Mama's Girl

Mama’s Girl

“Mama,” I said to her wide back covered in white and blue flowers. “I have to tell you something.”
She rinsed the carrot in a gentle stream of water and set to it with the peeler. Cheerful, bright orange shavings piled into the sink, clogging the drain because Mama had forgotten to replace the strainer again; a failing for which Dad always scolded her, and which he hadn’t yet been able to remedy. She looked out the window above the sink. “It’s still raining, Jen. Did you roll up your car windows?”
“Mom, please. I need to talk to you. It’s important.” My voice grew stronger along with my irritation.
She handed me the cleaned, skinned carrot to take my aggression out on, so I stuck it to the back of my mouth and gnawed on it. There was no other sign that she was hearing me. The fixings for stew lay across the checkered kitchen counter in neat lines: naked potatoes sat next to a bowl of carefully cubed meat, right beside the scrubbed and trimmed celery stalks. Tiny shreds of minced garlic still clung to her favorite steel knife, set across the cutting board in preparation for the next hapless vegetable to cross Mama’s path.
I swung my foot against the table leg distractedly, enjoying the reassuring solid thump of shoe on oak, and bit off the end of the carrot with my molars. “Mark asked me to move out. He says I can stay till the end of the week so I can find a new place….”
Mama moved smoothly from the sink to the counter, reaching for her knife. She began to chop the carrot into the even circle slices that reminded me of wheels on the celery cars when I was little, the stalk filled with peanut butter with a tiny raisin driver. I nearly expected her to whip out the toothpicks and paper plates – but no, today was meant to be a little more formal than automobilic vegetables. I kicked the table leg again, settling into a comforting rhythm. Thump, chew. Thump, chew. Thump –
“Jennifer, please. Would you stop?” Mama turned to glare at me, the first reaction I’d gotten from her since I’d stepped out of my car twenty minutes ago, into her welcome-home hug and my father’s strong handshake. My sister Jamie, typically, hadn’t been home, but I fully expected her to appear three minutes after dinner ended, wolf down a plate of stew, and disappear back out the door with her newly-won driver’s license and her best friend of the week. Mom was still looking at me. I hooked my foot into the rung of the chair to remind myself to stop kicking – to stop acting so childishly. It was a silly reaction to the effect Mama’s kitchen always had on me.
Dad wandered into the kitchen, one hand carrying a glass and the other holding a book to his nose. He set his glass on the counter, walked unerringly to the refrigerator, opened it to take out a pitcher of water, filled his glass, and replaced the pitcher without missing a beat, or a word of the story. He picked up the glass, braced his novel against the counter next to the fridge to turn the page one-handed, and shuffled back toward the kitchen door. Then he stopped.
“Jen, hon, could you help your mom with dinner? I’m sure she’d appreciate it.”
“Yeah, okay.” I levered myself out of the chair and sucked the rest of my carrot into my mouth. There was enough of it left to make my cheeks puff out.
“Oh, Steve?” Mom called to Dad. “Jen’s going to move back home.”
“I didn’t say that,” I mumbled through the carrot. I pulled another knife from the silverware drawer and began cubing the potatoes, swallowing too-big lumps in my hurry to talk. “I just said I’m moving out of Mark’s place. I don’t know where I’m going yet.”
“Of course you’re coming home,” she said. “Where else would you go? Besides, we’ve missed having you here. You don’t visit often enough. The city’s only twenty minutes away; is it so hard to come out here once in a while?”
“I’m visiting now, aren’t I?”
Once again, she wasn’t hearing me. “You know your sister misses you. You two used to be so close as children. Why couldn’t you have let her stay with you in town once in a while? Now that you’re home for good, you can spend a lot more time together.”
“Mama, I don’t think that’s on Jamie’s wish list….” It wasn’t particularly on mine, either. The six years between my sister and me had translated themselves into a lot of personality differences – clashes, even – and I don’t think we were ever as close as my mother liked to remember. I couldn’t remember the last time we had spent more than twenty minutes together.
“Of course she wants to see you! All of us do. Isn’t that right, Steve?” She yelled toward the living room, where I knew by now my father was most likely to be happily ensconced in a corner of the sofa with his feet propped against the wall, leaving dirty shoe prints on Mom’s cream paint, his book braced against his knee. Like a cat, he could always be found just flopping across random bit of furniture in the most awkward-looking positions, but he always claimed to be perfectly comfortable if anyone asked him. I’d be surprised if my mother could get a word out of him before dinner, as wrapped up as he was in his latest acquisition from the library.
Without Dad’s answer, Mama continued. “Your father wants you home, too.”
I took my frustration out on the potatoes, chopping with hard, fast strikes. “I told you. I haven’t decided what to do. I may get an apartment. Besides, you haven’t even asked what happened!”
“Does it matter? I told you Mark wasn’t right for you. It’d be a good idea to listen to your old mother once in a while…. You know you’re too young to be moving out of the house yet.” Her tone sounded so reasonable and matter-of-fact. “You remember, I told you when you left. You’ve got some growing up to do before you can handle being on your own. Here, give me those.” She took the potatoes and scraped them into the pot on the stove along with the rest of her stew ingredients, then slapped the lid on top. “Now, Jennifer. You go and write that Mark a letter, telling him that Dad will pick up your things next weekend. Then you can rest a little before dinner.”
“What if I called him? It’d be faster.”
“You’ll just get upset if you have to talk to him, honey. I know.” The Mom Look on her face allowed for no argument. I gathered my purse off the kitchen table and took it with me as I headed toward the living room.
Like I’d thought, Dad was sprawled across the sofa, his book held over his head as he read. I sat on the floor next to him and leaned my head on the sofa.
“How does she always get away with it?”
“With what, Jen?”
“Making me feel like I’m still in high school.” I’d never realized it before, but every time I visited home I wound up feeling like I’d lost four years off my life. Mama had always had this effect on me, really. As far back as I could remember, she’d been telling me not to hurry into growing up, not to do too much at once, not to worry about things that I shouldn’t have to. It was kind of nice when I was younger, not having to deal with a lot of the headaches that some of my friends in high school did. Now, though, I thought I’d learned a thing or two about ‘real life’ in the five months I’d lived with Mark and the three I’d lived alone before that; enough at least to prove to myself that I could handle things like paying bills and doing my own grocery shopping. “I don’t know why she’s so stuck on this idea of me moving back home.”
I thought Dad hadn’t heard me, but he spoke after a moment. “It might not be too bad, sweetheart. You could stay here for a while, just until you find a new apartment…. Your mother’s missed you.”
I shut my mouth, and for the first time I actually considered the idea of staying at home again.
“I’ll think about it.” I pushed off the floor. “I’ll be in my room, Dad, if you guys need anything.”
He nodded and looked back to his book. I walked down the hall until I came to my bedroom door at the end. I pushed it open and tossed my purse on my bed.
It was weird, actually, how little ever changed. I knew Mom wanted me to have a place to stay whenever I visited, but she hadn’t altered a thing in my room since I’d moved out. The bed still had its comforter with the black and purple geometric pattern, my dresser still had the same knickknacks sitting across its top… even the rock posters I’d put up while in tenth grade hadn’t been removed from the walls. The coziness and comfort of being home surrounded me like a soft wool blanket.
Would it really be so bad if I stayed? I’d managed to get through nineteen years in this house before moving out, after all. And I knew Mama cared about me dearly, the same as I cared about her and Dad even though I hadn’t lived at home for months now. Sometimes Mama seemed to think I would forget all about my family; it was why I’d made a point to visit often. I wanted to reassure her that I’d never forget her.
My mind began calculating up what I’d been paying in rent and groceries over the last eight months. Not a ridiculous sum, all things considered, but enough to make me stop and think carefully about my options. A new apartment, if I lived by myself, would be a lot more expensive than what I’d been splitting with Mark…. Was it mercenary of me to think of my parents in terms of how much money they could save me?
Mom had made it clear she wanted me home again, for whatever reason.
I sat at the desk and checked the drawers for pen and paper.
Dear Mark....
How to continue? It wasn’t as if either of us had been looking for a lifelong relationship with each other to start with, or he had given me to expect anything but our eventual breakup. He’d been completely honest about the possibility of moving on at any time – it was me that had hoped for more, even though I should have known our relationship wouldn’t last. The way things had ended, though….

