The Social Climber of Davenport Heights

by Pamela Morsi

  I’d spent two hours in Dr. Feinstein’s office coming to that conclusion. Voicing all my doubts and hopes as he nodded benignly.

  When I’d told Chester, he patted my hand and said he was proud.

  Of course, there were people who thought I was wrong. Tookie, Teddy and Lexi were amazed that I just gave in without a fight. Even the women at the office were openly disapproving of my behavior.

  “You don’t just let them out of the deal,” Kelli the receptionist told me. “It sets a bad precedent for every cheating son of a bitch in town.”

  The two people who were most upset by my actions were Edith and Brynn. The former was just going to have to get over it. But I felt very badly about the latter.

  “Oh, this is great!” Brynn screeched at me facetiously. “Just throw my father out, tear up my home, don’t even give a thought to me and what I want.”

  We were in the bar at the airport. We were perched atop high, uncomfortable bar stools on either side of a table the size of a large postage stamp. People came and went through the place in droves. The light was glaring and the noise level horrendous. Not exactly the perfect spot for an important family moment.

  Brynn was en route, stopping in for two hours on the last leg of her Christmas vacation trip. She was in town, basically, to pick up the rest of her luggage, which I had dutifully carted out to the terminal for her. The other baggage I brought to her was definitely the emotional kind.

  “I didn’t throw your father out,” I said. “He left me of his own accord.”

  “Of course he did,” she said a little too loudly for a public discussion. “No wonder, after years of putting up with your pushing, your constant criticism, your inability to love him and accept him for who he was.”

  I was more puzzled by her words than hurt. Pushing, criticizing and being unaccepting were sins of which I was undoubtedly guilty. But not with David, only with Brynn. If she had wanted to divorce me, I suppose she had grounds.

  “I’m sorry that this happened, but…”

  She gave me a hard look, unwilling to listen to my apologies as she fumbled around in her backpack.

  “Where’s my cell?” she cried out in frustration.

  Losing patience with her fruitless search, she dumped the contents of her pack onto the tiny table. Her stuff spilled out everywhere. Brynn spotted the phone and grabbed it up immediately. I picked up the less essential items, such as her wallet, passport and plane ticket.

  She flipped open the silver metallic lid. I could hear the dial tone.

  “Dr. Reiser at his office,” she said distinctly into the mouthpiece.

  She looked up at me, her eyes were narrowed with anger but they were also swimming with tears.

  “Mother, this is the worst thing you’ve ever done to me,” she told me. “It is totally unforgivable.”

  I wanted to tell her that I hadn’t done anything. It was David who had hurt her. But it wasn’t true of course. Divorces always concern two people and nobody comes out completely innocent.

  Brynn’s attention turned to her phone call.

  “Is he in the office?” she asked. She bit down on her index fingernail. “I’ve got to talk to him right away.”

  I couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation, but there was a long pause while my daughter was listening.

  “How long will he be?”

  She actually moaned as if the answer caused her physical pain.

  “Okay, this is Brynn, tell him that my mother has thrown Dad out. He’s run off to the Dominican Republic to marry his trampy pregnant girlfriend, and I’m about to get on a plane to fly back to Boston.”

  She snapped the phone closed and sat there, not looking at me.

  I just wanted to finish my iced tea, shake hands and walk away. But I was her mother, lousy at the job as I had always been. I had no other choice but to sit and watch her suffer.

  “Brynn, you have every right to be upset,” I told her. “But I know that somehow all of this is going to work out fine.”

  “Why would you think that, Mother?” she asked, steely-voiced. “Why would you think that anything, let alone everything, is going to ‘work out fine’?”

  “Because I’m sure that what we’re doing is a good thing,” I told her. “Your father, Mikki and I, we’re all really trying to do what’s best for everybody.”

  She rolled her eyes at that.

  “What would have been best would have been for you and Dad to continue to do what you’re supposed to do,” she said. “To be my parents like you’re supposed to be. Not start changing the rules on me and making everything different.”

  “Different can be better,” I pointed out. “Sometimes it can actually be the best.”

  She really didn’t like that statement. Her eyes narrowed furiously.

  “How can my parents’ divorce be best for me?” she asked.

  It was a damn difficult question to answer, so I didn’t even try.

  “Think of that little baby,” I said instead. “It’s going to be your little brother or sister. That little person should have a chance to come into the world with a mommy and a daddy.”

  Her mouth came open. She stared a me incredulously.

  “Think of the baby!” she said. “You want me to think of the baby?”

  Brynn threw up a hand dismissingly. She was shaking her head.

  “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this, even of you, Mother,” she said. “I’m supposed to consider the feelings of an unborn fetus that was conceived in an adulterous affair by my dad. And you sound like you care more about that fucking baby than the emotional well-being of your own daughter!”

  Brynn’s voice had slowly risen until the last was actually yelled. Everyone in the room was looking at us.

  “Don’t use that kind of language, Brynn,” I said quietly. “It’s very offensive.”

  “I fucking want to be offensive!” she screamed.

  She grabbed up her backpack, her computer and her carry-on.

