels clacking loudly against the floor outside the salon. Which meant my mother was nearly here. I gulped down a large amount of whiskey, letting it burn my throat as I grimaced.

“The icewoman cometh,” Violet muttered loud enough for all of us to hear. Nobody responded.

A few seconds later, my parents made their grand entrance. My father had thick, salt-and-pepper hair, thanks to some expensive hair plugs. He was in a suit with a blue tie and made his way over to Gilbert’s side, presumably to talk business. Although I wondered how something so one sided would actually go.

If Frederica’s signature color was red, my mother’s was pink. She wore a tight baby-pink sheath that she offset with a large diamond necklace and matching earrings. Her icy-blonde hair was in her signature updo. I couldn’t recall ever seeing her with her hair down.

She headed straight for me and I squared my shoulders, lifting my chin. I could do this.

“Madison.”

Uh-oh. I wasn’t going to even get the barest veneer of civility? “Nice to see you, Mother.” Or, more accurately, it was nice to see the latest version of her face.

I knew I shouldn’t judge her. I had either inherited or absorbed her vanity, despite trying to not be so shallow. I’d probably wind up getting work done on my face when I was her age, too. Well, I would if I could afford it, which was looking very questionable.

“Do you know what I had to do today?” she demanded, and I drew in a large breath, discarding all my initial responses.

Overreact to a perceived slight?

Make a list of all the ways I’ve failed and disappointed you?

Be offended when someone failed to recognize you and how important you are?

Start a new diet?

I settled on, “What?” That seemed safe-ish.

My father joined us. “What did I miss?”

That was followed by an awkward silence—my mother annoyed at being interrupted, me not knowing what to say next, him not having anything else to add to the discussion beyond that question. As far back as I could remember, I’d never had an actual conversation with my father. Nothing beyond him asking me a single question. I could never understand how a man who could so easily schmooze the media and wealthy donors was so bad at interacting with his own family.

Coughlin then appeared in the doorway to announce that dinner was served. I wanted to kiss him again for saving me from temporarily having to find out what my mother had to do that day.

Everybody went into the dining room two by two with me acting like the caboose, bringing up the rear solo.

I pulled my own chair out and scooted it back in as two servers brought out the first course. I smoothed my linen napkin onto my lap before anyone could do it for me. My mother’s eyes were on me, glaring.

My father was telling a tale of a particularly grueling round of golf he’d played that day and in the middle of it my mother interrupted him to say, “You were playing with Randall Ducksworth? I was at lunch with his wife Laura today. We were at Le Chateau and then to our surprise we found the Horvath sisters and . . .”

She continued talking but I tuned her out. My mother hated when the spotlight was off her for even a second and would often use someone else’s story to turn it into something about her. During my twenty-first birthday celebration a couple of years ago, I’d decided to do a shot every time my mom made the conversation about her, but five minutes into it I had to stop because I was going to wind up in the hospital with an exploded liver.

And instead of my father being upset about getting cut off, he just sat there and calmly ate his soup. While my mother had never had a formal diagnosis (and never would, as she was never wrong for any reason ever), I’d come to suspect she did suffer from a narcissistic personality disorder. People liked to throw around that term a lot, but I was pretty sure she actually had it. I had read multiple diagnostic lists where the instructions would say something like a person is a narcissist if they meet six of these twelve requirements, and my mom would meet all twelve. Everything in our lives was about her, her feelings and wants; nobody else mattered. My parents had fought for my entire childhood. They had come close to divorce on several occasions. But in the end my father gave in and had learned to get along by going along. For the sake of their relationship, he deferred to my mom on everything. He was always on her side, no matter how wrong she might have been.

She’d also been careful in grooming my two older sisters. If she told them to jump, they would always ask how high and what else she wanted them to do right after. I was the only one who had ever defied her.

It had always seemed odd to me that the world regarded my father as a powerful and successful businessman and politician, because he had no control over his personal life. He always did whatever she wanted. She ruled our home with an iron fist.

To make sure that her children and grandchildren stayed in line, she had constructed a will with multiple conditions concerning levels of success and what behaviors were appropriate and not appropriate. Like we had to have a college degree to inherit, and my parents would contact their attorneys on a yearly basis to assess whether or not we had a “good” relationship. Church attendance and volunteering hours were mandatory. Inheriting would happen only if we met every single one of their conditions. It struck me as immeasurably sad that my mother was so desperate to control us that she planned on doing it from beyond the grave.