She remembers a story Rachel once told her of a textbook narcissist she met during the supervision phase of her social work studies. The woman had had a stroke. Suffering from aphasia, she lost all language except for one word: Me. Me! Me! Me! she screamed day and night, until her daughter could no longer bear to visit her.
She refills her glass, ignoring Sam’s signal for yet another shot. She reviews her history with Ursula. She charts the lows:
Ursula: a mother lacking a single maternal gene. Why did she even have a child? Because her then husband, Annie’s sweet, quiet, lonely father, insisted on it? Because by the time she discovered she was pregnant, it was too late? Because a baby was a chic accessory, like a bracelet or a pair of opera-length gloves?
Ursula: a mother who once said the following:
Don’t you tell anyone your age, darling; my public wouldn’t believe I have a daughter that old.
Frankly, a touch of anorexia never hurt anyone.
I am so sad to miss your ____________ (school play, concert, exhibit, mother-daughter lunch, graduation).
Too bad you take after your father, Arabella darling.
I don’t believe that was really pneumonia, just a bad cold.
I’m afraid my lovely new beau doesn’t care for children underfoot.
The nanny spanked you, darling? Well, I’m sure you did something very wrong.
As for when you had your appendix out—you must understand that I am hopeless around hospitals: all those nasty smells, all that noise, that bad food, those dowdy uniforms.
Your Sam is adorable. If only he paid attention to his clothes.
And the worst: Well, darling, I never wanted to be a grandmother anyway.
Annie must have gone into some kind of fugue state, because she realizes Sam is still talking; she hears loan, Ursula, generous, Mr. Aherne, but the words float around in the atmosphere like atoms unattached to sentences.
“Beep. Beep,” Sam says now.
She snaps to attention. “I’m really mad,” she says. “Furious.”
“I can tell.”
“About a lot of stuff. The fact that you asked my mother, who, as you know, I long ago determined not to ask for anything.”
“You’ve made that clear.”
“And the fact that you lied.”
“Not technically lied. Just kept the secret. For which I am truly sorry. For which I feel terrible. But really,” he implores, “Ursula is not that bad. In my dealings with her …”
“She likes you, that’s why. She thinks you’re cute.”
“Nonsense. She thinks I’m incompetent. I’ve overheard her. But she’s your mother. She loves you. Of course she does.” He shakes his head. “Granted, in her own Ursula-centric way.”
Annie looks at her watch. It’s ten o’clock. She is exhausted. How odd that sitting at a desk for a couple of hours can wipe you out more than standing on your feet all day making sandwiches. Didn’t a famous author once lament that to write was to open a vein and bleed? On top of this, her whole conversation with Sam has sent her reeling. Anger itself opens a vein. It’s all too much—that Sam kept such a big secret from her, that her mother is involved …
Sam gets out of his chair and comes to stand behind her. He kneads her shoulders, kisses the top of her head. “I’m so sorry, Annie,” he says.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Ursula …” he begins.
“Let’s declare a moratorium on all things Ursula,” she orders.
The minute he consents, the minute they decide to march up to bed and seek, Annie guesses, the solace in each other that salves all wounds, the phone rings.
Annie grabs it.
“My darling Arabella,” gushes the unmistakable voice, words slapping down any moratorium on Ursula.
Annie sinks straight to the floor.
Sam raises his eyebrows, mimes a question mark.
“Ursula,” she says in response to both of them.
“You’ll have to speak up, darling. I got one of these new little phones. It came with the most delectable silver case. Smartphones, they’re called. I’m not smart enough, I told the adorable young man who sold it to me. Of course you are, he said, and promised he’d come to my apartment to teach me the ins and outs. My first lesson is tomorrow. Have you heard of apps? There seems to be an endless choice of utterly enchanting ones.”
“Yes, Ursula, I’ve heard of apps.”
“I’m not surprised. You were always good at math.”
Annie was horrible at math, not that her mother would know this essential fact about her own child. “Apps aren’t exactly math,” she informs her.
“Silly me, I’m still counting on my fingers. Fortunately, I have a business manager.” She lowers her voice to a stage whisper. “I decided you would be the first I’d ring up on my new little thingumajig.”