  “Goodbye, Mother,” she said. “I am totally done with you. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to hear from you. I don’t want to know anything about you ever. And I mean EVER!”

  “Brynn, no, wait,” I said.

  She brushed past.

  “Don’t follow me!” she demanded.

  I just stood there for a moment, not knowing what to do. In all honesty, I was tempted just to let it go. I couldn’t help Brynn with this. I could hardly help myself. I felt as betrayed, confused and rootless as she did. It was all I could do to simply drag myself out of bed in the mornings. I was in no position to offer comfort to anyone else.

  The waitress came over with the check. I dug around in my purse for the right amount of cash. I didn’t want to wait for her to process my credit card so I gave her a twenty. I just wanted out of there.

  “Keep the change,” I said.

  It was a big tip, much better than she deserved, but she didn’t even offer thanks.

  “Sure,” she said.

  As I reached the exit, she called out to me.

  “Hey, lady! Are these your keys?”

  I kept mine in a special compartment in the side of my purse. I touched it and felt them still there, but I turned back anyway. They were Brynn’s. They provided a valid excuse, a good reason and a motherly necessity for me to go after my daughter.

  “Thanks,” I said, clutching the collection of chinking metal in my hand. I headed down to the gate.

  My daughter was furious with me. She blamed me. But that was to be expected. Even if we didn’t have our history, if she loved and trusted and respected me, bringing such news would still have evoked a reaction of anger. I knew that as well as if I were reading it from a text on parent-child relations.

  It probably would have been better if David and I had talked to her together. If he had been there to reassure her that their relationship would not change. But he and Mikki had already gone to the Dominican Republic. And we certainly couldn’t wait
until he came back to tell her. There was too much risk that she would have heard it from somebody else.

  It was me or nobody. Of course, it wasn’t the first time that I was all that Brynn had. That was strange in itself. With a loving and involved father and two grandparents, she should have had tons of outside support. But so many times it had really been no different than me and my own mother. Life was just the two of us. A bilateral universe.

  The airport was bustling and crowded with weekend travelers. But I spotted Brynn the moment I arrived at the gate. Next to the window, she was sitting elbows on knees, head in hands. Her expression was lost, forlorn. She was so young. Decked out all sexy in tight jeans, clunky heels and a blue clingy sweater, I was reminded of finding her in my closet playing dress-up in my glamorous after-fives.

  I walked over to her.

  The moment she saw me, she sat up, back ramrod straight, defenses fully engaged.

  “I told you not to follow me,” she hissed between clenched teeth.

  I held up the keys. “You left these,” I said.

  At the sight she visibly deflated. Resuming her disillusioned-thinker position, she looked close to tears.

  “I can’t do anything right,” she said in a sad, tiny voice. “I can’t even manage a dramatic exit.”

  I sat down in the chair beside her. “I was never any good at them either,” I said.

  She snorted, disbelieving.

  “You’re good at everything,” she said. “You always know what to do and how to do it. You get along with everybody and don’t take crap from anyone. You even make getting dumped by your husband look like some sort of personal triumph.”

  I listened and thought about what she was saying. After a minute or two the irony of the situation got to me and I gave a little chuckle.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked unhappily.

  “I guess it’s knowing how much you despise me,” I answered. “While still giving me a lot more credit than I deserve.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “I’m not the woman that you think I am,” I told her. “I’d really like to be that woman. I’ve worked at it all my life. But when you get right down to it, I’m not her.”

  Brynn didn’t bother to argue. She looked so pitiful, so deflated. I almost wished that she would growl at me again. I put my arm around her shoulders. She didn’t even shrug it off.

  “When is it going to happen?” she asked.

  “I don’t know for sure,” I told her. “The legal proceedings might already be over or it may be tomorrow. After the decree is granted they have to wait twenty-four hours before they can get married.”

  “Not much time for Dad to play the field,” she said, attempting sarcasm.

  “It’s all been so quick because of the baby,” I explained. “I’m trying to look at it like ripping off a bandage. Maybe it hurts more, but it’s over sooner.”

  She nodded.

  “I am truly sorry, sweetie,” I said.

  “I just feel like I’m lost,” she said. “I was having such a great time with my friends. I met a guy and he seemed to really like me. I was so psyched up for going back to school. It’s like I looked away for a minute, and when I looked back…when I looked back, my life was just gone.”

  Her words struck a surprisingly familiar note with me. Feelings that I hadn’t thought about in years suddenly weighed down on me. I knew what Brynn was feeling. I knew it exactly.

  “I’ve talked to you about how my mother died.”

  It was as much a question as a statement. Of course, I had told my daughter about her grandmother. Of course, she knew that I was alone in the world, but I honestly didn’t remember any in-depth discussion on the subject.

  “She had, like, breast cancer or something,” Brynn answered.

  “Yes,” I answered. “But I didn’t know it. I was away at school living with a roommate, working part-time, studying.” I hesitated a moment and then continued frankly, “I was hanging with my friends, partying, dating this really cute guy in a fraternity.”

  “Eeeww, Mother, please, I don’t want to know.”

  I nodded, but continued.