“Jennifer?”
I’d looked up from tying my shoes to see Mark in the doorway to our apartment. “You’re home! How was your day?”
“I didn’t expect you to be home now,” he said.
I began to feel uncomfortable with the way he wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I was about to go running, but I can hold off. What’s up? Is something wrong?”
“Not really wrong. I was going to wait until later, but…. Jennifer, this is Lindsey.” He reached out of my sight to pull a woman into view. “I met her a couple of weeks ago.”
Lindsey gave a little bit of a wave. “Hi! It’s nice to meet you!”
I nodded to her slowly.
“I brought her up here to get a look at the apartment, kind of poke around a little. Jen, um… can I talk to you for a minute, in the back?” Mark started down the short hall.
I followed him to the bedroom and sat heavily on the bed. The bedroom window, half open, was letting a strong breeze flap the curtains against the wall, and I shuddered in the sudden chill. “Okay, so talk. What’s going on?”
“I’m in love with her, Jen. I didn’t expect anything to come of it when we met, but I’m in love. She hasn’t said yes or no yet, but I asked her to marry me today.”
I braced my hands against the bed behind me and tried to fight the rush of emotion. “That’s – that’s moving a little fast, don’t you think?”
“I don’t think so. I feel like I’ve known her forever, and I know she feels the same way about me. Um….” He looked at his feet, then at my face. “I know it’s sudden news to you, but I never pretended anything I didn’t feel for you.”
“I know.” I twisted handfuls of blanket tightly in my hands, managing to keep my face a blank.
“It’s been fun, but we both knew this was just temporary.”
“I know.”
“I’m… going to have to ask you to move out soon. If Lindsey agrees to marry me, we’ll live here until we can find a house.”
“How soon?”
“By the end of the week?” He had such a look of gratitude on his face that I couldn’t say anything else. I just nodded. The breeze through the window turned into a full-force gale, whipping the curtains into a frenzied dance and knocking them into a glass of water on the bedside table. I lunged, slamming the window shut harder than I’d intended. Mark just watched as I walked past him, standing in the spilled puddle of water while I grabbed my car keys and purse from the dresser.
Then I’d left, waving goodbye to the bouncy Lindsey on the way. I wondered what Mark had told her about me. Wondered if he’d said anything at all.

