Daughters for a Time

by Handford, Jennifer

  “There are my genes at work,” Claire said, pointing to Maura, who was on her side, hugging her knees and yelling in her mother’s direction, “I’m an armadillo! I’m in a ball!”

  “I love how she checks in with you every three seconds. Makes sure that you’re watching.”

  “Maura’s a little lovebug,” Claire said. “But I worry about her. She could use a little toughness, a little fortitude.” Claire made a fist and hammered it through the air.

  “She’s only three years old, Claire,” I said. “She’s supposed to be cuddly and vulnerable. You’re not raising a Navy SEAL.”

  Claire smiled, offered me a bite of her peanut butter cookie. It tasted good, slightly burnt, crumbly on the outside, chewy in the middle.

  “Not as good as yours,” Claire said. “I love when you make the peanut butter–chocolate chip cookies.”

  “Mom’s recipe.”

  “Really?”

  “Actually,” I said, remembering, “it was in a recipe book that Mom’s mother had made for her before she got married. So technically, I guess it was Grandma’s recipe.”

  “Grandma died when I was pretty young,” Claire said. “I don’t think you were even born.”

  “All of the women in our family die young,” I said, trying to make a joke, but it was true. Our loving and affectionate mother had been taken from us way too early, after a yearlong battle with ovarian cancer.

  “The family curse,” Claire agreed.

  “If Mom had known she was going to die at forty, do you think she still would have wanted to have kids?”

  “I don’t think anything would have stopped her from having kids,” Claire said. “But if she had known her fate and been able to make an adjustment, I’m sure she would have liked for you to be a little older by the time she died. Leaving you just as you were starting high school had to have been the hardest part for her.”

  “I didn’t make it any easier on her,” I admitted, remembering how I used to sulk around the house, feeling sorry for myself, cloaked in my usual armor: earphones blaring The Cure’s maudlin music, barricaded behind my sketchbook and bad attitude.

  “That’s because you were only thirteen when she was sick,” Claire said. “That’s my point.”

  Mom had been a natural when it came to mothering. We couldn’t leave a room without her saying, “I love you,” or leave the house without a hug and a kiss from her. She was still tucking me in at night when I was in junior high school, brushing the hair out of my face and whispering the same prayer she’d said since I was a toddler: “May the Lord bless you and give you peace…”

  Claire and I stared into the gym, watching Maura tumble.

  “Sometimes I look at her and I feel like I’m looking at Mom,” I said.

  It was true. Maura is a clone of our mother, all eyebrows and a thick mop of wavy, brown hair.

  “Looks like her. Acts like her,” Claire said, pulling out her cell phone and checking her e-mail.

  “How does she act like her?” I pressed.

  Claire sighed, tossed her phone back into her designer bag. “Maura’s sweet and trusting and naive.” Claire listed those qualities as if they could someday get her daughter into trouble.

  “Mom was a good egg,” I said, and my heart gave a familiar lurch at the thought of her.

  “No doubt. But she was a doormat for people like Larry. She could have used a little more backbone to walk out on him after his affair.”

  “Maybe it took more backbone for her to stay.”

  Claire gave that a dismissive shrug. “I just don’t want Maura’s good nature, her trust in everyone, to get her into trouble.”

  “It won’t last long. You’ll scare the trust right out of her.” I smiled smugly at my sister.

  With all her self-assurance, Claire was a helpless worrier, probably thanks to me having been dumped in her lap. By the time Mom died, the paperwork that appointed Claire as my guardian was already growing dust in some lawyer’s file cabinet. She and Mom had taken care of that early on, leaving no chance that I would end up anywhere other than in Claire’s care.

  Now Claire was the mom who did weekly Internet searches for sexual predators in her neighborhood and around Maura’s preschool. Claire was the mom who walked her daughter into class each morning, while all the other moms handed off their kids at the curb to the teachers’ assistants. If it were socially acceptable, Claire would have a GPS chip implanted under Maura’s skin.

