The Frog Prince

by Jane Porter

  Again she glances up at the wall and then looks back to me, and a hint of puzzlement creases her eyes. “So what do you do here?”

  I hesitate. “Events.” Her puzzlement hasn’t cleared so I add, “Plan events.”

  “Plan events?”

  “I’m an event planner.”

  The creases deepen in her forehead and around her eyes. “You know how to do that?”

  I’m beginning to feel a little prickly. “It’s what I did in Fresno, Mom.”

  “You did?”

  “That’s all I’ve ever done.”

  She makes a little sound, a puff of air as she exhales in utter surprise. “I had no idea.”

  I swear, this has been our relationship from birth. I smother my frustration. Can’t be frustrated with Mom. Love Mom. She’s my mom. Mom needs love.

  Take a deep breath, Holly, I say to myself. Think nice thoughts. “So what are you doing in the city?”

  A new, fine frown line puckers between her brows. Her eyebrows are thinner, sparser, and for a moment I’m worried—cancer? Stress? And then I realize she’s just overplucked them.

  “I love San Francisco,” she says.

  She hasn’t been here in years. She hates driving in cities, has the same phobia I do about steep hills, runaway cable cars, and earthquakes.

  “Did you come to see me?” I ask.

  She looks startled, draws her purse against her middle. “No.”

  Things feel hot inside me, hot and tight, and I want to hug her, if only to keep from throttling her. Mom and I have issues going back to, well, birth. It’s been this way since the beginning. I was her hardest delivery. I was her colicky baby. I was the dark, hairy girl when she wanted a beautiful blond boy named Jack. Apparently I never did figure out how to latch on properly and I wouldn’t nurse right, and then when she’d burp me, I’d spew. Apparently I hated her singing voice. And the way she walked me. And the clothes she bought me. And we’re still talking the first year of my life.

  But hey, that’s all history. “When did you arrive, Mom?”

  “Just a few minutes ago.”

  “Did you fly?”

  “Fly?” She has that slightly bewildered look again, which sends my blood pressure spiking. Airplanes are not generational. They had airplanes when she was a child, too. “Mom. Did you drive?”

  “Of course.”

  This is my mother. I don’t know what else to say. Everyone has a mother. And I love my mother. It’s just so... complicated... and I don’t want to feel this way. I don’t want to be angry or frustrated. I don’t want to sound irritable with her, either. I just wish she had called me, let me know she was coming. I would have at least been... prepared.

  Or at least had the chance to advise her on her wardrobe. No bright colors, loud patterns, elasticized waistbands.

  No open-toe heels in shades of pink or green.

  No oversize purses that don’t match anything.

  And I don’t know whether it’s her bright geometric/floral/neon dress, or that she’s sitting in a chair big enough for a pro basketball player, but she looks so much smaller than I remembered. When was the last time I saw her? Memorial Day weekend? Easter?

  Josh’s head suddenly appears in the doorway, his brown eyes extremely apologetic. “Sorry to interrupt, but, Holly, you’ve got a call.” He grimaces. “Olivia...”

  Olivia. “Mom, I’ve got to take that call. It’s my boss—”

  “That’s fine.” Mom waves grandly. “I’m in no hurry and I’ve got”—she gestures to Josh—”your friend to talk to.”

  I look at Josh, smile weakly. “I’ll be right back.”

  Olivia’s terse on the line. “I can’t believe you didn’t have those numbers for me.” Her voice is low, clipped, furious. “I’m in the middle of a presentation without any of the numbers I needed. I look like a damn fool!”

  I feel little prickles of heat. “Can I give you something now?”

  “It’s a little late.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “I needed those numbers today.”

  “I’ll have them for you today.”

  “You’ll e-mail them out this afternoon and then follow up with a FedEx hard copy before you leave tonight. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  Olivia slams the phone down in my ear, and I more slowly replace mine.

  It’s going to be a long afternoon.

  Returning to David’s office, I walk in on Mom regaling Josh with stories of my awkward youth. “First time in high heels and panty hose, Holly slips—”

  “Mom.”

