Page 37 of Best Woman
So I give in. “OK, yeah, fine.” I smile at the sales associate. “I wear an eleven.” Mom’s smile is victorious.
It doesn’t stop at the pumps. I let her buy me a pair of ballet flats I’ll never wear, a bra I can’t fill out, some perfume that has no hope of making it on the flight back to New York with me. I let myself be dragged out of Bloomingdale’s and around the mall, becoming more sullen with every new store we visit. I feel ten years old again, forced into a Sears changing room to try on a suit for my cousin’s bat mitzvah. When I ask if we can stop at the bookstore so I can grab something to read on the flight home, she insists we don’t have time, then steers us into Sephora where we spend thirty minutes finding me the perfect shade of concealer. I think it makes me look jaundiced, but whatever, she’s paying.
“It’s just for touch-ups, of course,” she says. “I booked someone to come do our hair and makeup tomorrow.”
“Oh.” I’m pleasantly surprised. “That’s nice.”
“Hopefully she can do something aboutthis,” she says,tugging at the hasty bun I’d managed to wrangle my hair into that morning, ruffling my messy bangs. Aaaaand we’re back.
I do manage to sneak in a few things I want, like a cherry red lip gloss that I hope will look sophisticated with my cocktail dress tonight—and I get a little thrill when I imagine it smeared on Kim’s mouth or leaving a sticky trail up her thighs. Mom spends ages plucking new variations of the same products she already owns off the shelves, talking to every employee she sees, and asking my opinion only to immediately disagree with it.
Finally, we’re done, and all I want to do is go home and crash for another few hours, maybe spend some time daydreaming about what might happen with Kim tonight. But Mom decrees that we’re getting lunch, and so I find myself once again wedged into a booth at a mall chain restaurant that is just barely a nicer version of the Cheesecake Factory.
“I’m starving,” Mom says as she peruses the menu. “But I didn’t eat breakfast.”
“You don’t need to justify being hungry.” Thanks to Grandma, who spent a year of my childhood eating rice pudding for every meal, Mom has always had a complicated relationship with food. “You can just, you know,be hungry.”
“I know that,” she says, acid in her voice, brows lifted high at the criticism. She can dish it out but has never been able to take it. This is the woman who still ends our arguments by insisting, “I’m right because I’m your mother.” I sigh, and when the waiter comes to take our order, I try to ignore the look in her eyes when I ask for a cheeseburger.
As we wait for our food, I look out the windows next to our booth and let my mind drift, staring at the tall palm trees ubiquitous to Floridian landscaping swaying gently in the breeze. Eventhough it’s a weekday, the mall is packed, little knots of shoppers hurrying through the parking lot to reach the air-conditioning and escape the muggy heat. A mother and daughter walk past the window, talking animatedly with their shoulders brushing, hair swinging in identical ponytails.
Would days like this be easier if I’d had them growing up? Mother-daughter shopping trips where I was carefully instructed in the ways of womanhood, welcome to it as my birthright rather than something I’d claimed and conquered for myself?I always wanted a daughter…
Or would our relationship be just as thorny and complicated, just as comfortable and combative as it is now? Would raising a girl have softened my mother in some fundamental way, made her feel like she had an ally in a house full of boys?
I wish we had the kind of relationship where I could ask these questions and, more important, get honest answers.
My phone buzzes with a text from Everett, and I feel a shock of panic realizing I haven’t checked any of his emails for days. I’m about to open it when Mom says my name, with an emphasis that makes me realize it isn’t the first time.
“Sorry, what?”
“Have you written your speech yet?”
“Kind of.” I snag a breadstick from the basket between us, snapping it in half and chewing with my mouth open just to annoy her. “It’s a work in progress.”
“The wedding istomorrow,Julia. You’re always leaving everything to the last minute.”
“Isyourspeech ready?” I ask.
“I’m going to speak from the heart,” she says, tossing golden hair over one shoulder. I guess one of us should.
My mom looksso beautiful on the day of her wedding to Randy. Her hair is huge and curly, and her dress as poofy as the Disney princesses I won’t admit I still love. Even as a child, I understand that the wedding has happened rather fast. Dad only moved out two years ago, but Mom had been sad for so long.
We get our cheeks pinched all day by relatives we barely know, telling us how handsome we look in our little tuxedos. We carry the rings down the aisle, and part of me likes the attention. The other part of me is so jealous of my cousin Alyssa and her sparkly pink dress as she scatters rose petals down the aisle.
Someone gives me my first sip of champagne, and my head is all fuzzy. My bow tie is tight enough to feel like it’s choking me, and the music is so loud. There are some other children here, cousins and second cousins and Mom’s friends’ kids, but I’m not in the mood to play with any of them. Aiden is, though,and despite our promise to stick together tonight I haven’t seen him in hours. “Sweetheart,” my mom coos as she drops into the chair next to me, her dress knocking a glass of water off the table. “Are you having a good time?”
“Yeah,” I lie. “Are you?”
She smiles, the kind of real smile I never saw when Dad still lived with us. “So happy, baby. This is the happiest day of my life.” She catches herself, giggles a bit. “Except for the days you and Aiden were born, of course.”
“Happier than the day you married Dad?”
“Different,” she says. Throughout the divorce and the months of family counseling, Mom always tried to be honest, to talk to Aiden and me like adults. “It’s different, baby. But it was a wonderful day, and I will always love your father because he gave me you.” This has been a constant refrain since they sat Aiden and me down two years ago and told us Dad was going to live somewhere new, one Mom has maintained while Dad has never said it again.
“I love you, Mommy.” It’s not something I call her anymore, feeling far too old at eleven to call my mother something so childish. But I like the way it softens her, makes her pull me into the cloud of her skirts and her sweet gardenia scent.
“I love you too, baby. You’ll always be my first, my perfect little boy.”
