She Effin' Hates Me

by Scarlett Savage

  “Molly, love,” she carefully put her latte down and folded her arms, “is there something you’d like to say to me?”

  “There is.” Molly folded her arms right back and looked squarely at her mother. Steam was practically rolling out of her nostrils. “As a matter of fact, there really, really is.”

  “Well,” Suzanne asked, “what’s stopping you?”

  “Okay, girls, let’s just . . .” Brandon tried to interject.

  “You want to know what my problem is?” Molly fired at her mother. “I’ll freakin’ tell you what my problem is. You’re a hypocrite, Mother.”

  “What?!” Suzanne gasped even before the full slap of the word had impacted her.

  After a moment of tension so thick it threatened to bend the branches of Ava’s maple tree, Brandon asked helpfully, “Does anyone want a Coke?”

  “No thank you, Brandon. I’d like my daughter to repeat what she just said,” Suzanne said, as she tried to hide the fact that her breath was coming in heaves. She would not let Molly see how deeply she’d stung her; that was another lesson she’d learned from Steve.

  “Oh, I could repeat myself,” Molly replied icily, “but I think you heard me.”

  “Yes, I heard you,” Suzanne replied, still stunned, “but I’m having just a little trouble believing what I’m hearing. Have you met me?”

  “Because,” Brandon went on, “if anyone wanted Cokes, I could run to the store and get some.”

  “You need to explain yourself, lady,” Suzanne spat out, really angry now. She hadn’t called Molly “lady” since she’d stolen the family car in the middle of the night and driven it to a friend’s house at the age of thirteen. Worrying about the possibility of car accidents and abduction had nearly driven Suzanne insane.

  But this definitely felt like a “lady” moment, if ever there was one.

  “Explain myself?” Molly wasn’t backing down, not an inch. “You see, the thing is, Mother, you lied to me. My entire fucking life, you lied to me.”

  “I don’t drink sodas myself—I’m a vegan,” Brandon interjected, “but I’d be happy to go get them. I could use a good walk. Walks are good,” he finished lamely. It didn’t matter. He could have recited the entire Bhagavad Gita and his words would have made no impact.

  “When?” Suzanne demanded. She reached for her cigarettes and noticed her hand was shaking—just a little, but shaking nonetheless. Dammit! She cleared her throat, sparked the lighter, and pulled a cigarette out of the pack, trying to buy a moment to get herself back together. After a few drags, she spoke again, this time in a tone much closer to her normal voice—albeit slightly louder than usual. “When the hell have I ever lied? In your whole entire life, when the hell have I ever lied to you?”

  “You did!” Molly fired back. “You did when you said that all you ever wanted was for me to be happy. That was a lie.”

  “Of course I said all I wanted was for you to be happy. That’s what I want more than anything in this world! I want you to be happy more than I want me to be happy! In fact I couldn’t be happy unless you were happier than I am!” Suzanne raged.

  “Oh, that is crap!” Molly screamed back. “That is crap, and you know it, Mother!”

  “How dare you say that to me?” Now it wasn’t just her voice that was shaking; her hands, her shoulders, everything seemed to be twanging like a violin string, but there was no music coming out of anywhere.

  “Calling all hypocritical mothers!” Molly shouted at the top of her lungs. Suzanne looked up and down the street, and sure enough, the Schwartzes and the DeCaturs were both idling about in their yards. Mrs. Steinmann was walking extra slowly to her car, but Suzanne knew from Ava that this was probably due to hemorrhoids.

  “Molly, just lower your . . .”

  “I’m a lesbian!! A dyke!!” Molly shouted, and Suzanne sighed and waved politely to their elderly audience. Pointing out the listening neighbors to Molly would only fuel her fire now. She’d just have to send them each a hanging plant later. Or a bottle of Hermione’s foot-soaking cream from Goddess Treasures.

  “I’m aware of that.” Suzanne smiled broadly as she waved, trying to diffuse the traveling sideshow aspect of this scene. “In fact, I’m so aware of it, I watched a girl named Sandy practically maul you right in front of me, and even though watching my child in any kind of romantic act makes me incredibly uncomfortable, I sat there, and I dealt with my discomfort.”