“What an honor.”
“I’m delighted you feel that way,” replies Ursula, impervious to irony. “Though this is not the only reason I called.” She taps a fingernail against the phone. “And oh, how are you? And that Sam of yours?”
“Fine.”
“Me too. I’m fine. In blooming good health, I am happy to report. Well, the real reason I called, in addition to finding out how you both are—it’s been so long since we’ve had an actual tête-à-tête—is to announce some really spectacular news …” She executes a Pinteresque pause.
Annie can recognize a cue when she’s handed one. “So, what’s your news?” she supplies.
“Ambrose just called. You remember Ambrose, darling, Dr. Buckley …”
A cold sweat of dread starts to slick her brow. He couldn’t have, he wouldn’t have … “Yes, I know him.”
“… well, darling, Ambrose phoned to announce I have been selected for the Passamaquoddy most-accomplished-citizen award.”
Annie starts to breathe again.
Ursula doesn’t wait for her daughter’s congratulations but jumps right in. “I knew you’d be thrilled for me. It turns out the award is being conferred next week. Though they made the choice ages ago, Ambrose, that dear man, had a devilish time getting hold of me. I’ve been on set. Then on the West Coast. Then traveling all over with Oliver—”
“Who’s Oliver?”
“Never you mind, darling. He turned out to be entirely disagreeable. Best to put him in the past. You know your mother, always looking forward, always looking to the future, never letting little bumps in the road stop her. I am just thrilled, thrilled about the award. After all, entre nous, I deserve something for those endless years I languished in that backwater. Not to insult your hometown—I know you and Sam are very happy there—but for me … Well, even you must agree that I’m not exactly the typical Passamaquoddy citizen, though I did make the best of it.”
“Yes, you do rise to the occasion, Ursula.”
“Thank you, darling. Ambrose tells me I’m by far the most notable candidate to receive the award. Some ratchet designer—whatever is a ratchet, anyway?—was the first recipient. Then, before that, a composer who wrote an anthem about the state tree, of all things. Highly unoriginal, if you ask me. Those disgusting needles falling all over the place. I much prefer the charming espaliered chestnuts you find in France. Well, never mind. According to Ambrose, I’m the first woman to be nominated. Oh, I’ll have to let my publicist know; maybe he can do something with the first-woman theme. A fish-out-of-water feminist angle. Hang on a sec, darling; I want to make a note to remind myself.”
Annie hears the rustle of paper, the scratch of a pen.
“Don’t you just love Post-its?” her mother marvels. “Aren’t they the most clever, the most wonderfully useful invention?”
“They come in handy,” Annie allows.
“And, in case you were wondering, they only give the award every decade, so it is the very definition of exclusive.”
Talk about exhaustion. As her mother continues her Ursularian monologue, Annie feels her veins opening one by one. She pictu
res the blood spilling out on the floor, running in rivulets all over her house. Her mother does it every time. Pricks the wound. Opens the wound. Causes the wound. Helplessly, Annie clutches the phone, held prisoner by her mother’s elocutionary parries and thrusts.
“What does she want?” Sam whispers.
“We’re about to find out,” she whispers back.
“What did you say, darling?” Ursula now asks.
“Nothing,” Annie replies. “The TV’s on.”
“Speaking of which … I have a small part—small but choice—in the new Law and Order.” Her mother laughs. “Unless I’m left on the cutting room floor.”
“They wouldn’t dare.”
“Just joking. But the reason I called …”
“Yes?”
“Besides to announce the award …”
She braces herself. “Yes?”
“… is to tell you I’m actually traveling to Maine to receive it. In person. I gather from Ambrose there will be a big ceremony at city hall. They’ll present me with the keys to the city. As if I’d want them, ha-ha-ha. And a plaque. Ambrose will give a speech. And then some of the city fathers. Is Passamaquoddy actually called a city these days?” She sighs. “Will wonders never cease? At any rate, following all the hoopla, I will offer up a few words … you know, the usual …”
Annie imagines the blood now all over the floor and creeping, against gravity, upstairs. Her chin is on her chest; her heart is in her toes. She is leveled with despair. Why now? Does Dr. Buckley have a hand in the timing of this?
