Phillip’s younger sister Liz was hunched over her computer, staring at the blank screen, when the e-mail came in. The sound of the computer voice saying “You’ve got mail!” literally made her wince when she saw who it was from, and she suspected why. It was about that time, and she’d been dreading receiving the e-mail for days. She hated getting it every year, and hated going on her mother’s birthday trip even more. She was always the odd man out, or at least she felt that way. At forty-four, she had felt like the family failure all her life.
She had been concentrating on the screen, with her eyes half closed, trying to write a short story. She had wanted to write since she was a kid. She had published short stories in her early twenties, and then had written a novel. She found an agent through a friend, but no publisher would touch it. They said it wasn’t commercial enough, her characters were flawed, and her plot was weak. Her agent urged her to try again—not everyone published on the first shot. Her second novel was worse. The agent had urged her to rewrite it three times, and when she had, he still couldn’t sell it. She went back to writing short stories and a few poems, and they were published in a literary magazine. And after that she’d been busy getting married, having babies, and trying to keep her head above water. She had been too emotionally spent to write and felt too unstable to even try.
She’d gone back to writing short stories, several years before, but hadn’t written any in three years. She was utterly and completely blocked. She still tried to write in spite of it but never finished anything. And since both of her girls were out of the house, she had told herself that it was now or never. She had been trying to write again seriously for several months, and for the past few weeks she had forced herself to sit down at her computer every day. Nothing came. She just sat there and cried. She was emotionally and mentally constipated, and what was worse, she was the only member of her family who had accomplished absolutely nothing in her entire life. As far as Liz was concerned, publishing a few short stories that no one read didn’t count. It didn’t matter that her agent had said she had talent. That was in her twenties and thirties. Now at forty-four, she had no achievements, no victories, no career, and her years as a stay-at-home mom to her two girls were over.
Her daughter Sophie was getting her master’s at MIT in Boston in computer science, after getting her B.A. at Columbia. She was a math genius and was talking about going on to business school. Like her grandmother, she had a head for business, and at twenty-three, she was far better than her mother at taking care of herself. She was a bright, beautiful, very independent young woman. She had been the product of Liz’s first marriage, to a French Formula 1 race car driver. Liz had fallen madly in love with him and had dropped out of college and run away to marry him at twenty-one. She got pregnant instantly, and he was killed in a race just weeks before Sophie was born. Two years later, with Sophie in tow, Liz had gone to L.A. and dated a well-known actor, Jasper Jones. She had been twenty-three, the same age Sophie was now, with none of her skills or capabilities. Sophie was a practical young woman. Liz had always been more idealistic. Liz had tried to get a job as a screenwriter and had gotten involved with Jasper instead. He was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. They got married when she was six months pregnant, and the marriage had lasted eleven months.
Carole had been eight months old when they divorced. She was twenty now, and a dreamer like her parents. She had assorted talents and was a bright girl but seemed without direction. She talked about being an artist but wasn’t serious about it. She had taken acting classes but had stage fright. She had done some modeling and talked about moving to L.A. but had no definite plan to do so and no job for when she got there. She went to California to see her father a couple of times a year. He was making movies after a checkered career, and had married a producer who was more successful than he was. He was still married to her, and they had had three more kids, all boys. Carole loved visiting them, and the atmosphere in L.A. She loved the idea of moving out there and living with her father and his family, but she wasn’t ready to leave New York.
Liz was constantly worried about her. She had turned into a mother hen, and both her daughters teased her about it. She called them three times a day to see how they were. She just wanted them to be happy. For the past twenty years, her daughters had been the main focus of Liz’s life. She didn’t want to be like her own mother and miss the boat on motherhood. So she had dropped everything for them, and now that they were gone, she wasn’t even sure she could still write. She had promised herself she would try, but nothing came, and she dreaded being on vacation with her family again, and having to explain to them, again, why she had done nothing for the past year. How did you explain that to people like them?
As far as Liz was concerned, her brother Phillip was second only to their mother in the astounding empire she’d built on her own, with their father’s silent, loving support. Phillip was the pretender to the throne. His wife was a successful attorney, a partner in an important law firm, and looked down her nose at them all. She was beautiful, sleek, well dressed, and had assured all of them she was going to be a judge. Liz’s brother John was an incredible artist and a genius in design. His wife had a doctorate and was a professor of literature at Princeton. And her baby sister, Cass, never came on the summer birthday trips. She had distanced herself from all of them since their father’s death but had become one of the most important music producers in the world, based in London, and for the past five years was living with a world-famous rock star ten years younger than she was, Danny Hell. Liz constantly asked herself how she could compete with people like them. All she had ever done was write a few lame short stories, have two failed marriages, and bring up two wonderful girls. Sophie and Carole were her only accomplishment, and no one in her family was impressed by that. She knew they all thought she was a total failure.