  Mom ignores me. “Slips in her new heels and falls in front of the entire church congregation.” Now she looks at me. “You were fourteen?”

  “Thirteen,” I say flatly, mortified.

  “She put a huge hole in her panty hose and burst into tears.”

  “I hurt my knee, Mom.”

  “I know, but it wasn’t the grand entrance you’d hoped, was it?”

  No, Mom, it wasn’t. Tripping and falling in front of three people is embarrassing, let alone in front of a hundred. I was so excited about those shoes. My first real high heels.

  I’ve never forgotten that day, and I wouldn’t even remember those shoes, if I hadn’t slipped and gone down the church’s brick steps.

  This had been my big moment. New, fashionably short beige skirt, suntan-colored panty hose, and heeled pumps—I was so sure everybody would look at me and think I was beautiful.

  Instead old people rushed to help me while my own sister, Ashlee, laughed hysterically.

  I’d wish bad things on Ashlee, but she’s still struggling to get through college (starting her fifth—sixth?—year), so I can’t be too unkind.

  But Mom’s moved on, and she turns to Josh. “So you do events, too?”

  Josh nods, glances at me. “Yes.”

  Mom shakes her head in wonder. “I had no idea Holly did this kind of thing. I always thought she was a secretary—”

  “Mom!”

  “Personal assistant?”

  “No, Mom. Never.” My face is burning up. I’m so hot, so frustrated, so angry. Doesn’t Mom listen to anything I tell her? Would it be too much trouble to get her facts right about the one daughter who has a job and continues to be financially self-sufficient? “I’ve never done clerical work. I’ve always been in marketing and public relations, even at a junior level.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with clerical work.” Mom suddenly sounds injured. “I’ve been a bookkeeper for twenty years. It’s paid the bills. Put a roof over your head. Even paid for that fancy fairy-tale wedding you wanted!”

  Please, please, ground, open up—San Andreas Fault, shift now, and swallow me whole. I can’t bear this. Can’t bear to be reminded of all my faults and shortcomings. “You did,” I say, wanting peace, wanting to move past this painful topic. “You have. I’m sorry.”

  Josh puts out his arm, extending his hand toward Mother. “It was a pleasure meeting you, Mrs. Bishop.”

  Mom visibly relaxes a little and shakes his hand. “It was a pleasure meeting you, too, Joshua.”

  She watches him leave, and I watch Mom’s face. I can see she’s still upset with me, and I’m not sure what I’m going to do with her. I glance up at the clock on David’s wall, see that it’s nearly two, and I still have Olivia’s mandate hanging over my head.

  “Have you had lunch, Mom?”

  “Are you going to lunch?”

  She sounds so hopeful, and I feel terrible because I’m going to disappoint her, just as I’ve disappointed her ever since that traumatic birth and latching-on nightmare. Apparently Ashlee and brother Jamie had no problem nursing, or keeping their milk down, or sleeping through the night. They were, by all accounts, dream babies. “I hadn’t planned on it. I’ve just come from a meeting, and I have this Oracle account I’m working on—”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  She says it too quickly, and the problem is, I do worry, and the fact
that I can feel so much worry and angst on her behalf doesn’t make this relationship any simpler.

  “I’m fine,” she adds, her voice airy, casual (she’s not casual), and everything inside me bunches up.

  We’ve been in this odd partnership for, oh, twenty-five years, and I think she should know how much I love her, but I don’t think she does, and being me, I don’t know how to tell her. I don’t know how to talk to her. “If this account weren’t a problem at the moment, I’d take you to lunch now. I would—”

  “Of course.” And she’s smiling at me, fiercely determined to be kind and patient, but I see something else in her eyes. I see that hidden puzzlement I’ve witnessed all my life, ever since Dad left, and it breaks my heart in a way that Jean-Marc never did.

  Mother shouldn’t have been left. No woman should be left, but especially not my mom. I don’t want to, but every time I look at her face, I see her past, see the childhood, where they didn’t have a lot and there wasn’t always security, or love. And I want her to have that security, and the love, but she didn’t get it from Dad, and she isn’t getting it from me.

