Unforgettable (23 page)

Rett stood up, then regretted it when her vision swam for a moment. “I guess we’re done. I have one last question.”

“Jesus. Haven’t you bothered me enough?”

I left you alone for twenty-three years! Rett wanted to scream. She shoved the anger down and put her shaking hands behind her. “Did you ever in any part of your soul have one glimmer of affection for me?”

Her mother lit a fresh cigarette from the one she was smoking and studied Rett through the smoke again. “I never had the time for that. You wouldn’t drink formula. I had to breastfeed you and my tits were never the same. You screamed for hours, sometimes all afternoon. You woke up all night. I didn’t step foot outside this house by myself for nearly a year. It was like you drained me dry — there was no time for liking you. The older you got the harder it was to control you.”

Her mother should have never had a child. She’d been too young, too unprepared, too alone. “Even when I was older, every day you told me something I’d done wrong. You never told me I did anything right, not one thing.”

“You never did. You dropped plates and ground up silverware in the disposal. You always burned dinner. You never did learn how to do the laundry properly. And the noise was endless. You running around pretending you were one stupid thing after another, and singing at the top of your lungs. You drove me crazy. I couldn’t think.”

Rejection, rejection, rejection. God, she thought — did I put up with Cinny’s teasing because I thought rejection was all I was worth, all I could expect? I didn’t take it because I was a lesbian, I took it because that woman taught me to believe that rejection was all a miserable human failure like me deserved. Rett was trembling with anger. Through a haze of red she saw her mother’s mouth moving, but she no longer heard the words.

“I was a bad household servant, is that it?” Rett stood over her mother, nearly choking on the smoke and bile in her own throat.

“You never did earn your keep around here. You were like a damn puppy, making messes and always wanting more food. Always wanting a pat on the head for every damn thing. ‘Look what I did,’ you’d say, and you’d expect me to love you for whatever the hell it was. I’m not built that way and I’m damned sure not gonna apologize for it now.”

I am not my mother and I will not make her mistakes. The flash of clarity pierced her rage. Rett realized she was on the brink of being her mother long enough to dump all her rage and frustration with words of pure poison, words she could never recall.
am not her and I will not dump my emotional trash on her, because that’s what she does. They might not have any love for each other, but that didn’t mean they had to hate each other instead.p>

She backed away and took a steadying breath even though it made her lungs ache. “I didn’t used to feel sorry for you. But now I do. Maybe I was asking to be loved all the time, but don’t you know that I wanted to love you? I tried to love you and you never wanted it.” Don’t cry, she told herself. It’s too late for that. “I’m sorry that my coming here hasn’t made anything better between us. I had to try one last time.”

“Am I supposed to applaud?”

“Don’t bother.” Rett turned the TV back on.

“You were always selfish. You don’t know what it cost me to have you.”

This is where I came in, Rett thought. “All I know, Mama, is that I paid and paid and I’m done now.”

Outside, she leaned on the car and filled her lungs with fresh air. It was as bad as she remembered — even worse. She’d gained nothing but a measure of self-respect for facing her worst demon and managing to survive it without an emotional break-down. She’d wanted to smash the ashtray and scream that she’d gone without dinner when all there was in the grocery bag was cigarettes and beer. That it had been agony to wear garage-sale clothes the other kids recognized as theirs to school while her mother had always worn the latest in man-trawling skirts and heels. They got bigger tips, her mother had always claimed. Now all her mother could say was that it could have been worse. Maybe there were six degrees of hell and she’d only been in the first — but it had still been hell.

Her shaking hands made it difficult to get the key in the ignition. She looked back at the house. Her mother had made the effort to come to the window and they stared at each other through the separating panes of glass. Rett could not interpret the expression on her mother’s face. Could it be regret? Or was it just annoyance? Her mother let the curtain fall back into place after a minute and Rett started the car.

“It’s over,” Rett repeated, stunned by the emptiness she’d felt in that house. It had sapped her completely. She was beyond tears — there wasn’t any emotion left in her.

She stopped at Denton’s Diner for a lemonade and a chance to breathe in nothing but cool air. She was waiting numbly at the counter when she heard her name.