  “Wow.” Molly was aghast and then began clapping. “Good for you, Mom! I didn’t realize how hard this had been on you! But to hear that you dealt with your discomfort—that’s tremendous. In fact, that’s really, really big of you, Mom.” Molly clasped her hands and bowed. There was no way the neighbors were going anywhere now. Molly dropped the act, and a sneer crossed her pretty features. “But it doesn’t change the fact that ever since I told you I was a lesbian, you’ve been treating me like I have the plague.”

  “I have not!” But something in Molly’s words tugged at her. She’d been uncomfortable with her daughter for the first time ever, hadn’t she? But not because she was ashamed of her but because . . .

  “Gays are great, gays are fun, some of your best friends are gays, but it’s different when it’s your own daughter, isn’t it, Mother? Then it’s arm’s length all the way!”

  The trembling threatened to get worse, so Suzanne crossed her arms, putting her shaking hands under each armpit.

  “Did it ever occur to you I had some things that were weighing on my mind—things that were causing me a boatload of stress, wondering how the rest of my damn life was going to play out? Things that your friend here was considerate enough to ask about, but which seemed to completely slip your mind?” Suzanne swallowed, trying to get the sandpaper out of her throat. “You are way out of line, little girl. Way out of line.”

  “Getting called on your bullshit hurts,” Molly ignored everything her mother said—she was finally acting like a typical teenager, Suzanne thought—and tilted her head to the side, looking at her mother knowingly, “when you constantly preach love and tolerance, doesn’t it?”

  “Moll,” Brandon said softly, putting a cool hand on her overheated shoulder. “Come on, be fair. You’ve had years to work this out; she’s had a couple of days.”

  Years? Suzanne thought in dismay. She’s known for years?

  “Take it easy?” Molly barked at him furiously. “Damn it, Brandon, whose hag are you, anyway?”

  “I like to think of myself as the Universal Hag,” he said sagely. It was a funny line, but Suzanne didn’t have a laugh to give up just now.

  “And anyway,” Molly went on, turning some of the heated anger to her friend, “it’s so easy for you to say. It must be nice sitting on your side of the fence, Bran—your family practically threw you a party when you came out.”

  And that was when Suzanne decided she’d had enough. She may not have been the perfect mother, but she was a good one, and she had tried every step of the way. Every decision she made had been with Molly’s best interest, not her own, at heart. Every extra job she took, every night she spent poring over the Internet, trying to learn calculus so she could help her daughter with it at the table after dinner. Whatever else she was, she realized, she did not deserve this tirade.

  “Yes, Molly.” Suzanne suddenly stopped shaking and dropped her hands from their defensive posture. She looked at her daughter and spoke in a voice both calm and clear. “You’re absolutely right. They did just about throw him a party. And why do you think that was?”

  For a second, the furious arrogance that had been smeared across Molly’s face faltered, just a little. “What?”

  “Why is it, do you think, that Brandon’s parents were so damn happy,” Suzanne repeated, in an equally calm voice, “when he finally came out to them?”

  Molly looked at her mother for a long moment, through a thick sheen of tears and betrayal. “Because they love him, and they accept him,” she breathed. “No matter who or what he is. Crazy me, I th
ought you felt that way about me too.” She stormed off, leaving her mother and the Universal Hag staring after her.

  It was maybe an hour and a half later. They were back in the courtyard, and Suzanne was on her seventh cigarette.

  “Now,” Brandon puffed out his chest in his self-designated role as mediator. “Let’s try this again. Only this time, no one’s allowed to yell—to raise their voices at all, in fact.”

  “But she . . .” Molly began, but Brandon immediately cut her off.

  “Bup, bup, bup.” He wagged a finger. “Our control over our speech is what separates us from the animals. Well, the fact that we talk at all separates us even more, I suspect. Anyway, this time, we’re going to try the fine art of really listening. Capisce?”

  “Capisce?” Suzanne groaned. “Oh, yeah, Buddy mentioned you’d been watching a lot of The Sopranos on On Demand.”

