Have Mother, Will Travel: A Mother and Daughter Discover Themselves, Each Other, and the World

by Claire Fontaine

  Two men sit at the next table laughing and drinking; a freckled, wiry fellow with a red crew-cut, and a suave East Indian guy around my age who suddenly turns to us and asks, in perfect English, why two pretty young women are sitting alone on a Saturday night when they could sit with them. Who could refuse such a charming invitation?

  Kamal, an Avignonais of twenty years, was born in India, speaks several languages, and seems to have lived many lives. Ryan is a gay Irish engineer around forty, who once lived here with a lover. He returns every few months to visit his friends.

  After an hour, we’ve covered the usual cultural differences, with Kamal prefacing most of what he says with “You Americans . . .” and Ryan half-listening, half-lost in his own internal orbit. Once Kamal scoots his chair over to engage Mia in conversation, Ryan scrapes his chair over to me.

  “Aie knew yair hair mother an all, but ken aie tale ye soomthing?”

  He leans so far over there’s nothing between us but his breath, rich with his tenth beer. I have no idea what he wants to tale me but his expression is suddenly deeply earnest. He puts his fingers in a V and taps under his eyes.

  “Et’s raight heer, ai’m tellin’ ye,” he taps and nods in Mia’s direction, “aie ken see it heer,” tap, tap, nod, “in the shadoos oonder hair eyes.”

  “Oh, that. She has allergies, they’re allergic shiners. It’s the pollen here.”

  He shakes his head at my apparent ignorance. He sighs and leans in again.

  “Aie knew yair hair mum, aie knew, but sumwun has to say et. The gairl needs sumthin,” he sighs, holding up the V sign again. Only this time he leans closer and taps them under my eyes.

  “Et’s raight thair in the shadoos. Ai’m sorry te have te tail a mum, but thair ye have it.”

  “Have what—I have shadows, too? We both have allergies,” I manage, completely bewildered.

  He sucks in his breath and then blurts, “Sayks! The gairl needs sayks! Ken ye not see et, woman?”

  Lord, have mercy on me. Somebody have mercy on me. I have a fire-breathing gay Irishman in my lap telling me, loudly, that my daughter needs sex.

  He sits back in great relief. Yooo knoooo, he says, a nice loover, just for the soommer, her being in France, after all.

  I need WHAT?!” I sputter.

  I wondered why that man from last night was trying to poke my mom’s eyes out, but that certainly wasn’t on the list of possibilities. Yes, it’s been a while, but (a) is it that obvious and (b) what the heck’s she supposed to do about it? Order Roman for me instead of my next glass of wine?

  “I know,” she exclaims, “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”

  “But what do your eyes have to do with anything??”

  “Doon’t ye mean tha shadoos?” she says, tapping them. “Oh, who knows! Men usually think that everything has to do with sex. The first therapist I ever saw asked me halfway through the session—completely out of the blue—how often I was having sex. He said it was an important part of patient history. Right.”

  “That’s what Tracey’s did, too!”

  Tracey is a family friend, a very successful writer in a very happy marriage.

  “She said that every male therapist she ever saw asked about her sex life no matter what she was there to talk about.”

  We both shake our heads, laughing as we weave through boulevards crowded with street performers, doing our best not to inadvertently walk through the middle of someone’s play.

  “So. Have you ever thought—” my mom pauses—“you might meet someone here?”

  “Meet someone . . . ?”

  “Come on, Mia, you’re twenty-five, you’ve got to feel like going on a date or something.”

  “Oooh, you mean do I need sayks!” I laugh.

  “Don’t talk so loud,” she says, scowling. “I don’t know. I mean, if you were living here by yourself you might take up a . . . a, oh I don’t know, a sooomer loover.”

  I know she was going for nonchalance but hearing my mom say the words “summer” and “lover” in the same sentence is painful, no matter how close we may be. Maybe Kamal’s right, maybe Americans are more uptight. Maybe if we were French this conversation would be as natural and breezy as deciding on what to buy for dinner. What about a lover, honey, you need one of those? Oh, thanks for the reminder, I’m fresh out.