One of the men at a nearby booth was looking at her. “I thought that was you.”

Thor Gustafson, Bunny’s brother, and from the looks of it, Jerry Knudsen and Dwayne Cook. The gang of three whose chosen mission in high school was making sure everyone else, including Rett, felt like a loser. She’d avoided them at the picnic and didn’t have the strength for banter right now. She just wanted to sit and stare at the sky until it filled her up again. “It’s me. How have you been?”

“Just great.” Thor looked like he could still play football. The forearms that bulged out of his canning plant uniform seemed larger than her thighs. “Bunny says you’re a big star now.”

“I don’t know about that,” Rett said. She wished the waitress would bring her lemonade so she could go-

“A big something,” Jerry muttered. Rett remembered now that Jerry had been the mentally impaired member of the gang. “Or is that a lot of bull-’

Christ. His pea brain was trying to find a way to use the word dagger in a sentence. She didn’t have any patience for his stupidity. She put her back to the counter. “Did you have something you wanted to say to me, Jerry?”

“Knock it off, Jerry,” Dwayne said. “It wasn’t that funny twenty years ago.”

Jerry smirked. “I was watching one of those home shopping shows. Had all kinds of knives. Fancy swords. Lots of daggers.”

The waitress brought her lemonade. Rett quickly paid. She wanted to just walk out the door, but something made her head the other direction, toward their table. She wasn’t going to tuck tail and run from a moron like Jerry. She’d driven his nuts into his pelvis once and she would do it again. Jerry was staring at her boobs — typical. She kept her tone conversational. “The word is lesbian, Jerry. Bulldagger is something ten-year-olds say when they have no idea what it means.” 

Jerry’s jaw dropped. “Are you really one of them?”

Oh, Christ, Rett thought. They’d only called me that to hurt me because I was too weird for them. They never knew. “It was one of the few things you ever got right, Jerry.”

“You don’t need to flaunt it, Rett.”

“Tell me how buying lemonade is flaunting anything but thirst, Thor.”

“You don’t have to talk about it.” Thor sipped his coffee with an air of having had the last word.

“Jerry brought it up. I could have said I had an erotic dream about him and woke up a lesbian the next day, but the truth is it has nothing to do with any of you. I was just trying to improve his vocabulary.”

Dwayne said, “Jerry’s an idiot. Always has been, always will be.”

“Shut the hell up, Dwayne.” Jerry cracked his knuckles. The sound had the same effect on Rett as an out-of-tune violin.

“See you at the dance,” Rett said. “I’ll be in my lesbian dress, with lesbian shoes and lesbian earrings. It’s got lesbian sequins on lesbian silk in a lovely shade of lesbian green.”

“Christ, Rett.” Thor looked like he’d found spit-up in his coffee.

She winked at him and walked out. She was in the rental car before she started to laugh, and she let herself go — it was better than crying. Those idiots hadn’t even known she was a lesbian; they’d just called her one because she was different. Her mother hadn’t loved her not because she was unlovable, but because her capacity for love had been exhausted long before Rett had been born. She hadn’t been in love with Cinny all those years ago and she’d missed the love that was there — not just the love Angel had offered, but the affection and caring of friends. High school hadn’t been one hellish day after another, it had only seemed that way because she’d been hopelessly infatuated with someone who would never love her, and she’d been trained not to expect anything better. Forty years old and she had just figured it out.

Therapy probably would have been a good idea. Oh yah.

She showered again when she got back to the motel, fancying that she reeked of cigarette smoke and stale beer.

It was never your fault. Rett brushed out her hair and studied her face in the mirror. Her mother’s face.

7 am not my mother, and I will not make her mistakes. Now more than ever she understood how important her mantra was. Was she supposed to be grateful her mother had shown her how miserable and empty a person could be so she could try to be different? Gratitude, like forgiveness, had a rat’s chance in hell of ever crossing her mind.

“Maybe someday I’ll be that evolved,” she said to her reflection. “But not today.”

She dressed with care. Although it was warm, she put on her newest pair of jeans, suspecting that Mrs. Martinetta would appreciate some effort for a family dinner. She’d have worn the slacks, but they were dirty. So she dressed up the jeans with a sleeveless blouse stitched with rhinestones that she’d bought at Pike Place Market in Seattle. She slipped hammered silver earrings on and surveyed the result. She rebrushed her hair. Dressy casual. She hoped she passed muster. Mrs. Martinetta’s good opinion was worth courting.

