Bertrand Court (8 page)

Kaya “whoopses” the first time during her birthday bounce on Robin and Marcus's trampoline, a few hours after the guests have all gone home. Thank goodness the Golds are in Rochester and were therefore spared the sight of an orange geyser flying into the blue sky. Maggie and I chalk it up to the heat, the excitement, and too much activity on a full tummy. Then the cake comes out both ends while Maggie is bathing Kaya, and again when the poor little dear stretches out on her Sleeping Beauty bedspread. We assume she's finished when we bring her down to the sunroom to cuddle and listen to the rest of
Charlotte's Web
, but she gets sick all over the wicker chair, ruining the page where Charlotte spells her first word. Maggie carries her to the bathroom, but only after Kaya has managed to make quite a mess of the sunroom, which looks like orange you-know-what really did hit a fan. I'm guessing Kaya snitched another piece of cake before dinner. There is nothing worse than the sound of a child retching. I run down to the corner market and buy some Gatorade and good old-fashioned Coca-Cola, like I used to give Maggie whenever she got sick.

When I return, Maggie has opened the windows to ventilate the sunroom. The thick air carries the scent of bleach and Say-Lo, which smells like burnt rubber. Maggie would have been better off baking a less colorful cake.

“Hand me that 409, dear. I'll wipe down this chair,” I offer after Kaya has finally fallen asleep.

Maggie doesn't answer me because the phone rings. I begin to dig into the weave of the wicker chair, trying not to breathe in too deeply. Her voice is full of apology as she talks to Tad's wife, Nikki, the twins' mother. “I spoke with Poison Control already. It's not toxic in the quantity I used for the cake.”

She hangs up and sweeps her wet hair off her neck. “Don't, Mom. I know what you're thinking,” she says through the hair band she's holding in her teeth.

“I'm not saying a word.”

“You're thinking why didn't I just buy one of those sheet cakes from the Giant, all lard and sugar, with princesses and mounds of pink and purple frosting?”

That's exactly what I'm thinking, but I've done a very good job of keeping quiet, and I'm sure not going to throw kerosene on this fire. I'm also thinking that Maggie could easily have married somebody like Nikki's Tad, but that's not productive either. “Actually, I was thinking about what marvelous self-esteem Kaya has developed. She has quite a Svengali effect on those little girls.” No big surprise, she's smart and gorgeous, but if I mention her looks, Maggie will flip into one of her moods. Pretty is bad. Confident is good. Got it.

Maggie answers the phone again. “Hi, Amy.” She shifts feet.

This isn't going to be good. Amy ate the frosting off of everyone's plate. I saw her do it. Such an odd woman, that Amy.

“I know. Wait, that's my call waiting. I'm so sorry. God, this is a disaster.” Maggie pushes down on the receiver
and answers the next call. “How many times?” she asks, then gives her Poison Control spiel and hangs up. “Megan Moore. Her Aliza ate a lot of cake.”

“Oh, dear,” I say.

“I better call Hannah,” Maggie says. She's nervous; her chest is breaking out in those red blotches. Maybe she'll feel better if we talk about our dazzling Kaya some more. “Your daughter was cuing those girls like a director when they played with those tiny dolls. Polly Pockets, I think she called them? Cute. And she assigned two mommies to one child!”

Maggie removes a soiled slipcover from one of the couch pillows. “Kaya has a lot of classmates in her preschool with same-sex parents.”

Oh, Lord have mercy, she's going to hop on that diversity soapbox with that hideous tone she uses to lecture all of us who “don't get it.” I've never figured out exactly what it is that I don't get, or why people who do get it are so gosh-darned mean to those who don't. That girl can make me mad as a hornet. I muster up a smile and reach for another roll of paper towels. My, it feels like a sauna in here. My blouse sticks to the dampness under my arms.

Maggie continues in that tone of hers. “So the preschool furnishes some of the dramatic play areas with only mommy dolls and others with daddy dolls.”

I wasn't going to say anything about the tennis ball incident, but it's always like this with Maggie. I'm her punching bag. “Kaya was pretty tough on that cute little Sophie, told her that she had to be the dog when they played house.” I give the chair another good squirt of cleaner.

Maggie's ears turn crimson. “Eric and I appreciate the diversity in her preschool. We want Kaya to know that everyone, regardless of his or her sexual preference or race or religion, should be loved and accepted for who they are.” She's heaping naked pillows on top of one another.

“And when Sophie started to cry, Kaya went in for the kill.” I lower my voice, knowing that my calm is just going to make her hotter. I gave birth to this girl, taught her her first word, and bought her her first brassiere; I know where she hides the silver.

Maggie ignores my comment. “These are our core values.”

Oh, for Pete's sake, if I hear one more word about their “values,” I might just have to wait in line behind Kaya for the toilet. “Your daughter runs the show. She's got the others lining up for her approval.”

“Kaya has not yet learned the social skills to manage all the girls who vie for her attention. It's a developmental issue.” Maggie's voice is loud.

Hooey. I'm about to tell Maggie she can move to London or Timbuktu and I'm still her mother and I can still read her and her little girl like a Harlequin. I saw everything. Kaya will always land on top of the heap, despite Maggie's mumbo jumbo about equality. And I'll tell little Miss We Treat Everyone with Respect that I watched her watch Kaya take charge of those little girls and I caught a smile poke through her lips. She can't deny how delicious it feels to see your child win.

