past Sundays, I find the quiet and the rituals soothing, and by the time we step back out into the sunshine a little over an hour later, I confess I seem to breathe just a little easier than I have since Rebecca knocked on my door yesterday morning.
As a teenager, I was always anxious to get on with my day, impatient with my mother’s ritual of lingering outside the church steps following the service to mingle with her friends. Today though, I follow her lead, greeting familiar faces, and even enduring a couple of honest-to-goodness cheek pinches from a few of the older ladies.
“Well,” Mom says in a satisfied tone, as the group slowly begins to dissipate. “Shall we?”
“Shall we…”
“Talk, dear. We may have been apart for some time, but you’re still my daughter, and I still know when there’s something on your mind.”
“What gave me away? Maybe the fact that I showed up on your doorstep unannounced for the first time ever?”
She ignores my gentle sarcasm and begins walking in the opposite direction of home.
“Where are we going?” I ask, falling into step beside her.
“Brunch. There’s a place just around the corner that serves the most perfect mimosas. They fresh squeeze the orange juice by hand. And they’re bottomless. That means you can have as many as you want.”
“Mom!” I give her a teasing, scandalized look. “Where was this part of the Sunday routine when I was growing up?”
She gives me a look I can only describe as saucy. “Maybe had you stuck around past your twenty-first birthday, you’d have been introduced to this part.”
“Touché,” I mutter, holding open the restaurant door for her.
The hostess asks if we want to sit inside or out. I say out, just as she says in. Rough start.
We sit inside.
The second the server arrives with a water pitcher, my mom orders bottomless mimosas for both of us, and in any other circumstance I may have been annoyed at the old, familiar habit of her deciding what I want without asking, but in this case, I’m all too happy to follow her lead. The second I turn down bottomless mimosas is the second you should just put me out to pasture.
The mimosa, as promised, is pretty darn perfect, but as delicious as that first sip is, it unfortunately doesn’t do much to diffuse the slight awkwardness we’ve managed to avoid up until now.
And by slight awkwardness, what I actually mean is the elephant in the room. I’ve mentioned that despite the strain of the past ten years, Mom and I haven’t had anything to do with each other. While we didn’t exactly break the ice at my brother’s wedding, we at least cracked it, and there have been birthday and Christmas phone calls that were cordial, if not exactly warm.
But in all of those tense exchanges, we’ve never once mentioned that day. The day I’d defiantly shown her the plain wedding band on my left hand and proclaimed that I had the funds I needed to get out from under her thumb and “build my empire.”
Yeah, I do believe those were the exact words I used, and no, I am not proud of them. In hindsight, I don’t even know that I can really blame her for responding the way she did, which was with ice-cold rage and that whole don’t bother coming back business.
So, while on some level, we both seem to have tactically agreed to chalk that day up to temper and pride (her) and temper, pride, and a side of immaturity (me), the scars are still there. Scars that I know won’t fade until we air out the wound, but …
I can already feel today is not that day. I’ll need my full armor for that conversation, and right now I so do not have my full armor.
“Mom, did you know Colin was seeing someone?” I say, deciding to get right to it.
My mom’s Champagne flute had been halfway to her mouth, but she sets it carefully down without taking a sip, the slight clink of the base of the glass brushing her bread plate the only signal that she’s rattled.
“A woman came by yesterday,” I babble on. “Her name’s Rebecca, and they work together, and—”
“Yes, I know Rebecca.”
My mom’s tone doesn’t give me much information, and I try to play it cool as I fiddle with my spoon. “You’ve met her?”
“Many times. As you said, they work together, and she’s been his companion on several occasions at various functions.”
Companion. Such