Her mother was always kind about her writing and tried to encourage her, but Liz feared she was just being polite. They felt sorry for her. Liz had been floundering and fighting to keep her head above water all her life. The only thing she’d ever been confident about was mothering her kids. It was the one thing she was sure of, where she never doubted herself, and she loved her daughters more than anyone or anything in the world. But she was also the only one in her family who had never finished college, had been married more than once, and whose marriages had failed. She had no career, lived on her trust, and had been paralyzed by her fear of failure all her life.
Liz lived in a Connecticut farmhouse she’d been meaning to remodel and rebuild since she’d bought it ten years before, and she’d never managed to do that either. She just never got around to it. Although the bones and structure of the place were beautiful, it was a mess, constantly leaking, with things breaking that she never quite knew how to fix. In some ways, her life seemed like her house to her: it had potential but was disintegrating quietly and falling apart. And now she had to go on vacation with all of them again. She didn’t have the guts to do what her younger sister did every year, and turn their mother down and refuse to go. Instead, Liz always did what was expected of her, never wanted to upset anyone, so she and the girls went every year. The girls had a great time, and Sophie and her grandmother were soul mates, just as Liz and her own grandmother were, but each year, after the summer vacation Liz swore she would never go again. It was just too stressful for her, to compare herself to them, and endure their casual comments and put-downs and supposedly helpful criticism about her life. No one could understand what she was doing with herself, and her time, particularly now that the girls were gone. It was impossible to explain to them that some days it took her all day to get out of bed.
The only person who had ever understood the extreme insecurity she felt was Granibelle, whom Liz went to visit on Long Island every week. Just as she had been for Phillip, her grandmother had been the real mother in her life. Olivia was more like a friend. She was always kind to her, and compassionate, but Liz was convinced that they were just t
oo different to ever understand each other. Granibelle always told Liz to give her mother a chance, that she regretted the time she hadn’t spent with them when they were children, but Liz was sure now it was too late. And the birthday trip reinforced that impression every year. She spent two weeks with them in gorgeous locations, feeling like a freak, and in agony in their midst. And now the invitation was sitting on her computer, and Liz didn’t have the guts to open it. She sat and stared at it for a long time, and then finally clicked it open and looked at the photographs of the enormous yacht.
“Shit,” Liz said out loud, sitting in her kitchen. “Now what am I supposed to do?” She felt seasick just looking at the photographs of the gigantic boat. She read the description of everything it had to offer, and even that didn’t help. If her family was going to be on it, she knew she would feel miserable and inadequate, seasick or not. But she knew with equal certainty that both her daughters would love spending those days with the family on a fabulous boat. Hair salon, spa, movie theater, water toys—her mother had gone all out. Liz knew she couldn’t deprive her daughters of a trip like the one her mother had planned. And she didn’t want to miss being with her girls. She got little enough time with them now, and they were busy with their friends most of the time. As she did every year, Liz felt she had no choice. If she wanted to see her children and share a holiday with them, she’d have to put up with everyone else. It was a depressing thought.
She read through the e-mail several times, with the description of the boat, and forwarded it to both her daughters. And then she hit the reply button with a heavy heart.
“Thanks, Mom!” she typed the message to her mother. “This looks incredible! We’ll be there with bells on. The girls are going to be thrilled! Love, Liz.” She read it over several times, and then hit the send button. Her fate was sealed. All she could think was “here we go again.” She had nothing to wear, but she knew she could borrow something from her girls. She still had the same lithe body she had had at their age. Her face looked older, but her body hadn’t changed.
After she responded to her mother’s invitation, she picked up a notepad and walked out into her garden. There were two broken deck chairs with torn cushions on them, and if she sat down on them carefully, she knew they would hold her. She had a silly idea for a children’s book. It wasn’t the kind of writing she usually did, but maybe it would distract her and cheer her up. She had nothing else to do, and she wasn’t going to write the great American novel in the next six weeks, so she might as well write something fun, for herself. No one in her family was going to be impressed by a children’s book, but that didn’t matter now. She was resigned to being the family screw-up who had accomplished nothing, yet again.
Sarah Grayson raced into the house between classes, to pick up some additional books she had left at home. The small cozy house just bordering the Princeton campus was quiet, John was at work, as head of creative and design for his mother, their son, Alex, was in school, finishing his junior year in high school, and their golden Lab was sound asleep, stretched out in the sun. The dog picked up his head when he heard Sarah come in, and then dropped it again. He was too tired to move or do anything more than wag his tail and go back to sleep.
She checked her e-mail, to see if any students had written to her about homework, or help they needed, and she saw the e-mail from her mother-in-law instead. She opened it quickly, and then gasped when she saw the photograph of the Lady Luck.