  “I don’t want to scare her,” Claire said, picking off a piece of cookie. “I just don’t want her taking any unnecessary risks. I want her to learn to play it safe. God knows that life can clobber you, even if you’re doing everything right. Look at poor Mom.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Claire turned, looked me square in the eyes. “How are you doing? Anything new on the adoption front?”

  “I think we’ll give it a few more months. The doctor increased the dose of meds I’m on, so maybe this’ll be our month.”

  “It’s fine to keep trying,” Claire said. “But you need to get in the right frame of mind. Rambling around in your house all morning and hoping for a miracle is not the best plan.”

  “Do I look like I’m rambling around the house?”

  Claire raised her eyebrows, inspected my makeupless face, my blondish ponytail with too-dark roots, jeans, and sweatshirt. “This is what you need to do,” she said, waving her hand before me as if I were an exhibit. “Catch a yoga class, get your hair done, and start filling out the adoption paperwork.” Claire put her hand out like a stop sign. “Just as backup. Seriously, Helen, you’ll feel completely better.”

  And just like that, Claire was bossing me around like we were kids again. A lifetime of Claire played through my memories: “Helen, I’m not saying they’re ugly, but you may want to rethink those pants.” Or, “Helen, algebra really isn’t hard. Let me think of a way to explain it so that you might understand.”

  Claire dug through her Fendi bag. “I almost forgot. I brought you some new eye cream. Retinol. It’ll plump your skin right up.”

  “Subtle,” I said, taking the cream.

  “Trust me, you’ll feel better if you clean up a bit. If you want to come over this week, I can do your roots. And pluck your eyebrows, and wax your legs, and exfoliate that layer of dead skin off your face.”

  “I’ll check my schedule, Elizabeth Arden, and let you know,” I said, reaching for my face, thinking that Claire’s assessment of my skin wasn’t exactly fair. Just the other day when I was in the shower, I’d scrubbed my face with Tim’s Clinique shaving gel with exfoliating beads.

  “And come with me to the gym. I’ve been spinning and kickboxing, and Enrique’s got me on a new strength regimen.” Claire was a fitness freak who worked out with her personal trainer four times a week, keeping her hundred-pound body in Madonna shape. Even when Claire was pregnant with Maura, there wasn’t an inch to pinch.

  “Sounds horrible.”

  “And I went on the adoption agency website and looked at the packet of information,” Claire went on. “You’ll need letters of recommendation, so I went ahead and drafted one for when you’re ready.”

  “Fine, Claire.”

  “And read those books I got for you!”

  I thought of the stack of books on adoption, none of which I had cracked open, sitting on my side table next to the bed. “Okay, Claire,” I said. “I’ve got it.”

  Just then, Maura bounded out of the classroom and onto my lap. “Aunt Helen,” she said, hooking her fingers around my neck, her face only a centimeter from mine. “Guess what?”

  “What?” I asked, inhaling her sweet breath, something like animal crackers and jelly beans.

  “Did you know that Michael is allergic to peanuts, and if he eats them, his throat will close?” She clutched at her neck to illustrate.

  “No way!” I said. “What else?” We jokingly called Maura “Running Commentary” because she couldn’t help but give everyone a blow-by-blo
w of the goings-on in her day.

  “Peanuts aren’t really nuts, and daddy long legs aren’t really spiders—six legs!” Maura said, her eyes open so wide that her eyebrows almost disappeared under her hair.

  “That’s fascinating, munchkin.”

  “Aunt Helen, guess what?”

  “What?” I said, leaning into her, resting my mouth on the soft velvet of her forehead.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” I said. I closed my eyes, inhaled my wish, and exhaled a prayer: Please.

  “I’ll see you Sunday,” Claire said, standing up and stretching side to side. “I’m sore.”

  “Tell Eduardo to lay off.”

  “Enrique.”

  “Whatever,” I said, hugging Maura against my chest. “Mommy’s in no position to take care of you,” I babbled in a cartoon voice. “So that means that you’re mine, all mine.” I nuzzled my nose against Maura’s until she squealed.