  “Are we all agreeing to the rules?” Brandon inquired. Molly and Suzanne shrugged, then crossed their legs and their arms in unison. It took all of Brandon’s willpower—and an oft-employed mental image of his nanna in a teddy—not to laugh.

  “Suits me.” Molly was aiming for an I’m-too-cool-to-give-a-shit tone, but her incessantly bouncing leg belied her blasé attitude.

  “The rules will do just fine, Brandon,” Suzanne coolly agreed.

  “So,” he clapped his hands together before him, “who wants to go first?”

  The bitter silence stretched out and threatened to blow up the courtyard, then the street, then the world at large.

  “Come on, someone’s got to go first,” Brandon urged. “Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller? Okay.” Suzanne couldn’t help but think that she could see the counselor he was studying to be in him already. “It needs to be totally fair; should we draw straws? No, wait. I’ve got a coin, we could . . .”

  “Excuse me.” Suzanne raised her hand slightly and spoke in the clipped, polished voice she reserved for customers at restaurants who had really bad attitudes, or in general when she was really pissed off. “Before we begin, my daughter made some pretty serious accusations of me, and I really feel like she owes me an apology. What she said,” she pointed at her daughter, “I did not deserve, and I want that acknowledged immediately.”

  “Tell that woman,” Molly replied, equally polished, “that I’m not going to apologize for holding the mirror up to her face.”

  “Well, this has been fun, Brandon, but,” Suzanne started to lift herself out of her chair, but Brandon gently pushed her back down.

  “Come on, come on, this is crazy,” he implored. “Do you think it was easy for me to come out to my family? And we all worked it out. And if we, the dysfunctional yet loving family that we are, can do it, so can you.”

  “Clearly,” Molly said frostily, “your family is different than ours, I’m sad to say.”

  “Me too.” Suzanne nodded.

  “No—not so different. Look, Suze.” He sat down next to her on the bench. “You should hear the way Molly talks about you. She talks about you all the time.”

  “She does?” Suzanne was surprised but wary. After eighteen years of being manipulated with false compliments by her husband, she wasn’t about to fall for anything now, at least not without cold, hard proof. “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Brandon went on, ignoring Molly’s burning looks. “And it’s like you’re not only her mom but you’re, like, this person that she really gets, who really gets her, who’s her best, best friend . . . maybe even, you know, sort of a role model.”

  Suzanne looked away at his last statement as she ground out the hastily smoked cigarette. What Brandon just said—no, it couldn’t be true. Her chain was definitely being yanked, for sure, in the name of family harmony. A role model—her? Now there was a laugh. Not just a laugh, it was an annoying, high-pitched chortle. A girl who had thrown away her childhood, gotten pregnant, married the wrong guy, cashiered and/or waitressed her way through her baby’s earliest years, and chain-smoked her way through life. Her daughter thought of her as a role model? Suzanne dealt with her raging emotions the way she always did: with a lighter and some well-packed tobacco. She breathed deeply, evenly, trying to regain control of the cyclone inside her chest.

  “Isn’t this true, Molly?” Brandon asked pointedly.

  Molly didn’t say anything for a minute, but she didn’t, Suzanne couldn’t help but notice, deny it.

  “It still doesn’t change the fact,” Molly finally pointed out, “that your family was so happy, they were practically dancing in the streets when you came out. Whereas, mine . . . Look at her, over there. She can’t even look at me.”

  “Actually, Molly,” Brandon interjected, “that’s not why they were so happy.”

  “Brandon, I was there.” She glared at him for stepping on her perfectly made point. “Don’t try to rewrite history that I personally witnessed.”

  “Okay, then. Tell me.” He leaned toward her. “What exactly did my brother say?”

  “He said . . . well, he . . .” Molly frowned. She’d been so caught up in the moment, the specifics were hard to recall. “Give me a minute; I didn’t memorize it.” She sighed impatiently, and her leg, always the betrayer of her innermost feelings, started bouncing again. “It doesn’t matter, okay? It doesn’t matter what he said, what matters is how he felt. He was really happy, and that’s what matters.”

