Page 18 of The Cruiser
“Actually…” I turn around to face her, arms crossed. “I have some bad news.”
She lowers her sunglasses, eyes raking over my wrap dress. “Oh, no. Are you pregnant?”
“No. But if I was, thanks for the support.”
“Darling,” she sighs. “I told you motherhood is overrated. The last thing you need is to lose your figure at thirty-three. The boobs your father bought you will always hold up, but the rest of it? You can kiss it all goodbye. You’ll never bounce back.”
The only thing I wished I’d inherited from mom was her cleavage. Instead, I got her size ten feet, aversion to cilantro, and high metabolism. At sixteen, I barely had bumps on my chest and couldn’t bear a life of inserts. Maybe it was shallow, but I felt deprived. Mom didn’t help, always flaunting what she had in my face. When she found out dad and I had secretly scheduled the surgery, she’d been livid. She liked me unhappy.
“Is that your way of blaming me for the five pounds you can never lose?”
Her cigarette butt sizzles, extinguished in the coffee mug. “This news of yours must be bad given how snippy you’re being. Everything okay at home?”
With that simple question, my throat closes in.
Do it fast. Like ripping off a band-aid.
“No, it’s not. Derek and I are splitting up.”
Mom stills. In the long, eerie gap, a squawking seagull passes overhead. “It’s him, right?” she asks. “He had an affair?”
“Yeah.”
She hurls the Vanity Fair halfway across the deck. “I knew it! I knew it all along. I told you that industry is drowning in loose morals,” she gloats. “So self-important. All these little films they make. Let me guess, some floozy actress?”
“Not exactly.”
“It’s not someone you know, is it?”
I squirm, suddenly interested in my espadrilles. Mom’s dim view of Hollywood is about to turn blacker than oil. “It’s someone he works with. A grip.” And because she has no idea what a grip is, she forces me to say the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say to her, and I’ve said plenty. “A guy who works on set.”
“What?” She whips off her sunglasses with reckless rage. “A man?” When I don’t deny it, her hand covers her mouth, like she might upchuck on the spot. “Sweet mother of Christ. I told you, you can never trust a Democrat.”
“I’ma Democrat.”
“You wouldn’t be if you hadn’t landed in his clutches. Oh, God. This is a disaster.” She starts to massage her temples. “Your father’s campaign is in the final stretch. This isn’t the time for our daughter’s husband to come out as a homosexual.”
“Jesus, mom. My marriage is over. Can we talk about that?”
“You have to keep this under wraps,” she says, furtively glancing around for no reason—both neighbors are foreign owners, never around. “Any whiff of a scandal, and these traitors fly it up the flagpole for the world to see. It’s a tight race this year.”
She’s off in her world, one where the catty, coffee shop whispers can’t ever be about her. My heart pounds so hard I’m afraid it might blow up. “I cannot believe this. You are incapable of being a mom for me. Not even just once.”
I storm into the kitchen, trapped as she trails after me, stiletto heels cracking like machine gun fire on the imported tiles. The kitchen island becomes our battlefield and we each claim a stake on either side of the Corian. Her blue-eyed Valkyrie to my dark-eyed upstart.
“How dare you say that?” she accuses. “Who managed all the details of your wedding?”
“You managed them because you didn’t want Derek’s family involved.”
“And it’s a good thing I did,” she huffs. “No daughter of mine was going to get married at an Elks Lodge in Minneapolis with a Costco wedding cake.” She levels a warning finger at me, her version of a sword. “And don’t tell me you wanted that, because I’ll know you’re lying.”
I’m clutching the countertop so hard, my fingers turn white. Derek was everything my mother hated. He was a free spirit in G-Star Raw jeans who whisked her only daughter away from the joys of social climbing, ladies who lunch, and the kind of moneyed housewife ennui that requires pills before bedtime. She’s right about my wedding, but damn if I’m giving this one to her. “Can’t ever be less than perfect, right, mom?”
She takes that in, and all the bile that comes with it. In her spotless, shiny Poggenpohl kitchen, in a house where her maid works forty hours a week to make it look unlived in, in a life where every decision is calculated for optimum presentation, her feral daughter not understanding the very basics of her existence deflates her. “What have I said your whole life, Vandana? Image is everything. I’m sorry, but Derek was never your equal. I’m surprised he lasted this long.”
“Gee, thanks. That makes me feel a whole lot better.”
“Darling,” she says, her voice a touch softer. “You’ve always been naive about men. Going after the bad boys, thinking they’ll have your back. Stryker never committed despite you practically throwing yourself at his feet. And Derek. We both know you started to date him just to piss me off.”