  Of course Ryan had a point, and when I studied abroad in France during college I did have a summer boyfriend—something facilitated by the fact that my mother was across the Atlantic.

  Kamal can call me American, a Puritan, or Cotton Mather for all I care, but asking my mother to vacate for the night so I can take up a lover is one line in the mother-daughter relationship I’ll never cross!

  I myself am no stranger to being asked to vacate the premises. College kids call this being “sexhiled,” which I know because my sophomore year it happened to me so often that I was a near-permanent fixture in the student lounge.

  Wanting me to vacate was Nina, my roommate, and when we first met I’m not sure who thought she had it worse. Me for having to room with the female Casanova, or her for having to live with a celibate who dressed like Ted Kaczynski (a year and a half in a Montana boot-camp school means you own a lot of plaid, flannels, and fleece).

  Nina never left the room without darkly lining her emerald eyes, glossing her lips to a luscious shine, shaking out her long brunette waves, and arranging her most notable feature—all-natural, perfectly shaped double Ds—into a traffic-stopping display. People couldn’t help but gawk and she reveled in it, something that amazed me because of how uncomfortable I was with catcalls or any form of sexual attention.

  Moreover, Nina had quite a sexual appetite. Who knows how many partners she had over the year we lived together, but the most memorable included an El Salvadoran with family ties to a former guerrilla president, the navy cadet who later went AWOL, the five-foot-five Italian self-made millionaire, and, my favorite, her doctor (who turned out to be married). Clearly, their initial consult went well. I quickly learned when I heard Andrea Bocelli or opera music blaring (both disguised other kinds of wailing well) from our room, to come back later.

  I heard a lot of Bocelli that year.

  Nina was comfortable with and open about sex and sexuality in a way many women aren’t. And she didn’t sleep with so many men because she had daddy issues, or for acceptance and approval. She truly enjoyed it and felt—not just pretended to feel—fantastic the morning after. While most girls did the Walk of Shame quickly and quietly back to their dorm after spending the night in a guy’s room, Nina catwalked it like a runway model. At the time, this fascinated, intimidated, and appalled me.

  Not that it took much to scare me off; as a one-of-the-guys kind of girl, I never wore makeup, owned nary a hair product, and when I wasn’t wearing L.L. Bean, I lived in a pair of shapeless, sexless Thai fisherman pants (they’re amazingly comfortable). Which is why, fortunately, Nina blockaded the door when I went to meet a cute boy from my history class for dinner and a movie.

  She took one look at me, ordered me to sit down, and rummaged through my closet until she came out with a long skirt and a tank top. While I changed, she pulled out her makeup kit, and only then did she let me out of the room.

  And that’s how I met Graham, my first long-term boyfriend. It was the first time either of us had been in love or dated someone for more than a few months, which was perfect, because it meant we both entered into it without any expectations. We wrote our own rule book based on what felt right to us, adjusting as was necessary, particularly for me, given I’d been sexually abused. There was an innocence to us that reminded me of a high school relationship (or at least how I imagine them to be), where everything is new and you’re shyly negotiating and renegotiating everything. It was like a virginity do-over, only with a best friend with whom there was mutual trust, affection, and respect. We were together for two and a half years, by the end of which (it ended very amicably, and we’re still good friends to this
day) I learned how to be in a healthy romantic relationship.

  Dating Graham helped me immeasurably when it came to intimacy. Heineken, however, was instrumental when it came to the polar opposite. For women who are deathly afraid of catcalls or overt sexual attention (I froze at either), I highly recommend donning a green polyester minidress, white patent go-go boots and matching cap and parading through a bar passing out beer to mildly intoxicated men. Heineken had just launched their first light beer and, as a promotional model for the campaign, we were seventies-era stewardesses right off the plane from Amsterdam—we actually had to fake accents—to bring you this new beer! Hey, I was newly graduated with steep student loans, and promo modeling paid $25 an hour and consisted of handing out free beer.