  Chapter Three

  Cilantro. Strong coffee. Bacon. I flipped over onto my side, grabbing a handful of down comforter and burrowing deeper into my pillow. I was on a boat, a canoe in the middle of a lazy river. Who was cooking bacon? Where was the coffee? I looked around for an oddly placed herb garden, for a campfire with a tin coffee pot over it like the one Huck Finn used as he rafted down the Mississippi.

  The current picked up and the canoe bumped toward a fork in the river. I scrambled for the oars, desperate to make the right decision. Which way? I pleaded. Which way?

  Helen, I heard Tim saying. I pried my eyes open and found him standing before me holding a tray.

  “Good morning,” Tim said.

  I took a breath, tried to let my heart rate settle. “What time is it?”

  “Eight o’clock.”

  “Oh! Really?” I yawned, stretching my arms over my head, trying to shake off the sleepy fog. “I didn’t even hear you get up.” I scooted myself up against the pillows and headboard and looked at Tim. “What’s all this?”

  “Happy ‘Almost’ Mother’s Day!” Tim sang, placing a tray of huevos rancheros in front me. My all-time favorite breakfast: a fried tortilla topped with fluffy, cheesy eggs, black beans, fresh salsa, and thick slices of creamy avocado.

  “Wow!” I said. “Look at this.”

  “Just think, if we work quickly, this time next year we might be celebrating your first real Mother’s Day. Wouldn’t that be great?”

  I glanced over at the adoption paperwork, stacked neatly on my dresser, untouched. I had planned to open it, but this last cycle seemed especially encouraging. Tim and I had had sex a number of times, and with the new medication I was on, I should have been a target-rich environment for his eager sperm. And this morning I was feeling decidedly pregnant: the tender breasts, the urgency to pee. There was a chance that I was pregnant right now, placing my due date in a solid nine months. By next year at this time, I’d have a sweet three-month-old.

  Tim settled onto his side of the bed with the Sunday paper. I reached over and rubbed his shoulder. “I love you,” I said.

  “I love you, too. I hope you have a great Un-Mother’s Day.”

  “I think I’m going to have a great day,” I admitted, pocketing my plan of doing a pregnancy test later tonight.

  It was past noon when I pulled up to Claire’s Great Falls mini-mansion. She was sitting on the front steps, her face tilted toward the sun, the “G” on her Gucci sunglasses shimmering like diamonds.

  “Not a bad day, huh?” I hollered to her as I walked up the path.

  “It’s gorgeous!” Claire exclaimed. “Why can’t we have weather like this all the time?”

  “Because we live in DC, where it’s either swamp-ass hot or freezing cold.”

  “Nice language.”

  “Ready to go?”

  “You bet!” Claire stood up, perfectly pulled together: indigo-colored skinny jeans, ballet slip-ons, and DKNY T-shirt.

  “You have the stuff?” I asked.

  “In the trunk of my car. I can drive. It might be easier.”

  “Sounds good.”

  I slid into Claire’s Mercedes. The earthy smell of leather and the warm sun baking the seats made for a luxurious cocoon. I considered the possibility of a three-hour nap.

  On a beautiful day like today, our sisterhood seemed so natural. When I was in high school, the age difference had been too big. There was no way for me to consider Claire other than a mother figure, a guardian. After graduation, I begged Claire to let me get my own apartment. I needed to get out of the house where it all had happened—where Mom died, where Dad left. But I needed her help, so I had to go along with what she wanted. Waging an argument against college would have left me out of luck. So when she insisted that I enroll at George Mason, I agreed, even though studying Greek philosophers and German psychologists held little interest for me. The payoff of having my own apartment was worth it—my own space where I didn’t need to censor my feelings, two hundred square feet where my grief could emerge as often as it liked, rearing its ugly, familiar head like a hungry monster. I needed my privacy, where I could cry just because it felt good, even though it had now been five years since Mom had left us.