  “I wasn’t even there,” Suzanne lit another cigarette, noting that her throat was starting to scratch, “and I remember what he said. They were so thrilled, so incredibly happy that he’d come out to them, because they already knew and were just waiting for him to tell them. And when he finally did, it was a relief. They felt like he finally trusted them.”

  “So?”

  “So?” Suzanne looked at her, aghast. “So? So?” She leaped to her feet before she spat out, “So, Patty has been divorced for five years, and she has four kids!” She began pacing back and forth rapidly, like a hungry lion in a traveling circus, huffing and puffing all the while.

  Brandon looked at Molly. “I’m sorry,” he admitted, “but I’m going to need a translation for that one.”

  “Patty’s one of her friends—she was one of the other moms in the drama club car pool,” Molly told him. “She moved to Boston last year.”

  “And she has four kids. Four.” Suzanne repeated, holding up four fingers. “One, two, three, four. Anyway, Patty and I used to go grocery shopping together. With four kids, that can take quite a while, you know? And she homeschooled all of them, do you remember that?”

  Brandon nodded, even though Suzanne’s questions were directed at Molly. At least he’s listening, Suzanne thought remorsefully. Molly’s gaze was fixed firmly far off into the distance, down the street.

  “So, she knew who was good at English and who needed special help with math and who wanted to take more years of a foreign language,” Suzanne went on, her voice rising toward a fever pitch. “She knew which of her kids wouldn’t eat mushrooms and that Andrew was allergic to onions and that Sarah’s favorite jam was raspberry. And she was a single mom, so she did this all by herself . . .” Suzanne paused, trying to catch her breath.

  Molly threw her hand in the air and waved desperately.

  “Please the court,” she cried, “is there a question or statement of pertinent fact anywhere in our future?”

  “Molly, willya just . . .” Brandon began, but Suzanne cut him off.

  “Don’t you get it?” she asked, almost pleadingly. “Don’t you? Think about it. Patty knew everything her kids wanted or needed, before they even had to ask it. Still does.”

  Molly was still not looking at her, but the sight of her beautiful profile in the sunlight brought back a thousand memories in one huge, bursting rush. Molly, her daughter, her baby, the little bundle they’d handed to her after two hours of labor, who had turned into the intelligent, confident, accomplished young woman sitting here before her.

  “Patty’s got four, but I’ve got one,” Suzanne said, her throat
so tight that speech was painful. She plowed on. “One kid. One beautiful, amazing, brilliant daughter. You. I always thought, no matter what else, you and I had this connection, this bond that nothing could touch. I thought we were strong and solid. I thought we were ‘tight.’”

  “I did too,” Molly agreed icily. “Until recently, I really, really did.”

  “And I had no idea,” Suzanne could hold it back no longer, and finally burst into tears, “none whatsoever, that you were a lesbian until you told me last week. I didn’t know!”

  And there it was. The sobs were coming hard and fast now, great gulping sobs of air. It was a relief to let it out, finally. Her bomb. Her big failure. Her lack of perception and her amazing blinders. Now the world would know.

  “Ohh . . .” Brandon breathed, the light dawning on him. He put his much-inked arms around Suzanne and rocked her like a small child, as Molly looked from one of them to the other, still bewildered.

  “Ooohhh?” she asked. “You don’t get to do the understanding ‘Ooohhh’ to my mother while I still don’t know what the fuck is going on. And I don’t understand at all how my coming out leads you to feel all depressed and comparing yourself to Patty, who, by all accounts, is the perpetual motion machine.”

  After a few minutes, the worst of Suzanne’s sob storm had passed. “I thought I knew you.” Suzanne’s words were muffled in the fabric of Brandon’s shirt. He was still patting her comfortingly on the back, and frankly, it felt damn good. It had been a while since she’d let herself go to pieces and had someone there to put her back together. “I thought I knew you every bit as well as Patty knows her kids.”

  “Why do you keep bringing her up?” Molly demanded. “How well Patty knows her kids has nothing to do with us.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Suzanne asked. “Because when push came to shove, I didn’t know you, did I?”

  “Mom, I . . .”

  “And do you know what the first thing I thought of was, when you told us? Do you?”

  “Do tell,” Molly said in that same bored voice, but she was at least looking at her now, and that was something.