“So, I want to give you advance notice to get your guest room ready,” she hears Ursula say. She feels a roaring in her ears. Her body goes still.
“Arabella,” her mother prods.
“It’s not really a guest room,” she forces herself to answer. “We call it that, but I mean, no guest has ever stayed there.” She pictures her mother’s customary hotel suites, gilt tables cluttered with orchids, marble bathtubs the size of a small pool, closets bigger than Annie’s Samwich Shop. “It’s hardly up to your standard. Don’t forget, it was meant to be the nursery …”
“And high time you got over that,” her mother says. “No, on such an occasion, I much prefer to stay with my family. Ambrose offered, but I think it’s a little early …”
“A little early?”
“In our relationship. Besides, there is only a Days Inn, hardly up to, as you say, my standards, and that B and B with all the Hummel figures in the window.” She clucks her tongue; a tidal wave of distaste spills over the phone. “No, darling, your guest room will be perfect. I’ll arrive next Wednesday. I always travel with my own pillow and Penhaligon’s Blenheim Bouquet candles. It’ll save you the trouble of a shopping expedition. Ambrose will collect me from the airport. Oh, my sweet Arabella, we will have such a lovely visit tightening our mother-daughter bonds. Oh, my! Look at the time. I need to get my beauty sleep, darling. À bientôt.”
Annie leans against the wall, stabbed, mauled, flattened, a casualty of war, a casualty of Ursula.
Sam scoots down beside her. “What is it, Annie?” he asks.
She can barely speak the words. “My. Mother. Is. Coming. Next. Week. To. Stay. With. Us.”
She drops her head to her knees.
Chapter Thirteen
For the first time in seventeen years, Annie hires a cleaning service. She doesn’t even flinch at the price, quoted by the advance man who comes to evaluate the nature of the job. Major, he pronounces, requiring a crew of four and the full supply of heavy-duty, industrial-strength equipment. Though he can’t be sure—unfortunate surprises often turn up—he estimates a total day’s work, including a forty-five-minute break for lunch. As he writes up the agreement, he can barely hide his disdain for the result of her recent lack of interest in keeping up household appearances combined with Sam’s casual long-standing attitude toward neatness.
If you think this is bad, go visit Mr. Aherne, she wants to protest. Instead, she meekly signs her name and hands over the deposit for services to be rendered. It’s Monday. Countdown: two days—forty-seven and a half hours—until Ursula.
As soon as the cleaners’ truck pulls up in front of her house, she heads for the Samwich Shop. Megan’s already behind the counter filling sugar shakers and pouring coffee for the early lunch customers who mark their usual spot, reading newspapers and waiting for the rest of their cohort.
“You okay?” she asks Megan.
“Better,” she reports. “Much. I figure there are plenty more fish in the sea.”
As long as they’re not bottom feeders like Ralphie Michaud, Annie does not reply. Oh, to be young, to bounce back from heartbreak, to be resilient in the face of life’s blows.
In the kitchen, she’s on automatic pilot, chopping, slicing, layering while fixating on the life’s blow that is her mother. In the middle of the night, she slipped loose from the tangle of Sam’s arms and legs and tiptoed into the guest room. She tried to view the space through her mother’s eyes, eyes that would never see the loss inside these walls. She surveyed the sunny, baby-neutral paint, the Van Gogh sunflowers in place of Dr. Seuss drawings. The toys had been packed up and delivered to Goodwill along with the tiny onesies and cheerful bibs. She tested the mattress; it was comfortable enough, of decent quality, though not one of those princess-and-the-pea towering extravaganzas fit to pamper the limbs of a diva like Ursula.
No matter how carefully they’d stripped the room of anything child related, Annie could still imagine rocking Baby Girl Stevens-Strauss, still picture her daughter’s face turned toward the window, to where the light danced among the trees. She was real; she existed. Annie had swaddled the motionless body in her arms, had sung to her. If only Home Depot sold smudge sticks to drive out all remaining nursery spirits, or a fêng shui guide to repositioning the furniture and inviting good Chi.
