improved version of “Piglet,” I am actually fully present at that field trip. Instead of toggling from imagining Joyce Chaffee with a meat cleaver buried in her thoughtless, behighlighted head to wondering how I am going to pay my property taxes on what I make as a lactation consultant, I am focused entirely on Aubrey as she feeds that baby pig. This time around I savor her joy like crème brûlée and notice that for just one second, piglet and girl, their eyes shut in contented slits, wear identical expressions of bliss. In this version of Childhood Done Right, Aubrey has two straight-arrow parents like Madison and Paige and Kelsey do, instead of a crazed single mom driving around in the Bird Shit Mobile encouraging women to flash their boobs in public, and a father who has joined a cult. Aubrey is the girl all the moms want for playdates.
I speed out of Joyce Chaffee’s neighborhood, check my phone, and see that I forgot to turn it back on. When I power it back up, the phone plays cheerful notes, alerting me that I have a message. I hit the “voice mail” button, praying it will be Aubrey but expecting the freaked-out preemie dad.
After some electronic sputtering, I hear the message, clear as a bell: “Cam. Sorry, reception is impossible. I’ve finally got a signal, but I don’t know how long it will last, so I’ll cut to the chase. I hope that you’re back from your trip to Europe, because I need to warn you that there might be … I’m not saying there will be, but there might be a problem with the trust. So you and Aubrey should probably get over to the bank as soon as—”
Scattered words blip in and out, then nothing.
OCTOBER 26, 2009
The next day, after getting dragged to a couple of classes meant to show how open and cool all the professors are, sitting next to my mom who won’t stop beaming at all this open coolness, I snap and Inner Bitch reemerges. The thought of spending four more minutes in this place, much less four years, freaks me out so much that I can’t breathe. Literally. I get such a bad asthma attack that Mom wants to take me to the hospital until I get enough breath to tell her to calm the eff down.
She and Dori have pretty much made it that I have to drop the F-bomb to get taken seriously. Still, Mom lets me spend the rest of the day at the motel and she has a great time going to all the sample classes.
OCTOBER 27, 2009
Too much of the asthma medicine combined with my usual too much thinking keeps me awake most of the night so that I am a total crab by the time we drive to the airport.
Mom, meanwhile, continues with her one-woman-show monologue all fakethusiastically, like an old-pro actress playing to a bad audience, until she finally gives up and asks, “Can we just start over today? Is that possible? I was up most of the night trying to figure out what I am doing wrong, and I remembered how your grandmother used to drive me crazy.
“I hated everything about her. I hated the way she chewed, and put on lipstick. I hated the way she smelled. I hated it when she stared at me like she was looking in the mirror and wasn’t sure about her hair or the outfit she was wearing.”
I don’t say anything, but I hate that my mom assumes that my mood and entire being are totally determined by her. I also hate the way she chews. I hate the way she puts on lipstick. And I really hate it when she stares at me the way she is right now, like she is looking in the mirror and isn’t sure about her hair or the outfit she is wearing.
“Anyway, I know that it’s all part of the separation process. I guess that the closer you are, the more it hurts. With you and me. The single mother/daughter, it’s even more intense. Maybe I wanted too much closeness because I didn’t have that with my mother. My mother, your grandmother Rose, and I, we were never … We were always such very, very different people. And then she was sick so much of the time when I was growing up. Maybe I was closer to Bobbi Mac, your great-grandmother, because I never had to go through the whole separation process