Tara went on full alert. Her mother never got drunk and she never used what she called foul language, including damn and hell. “I’m making chamomile tea. Would you like some?”
“I waited for you. We hafta do the pro...gram for the fun’ral. What was going on in there?”
“I was hosting a web meeting with one of my clients.”
“Yes. You have clients.”
Was she being sarcastic?
“Faye says you’re very...pro...fezzhional.”
No. That sounded sincere.
“I try to be. I’m doing well, especially in this economy and—” She stopped, realizing her mother had bigger concerns. “What’s up, Mom? What’s going on?”
“You’ll have to drive me to the hozzpital. Joseph’s going too early and my car...my car...see...it’s still—”
“At the mechanic’s. I remember. No problem. I’m happy to drive.”
Abruptly her mother grabbed Tara’s forearm, her fingers digging in, her eyes fierce and desperate. “Is she suffering? I can’t stand to think...that I... That my little girl...is in pain...”
“No, Mom. She’s not suffering. Rita told me coma patients fidget when they’re hurting. And Faye doesn’t move at all.” She’s as still as death.
“You wouldn’t lie to me?” Then her mother gave a small smile. “Not you. You’re honest to a fault.” That was a jab, but her mother’s behavior was so troubling that Tara was relieved by the normalcy of the dig. Her mother noticed the photograph Tara held. “Wha’s the pic...ture for?”
“To tape up for Faye to look at. What do you think?” She showed it to her mother, who blinked, as if to clear her vision, then studied it. “This was that trip we took before Faye got married.”
“Yeah. Sunset Crater. We were talking about it and you said let’s go so we did.” It had been a rare instance of spontaneity from their mother, and Tara had loved it. As they set off, her mother had actually squeezed Tara’s hand in excitement.
With so little reaction from her parents, Tara had learned to interpret the smallest gesture or postural shift. In a way, that had led to her skill with people. She knew well the way her mother’s eyebrows lifted whenever Tara spoke, as if she expected Tara to be loud or wrong. She knew the sour lip twist when Tara’s manners failed and the huffed breath when Tara bumped a chair, the relieved exhale when Tara left the room, the quick stiffening when she entered.
Her father had hardly seemed aware Tara existed. His neglect somehow hurt less, maybe because he neglected her mother, too, as far as Tara could see. When he was home, he was in his study or reading. His books, their places marked, were scattered throughout the house. Only Faye made him light up. Tara had been happy for Faye, but she’d also ached with envy.
“That was a fine trip.” Her mother smiled, running her finger over the glass.
They’d parked on the lookout and asked a tourist to take their photo. They stood with the crater behind them, Tara and their mother on either side of Faye, who sat on the hood of their mother’s sky-blue Mercedes, her heel braced in the heart-shaped dent in the fender their father had refused to fix. Her mother was notoriously bad at parking and her father had gotten fed up with all the bodywork charges.
“Faye looks so happy,” Tara said. Her sister practically glowed with joy.
“Faye was always happy.” Unlike you. Her mother claimed Tara had been a colicky baby, a cranky child and an impossible teenager.
“But this is more. You can see she’s in love.” At the time, Tara had dismissed that, insisting that Faye owed it to herself to go after her dream, to study art. Love can wait, she’d said.
Tara cringed at her nerve. The trouble was that Tara had never been in love. Not real, adult love. The thing with Dylan didn’t qualify. She didn’t understand love. Worse, in the back of her mind lurked the deep and painful truth that Dylan had blurted when they had that terrible fight:
You don’t know how to love anyone, not even yourself.
Still, still that thought made her gasp as if from a stomach punch and left her feeling empty and aching inside.
Tara should have rejoiced that Faye had found love, that she was happy. Instead she’d harassed her about it, sounding eerily like her mother when Tara said she was going to NAU with Dylan. Her mother had said it was puppy love.
Tara had been just as thoughtless. It was the Wharton Effect—the feeling of being both lost and trapped because of growing up where