  “My mom didn’t tell me she was sick. She had a mastectomy and radiation treatments and she never let me know. When she’d call, she’d talk about her work or ask me about school. She never said she was sick. The hospital called me when she was too unresponsive to make her own decisions. Even after I got there, seeing how awful she looked, I was sure she was going to be fine.”

  “Did she explain why she didn’t tell you?” Brynn asked.

  I shook my head. “She was getting so much pain medication, I’m not sure if she even knew who I was,” I answered. “She died six days later.”

  I glanced over at Brynn. She looked as though she might cry. There was an empathetic aspect of her that I was very aware of, but I rarely saw it focused in my direction.

  “Oh, Mom, that’s so awful,” she said with genuine sincerity.

  I felt as though I might cry, as well. Not just from the story of my loss, but from the sound of Mom on her lips. She so rarely called me that.

  “Brynn,” I said, “I don’t know what you’re feeling, what you’re going through. But I do know the feeling that a familiar world has just disappeared without warning. I can’t make it be different, but I am sorry.”

  She nodded.

  We just sat there in the middle of the noisy hustle and bustle, the gray sky beyond the windows, unwelcoming, the smell of jet fuel and stale air around us. We were a mother and daughter. My arm around her shoulder, the warmth of her body close to mine. United for a precious moment by more than interactive history and shared genetic material. It was a sweet space of time that I treasure.

  It ended abruptly with the sound of her cell phone beeping out the tune to “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”

  Brynn fished it out of her backpack and glanced quickly at the caller ID before answering.

  “Thank God you called me back,” she said without prelude. “My parents are getting a divorce. Everything is just totally screwed.”

  I waited for a moment while she listened to the other end of the line. “No, it’s not like that at all,” she said. “It’s worse.”

  She glanced in my direction.

  “Dr. Reiser, could you hold on for a minute,” she said.

  Taking the phone from her ear, she spoke to me.

  “Thanks Mom,” she said dismissively. “If you don’t mind, I am talking to my therapist.”

  We were back to our relationship as usual.

  “Okay,” I said, rising to my feet. “Be safe and call me when you can.”

  Brynn was noncommittal. I walked away.

  It was two nights later when I finally got the news from David. We were divorced. They were married. It was all nice and neat and very, very final.

  These facts filled David with optimism and enthusiasm. My own bag of emotions was stuffed with emptiness.

  “The weather here is great,” he told me. “Mikki’s feeling wonderful. The morning sickness hasn’t bothered her a bit here. We’re so happy.”

  I tried to talk to him about Brynn. I give him credit, he did his best to give me his full attention on that. But his heart just wasn’t in it. He was brimming with excitement and exuberance. Who could blame him for wanting to keep the cares of his past in the past?

  “She feels so lost right now,” I said. “We’ve turned her world upside down and she needs some reassurance.”

  “Brynn’ll be fine,” David insisted. “She’s a strong girl, lots of grit and depth. She gets that from you, I guess.”

  I wasn’t sure that grit and depth were ever in sufficient supply in either of us.

  “You should call her,” I suggested. “Tell her yourself what’s happening and how much you still love her.”

  “Yeah, I do need to call her,” he agreed. “When I get back I’ll do that.”

  There was a pause. I suppose in our married life I would have filled it
with an insistence that he call her now. But he wasn’t my husband anymore. I couldn’t really tell him to do anything. So I didn’t.

  The silence lingered and he was obliged to say something.

  “I shot a five under today,” he told me. “And Mikki is at the top of her game. Her putting still needs work, but she’s been playing some great golf here.”

  “That’s wonderful, David,” I said. “Listen, I need to hang up now. But I appreciate your call. Best wishes to you both.”

  “Thanks, Jane,” he said. “We…well, I’m sure all of us are going to be happier now.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed with as much hopefulness as I could muster. I hung up the phone and allowed myself a good old-fashioned cry. I felt as if I had earned the luxury. But I didn’t linger in self-pity. Within an hour I was past the moment. I washed my face and went on.

  Before I gave myself a chance to chicken out, I called Brynn at her dorm. Hailey, her roommate, said she was out. Of course, she said it in a way that sounded as if Brynn just didn’t want to talk to me.

  Hailey connected me with her voice mail and I didn’t tell her anything, I just asked her to call. Maybe I should have just said, “Okay, it’s over. Your dad is now married to somebody else.” But somehow it didn’t seem like the kind of words that should be left on a message machine.

  David thought that we were all going to be happier. I wasn’t so sure. He knew nothing about being a faithful, devoted husband. That wouldn’t be easy to learn. Mikki would have a name for her baby, but she was going to have to work at making a marriage. Brynn was going to find her position as David’s daughter a secondary one to the new baby. And me, well, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen to me.

  The next few days did give me some ideas.

  News of our divorce must have been posted in a flash box on the Internet. I didn’t have to tell a soul. Everyone I knew was already informed. The dinner invitations dried up immediately. Even my calls at the office dwindled to nothingness. I couldn’t tell whether people no longer wanted to talk to me, or just didn’t want to bother me while the wound was still fresh. But it seemed that none of my friends or long-term associates had any interest in commiserating with me.