  Claire was like the Gestapo, checking in on me daily, so I was forced to shed my flannel shell each morning to attend my classes and do my homework. I didn’t really mind, though. I actually enjoyed some of my classes, including some I’d been certain I’d hate, like accounting. There was a deep satisfaction in balancing columns, some cosmic or karmic assurance that what went in would equal what came out. A hopeful thought that my pain would someday be reconciled with happiness.

  I studied most of the time at the corner coffee shop and that was where I met a group of alternative students who seemed to have the world figured out. They smelled of clove cigarettes and patchouli oil. They spouted their philosophies. Buddhism is so enlightening, I remember them saying. No dogma. At the time, I felt that their free-living lifestyle was the antidote to too much Claire and to missing my mother. When I was with them, I didn’t think about Mom when she was sick and Claire pounding down on me the importance of going to college. They were recovering Catholics. Some of them fancied themselves anarchists (though I never knew them to do anything but talk). Everything about them showed disdain for social convention, and Claire was the poster child for social convention. Meanwhile, my sister continued to check in on me, and I continued to tell her what she wanted to hear—that everything was fine, that I was fine—and not one word about my new group of friends. The last thing I wanted was my conservative, goal-driven sister telling me that my current lifestyle was unacceptable.

  One night, four of the guys in the group were arrested for possession of cocaine. The group cried foul, saying that the arrest was bogus, that drugs should be legal anyway. We should be able to do what we want with our bodies, they argued. I might have lacked direction, but I’d never done drugs and was put off by their defense of these guys. Where I once saw them as evolved, progressive, and revolutionary in their opinions, I now saw them as aging dropouts with few prospects. All of a sudden, Claire and her day planner, her tax-deductible IRA, and her five-year goal chart didn’t seem so stupid.

  The next year, I convinced Claire that I could handle a job. I scoured the want ads, though I wasn’t qualified to do more than bus tables or answer phones. Then I came across an ad for a prep cook at the Arlington Country Club. I’d always liked cooking next to Mom. In fact, standing next to her at the counter was one of my fondest memories. First soak your bread in buttermilk, I could still hear my mother say as we made meatballs. I loved the way she always hummed as she worked, the way our conversations flowed easily while our hands were busy chopping or mixing, the times when she revealed something new about herself that I’d never known, like the miscarriage she had had between Claire and me, how she still sometimes woke in the night wondering about her lost child.

  I was hired, and for the next six months, I did every bit of grunt work that was asked of m
e. Early one Sunday morning, Chef asked me if I wanted to learn how to make hollandaise for brunch. I whisked while he gently spooned in clarified butter, explaining the risk of the sauce “breaking.” Then I watched as he poached the eggs in water and vinegar, cradling each one as gently as a baby bird. I shadowed Chef for two weeks, at which time he promoted me to the resident eggs Benedict maker. A perfect hollandaise was now my responsibility.

  After five years of going to school and working part-time, I was finally ready to graduate with a degree in accounting. When Claire and I met for lunch one Saturday, I told her what I’d been thinking about.

  “You’re going to think it’s stupid,” I said, feeling my heart thump. “I know you are.”

  “Try me,” Claire said, as calm as a career counselor.

  “I don’t want to be an accountant,” I said. “I can’t sit in an office all day.”

  “What do you want to be?”

  “I want to be a chef,” I said, and then turned away, waiting for Claire’s barrage as to why that was the stupidest career choice in history. How, with my luck, I’d end up stocking the salad bar at Olive Garden or flipping pancakes at IHOP. How I’d never have health insurance, paid vacation, or a 401(k) this way.

  “At the country club?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “Well, maybe. But I want to be a real chef, not an assistant.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly. “I don’t think that’s stupid at all. I know you hate to sit still. I actually think that’s a pretty good choice.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really.”

  “They offer cooking classes right here at George Mason,” I said, growing more excited by the minute.

  “How about we dream bigger?” Claire said. “Maybe France? Or Italy?”

  “Are you kidding, Claire?” I gasped. “How on earth would we pay for that?”

  “I have some money set aside for your education, from Mom’s life insurance. Plus, Larry’s on the hook to cover some of it, too. I think you’d do really well to get out of Virginia for a while.”