Mother

“Is this your fourth or fifth divorce?” I ask. “I can’t remember.”

You won’t believe what happened at my dream job interview! If Mom was a different kind of mother, I might’ve led with that excited announcement.

I would tell her about the corner office, the worldwide travel, the amazing salary … everything.

I open my mouth, but she gets in the first sentence.

“He’s fucking another woman.” She blows out cherry-scented water vapor from her e-cigarette. The chemical scent smelling faintly sweet fills up my nostrils.

I hate it.

Mom taps her acrylic nails against her empty wine glass. “He’s such a bastard.”

The outdoor cafe where we’re having lunch pretends to be a garden. It also pretends to be French. Mother always insists on eating “someplace decent.”

The waiter brings our salads, prompting Mother to put down her vape. The young man dressed in a crisp white shirt and pressed black pants pours wine into her empty glass.

“Why is he so cruel? He is, isn’t he, Madison?”

“Is this your fourth or fifth divorce?” I ask. “I can’t remember.”

Mother’s jaw drops as her fork clatters to the table. “Maddie!”

I didn’t want to play the adoring and understanding daughter. But Mother’s green eyes cloud with hurt and her lower lip trembles. She drains half her wine and reaches for the vape on the table.

“I’m sorry.” Not really. I poke at my salad with my fork so I don’t have to look at her. Mother doesn’t draw on her vape. Instead she finishes the wine and stares into glass as if the answers to her life were etched in it.

“You never take my side. Where’s my support? I’m your mother, for God’s sake.”

And I am your daughter.

Mom takes the I-am-queen-of-my-world-and-yours approach to life. The three children she brought into the world are extensions of her. Not their own people. With their own lives. Lives that do not revolve around her.

I’ve always felt like an afterthought — a toy Mother would only play with when she couldn’t find anything else to do.

I don’t feel like coddling her today, so I say nothing.

“Where the hell is the waiter? I need more wine.”

“You’ve had three already.”

“You sound like him.”

I know better than to say anything else about her drinking. Or her vaping. Or those pill bottles rattling around in her purse.

If I could paint my mother or put her inside a poem, the title would be Wasted Potential. Everything she could have been — the things she could still accomplish — are always lost in her choices.

She’d rather have a man or a drink or a pill than to find herself. She hides from happiness like a little child ducking under the bed covers to hide from the boogie man.

She doesn’t like contentment. It scares her. God forbid she discover her own soul.

The waiter doesn’t appear. Mother opens her purse and takes out a prescription bottle. She pops two little white pills — swallows them without water, a real pro. I can’t help but ask, “What are those?”

“For my nerves, Maddie. You know I have anxiety.”

Don’t we all. I put down my fork. I don’t want the damned salad anyway. Mother hasn’t touched her food, either. She opts for the vape.

When I was a teenager and she still smoked cigarettes, I told her that I would probably die from secondhand smoke. She told me to shut up and leave her one vice.

That was before she started drinking again.

And pill popping.

I don’t want to be here anymore.

My dream job announcement lodges in my throat like a bite of stuck food. I swallow hard. “Mom — ”

“Thank God!” Mother exclaims as the waiter appears. He fills her wine glass and Mother tells him to leave the bottle.

I can’t wait anymore. I have to tell her. “I’m moving to Seattle.”

Mother sloshes the Cabernet Sauvignon she’s pouring. A dark red stain spreads across the white tablecloth, but she doesn’t bother to dab at it. Instead she puts the wine bottle on the table and stares at me.

“Why?”

“I got my dream job, Mom. The one I’ve always wanted — ”

“What about me?” Her mouth twists, revealing the wrinkles that Botox can’t fix. “I bet your sister knew, didn’t she? You and Grace were always close. And Tom. You always tell your brother everything, too. None of you kids ever appreciated me.”

Oh God. Not this again.

“You’ll be so far away,” continued Mom. “Tom and Grace … they aren’t like you, Maddie. They’re mean.”

“They’re — we’re worried about you.”

“What for? There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“Right, Mom. Everything’s great. You’re getting another divorce, you drink yourself into blackouts, and your body is so pumped with drugs, your corpse will be a chemist’s wet dream.”

Mother’s face reveals confused hurt. That’s her go-to expression when anyone challenges her idealized sense of self.

My anger subsides, leaving weary acceptance in its wake.

Her gaze shifts from me to the half-empty bottle. She studies it as if she’s debating whether to be polite and pour its contents into the glass or if she should just chuck etiquette and guzzle it all.

“Don’t you love me, Maddie?” she asks.

A sigh billows out of me, disturbing the drooping lettuce on my plate. “Of course.”

“Then why are you leaving me?” Tears glitter in her eyes. They won’t fall, those tears. She knows how to make her gaze shine with diamond sorrow. Then, when she’s assured her target feels guilty, her eyes will dry without so much as smudging her mascara.

She doesn’t see me or my siblings all that much. In fact, I’m the only one who agrees to what we call these occasional lunches with our birth giver: Swallow and Wallow.

My siblings have created their boundaries. It’s time for me to create mine. “I’ll visit,” I lie. “You won’t even know I’m gone.”

She nods. “I suppose I can visit you, too. LA isn’t that far from Seattle.”

It’s a lifetime away. A second chance away. A geographical sanctuary away.

She will never visit.

And I will not miss her.

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