  It gave me an entirely new skill set, and, ultimately, it was a good experience for me. I used to respond to catcalls with an expletive-filled sentence or totally ignore them. Working for Heineken, we couldn’t do either, and what I learned was that the classier and more polite I was in reply, the more embarrassed and subdued guys became. For the most part, catcalling has little to do with you and everything to do with impressing the other guys, and when you recognize it as the pathetic ego-boosting ploy it is, you’re far more relaxed. In a strange way you almost feel maternal toward them. And because you’re not flustered, angry, or embarrassed, they don’t get the reactions they’re hoping for and quickly lose interest.

  It was total immersion training, but now I can walk by any construction site without breaking a sweat.

  I absolutely love this dress!” Mia exclaims.

  We’re in a shop on the crowded Rue de La République and she’s tried on a long sea-green sundress with pieces of fabric across the bust that create flower petals. It’s a beautiful dress but it doesn’t really flatter her.

  She turns for me to see it all around and says, “What do you think? Isn’t it beautiful?”

  “Well . . . it’s not the most flattering weave.”

  “Really? I love the fabric, what’s wrong with it?”

  “Well, it kind of clings in the behind.”

  “Oh,” she says, disappointed, then brightens. “That’s just the back, who cares? How about the rest of it?”

  “Well, to be honest, it kind of clings all over. It’s just not the greatest fit, honey.”

  “But the color looks so good on me, and these flower petals are so cute!”

  She’s so excited about the dress, but she did ask my opinion and it isn’t very flattering even in this dim light. I know Mia, once she has it on outside, she won’t be happy that her tummy is completely outlined.

  An American woman dressing next to us has been watching. She joins in Mia’s enthusiasm, saying, “I think it looks fabulous on you, and it’s perfect for your coloring.”

  “Really?” Mia lights up. “Thank you!”

  “It’s so clever how they did the petals. I think you should get it,” the woman says, giving her a big smile before leaving.

  Mia is ecstatic. I don’t say anything else as we gather our things and head for the register. I’m too stunned—at what a complete idiot I am.

  A total stranger was a better mother to my daughter than I was. She made Mia feel like a million bucks. All she saw was how happy Mia was wearing that dress. All I saw was the flaws, what wasn’t “perfect.”

  What if perfect is wearing something that makes you feel fabulous and beautiful? Anyone who’s more focused on how a dress clings to Mia’s hips than seeing her glowing, happy self isn’t worth her time anyway. Today, that anyone would be her own mother.

  My perfectionism reared its ugly head again, and I’ve never felt it so viscerally. Seeing my own child’s face light up when another woman saw her, not a dress, a stupid dress, was like a kick in my gut. A very well-deserved one.

  And not just today, over a dress. It’s been a lot of days in her life, over a lot of things. How awful that must feel to Mia! To always be seen with such a critical eye. Yes, sometimes our girls need the unvarnished truth. Sometimes Mia insists on it. But now wasn’t one of them. I lost sight of what was truly important.

  I follow Mia out into the heat and noise of the crowded, merde-y rue. We duck quickly into one of the tiny passages leading home.

  “Oooh, what a relief!” she says of the dim coolness.

  “Mia, I’m really sorry about the dress.”

  “Sorry? About what?”

  Which makes me feel worse—is she so used to it that it doesn’t register?

  “You look radiant in it, really, the color, the design, but most of all you love it, it makes you feel good. All I was focused on was one stupid little thing that didn’t matter at all.”

  “I asked your opinion and you gave it, that’s okay.”

  “No it isn’t. I saw the dress, I didn’t see you. I think I do that about a lot of things.”

  She’s quiet for a second. “Not as much as you used to.”

  “I’m so, so sorry. I feel really horrible. There’s always something that could be better, everything has to be perfect. What you wear, what classes you choose, how you do or say something.”

  “I know your intentions are good, Mom. You want the best for me.”

  We reach the other end of the passage and turn toward our plaza, which seems like another world, tourist-free and quiet. I stop her.

