Wild Game My Mother, Her Lover, and Me - Adrienne Brodeur Page 0,18

We were deciding what she should bring for an overnight stay in New York with Ben. My mother tried on outfit after outfit, appraising her reflection in the full-length mirror, her lips pursed critically.

When she put on a dark green wrap dress that flattered her narrow waist, I said, “Oh, Mom. That’s the one. You look gorgeous.” And she did.

Malabar positioned herself on the padded stool and leaned into an unforgiving, three-paneled magnified mirror to study her face. Her large brown eyes, shaded by heavy lids, gave her a sultry look. As a child, I’d heard her friend Brenda refer to them as “bedroom eyes.” At the time, I took this to mean she looked sleepy.

Despite my assurances that she was beautiful, so very beautiful, Malabar was in no mood for compliments. She pinched the excess skin from her upper lid and frowned at her reflection. “There is nothing worse for a woman than getting old, Rennie,” she told me. “My mother warned me and I didn’t believe her. But mark my words: Nothing worse on earth.”

A photograph of my glamorous grandmother Vivian sat on the dressing table. Hers was the beauty standard against which my mother compared herself and believed she came up short. I didn’t agree. To me, Malabar was far lovelier. My mother’s face had warmth, and her eyes sparkled with mischief, whereas my grandmother’s black hair, dark eyes, and flawless ivory skin struck me as austere. She had a steely gaze even when she smiled. When I looked at my grandmother’s photo, it occurred to me how all-consuming it must have been for my mother to be her only child.

But I was alone in the impression that my mother was the more attractive of the two. I needed only to utter my grandmother’s name, and the universal response—from men, women, close friends, and rivals—was that Vivian was the most stunning woman who had ever walked the earth.

“Your grandmother was a seductress extraordinaire for much of her life, but she did not age gracefully,” my mother said. I’d heard stories about my grandmother’s temper, competitiveness, and alcoholism for years, including one about a terrible fight she’d had with my mother when I was a toddler. They’d brawled over a man they’d both been flirting with at a party. Drunk and furious, they slung accusations until the argument turned physical and my mother ended up falling backwards and landing in the fireplace. My grandmother came out of it bruised, my mother in a hip-to-toe cast.

I hated to imagine them fighting; the thought of a mother hurting her daughter scared me.

My grandmother was bedridden now, no longer capable of tussling with her only child or seducing a man. After she and my grandfather divorced for the second time, she spent some thirty years single and then remarried in 1976. Her new husband, Gregory, hailed from Plymouth and was a direct descendant of the Pilgrims, just like Ben Souther. But happiness and misfortune ran hand in hand for Vivian, and Gregory died just five months after their wedding, when I was eleven. My grandmother, wanting to be clearheaded at his funeral, skipped her blood-thinning medication and had a major stroke the next day. We visited her regularly, but she was no longer capable of communicating in a meaningful way. Years later, my mother confessed that my grandmother had had a decade-long affair with Gregory while she waited for his wife to die. It was as if Vivian had left a map for her daughter to follow.

Initially, my mother and Ben conducted their romance cautiously, meeting discreetly on Ben’s business trips, usually in New York City, where he served on the board of several organizations. They would book hotel rooms on different floors from each other, order room service instead of going out for meals, and pay for everything with cash. But it wasn’t long before they became emboldened, having determined that it was unlikely they’d run into anyone they knew. They started dining out in style at restaurants like Le Cirque, Hatsuhana, Lutèce, and La Tulipe, which was owned by one of my mother’s good friends.

My mother loved nothing more than going to fine restaurants, insisting it was the only way for her to get out of her own kitchen. “Think about it, Rennie,” she told me more than once. “When you are known to be a fabulous cook, everyone’s too intimidated to invite you over for dinner.”

This might have sounded arrogant, but it was true. My mother had studied