The Perfect Mom

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Kathleen glanced down at her hands, a study in still life atop her purse. “I suppose she’s furious at me.”

  “Well, of course she is.” Sharon sounded cheerful. “Did you expect anything else?”

  Kathleen gave a wry smile of her own. “No, she offered me the benefit of her opinion at the hospital. I’m cruel and hateful.”

  “On the upside, at least she’ll talk about you. She clams up when I ask about her father.”

  “Well, since she doesn’t see him…”

  The therapist leaned forward and put her elbows on the cluttered desk. “But she must be simmering with feelings about him! Kids don’t go, ‘Oh, my dad’s a creep, I don’t want anything to do with him.’ Rejection is hurtful.”

  Sharon already knew the back story. Ian probably would have taken Emma every other weekend, or whatever was the norm these days with divorced dads. Kathleen was the one who had said, “Until she resolves her problems, she isn’t coming to stay with you. You may call or get together for an outing, but I won’t put her in a position to face a repeat of that episode.”

  She’d stung his pride, of course, so he had chosen to sulk and not call. Rejection, yes. But it wasn’t as if he’d told Emma, “I don’t want to see you.”

  “You still think I should encourage Ian to call her,” Kathleen said slowly.

  Sharon frowned, pursed her mouth, grimaced, and finally shook her head. “Not at this point. From what you’ve said, he wouldn’t be supportive or understanding, and she doesn’t need that right now. It’d be great if he suddenly swept in and said, I love you, I miss you, what can I do to make up for my ignorance and temper?”

  Kathleen snorted.

  Sharon laughed, her plain face lighting. “Failing that miracle, I’d say what Emma needs is to concentrate on her responsibility to herself. She needs to ease up, accept life’s uncertainties, other people’s flaws. The two of you can work on your relationship, which is most central to Emma. No.” She nodded more decisively. “For now, let’s leave Emma’s dad out of this.”

  “He is…so scathing, I’m not sure he would have cooperated anyway.”

  The therapist’s eyes were sympathetic. “Do you have friends and family to offer you support right now?”

  “Yes.” Her voice firmed. “Yes. I have good friends.”

  She left with the assurance that she could see Emma on Sunday afternoon, although she was very nearly dreading the moment. Would Emma even speak to her?

  How far we fall, Kathleen thought drearily, then brought herself up sharply. What was she mourning? The loss of money and servants? Ian, who was apparently too selfish to even consider putting his daughter ahead of his pride? The friends, who had all disappeared when she left Ian and the privileged world he had given her?

  If she was regretting anything, it should be how long she let her own smug belief—that her world was perfect—blind her to the fact that her husband was an arrogant jackass and her daughter was miserably unhappy.

  But at least she had woken up, and she was getting by, even if she was petty enough to hate the stained sink and the yellowing linoleum in the kitchen, the steep stairs to the basement, the cleaning chores she’d once supervised, the cold darkness in the early morning when she left the house for a menial, mind-numbing job that paid peanuts.

  And she hated herself for thinking she was too good to live a life that was blessed in so many ways.

  She waited at the nearest bus stop with an old man who was talking loudly to himself and a young woman with half a dozen rings through one eyebrow who was reading, of all things, Beowulf.

  Keeping a few feet away, Kathleen thought, Maybe this was all God’s way of slapping her down.

  Or was it arrogant to think He’d bother?

  The bus rumbled up and she found a seat by herself. Swaying as the bus started, she was grateful for its relative emptiness. The last thing she wanted was to make conversation or fend off a drunk or edge nervously from a potential crazy.

  She had never ridden the bus when she was married to Ian. That was something left behind with her parents’ small, shabby house in West Seattle, along with washing dishes by hand, and enduring the television being on nonstop and her father’s puzzlement and exasperation at his daughter’s ambitions.

  Now, she rode the bus several times a week, saving gas money and the hassle of finding street parking in busy parts of Seattle. She didn’t mind it too much on a day like this, when her mind was free to drift.