How could I deal with all of this in just a letter? I could rationalize things to myself, but there was still the core of pure emotion within me. Anger at Mark’s sweeping me away like nothing. Guilt for having wanted too much. Sadness at this change in our relationship. Was there a way I could put those aside, forget about them?
I began to write.

Dear Mark,
Congratulations on finding what you were looking for in Lindsey. I hope the two of you can be very happy together. From what I saw, she seems like a very nice person.
My clothes and all should be gone within the week. I don’t think a new apartment will be hard to find, but just in case I don’t have anything in time, my father will pick them up.

Was there anything else I could say?

Please know that I still consider you a friend.
Jennifer

I folded the letter, stuck it into an envelope, and wrote our – his address on the front, feeling a sense of victory as I did so. Then I took out another piece of paper, hoping to finish before my resolve faded.

Dear Mom....

When I came out of my room, the thick smell of beef stew was starting to fill the house. I had one letter in my purse and another in my hand. I went back into the living room, where my father had now fallen asleep with his book resting on his chest. I leaned down and kissed him on the cheek.
“Dad?”
His eyes opened quickly enough that he couldn’t have been asleep for very long. “Hi, sweetheart. Is dinner ready?”
I shook my head. “Dad, I’m leaving now. I wanted to let you know that I’m going to find a new place to stay, and I’ll send you the address as soon as I know. Can you give this to Mama for me?” I held out the second letter I’d written.
His face was a little sad as he took it. “Your mother loves you, you know. She just wants you to be happy.”
“I know she does. This isn’t easy for me either, but I’ll never get anything done if I stay here the rest of my life….”
Dad folded open the single sheet of paper and glanced through it. His eyes were sad, but he smiled. “I’m proud of you no matter what you decide, Jen, so just remember that. I love you. Keep in touch, okay?”
He gave me a kiss and I straightened up, nodding in agreement. “Love you too, Dad. I’ll try.”
I could hear the clinking dishes of Mom’s setting the table as I quietly opened the front door. Maybe it was cowardly of me not to say goodbye to her, but I was afraid I’d lose my newly-found strength once she started in at me again. I shut the door behind me on the smells and sounds of dinner and went down the driveway to my car.