Page 18 of Kiss Me Now
“Is your life materially improved by knowing when you need to pick a tomato?” Her tone was growing ever-so-slightly sharp.
“Yes,” I answered, my voice firm. It was the only way to deal with the Queen of Boundary-Crossing. “But garden aside, I have so much to do in my house.”
“I still can’t believe my uncle left you that old thing.”
I realized my tactical error at once. I’d get a long lecture about how it was just like Fred to have saddled me with such an impractical inheritance andwhydidn’t I simply sell it, and it would go on from there. For a while. A long, annoying while. I headed her off.
“I know. I can’t believe how lucky I am. The bones of this place are so good. You’ll be surprised when you see how much the right paint and some elbow grease can do.”
“It’s a poor use of your time,” she complained. “There are people for that, same as there are to work in gardens. Hire someone else to do it and come home while your house gets painted. It’ll be so much nicer than sitting in the noise and fumes.”
It wouldn’t be nicer. It would be full of more nagging, unsanctioned setups, and pressure to leave Creekville behind.
But it wouldn’t get her anywhere. As a young woman, I hadn’t seen through the life my parents lived. Not that either of my parents were bad people. They weren’t. But my mom was so caught up in staying in the social mix that she’d lost herself. Or maybe she’d become nothing more than a reflection of the people she spent all her time around.
In hindsight, I could see how everything from the neighborhood where we’d lived to the volunteer activities my mother urged me toward had all been part of a carefully planned campaign to secure her place in the McLean social hierarchy. I hadn’t thought much about being friends with the children of some of the nation’s most important political figures. Like, it just seemed normal. I’d eaten meals in the homes of senators, had sleepovers with the kids of generals, worked on science projects and campaign posters for class offices at the dining tables of congresspeople.
Only after my disastrous time in Senator Rink’s office did I look at it all differently. How many of my friends’ parents had been liars, cheats, and predators, putting on a politically perfect face for the world while privately engaging in the most heinous conduct? I was sure there was more than one of my parents’ friends who counted on their power to not only protect them but to keep enabling behavior they wanted kept in the dark.
All I knew was that the further I got from DC, the less I trusted the people who craved its air, and that meant I wasn’t going back to McLean a second before obligation required of me.
Was thirty too old to be this cynical?
“So you’ll hire painters and come home?” my mom prompted.
“No, I’m definitely staying here,” I replied. “Think of this as a win for your parenting. You taught me to work hard with my mind, and now I’m learning to work hard with my body. That work ethic is a credit to you. Good job, Mom.”
She made a sound that I would have taken as a snort if Linda Spencer were prone to such an inelegant noise, which she most definitely wasn’t. “I just don’t understand why you want to spend all your time in that dusty, smelly old lumber pile.”
“Let me let you go,” I said. There was no point in explaining it all again. “I need to get dinner ready and go make more dust.”
“But Brooke—”
“Bye, Mom. Love you!”
I ended the call and decided that I’d lost the energy to tackle pasta from scratch. Calls with my mom had that effect on me. I wished I could make her understand how McLean felt like a trap after experiencing the simplicity of Creekville. But how did I politely say, “I wouldn’t trade the smell of paint and sawdust for the reek of capital corruption for all the eligible bachelors in the world”?
One did not say such things, politely or otherwise. One simply took one’s money and ran away from it as fast and as far as possible without looking back, no matter how much one’s mother begged.