  She should call her father. She hadn’t in weeks. He didn’t know about Emma’s collapse or hospitalization, unless Ryan had told him.

  She loved her father, but she had spent her entire childhood also despising him. He was content with on-again off-again jobs, never seeming to care whether his family got ahead financially. It never occurred to him to save so that his kids could go to college. He would have said, “Why the hell would they want to do that?”

  When Dad walked in the door every day from work, he headed straight to the refrigerator for a beer, then slumped in his recliner with the remote control in his hand. He’d grumble if dinner was late, and half the time refuse to come to the table for it. His wife or daughter had to bring his plate to him, “along with another brewski.” Grease seemed embedded under his nails and even in the wrinkles on his big, rough hands. Kathleen had been ashamed of him when he went to school events and parent-teacher conferences, and ashamed of her timid mother who did cheap, at-home dye jobs on her hair and said “ain’t.”

  It seemed she had been born envying the kids from privileged families where the moms looked chic and drove BMWs and the dads had clean hands and wore business suits.

  She was different, she used to declare when she was mad enough to yell at them. She didn’t belong in this house.

  Ryan sarcastically called her a princess. She secretly thought maybe she was, that two babies had been switched at birth in the hospital and she was really…oh, Princess Grace’s daughter, or at least some rich attorney’s child.

  Except, she had to grudgingly concede as she got older, she and Ryan did have a strong familial resemblance, and she looked a lot like her grandmother on her mother’s side when she was a teenager.

  But Kathleen didn’t get over her hunger to leave their working class neighborhood and find a life that fit her. At the University of Washington she met Ian Monroe, who was everything she’d ever dreamed about: handsome, charming, ambitious, smart, athletic—and from a family with money. She finished her degree, but never considered going on to law school the way she’d intended. She was too madly in love, too thrilled with the life Ian gave her.

  Too smug.

  She got off the bus on Roosevelt near Whole Foods, went in and bought milk and bread and then walked home. Bulbs were in bloom everywhere, primroses peeked from cracks in stone retaining walls and candytuft spilled above the top. An old crab apple tree rained fairy-tale pink petals to the cracked sidewalk.

  Kathleen’s mood should have lightened, but didn’t. She had spent the past year and a half discovering that she didn’t like herself very much. She had tried, slowly and painfully, to change. Sometimes she thought she was succeeding.

  Today wasn’t one of those days.

  How did you…well, find the parts of yourself that were likable and keep them, while discarding whole chunks of standards and beliefs and motivations that were snobbish?

  One of Emma’s favorite lines was, “Just because you’re so perfect!”

  It used to irritate her. More recently, she’d begun a self-examination: Did she think she was perfect? Was it something in her attitude that Emma so resented, or did she somehow have to visibly manifest imperfections? Leave dirty dishes in the sink and go to work without makeup and…and…

  Her imagination failed her. Was it so bad to like order and cleanliness? To want to project a certain image to the world?

  Maybe not—unless she’d put them ahead of listening when Emma needed to talk, or just needed her.

  Or maybe she’
d just conveyed her chosen image too well. Maybe Emma didn’t believe she could ever match it.

  And Kathleen had not the slightest idea how to convince her that her mother was just as uncertain and scared and confused and afraid of rejection as anyone else.

  Because Emma no longer listened to her mother. No longer believed her.

  And whose fault was that?

  Wearily Kathleen started up the steps from the street to her front porch.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  EMMA MISSED HOME SO MUCH.

  She huddled in bed, covers pulled tight around her, the lights out, and felt muddled and alone.

  Mostly she was resentful and horribly conscious of the fat that was probably swelling on her butt even as she slept. She’d eye the other girls and wish she could be as slim as they were. Summer was delicate, like those paper snowflakes kids cut out in school. In comparison, Emma felt like an ugly lump of clay.

  But once in a while in a group session or just talking during craft time, something would be said that made her remember the days before she had to think all the time about food. When she could just eat, or not eat, when she tried makeup and studied herself in the mirror and secretly believed she was pretty, even if she was fatter than her friends.