  “Maybe I can get off early,” I say, feigning optimism because there isn’t a chance in hell I’ll be going anywhere soon. I don’t have Olivia’s numbers, because before I met with Brian Fadden, I spent the morning trying to connect with Perry Zeeb from one of the TV stations, and Melinda Martinez at the Examiner, but she never returned my calls. So although I worked all morning, it wasn’t what Olivia wanted me to accomplish, which is why the info for the Oracle proposal was never pulled together, which is why Olivia is going to be livid when she returns from the Beckett meeting.

  “Don’t worry if you can’t, honey. I understand.”

  “Thanks.” For a moment I’m not sure what to say, or what I should suggest. If I gave her directions to my apartment, would she find her way there? If I offered to treat her to a spa manicure and pedicure at the Vietnamese nail salon down the street, would she agree? (No. And no.)

  “I was hoping I could meet some of your new friends,” she says after a moment, clutching her purse again, smiling shyly. “Just so I could get a feel for your new life.”

  I glance back at my cubicle, see no one stirring. I think half the office is gone (since David is), and the rest doesn’t want to be visible. This office isn’t into family visits. Most of us moved to the city to escape our families, nearly all having issues with our past, and to be brutally honest, unless someone in your family is an extremely important person, that person probably doesn’t matter.

  Just as my mother doesn’t matter.

  I know this, recognize this, and hate it all the same. Everyone knows my story—at least where I’m from—and while they don’t know where Mom was born, they can guess.

  Mother was raised in Coalinga, California, and has spent her life making sure she knows people, the right people, people who will get her out of Coalinga and keep her out.

  Which explains Father.

  However, the essential thing to know about Coalinga isn’t Father—I really try hard not to think about him, and he makes it easy by behaving as if we kids never existed, except for his showing up at my wedding late and then leaving early—it’s that if you can survive a life in one of Central California’s little cow towns, you can survive anything life throws at you.

  I’m not trying to be cruel. I’m the girl who grew up thinking a good party was a two-kegger in an orchard. Growing up provincial had its merits.

  Like Mother’s ability to be outwardly calm when disaster strikes. The sky could fall, and my mother would be the only one not running around screaming. Okay. Maybe she ought to be running, if only to look for shelter, but she wouldn’t panic. Because she wouldn’t do anything.

  Mother certainly didn’t do anything when Dad left all those years ago. She didn’t take to her bed. Didn’t drink, pop pills. Didn’t vow to clean him out by going to court. No, Mom was very controlled. And civil. She wrapped her pride around her nice and tight, kept her chin up, attended all the usual social functions, and managed to convince everyone she was better off without Ted.

  She was so convincing that in no time she had everyone thinking that Ted’s leaving was a godsend and that the only tragedy here was that he didn’t do it years earlier.

  It wasn’t, of course, that easy. Mom suffered. I know she did. I just don’t know how, as she’s kind of a mystery lady. She’s present hut not. Kind but defensive. Positive but petrified.

  I suppose I don’t know her at all.

  “Everybody’s in meetings,” I say, trying to ignore two of Tessa’s girls turning the corner and walking down the hall to the break room. “It’s really crunch time right now around here.”

  “I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry.”

  This is why I wish Mom had remarried. A new husband might have kept her off San Francisco’s streets and from blurting misery-inducing things like this. But Mom never did remarry, nor did she ever get serious again. In the beginning there were a string of casual dates, but eventually even those faceless, nameless men disappeared.

  “Don’t say that, Mom.” I’m already assailed by guilt. I haven’t seen my mother in months. We never really talk, even though she tries to call once every couple of weeks; but she usually calls me at home during the day, and I’m not at home during the day—I’m at City Events—and she’ll leave messages like this: Oh, Holly (sigh) it seems I’ve missed you again. We never do seem to connect.

  That’s right. Mom. Because you call me at the apartment when I’m working, and you call work when I’m at the apartment. I almost want to give her a crib sheet, a little chart, marking workdays and weekends and attaching the right phone number to the right day.

