“So, Janey,” Sylvia drawled. “Your Charles is a fine young man. You have good instincts.”
Jane smiled tightly. “I like to think I have good taste.”
“Now, you’ve dated a lot on your way to finding him, haven’t you? Lots of boyfriends?”
Elizabeth listened to Sylvia’s half-baked reasoning with rising annoyance. Jane played her usual role, nodding and smiling.What point is Sylvia driving at?Why does she always wear such tight clothing, and who told her mint julep isthecolor for autumn in New York?
“Are you absolutely positive you won’t have any regrets about what you might have missed by settling so early? Engaged at twenty-six, married at twenty-seven?” Sylvia lifted Jane’s hand and eyeballedher engagement ring. Her own hand was bedecked with an oversized sparkly pink cocktail bauble. “I was too young when I married your father. You have another decade to have fun before the baby clock starts ticking. You totally sure about Charlie?”
“Absolutely.” Jane’s face showed the hard edge that rarely emerged. Elizabeth bit back her comment on the real reason her parents had to get married.
“Fine, fine. It’s important to be sure. He’s cute and rich and awfully accommodatin’. It would be hard to do better.” Sylvia turned to her younger daughter. “And you, Lizabit? Still doing the single, career gal thing?”
Elizabeth despised that nickname. She despised that she felt obliged to even sit here. If only their entrees would arrive so she could wolf hers down and they could make their excuses and leave. She and Darcy had gone for a long run around the Reservoir that morning, hoping the exercise would help tame her angry ambivalence toward Sylvia, but the woman managed to trigger her resentment anyway.
“Is there a certain someone in your life?” Sylvia smiled sweetly. “You can tell me. I’m open-minded.”
Well, here she goes again.Elizabeth sighed.No one who so horribly abuses green eyeliner can possibly be open-minded.Sylvia retained her long-held conviction about Elizabeth. The moment her younger daughter had kicked a soccer ball and discovered her passion for the game, Sylvia had been sure about the sports-mad girl’s future as a lonely, muscle-bound lesbian.
Elizabeth shifted in her seat, wondering what kind of message her black skirt and heather-gray sweater set was sending. “As I’ve told you before, I’m neither gay nor bi-, Sylvia,” she said bitingly. Calling her mother by her first name was a sure way to annoy her, and playing tit-for-tat seemed fair.
“Well, I never heard you mention a boyfriend, Lizabit.” Sylvia peered at her. “Gray sweaters are not helping; you need to show cleavage.”
Touché. Elizabeth nearly laughed out loud. Instead, she bit into a breadstick.
“And your apartment has no personality. It’s so plain. You need to put yourself out there.” Sylvia took a drink of wine, leaned closer and squeezed Elizabeth’s hand. “Honey, you’re twenty-four. You’re not still a virgin, are you?”
“Mom!” Jane whispered, shocked.
Elizabeth took a sip of water and sat very still, her eyes on Jane as her sister’s face disappeared into her napkin. Once she was certain Jane was stifling horrified laughter and not choking on a piece of bread, Elizabeth turned her attention to her mother—the mother who’d come here to play her part in a lavish wedding in a city where she’d get a free vacation with her boyfriend, and who would forget Elizabeth’s answer to her question within the hour.She really doesn’t deserve me, or Jane, or my story.I’m not playing the part for her.
She turned to Sylvia and, in a calm voice, replied, “You noticed that I cleaned off my bulletin board? It might have been enlightening to a visitor, but some of the clippings were out of date so I put them in my memory box. You know what’s in that box?” Elizabeth glanced at Jane while her fingers played with the tines of her fork. She could feel Sylvia’s distraction and briefly wondered whether she was actually listening or simply waiting to interrupt with another story about herself.
Elizabeth took a breath and tapped her chin in exaggerated deep thought. “Let’s see, there’s the newspaper clipping from when I was named to the all-state girls’ soccer team, the blue ribbon I won in tenth grade for my poem about the march on Selma, the dried-up rose from my senior prom, and the silk gloves I wore when Dad married Barbara. Oh, and the hospital bracelets from my surgeries.”
Elizabeth looked straight at Sylvia; the servers were approaching with their food, and she wanted to finish. “There’s nothing in that box that you’ve ever been part of or expressed an interest in, so I think I’ll keep the state of my sex life private too if it’s all the same to you.”
The happiest girl in New York relished the stunned expression on the face of the woman who had given birth to her and felt the last tendrils of any mother-daughter connection curl up and wither.
The spaghetti Bolognese was very good, she mused a few minutes later, but not as good as the dish Mrs. Reynolds had made the previous week.
After the sisters dispatched Sylvia to New Jersey in a cab they paid for, Jane pulled Elizabeth back into the restaurant’s vestibule. “That was awesome. You were amazing.” She gave Elizabeth a brief, intense hug before pulling back to shake her head. “I can’t believe that woman is our mother. I can’t believe she’s going to be at my wedding.”
Then her face crumpled, and she slumped down on a bench. “How is it that she just gets worse and worse?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to care anymore.” Elizabeth sat andput her arm around her sister. “Will reminded me that she made a choice when she left us, and we can make a choice about accepting her back now. Choices have consequences.”
“She’s our mother.”
“You can have her, Jane. I meant what I said. I’m finished.” Elizabeth shook her head firmly when her sister started to protest. “Everything is always on her terms, and I refuse to live my life that way. Honestly, I think she wants me to be a lesbian to make her seem trendy or something. Can you believe her?”
“It’s weird. I would have thought she’d disown you for it. I mean, she clearly relishes the idea of my finding a rich man to take care of me.”
“And you wonder why I’d rather she knows nothing about Will.” Elizabeth sighed and pulled out her phone to send a quick text to Darcy’s driver, Rudy. “I’m not changing for her, and it’s clear she is not changing for us.”
“We still have to get through the rehearsal dinner and the wedding.” Jane looked despondent.
“I know.Yourrehearsal dinner andyourwedding. It’s your day, not hers.”
