Page 80 of Canadian Boyfriend

“I’m sure they’d do a side salad for you,” my mother said.

Had she always been this bad? I supposed the answer was yes, but I hadn’t felt it so keenly because we didn’t usually have an audience.

I was embarrassed, but there was something else in there, too, something that felt a lot closer to… anger? Yeah. I was pissed. At my mother. For embarrassing me in front of Mike Martin and Olivia, but also for screwing me up. For making it so I was almost thirty years old and ordering a BLT was a triumph.

As I sat with my anger, I found I kind of enjoyed it, as unfamiliar as it was. Like that time Mike Martin and I had that argument and I’d felt a heady rush of power. So, not caring if it was petty, I leaned into that feeling, looked at my mother instead of the server, and said, “I will have the Tater Tots, thanks.” Though as soon as it was out of my mouth, I had some kind of adrenaline crash. I was shaky and, honestly, starting to panic—and I couldnotdo that here. My mom didn’t know about the panic attacks; I’d managed to hide them fromher after they started my last year of high school. I knew she’d be embarrassed. Genuinely confused as to why I couldn’t just get over it.

And more than that, I hadn’t had an attack for ages, and I didn’t want to give my mother the honor of breaking my streak.

Mike Martin coughed, drawing my attention, and when I made eye contact with him, he winked.

It was just a little wink that no one else saw, but it contained worlds, that wink.

It said he knew what a big freaking deal it was for me to take a stand against my mother. It said he understood, that he supported me.

It said he saw me.

I heaved a shaky breath. I was going to be OK.

And I was going to eat some Tater Tots, motherfuckers.

After lunch we went to the pageant. As usual, my mother drew some unkind conclusions before the show even started. I felt bad exposing Olivia to this constant, passive-aggressive parade of negativity, but she didn’t seem to notice, and once the show started, she was all wide eyes and exclamations. “She’s so pretty!” she’d whisper about Laura, or “I wonder if they’re going to use real horses!” My mother was the opposite, narrow-eyed and snippy.

Afterward, I turned into a chipper camp counselor shepherding us through the rest of our itinerary. We went to the cemetery and found some familiar names among the tombstones. We bought a tiny prairie dress for Ivan and Lauren’s daughter. I tried to keep my mom from talking to Olivia by keeping up my own steady stream of chatter. Seeing their opposite reactions tothe pageant had stirred up something protective in me. It also made me sad for myself. Not in a self-pitying way, more that I’d found a new well of compassion for the girl I’d been.

“Our last stop,” I announced, as the end was in sight, “the Ingalls’ homestead!” The visit went pretty well, but as we were coming off our covered-wagon ride, the talk turned to dinner. As soon as my mom started telling Olivia that since we’d had “indulgent” lunches we should “compensate” by “thinking carefully” about our dinner choices, I sprang into action. Mary-Margaret had helped me see how incredibly toxic this shit was, and over my dead body was any of it getting directed at Olivia.

They’d gotten a little ahead of Mike Martin and me—we’d been lagging as we discussed whether Pa’s obsession with moving was a sign of his optimism or a sign that he was in denial—but I’d been keeping one ear open. Mike Martin must not have been, because when I cut him off midsentence and said, “Oh no you don’t,” his eyes widened.

I jogged up to them, my adrenaline frothing. “Mother.” She turned, her eyes wide. She knew something was up, but she didn’t know what to do or say, because there was no precedent for this. No script. Which, on my end, was liberating. It meant I could say whatever I wanted. “There will be no ‘compensating.’ You will stop talking to her right now. I will not let you fill her head with that garbage.”

I had snapped. Except instead of it being like in the movies where someone “snaps” and starts shouting, I was awash in a preternatural calm. I was righteous in my certainty.

“It’s important to get started early with good habits,” said my mother. “I was just trying—”

“No. We will be eating a normal dinner, at a normal restaurant. Everyone will order what they want, and you will refrainfrom commenting. If you’re not able to do that, maybe it’s best if you head home now.”

“Well.” She paused. “Maybe itisbetter if we go now. We can stop somewhere on the way to eat.” Did her face soften a bit, or was that my imagination? “We can discuss our options in the car.”

“I’m not going to drive back with you.”

I sent myself back to that wink from lunch. Mike Martin would have my back. He would drop me off at a car rental place, no question. In fact, since he was physically behind me, I tried to tune into his presence, to feel him there as I geared up to push my way through the rest of this conversation. Because I was pretty sure Mom would have more to say.

“What do you mean you’re not driving back with me?”

There it was. OK, we were doing this. “I don’t want to spend four hours in a car with you. I don’t want to spend any time with you, actually, not the way things are.” She opened her mouth, blinked rapidly, and closed her mouth. Was I going to keep going?

Yep, I was. “You have not been good to me. You make me feel bad about myself. So I’m done spending time with you until that changes.”

She gasped but recovered quickly. My mother did not like to think of herself as the kind of person it was possible to shock into gasping. “I’m not sure what more you wanted from me, Aurora.”

“I wanted a mother. I wanted you to seeme, and not the ballerina you wanted me to be. And when I came back from New York, I wanted—”

“When you quit, you mean,” she interrupted, and it was hard to fathom that she could be so cruel,still.

“Yes. When I quit.” I paused for a moment to let my easy agreement sink in. I suspected she thought I saw it differently. I didn’t. I just didn’t see quitting the same way she did. For her it had been failure; for me it had been an act of self-preservation. I hadn’t thought of it in those terms at the time, but I did now, and I was grateful to my younger self for making such a hard choice. “And when I came home after I quit, I needed help. I needed kindness.”

“You have no idea what I’ve sacrificed for you. What I’ve given you.” Her voice was shaking, and normally I would have backed down at this point—long before this point, actually.

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