  “Don’t make excuses for me, Mia. You must feel like nothing’s ever good enough, or worse, like you’re never good enough. It must feel like shit.”

  “Oooo, now I know you’re sorry,” she says, amused but clearly pleased I’m acknowledging it. “Well, yeah, sometimes it does feel really lousy, but I usually just ignore it. It bothered me before, because I took it personally, but it’s really not about me. You’re almost never satisfied with yourself, you’re always thinking about how things could be different or better. At the end of the day that’s a lot harder on you than it is on me.”

  “It is, and yes, I’m much more aware of it now. But this isn’t about me. I’ve always known, in my head, that I’m hard on you sometimes. But seeing how you responded to that woman in the dressing room . . .” I feel my throat get tight. “You had the same happiness in your face that you did as a little kid. Ohhhh, man—I can’t even think how to express what it felt like. I feel like I could apologize to you every day for the next year and it wouldn’t be enough.”

  “Awwww, Mom.” She puts her bag down and hugs me.

  “I’m so sorry, Mia,” I whisper, hugging her tight.

  I arrive at our bluff at my favorite time, just as the pale gold stones of the city begin to gray, as if to better turn your attention to the sky. Before sitting on the low cavalry step, I glance over the wall, a hundred feet below. Mia said she’d meet me later in the plaza by the puppet show and she’s there already, sitting cross-legged on the ground behind some children.

  As usual, the bluff isn’t crowded, just a scattering of a dozen or so people. Farther down the wall, a young man with a felt fedora plays guitar softly. Also as usual, everyone’s silent or whispering, out of respect for where they are—sandwiched between Christ, Mary, and a predictably beautiful sunset. This evening the sun has melted into a bowl of red-orange between two low mountains on the horizon. The sky deepens into indigo above it.

  Suddenly the heavens do something I’ve never seen before. Sunbeams are normally rays of light radiating out from darker clouds. Today the reverse occurs—dark blue-violet rays shoot out of that molten nectarine glow. A sky full of inky sunbeams.

  After a few moments I hear some high whispery twittering I recognize instantly. Only young girls make that lovely noise. I turn slightly to see three little girls in flared dresses, each its own shade of pink. They’re gripping the wrought-iron railing around Mary’s feet, staring up at her as they whisper urgently, as if discussing some expected miracle they’d been talking about all week on the playground, Is it true, about the Virgin and miracles and resurrections and pestilence and angels and sins, will she share secrets, see how spe
cial I am, hear my wish?

  The girls then rush to the wall in front of me, with their prayers still fresh in their mouths, twirling to sit cross-legged with their dresses spread around them. They gaze up in excitement, lips pressed tight against their smiles (they’re really pushing for somber piety here). They close their eyes and press their hands together in unison to mumble silent prayers. And then, in unison again, they bend at the waist over their crossed legs, until their foreheads touch the ground in front of them. Three little devotees arranged like petals of a rose, waiting.

  Their mothers are far off to the side, oblivious to this little drama, one holding an infant who burps up. Without a break in conversation, one woman wipes baby puke from the mother’s dress, the other wipes the baby’s face.

  I hear a murmur from the little girls’ bowed heads and they suddenly lift their heads to stare at the statue with a look of both absolute faith that whatever they were expecting to happen was really going to happen—and the beginnings of the kind of doubt that every mother would recognize: you see your daughter has begun to know something about the world, something that she knows you always knew and never told her.

  Of course, you didn’t. There are so many things we never tell our young daughters. Most of them things we’ll never end up telling them, we don’t need to, we know the world will tell them. The world is always telling them, and each moment that they’re first able to hear is a moment we mourn in a small way; because it’s one moment closer to them being us. And for us, one moment farther from who we once were. For we will no longer have our girls in which to see our own young, innocent selves. We know that when she leaves the girl she is behind, she takes the girl we once were with her. A part of both of you is lost to the world.

  This is both the joy and the heartbreak of raising a daughter. Your heart melts at the sight of their absolute innocence, but your mind knows they have to live in the world, and that the most precious thing about them is also the most dangerous.