“Oh my God!” she said, and then sat down heavily at her desk to read quickly through the rest. It was more than a little overwhelming, but she knew Alex would be thrilled, and John probably would too. Their summer trips were fun but always harder for her. Her parents had been serious liberals and activists, her father had been a professor of biology at UC Berkeley, her mother had taught women’s studies when it had become popular as a subject. Her father had been one of the early supporters of the civil rights movement, and they knew that John had money, but they had never fully understood how much, or what it meant. Neither had she. Fortunately, she and John shared the same political views, and the same philosophies about life. They gave away most of John’s income every year, to philanthropic causes, and they wanted their son to have good values that were not based on personal wealth or a fascination with money.
They had chosen to live in a small house and spend their time in the academic community. Alex knew that his grandmother had money, but he had no sense of how wealthy she was, or that his father would inherit a fourth of her vast fortune one day, or that he already had a great deal of money. They were careful to see that none of it showed. John drove a Toyota for his commute into the city every day. Sarah drove an ancient Honda she had bought from a student for a thousand dollars, and when Alex wanted a mountain bike, they had made him get a job after school and pay for it himself. Sarah didn’t want their son corrupted by the more-than-daunting Grayson fortune. Their summer vacations were like trips to Disneyland for them, and for years Alex had been young enough not to make any connection between the rented châteaux and villas and what it cost to rent them. But the yacht Olivia had chartered and that Sarah was reading about in the e-mail was a different story. It would be hard to explain that to Alex. And as far as Sarah was concerned, Olivia should have been giving away the money to people who needed it, not spending it on them for a fancy Mediterranean vacation. The only thing that ever made her more comfortable was John’s assurance that The Factory donated vast sums every year to worthwhile causes. But clearly this year’s summer vacation had cost Olivia a fortune.
Sarah felt guilty just looking at the pictures of the boat and knowing they would be on it. She wished her mother-in-law had decided to do something more modest, but she knew how important these trips were to her, and that she wanted to provide only the best for her children and grandchildren. It was a well-meaning gesture, but Sarah disapproved anyway. She suspected her husband would enjoy it, and love the opportunity to go fishing and sailing with his brother. They were like two kids when they got together away from the office. And at forty-one, John still looked and acted like a boy to her.
Sarah had just turned forty. She had married right out of college. Their initial plan had been to join the Peace Corps together and go to South America, but she had gotten pregnant on their honeymoon, which changed everything. They’d gotten stuck in a small apartment in New York, and John’s mother had convinced him to get a master’s in design and, once he had a family to support, to join her in the business. He hadn’t had the heart to turn her down. And Sarah had eventually gone back to school too, first to get her master’s degree in Russian and European literature, and then her doctorate in American literature. She had been teaching at Princeton for ten years now, and the move to Princeton had been good for them, and they were happily folded back into the academic community. John still dreamed of giving up his job and becoming a full-time artist, but he said he couldn’t do that to his mother. So his dreams of being an artist had been put on a shelf, probably forever, and he had to be content with painting on weekends. He had shown his work several times at a local gallery, and in art shows at the university, where they exhibited work by professors or their spouses. He sold all his paintings every time. It validated him, but was bittersweet. His success at gallery shows always made him wish that he could give up his day job and devote all his time to painting.
Their ease at getting pregnant with Alex, earlier than planned, had led them both to hope that they would have many children. Sarah had wanted four or five, and the blessing of John’s money meant that they could allow that to happen, but an ectopic pregnancy two years after Alex changed all their plans and dashed their dreams. Even with the help of in vitro fertilization, Sarah had never been able to get pregnant again. They tried IVF five times before accepting defeat and conceding. It had been a painful disappointment, but Alex was a wonderful boy and the joy of their life. They had talked about adopting a child from Central or South America, but once they finished their studies,
they were both deeply involved in their jobs, and in the end they decided that one child as terrific as Alex was enough for them. And like his cousins, Sophie and Carole, Alex had a wonderful rapport with his grandmother. He looked forward to their summer vacations, and he took the train into the city to have lunch with her from time to time. She had promised him a trip to China with her when he graduated from high school, and Alex talked about it all the time. And Sarah knew as she glanced through the e-mail that he would be ecstatic when he saw the boat his grandmother had chartered for their summer trip.
Sarah sighed as she pressed the reply button to answer. The boat was definitely over the top, and it made her feel guilty to share in such extreme luxury with them, but she also knew that it was going to delight her husband and son. She wrote a hasty note to Olivia, thanking her and assuring her they’d be there; she hit the send button, grabbed the books she’d come home to get for her next class, rushed past the sleeping dog who wagged his tail again, and left the house. And as she walked into her class ten minutes later, the yacht she had just seen and would be traveling on in July was the farthest thing from her mind. All she cared about now was the class she was about to teach, her students, and the academic life she loved. And just as they did every year, they would tell no one about the trip, particularly this year. No one they knew would understand. The world of super yachts, and cruises in the Mediterranean, was no part of their real life. As far as Sarah was concerned, that was Olivia’s life, not theirs.
The Sins of the Mother Page 5