Before I can say any of this, the phone rings again, and Maggie looks at the caller ID. “This is a nightmare,” she says in a tone of dread. “Hi, Hannah. I was just going to call you.” She pauses. “Oh, that's such a sweet thing to say.” Now she sounds almost chipper. “I'd love to chat, but we're just putting our house back together. Thanks for calling.” Maggie grins. “Jane must not have eaten the cake!”

I can't tell if Maggie's happy that her niece didn't get sick or that someone actually called to compliment her on the party, especially Hannah. She looks like she did when she used to do those tap routines for my mother, eager to please, vulnerable to my mother's boozy indifference — and Maggie was the favorite grandchild. I wanted to mess up my mother's Greta Garbo hairdo, scoop my little girl up in my arms, and cover her with kisses.

The anger vacates my body, and now I'm just dog-tired. And sad. Why do Maggie and I fight when she needs me the most? My limbs feel heavy, and my eyes burn. I want to hug my daughter, but I can't face her turning away from me again.

“Remember when I hired the Mary Kay lady to make up all our faces at your sweet sixteen?”

Maggie nods her head. “Who knew that poor Rhonda Anderson would break out in such a rash? What was that chemical she was allergic to?”

“One of the dyes in the blusher, I think.” Methylparaben, I'll never forget that one. “See, dear, I'm not so old that I can't remember what it's like to ruin a child's birthday party.” I offer this as an olive branch, but Maggie's laughter trails off. The only sound in the room is my paper towel digging into the soiled wicker chair.

Fuck Eric. He should be here right now phoning the remaining guests and helping me clean this mess up, and then my mother wouldn't be comforting me for ruining Kaya's birthday party. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I should have researched the side effects of that damned sweetener. What kind of acupuncturist smokes, anyway? I wish my mother would just go upstairs and take a bath or something, but there's a part of me that wants her to stay. Story of my life.

We use two rolls of paper towels to clean the chair. Much to my surprise, it actually feels good to wipe away the mess with her. When I was a little girl and I was worried about a test or remembering my lines for a school play, I would lie in bed and wait for my mother to come sit on the edge and stroke my forehead. Just like that, my worries would dissolve, like the graphite designs on Kaya's Etch A Sketch when you shake it. Presto. Gone. The sheer act of the telling made them disappear. Okay, here goes nothing.

“Kaya makes her friends tell her secrets if they want to play with her. Sophie told Kaya that another girl's mother — a pediatrician, no less — makes her eat off the floor. ‘Germs on her terms,' her mother calls it, something about immunity boosting. Kaya told everyone during circle time, and the little girl was so embarrassed that she cried for the rest of the day.” I deliver my confession in one breath.

“Did Kaya invite the girl to the party?” My mother's tone is soft.

“What do you think?” I almost laugh, but I can feel tears creeping up behind my eyeballs. “No wonder the other mothers quit the Mean Girls, Zero Tolerance Task Force as soon as I joined.”

“Mags, maybe it wasn't because of you.” Her voice softens further.

For a second my shoulders relax, and then the tension returns with a snapping sensation. “Most of the mothers hate me.”

“Hannah and Amy don't.”

“Mom, Amy isn't a mom, and did you see the way Hannah was hawking over the girls?” I wish my voice wasn't shaking.

“What do the other moms say, darling?”

“They say I can't see how manipulative Kaya is, that I encourage it because I'm proud of her power.”

“Are you?”

“No,” I answer too quickly.

She lets my half-truth go. “How do you know this?” she asks.

“I overheard a couple of mothers talking at the school auction. Only a few of the ten girls we invited to Kaya's party came, and two of them were neighbors.”

My mother puts down her sponge, and for the second time tonight she moves toward me, and I wonder again if she's going to gather me up in her arms and hold me. She pauses and then sits down.

“They hated me too,” she says. Now she looks like a rumpled little girl, slumped in a corner of the sunroom, with a wad of dirty paper towels in her hand. Years of tanning have leathered her skin, a tiny pouch hangs over the waistband of her pink Lilly Pulitzer capris, and her arms look bony, loose skin puckering at the elbows. I want to tell her that it's okay, that every call she made to the school, every diet she put me on, every backseat coaching session she gave me, she did because she loved me, in her way. I forgive her for making me practice my cheers in the driveway until my fingers turned numb from the Wisconsin autumn cold and relentlessly comparing my looks to the other girls'. I forgive the stony silences on the way home from running errands, after the butcher smiled at me while she batted her eyelashes. Did I choose to get fat and dye my hair because I wanted her to back off, or because I wanted the butchers and mailmen and electricians to flirt with her and not me? Or both?

I want one of those double-hanky moments portrayed on the family television dramas I used to watch as a child, where everyone hugs and cries and then trots off to the kitchen to scoop out big bowls of ice cream with hot fudge sauce. But my kitchen still smells like Say-Lo, an aroma I will forever link to vomit and humiliation. And my mother does not bring out my inner compassionate TV drama daughter; I am stuck as the petulant teenager who ran from her like hell. Instead of hugging her, I speak a truth, because right now that's the best I have to offer.

“I bet those mothers loved it when I went through my little rebellion.”

Without a beat she returns my lob. “Why do you think I stopped shopping at Food Lane? You were the talk of the checkout line.” The depth of the shame I caused her exposes itself to me, and for the first time in my life, I can actually see her as someone other than the person who makes me crazy.