Page 3 of Mom Com

She stares at me for a moment and glances at my antlered car, probably registering the fact that it’s the same one I was driving as a teen. She waves her hand through the air. “For a scratch? Nah. I’ll just get it buffed out.”

My intense relief turns to embarrassment. I hate that I can’t insist on taking care of it. “That’s so kind. Can I make it up to you in some way? Maybe with an obscene quantity of apology éclairs?”

“They’re really good,” Spence adds. “Like delicious.”

“I bet they are, and I totally want to try them.But,” she says, her red lips parting in a smile, “I was actually just thinking about my family’s fundraiser tomorrow night. While it’s a good cause and all, it’s going to be about as fun as watching paint dry. Why don’t you come with me, Maddi, and we’ll call it even. You’ll be saving me from death by boredom.”

My heartbeat falters like a cartoon character that can’t find its footing. The Buenaventura Annual Holiday Fundraiser—a lavish event akin to a high school reunion for all its posturing and bragging, and one that likely includes her brother. Selling my kidney on the black market is suddenly sounding like a preferable alternative. But in the face of her generosity, I’d hate to disappoint her. Not to mention that even though I haven’t seen her in forever, she still feels like surrogate family.

“Sure,” I manage. “I think I can swing that.”

We say our goodbyes and Spence and I get back in the car, my stomach deeply unsettled by the plans I just made for Saturday night. This town isn’t shy about being nosy, and I can’t imagine for a second that the fundraiser guests are going to hold back their judgment just because it’s been ten years. In fact, they’ll probably be that much more insistent because they had to wait so long to put in their opinion.

I drive out of the square, leaving behind the bakery and the painful nostalgia. Two weeks, I tell myself. Two weeks until we can drive home to California.

CHAPTER2

Chocolate Give Me Bourbon Cake—

extra bourbon for all the reasons

My car rolls to a stop in the driveway of my parents’ house—a narrow two-story Victorian painted white with denim blue trim and a line of shaped shrubberies running along the side. Even though the property is small, everything on it is neat and tidy just like my parents, not a stray leaf on the lawn or a discolored shingle on the gray roof. I wince. Mymom’shouse, I correct myself. Even though it’s been almost a year, I still think of them as a unit. Charles and Eleanor, despite being distinct opposites—him a quiet baker’s son from the country, her a socialite from a well-to-do Boston family—they found commonality in the small things, like their love of baked ziti and their impossible expectations for their daughter.

I hesitate, falling back in my seat and exhaling, resistance building inside of me. But Spence is out of the car in a half second, bouncing in the driveway and yanking his duffel bag out of the trunk. “We’re here! Whoohoo!”

I desperately wish I could borrow his enthusiasm, and trade in my expectations of tension and inevitable disappointment for something less painful. But even in the best of times when I was a star student, my mother and I didn’t have an easy relationship.

Spence opens my door. “Mom,” he says like I’m holding up the fun.

For a split second, I consider pulling him onto my lap and throwing the car in reverse with a Harley Quinn celebratory getaway cackle. But instead, I find myself taking my coat and purse off the passenger seat and stepping into the chilled salty air that carries the scent of the ocean even in winter.

Spence yanks my cupcake-print suitcase out of the trunk with a plunk and drags both it and his duffel toward the door. I pluck it from his grasp, and he skips up the steps, pressing the doorbell two times fast. Unlike Jake’s sparse communication, my parents have called every Saturday religiously these past few years. I’d spend about thirty seconds on the phone saying some version ofHow’s the weather?and then Spence would take over. And while I’m glad that he has a relationship with my parents—Goddammit, I correct myself again,with my mom—that’s enriching, I share no such bond.

Before I can steel myself for the inevitable, the door swings open, revealing my mother in a burgundy knee-length skirt suit, hair blown into fluffy waves around her rose-tinted ivory cheeks, a single strand of pearls around her neck—a debutante out of place in her middle-class backdrop like a crystal glass on an otherwise informal table.

Her eyes flit from Spence to me. “You’re not wearing your coats,” she says with a frown. “It’s absolutely freezing.”

I consider explaining that the proper-lady etiquette she attempted to instill in me didn’t stick, but I don’t get a chance because Spence is already inside and hugging her.

“Grandma, did you see the lights in town? They’reeverywhere. And—” he stops short near the door of the living room. “Is that your tree? It’s GIANT.”

My mother smiles, satisfied by his reaction to her tree, impeccably decorated in red and white—all non-matching sentimental ornaments stashed away inside the branches where they can’t muddy her aesthetic. It’s not actually giant, but it appears that way because the living room is small and the thing pushes up to the ceiling and out like a Hershey’s Kiss, exemplifying my mother’s best skill—making her very average means appear more.

I close the front door behind me, hanging up my coat in the foyer closet and kicking off my boots while she shows Spence the stack of presents intended for him. I join them in the living room, and she looks from my cupcake suitcase to my jingle bell socks, her eyebrows knitting together. I can almost hear her thoughts:Presentation is everything, Madeline.

“You must be hungry,” she says as Spence circles her living room ogling the monogrammed red velvet stockings hanging from the mantle.

“We ate on the way,” I tell her, aware that it’s hours past her designated dinnertime. She and my father have eaten promptly at 6:30 every day of my life.

“I saved you food,” she replies. “It’ll only take a minute to reheat.”

“Thanks, Mom, I appreciate it, but I’m stuffed.”

“You’ve had a long trip,” she says, her tone betraying her annoyance that I drove instead of flew, which I justified as an adventure for Spence, purposefully omitting that I couldn’t afford the last-minute holiday-adjacent tickets. “You should have something.”

We stare at each other uncomfortably, the simplest of conversations somehow turning sour.

“I’ll eat,” Spence announces happily, and I find myself grateful for his bottomless kid hunger.