Angel arrived at five-thirty. “Traffic was easy,” she said. Rett returned her kiss with pleasure. Angel still had her business regalia on, but she looked relaxed and happy.

“Do you have any ice? I’m parched. I kept meaning to stop for a soda, but I never did.”

Rett put some ice in a glass and caught Angel staring at her in the mirror.

“What’s wrong?” Angel came to take the glass away.

“Nothing,” Rett said.

“Not nothing. You look — different.”

Rett took the glass back and went to fill it with water. “I’m fine.”

Angel drank thirstily. When she was finished, she gave Rett one of her laser-beam looks. “You look like you’ve had a shock.”

“Can I tell you about it later?” She put her arms around Angel and looked down into the face she would now never forget. “It’s nothing to do with us. Something I did today that didn’t go as well as I had hoped.”
thought I had no hope, but I must have or I wouldn’t feel so sad.p>

“You went to see your mother.”

Surprised at Angel’s perceptive conclusion, Rett let go and tried to change the subject. “Should I wear these shoes?”

“Rett.”

She sat down on the bed. “I can’t talk about it right now.”

“Okay. I’m ready to listen when you want to talk.” 

Angel ran one finger over the tip of Rett’s ear. “Is there anything I can do?”

Rett put her arms around Angel’s waist and rested her head for a moment. “You’ve done it.”

“Mama’s not expecting us for another twenty minutes. You don’t suppose …”

“I just got dressed, you wench.”

Angel kissed her thoroughly. “That will have to do, then. It occurs to me that if I’m picking you up, I’ll have to bring you back. It’s such a long drive, and it’ll be so late, and I’ve been on the road so much today that it would be so much safer if I just stayed here tonight.”

Rett hugged her until she protested. “That may be what your mother had in mind all along.”

“What a cruel thing to say,” Angel said tartly. “I’m still not old enough to want to give in to my mother’s machinations, you know. Even if she’s right. The fact that she’s right only makes it worse.”

“I think your mother approves of me.”

“I’ll be forty next year. At this point, my mother would approve of an orangutan.”

“Gee, thanks.”

Angel grinned. “Okay, let’s be early. She’ll love you even more.”

“Is this the way to Manderley?” Rett asked. Angel had turned off the main road into Woton onto a tree-lined gravel drive that wound between two modest hills.

“I’ve always loved our driveway. Hey, what gives?” The drive had given way to a large cement and brick area that reminded Rett of an Italian piazza. To one side was an expanse of neatly mown grass with green and white striped umbrellas shading tables and chairs. A hammock promised rest beneath a cluster of pines. Scarlet geraniums and petunias lined the walk to the front door. The colors were dazzling, the antithesis of the dying plants and grass in her mother’s yard.

There were already several cars parked in front of the house. Three ladders were propped against the house, and sweaty male family members swarmed about.

Big Tony waved from the top of one ladder. Angel’s two brothers-in-law occupied the other ladders. “We decided this morning on a painting party. This is the last bit.”

Little Tony, Big Tony’s oldest son, not to be confused with Tony Junior, handed up another tray of paint. Little Tony was taller than either his father or uncle. “This is hard work for a vacation, but it’s worth it. Nana’s making timpanol”

“Timpano,” Angel breathed.

The word was repeated like a prayer by everyone in earshot. Rett had no idea what timpano was but she had a feeling she was not going to regret finding out.

Angel’s father came around the side of the house with a heavy bucket of water. Rett saw T.J.’s son, Carmine, start forward to help, then stop at a gesture from his father. Rett was touched by the love and respect shown by son and grandson.

Stop that, she told herself, but the comparison was inevitable. This is what it looks like when children love their parents, she thought. Once upon a time when she’d felt that way, she must have. The affection she might have felt had died from lack of care.

“Use this to rinse up your brushes.” Mr. Martinetta wiped his brow. “Angel! You’re early. I’m sorry I’m such a mess to greet you, Rett.”