  There’s no reason for her to be so confused. Childbirth couldn’t have taken that much out of her. Sometimes I even wonder how she managed to snag Ted, my so-called dad (it’s not nice, but I’m more comfortable thinking of him as a sperm donor than as my father), because she can be pretty damn clueless.

  But I’m now feeling bad for having bad feelings, and the guilt grows. “I can’t get away now,” I repeat, “but maybe I could round up a few people and we all go to dinner.” I don’t even know where this thought comes from. I don’t know how I let it pop out of my mouth. It’s not as if I even have friends to round up, but I’m desperate to feel like a nicer person again, and Mom does appreciatively brighten.

  “That sounds like fun.”

  Not really. I don’t know where I’m going to find friends, and I don’t know where we should go to dinner, and I feel like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible VI. Why are we even making this film? “I’ll work on firming dinner plans.”

  “Where will we go?”

  “Let me think about it.” I’m already feeling claustrophobic. She’s a dear, dear lady, but she should have had a good, sweet daughter. Not me. “Why don’t you go to Union Square, do some shopping, maybe get tea at Neiman Marcus?”

  “I’d rather have tea with you.”

  “Then shop! You know I hate shopping.”

  Mom’s expression falls. “I do, too.”

  She sounds forlorn again, and I’m Cruel Joke for a Daughter. “Why not wander around a little, take in the sights, and then we’ll meet up for dinner?”

  “But where?”

  I struggle to think of a place near Union Square that Mom would like and that I could convince some of my colleagues to go to, because the people here at City Events are the only people I even know in the city. Immediately Josh comes to mind. I’ll approach him first. He’ll have a hard time telling me no if I get down on my knees and weep.

  “I’ll think of something.” There are lots of little places by Union Square, lots of big, expensive hotel restaurants, lots to choose from, but right now I can’t think of one.

  Suddenly Mom’s eyes light. Her mouth opens. She has an idea.

  “What?”

  “The Tonga Room,” she breathes reverently.

  The Tonga Room at the Fairmo
nt? There’s no way in hell I’d ever get anyone from work to go there. Not even Josh. Although... if Josh is gay, he might like it. But I don’t think he’s gay. I think he’s from a wealthy, oppressive family that lacks a sense of humor. “Mom—”

  “We went there when you were little.”

  “I remember.”

  “You loved it, Holly.”

  I did. But I was eight.

  “It rains from the ceiling, Holly.”

  Yes, it’s a Polynesian tropical paradise complete with a band playing on a floating raft, thunderstorms, exotic bird calls, and outrageously priced Chinese food, but it’s also my last memory of dinner with Ted—Dad—before he packed up and left.

  “Oh, Holly...” Mom’s eyes are shining, and clearly she doesn’t remember the Tonga Room the way I do. “It’d be so fun. With your new friends it’d be a party.”

  She doesn’t know I haven’t made friends yet. She doesn’t know I’m barely able to cover my rent and, worse, that my landlady’s a bitch. She doesn’t know I get parking tickets right and left. She doesn’t know I still get lost when I drive around the city.

  But she’s smiling. And I feel a pang, the way her eyes light up. I hate seeing her like this. Girlish. Excited. Hopeful. It reminds me of how she must have been, once upon a time before she married Ted and had us.

  Ted’s a bastard.

  Ted left her with his three little Bishops (Jamie, Holly, and Ashlee) and a houseful of heartbreak in the middle of Central California. He moved south, somewhere sunny and beachy in Southern Cal, and with the help of some mind-science church he discovered his true self. (Praise the power of the mind!) And Mom continues to struggle along, doing her best, which means instead of being on some cruise ship in the Panama Canal meeting sex-starved sixty-year-olds (preferably male, but hey, I’m open-minded), she’s in San Francisco for some mother-daughter bonding time.

  I’d say it’s a fate worse than death, but that’s actually reserved for my night out with Lehman.

  “Call the Tonga Room,” Mom says.

  I really want to be a good daughter, I do, but I’m dragging my feet here. “I don’t know if I can get reservations.”