Freedom [93]
The next morning, she took a commuter train out to Jessica’s college in a state of neediness from which no good could come. Although she’d tried, for nineteen years, to do everything for Jessica that her own mother hadn’t done for her—had never missed a game of hers, had bathed her in approval, had familiarized herself with the intricacies of her social life, had been her partisan in every little hurt and disappointment, had involved herself deeply in the drama of her college applications—there was, as noted, an absence of true closeness. This was due partly to Jessica’s self-sufficient nature and partly to Patty’s overdoing things with Joey. It was to Joey, not Jessica, that she’d gone with her overflowing heart. But the door to Joey was closed and locked now, due to her mistakes, and she arrived on the beautiful Quaker campus not caring about Parents’ Weekend. She just wanted some private time with her daughter.
Unfortunately, Jessica’s new boyfriend, William, couldn’t take a hint. William was a good-natured blond Californian soccer player whose own parents weren’t visiting. He followed Patty and Jessica to lunch, to Jessica’s afternoon art-history lecture, and to Jessica’s dorm room, and when Patty then pointedly offered to take Jessica to dinner in the city, Jessica replied that she’d already made a local dinner reservation for three. At the restaurant, Patty listened stoically while Jessica prodded William to describe the charitable organization he’d founded while still in high school—some grotesquely worthy program wherein poor Malawian girls had their educations sponsored by soccer clubs in San Francisco. Patty had little choice but to keep drinking wine. Midway through her fourth glass, she decided that William needed to know that she herself had once excelled at intercollegiate sports. Since Jessica declined to supply the fact that she’d been second-team all-American, she was obliged to supply it herself, and since this sounded like bragging she felt she had to undercut it by telling the story of her groupie, which led to Eliza’s drug habits and lies about leukemia, and to the wrecking of her knee. She was speaking loudly and, she thought, entertainingly, but William, instead of laughing, kept glancing nervously at Jessica, who was sitting with her arms crossed and looking morose.
“And the point is what?” she said finally.
“Nothing,” Patty said. “I’m just telling you what things were like when I was in college. I didn’t realize you weren’t interested.”
“I’m interested,” William was kind enough to say.
“What’s interesting to me,” Jessica said, “is that I’d never heard any of this.”
“I’ve never told you about Eliza?”
“No. That must have been Joey.”
“I’m sure I’ve talked about it.”
“No, Mom. Sorry. You haven’t.”
“Well, anyway, now I’m talking about it, although maybe I’ve said enough.”
“Maybe!”
Patty knew she was behaving badly, but she couldn’t help it. Seeing Jessica and William’s tenderness with each other, she thought of herself at nineteen, thought of her mediocre schooling and her sick relationships with Carter and Eliza, and regretted her life, and pitied herself. She was falling into a depression that deepened precipitously the following day, when she returned to the college and endured a tour of its sumptuous grounds, a luncheon on the lawn of the president’s house, and an afternoon colloquium (“Performing Identity in a Multivalent World”) attended by scores of other parents. Everyone looked radiantly better-adjusted than she was feeling. The students all seemed cheerfully competent at everything, no doubt including sitting comfortably in a bar chair, and all the other parents seemed so proud of them, so thrilled to be their friends, and the college itself seemed immensely proud of its wealth and its altruistic mission. Patty really had been a good parent; she’d succeeded in preparing her daughter for a happier and easier life than her own; but it was clear from the other families’ very body language that she hadn’t been a great mom in the ways that counted most. While the other