  Turning her face into the pillow, she thought wistfully how nice it would be go back, to be like Ginny, who stared at her with those huge, amazed eyes when she turned down an ice-cream cone or just a glass of milk. To not care whether spaghetti had ten calories or ten million, just to be able to suck each noodle in and savor the slippery texture and the rich flavor.

  But then she caught herself, like she did each time, and rolled over angrily to stare at the ceiling. Sure, she could just eat and eat, but then she’d be fat again, so fat she’d have to wear tent dresses and waddle and her arms and legs would dimple and her chins wobble! Was that what she wanted? If she let herself eat, she wasn’t sure she could stop. Maybe she never would. Goose bumps rose on her arms at the thought, and she hugged herself under the covers.

  She did miss Ginny. Sometimes, with Ginny, Emma could be a kid herself again. She even played dolls with her, and they had tea parties, or played hide-and-seek in the back yard, both shrieking with laughter. Those were the times Emma didn’t think about food, or how hungry she was, or how full, or whether she should exercise for hours tonight to make up for the graham cracker she’d eaten.

  The staff pretended this place wasn’t a hospital. The hallways were painted bright colors, and the rooms were decorated and had nice comforters and posters, but nothing could make it really feel like home.

  In her bedroom at home, Emma could smell whatever soap Mom was making downstairs. Vanilla and cinnamon would make her stomach rumble, or odd spicy scents made her imagine she was in a Middle Eastern bazaar, or flower essences smelled like Hawaii, where they had gone on vacation a couple of times. This place smelled like cleansers.

  And Pirate. He mostly slept with Ginny, but sometimes he’d be waiting in Emma’s room when she went to bed, and he would paw at the covers until she let him under, where he would curl against her waist and purr, making her think he was crooning her to sleep. He was so warm, she would wrap herself around him and even snuggle her cheek against his soft head.

  If Pirate was here, she wouldn’t be so lonely and cold and scared.

  Sometimes she told herself she was glad they wouldn’t let Mom visit, but other times she missed her mother with a fierceness that hurt, as if her chest was being crushed. One minute she hated Mom, and another she loved her. Going back and forth wasn’t an easy shift; it was more like getting your hand wedged between the bars of a wrought-iron gate, then yanking and squirming and yanking some more until you freed it, terror flooding you at the idea of being trapped. Only, it wasn’t her hand that she had to wrench free. It was something inside, in her chest or stomach.

  She liked it when she and Mom could be friends or talk or laugh together. Even though she pretended not to, Emma was glad that Mom still insisted on tucking her in every night. Mom smelled good, like her soaps, and her hand was soft when she smoothed Emma’s hair back and her lips were warm on Emma’s cheek.

  Emma rolled over again and buried her face in her pillow. Her eyes burned, as if she was about to cry. She didn’t want to miss her mother, who had put her here. Mom probably didn’t miss her at all! Without her problem daughter weighing her down like a school bag bulging with books from every single class of the day, she was probably having fun.

  Maybe she had even had lunch with Dad this week, or dinner. Emma knew they’d still be married if it wasn’t for her. They were so perfect for each other. Emma had watched them talk to each other without words across a crowded room, dance together as gracefully as stars in those old movies Mom preferred, get dressed up to go out and look like those stars, Dad in his tux and Mom in a long dress with diamonds sparkling at her throat.

  It was Emma who had ruined everything. From the time she could remember, she had known that she disappointed Dad, at least. She wasn’t athletic, like he was, or beautiful like Mom. He hated that she was just okay at most things she did. Like, when she got a chorus part in the school play, he sat and fidgeted in the auditorium and afterward said irritably, “If you keep hiding behind your hair, you’ll never be the lead.”

  Mom and Dad had started fighting when Emma was in sixth grade, and at her fattest. Emma would creep to the top of the stairs when she was supposed to be in bed and listen. She couldn’t always hear every word, but the bite in Dad’s voice and the anger in Mom’s carried. Mom said Emma would outgrow her “baby” fat, that he’d damage her self-esteem if he kept saying things at the dinner table like, “For God’s sake, don’t you have any self-control?” or, “Have you looked at yourself lately? And you can still eat cake?”

