documentation.
Mike worked hard taking shit from a sadistic boss in a thankless job. A Good Team Player: that’s what everyone at the office called Mike. Code for Kiss of Death. He was just high enough in the food chain to have a small coterie of junior hearing officers to supervise but low enough to have no real power. Still, he tried his best to see her perspective: that her parents depended upon her. The dutiful daughter. Not someone who reneged on obligations the way her father had. But Mike could lose patience with her. Geez, even she was losing patience with herself.
“I just don’t know what else we can do, Mother. We’ll all be ruined if you don’t change your lifestyle.”
“Now, now, Jules. I’m not worried. You’ll figure something out. Other responsible adult children must face their parents’ needs, too, mustn’t they?”
What was going to happen to all of them? There were consequences, sometimes irreversible. How was she going to pay for her parents’ assisted living bills now? Certainly not without cooperation from her sister, Joanne, or her brother. Was it even possible for Joanne to be approved for a loan? And Andrew had never chipped in for one goddamn Christmas gift, although he was in better financial condition than Joanne. Dentists had a good income; why was he so cheap? What had their parents done to him that was so unforgivable? She had to think of Mike and Zoë—their dreams, their future. What happened to
The Narcissistic Mother
, the book she wanted to publish? Jules was supposed to be the expert. Sometimes she felt like a fraud.
“Oh, Julia … We’re your family! Maybe we aren’t as close as we used to be. But that’s inevitable as you move away, isn’t it? But you were always the one with the long, unforgiving memory. An unreliable memory, if I may say so myself. A memory of a memory of your last memory. Always holding a grudge. Even as a little kid. No lightness in your nature. You just can’t move on, can you dear?”
Jules listened to her mother’s words. How could all this be of her own construction? How could she choose between her parents and Mike and Zoë?
“I’m just glamorous, you know, a diva meant to be on stage,” her mother went on, a cracked vinyl, skipping tunes until the needle landed on her. “You were so tongue-tied in high school. Except when you sang in the choir. That beautiful vibrato I had taught you. How we loved to sing together! Those were the good old days! Then you changed. If I hadn’t stepped in to entertain your few-and-far-between boyfriends, you wouldn’t have had any. They knew a red-hot mama when they saw one, that’s for sure. I rescued you. I gave you joy—joie de vivre.”
Is that what her mother called it—“rescue,” “joy”? Jules’s heart pounded faster, until the pressure in her chest traveled upwards and became a throbbing headache in her skull.
That petal-pink nightie
. Her mother had called it Valentine’s Day pink.
“Well, of course you may speak to my gorgeous daughter,” her mother had said, two feet from where Jules was standing. “It’s for you, darling. A boy.”
The night John had picked her up for the Valentine’s Day dance, her mother must have been listening upstairs, just waiting for him. Having her evening manhattan. Dashing to put on the first dress she could slip over her head with a minimum of fuss, Jules still couldn’t outrun her mother down the stairs.
John stood there in the hallway, so tall and strong, looking down at his dress shoes, all polished. An odd look for a teenager.
Her mother’s outline shone through like the filament in a lightbulb. Naked. In a pink, transparent nightgown. “Now, you’ll take good care of my daughter, won’t you? She doesn’t go out on many dates, you know. Wants to be a psychologist or some kind of scientist. Who knows why?” she said, standing so close to John that he stepped back into the wall. He was holding a corsage near his thigh, clenching
Mike worked hard taking shit from a sadistic boss in a thankless job. A Good Team Player: that’s what everyone at the office called Mike. Code for Kiss of Death. He was just high enough in the food chain to have a small coterie of junior hearing officers to supervise but low enough to have no real power. Still, he tried his best to see her perspective: that her parents depended upon her. The dutiful daughter. Not someone who reneged on obligations the way her father had. But Mike could lose patience with her. Geez, even she was losing patience with herself.
“I just don’t know what else we can do, Mother. We’ll all be ruined if you don’t change your lifestyle.”
“Now, now, Jules. I’m not worried. You’ll figure something out. Other responsible adult children must face their parents’ needs, too, mustn’t they?”
What was going to happen to all of them? There were consequences, sometimes irreversible. How was she going to pay for her parents’ assisted living bills now? Certainly not without cooperation from her sister, Joanne, or her brother. Was it even possible for Joanne to be approved for a loan? And Andrew had never chipped in for one goddamn Christmas gift, although he was in better financial condition than Joanne. Dentists had a good income; why was he so cheap? What had their parents done to him that was so unforgivable? She had to think of Mike and Zoë—their dreams, their future. What happened to
The Narcissistic Mother
, the book she wanted to publish? Jules was supposed to be the expert. Sometimes she felt like a fraud.
“Oh, Julia … We’re your family! Maybe we aren’t as close as we used to be. But that’s inevitable as you move away, isn’t it? But you were always the one with the long, unforgiving memory. An unreliable memory, if I may say so myself. A memory of a memory of your last memory. Always holding a grudge. Even as a little kid. No lightness in your nature. You just can’t move on, can you dear?”
Jules listened to her mother’s words. How could all this be of her own construction? How could she choose between her parents and Mike and Zoë?
“I’m just glamorous, you know, a diva meant to be on stage,” her mother went on, a cracked vinyl, skipping tunes until the needle landed on her. “You were so tongue-tied in high school. Except when you sang in the choir. That beautiful vibrato I had taught you. How we loved to sing together! Those were the good old days! Then you changed. If I hadn’t stepped in to entertain your few-and-far-between boyfriends, you wouldn’t have had any. They knew a red-hot mama when they saw one, that’s for sure. I rescued you. I gave you joy—joie de vivre.”
Is that what her mother called it—“rescue,” “joy”? Jules’s heart pounded faster, until the pressure in her chest traveled upwards and became a throbbing headache in her skull.
That petal-pink nightie
. Her mother had called it Valentine’s Day pink.
“Well, of course you may speak to my gorgeous daughter,” her mother had said, two feet from where Jules was standing. “It’s for you, darling. A boy.”
The night John had picked her up for the Valentine’s Day dance, her mother must have been listening upstairs, just waiting for him. Having her evening manhattan. Dashing to put on the first dress she could slip over her head with a minimum of fuss, Jules still couldn’t outrun her mother down the stairs.
John stood there in the hallway, so tall and strong, looking down at his dress shoes, all polished. An odd look for a teenager.
Her mother’s outline shone through like the filament in a lightbulb. Naked. In a pink, transparent nightgown. “Now, you’ll take good care of my daughter, won’t you? She doesn’t go out on many dates, you know. Wants to be a psychologist or some kind of scientist. Who knows why?” she said, standing so close to John that he stepped back into the wall. He was holding a corsage near his thigh, clenching
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