When she could no longer bear the prospect of Ursula on such sacred ground, she’d escaped to the study, opened the computer, and ordered a set of six-hundred-thread-count hemstitched sheets, paying extra for next-day delivery. Still restless, she’d clicked on the manual.
Addendum to Ursula, she wrote. Sam, please feel free to ask Ursula for the money for the annex. You shouldn’t ever need to pay her back. Just make a little shrine to her in the shop, maybe hanging over the counter where everyone can see it. Her photo, the Passamaquoddy most-notable-citizen award, a few theater programs from her greatest hits. Hell—why not name a sandwich after her: Ham? Baloney? GORGONzola?
For obvious reasons, I never wanted to ask her for anything while I was still alive. But now, well, there’s no incentive to put limits on you out of my own prejudices, my own neurotic principles—ones she probably never noticed anyway. So ask. Speak up. You have my blessing. She owes me big-time. For what, you may wonder? Well, for my not calling in child services! (Okay, a slight exaggeration—she never beat me or forced my hand against a flame or withheld food or a warm winter coat—though she did forbid desserts, for my own good, she said.) No, she owes me, and by proximity you (who have suffered from the fallout), for being the most narcissistic mother on the face of this earth. Good enough reason?
Now Annie looks out the window to Mr. Aherne’s property. Old tires dot the front yard; a rusted-out Dodge sits up on cinder blocks. Though the dwelling is haunted-house derelict, it could work. It could work, she decides.
Megan walks through the kitchen door balancing a tray of dirty coffee mugs; she rinses them, then loads them into the dishwasher. “Hey, Annie,” Megan says, “I hear your mother is coming to town to get the Passamaquoddy award.”
“I’m afraid so,” Annie replies.
“That is totally amazing.”
“Amazing is the perfect word,” Annie says, “if you define it as incredible.”
“You must be so proud.” Megan fills the napkin dispenser. She brushes an anthill of bread crumbs into the sink. “Mom and I wouldn’t miss the ceremony for the world. I might be late, though, since we’ll al
l be up to our ears.”
“Up to your ears in what?”
“Didn’t Sam tell you? They—city hall—have asked us to supply refreshments for the event.”
No, Sam didn’t tell his wife. A smart choice on the part of the city fathers, she grants, though she’s not surprised Sam didn’t confide in her. Lately he’s been tiptoeing around the subject of her mother, not, she supposes, to keep a secret, but to spare her additional stress. He’s seen her rocking in the guest room chair, staring out the window and looking sad before she can hide any melancholy with a fake grin. He’s seen her making lists and filling the refrigerator with the low-cal snacks she’d normally scorn. He’s felt her tossing and turning next to him, then sneaking out of bed to pace the hall. He’s watched her trying on five different skirts and shirts, polishing her shoes, stepping on the scale. “You’re perfect just as you are,” he reinforces again and again. “Don’t let your mother get to you.”
“It’s such an honor to do the food for the award celebration,” Megan now says.
“What are we supposed to serve?” she asks.
“Oh, the Bunyans. They want everything to be iconic to Passamaquoddy: pinecone wreaths, locally brewed beer, Mrs. Gerard’s whoopie pies, Geraldine Pritchard’s saltwater taffy, Michaud’s poutine. They’re even printing a couple of Longfellow Clark’s poems in the program. Sam’s trying to figure out how to cut the Bunyans into hors d’oeuvre size.”
“Good luck to him on that one,” she says. “Why don’t I help?”
Horrified, Megan shakes her head. “Not you, Annie. You’re kind of like the daughter of the bride. Or the maid of honor. You’ll be all tied up with your mom.”
* * *
It’s Wednesday. D-Day. U-Day. Ursula’s plane gets in at 1:14. It will probably take Dr. Buckley another thirty minutes to gather her luggage, load the suitcases into his trunk, then drive the hour from the Bangor airport until he can deliver the honoree to the scrubbed, fit-for-receiving-royalty manor of Arabella Stevens and Samuel Strauss.
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