  Of course, Mom said things, too, but more gently. Emma could tell that she was worried her kid would always be fat, that she was lying to Dad about the baby fat melting away when her body stretched out in puberty.

  When Emma started to diet, for a while things got better. They both smiled in approval. Until Mom decided she should stop. Then Mom would look at her dinner plate with puckered brow and say, “Please try to eat a little more.” And Dad would snap, “You want her to go back to stuffing her face?”

  But he got mad, too, when Mom insisted that Emma should see a counselor. That’s when they really started fighting.

  Over her.

  She’d liked knowing that Mom was taking her side. But sometimes she thought her dieting was ruining everyone’s lives. Only, she was pretty sure she was the problem, not her eating. She had always been one big disappointment. Dieting was the first thing she’d ever been really, really good at. Better than the other girls. Better than anyone she knew.

  Denying herself when she desperately craved a bite of lasagna or a slurp of a root-beer float or even just a nibble of lettuce made her feel strong. Proud of herself.

  If she let that go, she would hate herself completely. She knew she would. But nobody seemed to understand what she was talking about.

  Except the other girls here. She bet most of them felt the same.

  Today, one of them had said something interesting. It was in Group, when six girls were slumped in their chairs, ignoring the counselor’s efforts to get them talking, Maria chewing on her fingernails and Rochelle looking so spacey Emma wondered if she was really in there. Then this eighteen-year-old named Lauren said suddenly, in a loud voice, “I think my mom is anorexic, too.”

  The counselor, a guy who was, like, thirty but already going bald and developing a paunch around his middle, made that humming sound therapists used to indicate interest.

  “Why do you say that?” he asked.

  “It’s obvious!” Lauren sat up, her face intense. “She takes maybe a bite or two at dinner, then moves the food around on her plate so nobody will notice she hasn’t eaten more. She loves to cook and tries to get everyone else to eat. She claims she samples it and that’s why she isn’t hungry,
but I’ve never seen her. And she, like, freaks if she thinks her pants are tight or something.”

  “Has she always been this way?”

  Lauren nodded.

  They talked about how people maintained a sense of control over their environments and relationships with family and friends. Emma got to thinking about her mom, and how super picky she was about tons of things. She couldn’t stand it if anyone left shoes lying around or empty cups or pop cans, and the dishes had to be washed right after dinner. Her closet was like something in a magazine, with shoes arranged by type and color and clothes hanging perfectly spaced like in a store, dresses here and pants there and shirts color-coded.

  The kitchen cupboards at home were just as weird, by most people’s standards. Mom alphabetized the soups, for Pete’s sake!

  So, while she was pretty casual about her diet, she controlled her environment in other, really obvious ways.

  They also talked about whether these attempts at control actually worked, and mostly everyone agreed they didn’t. Alphabetizing soup cans hadn’t kept Mom and Dad married.

  In the end, Emma’s dieting had made her father even more disgusted with her than he had already been. It didn’t make either of her parents proud of her.

  “Maybe,” she had said tentatively, “we’re trying to prove something to ourselves, not to other people, even if that’s what we believe when we start dieting, or whatever we do.”

  The counselor clapped his hands. “Bravo, Emma! I think you might be right. How about the rest of you?”

  They hadn’t all agreed. One girl said her boyfriend hated fat girls and she loved him so much she wanted to please him. Another one admitted that partly she wouldn’t eat because it made her mother furious, and that was her goal. Lauren and Maria had looked thoughtful. Rochelle, who hardly ever opened her mouth, said belligerently, “Sure I do it for myself. I can’t say no to my father when he gets in bed with me at night. At first I thought if I got really bony, he’d lose interest. Now I just like knowing there’s this huge part of my life I’m in charge of.” She went back to looking bored. “So what’s the big revelation?”