Pug Hill - Alison Pace [22]
I sit down at my desk and turn on my laptop. I sit back in my chair for a minute, as the light from the computer screen glows out at me. I hesitate and look around my apartment. Before I can type The New School’s Web address into my Internet Explorer, the phone starts ringing. I am sure it is ringing in a way that is hostile.
“Hello,” I say, knowing as I do that it is perhaps a bit hostile in itself to answer the phone sounding so tense.
“Hope, it’s your mother.”
“Hi,” I say.
“Are you tense?” she asks.
“No,” I say quickly. “I just walked in is all. Hi,” I say again, so we can go back to the normal start of a phone call, without the whole are-you-tense segue. Because, really, I am not tense.
“Dad tells me he called and mentioned the speech,” she says, and I want encouragement, love, coddling. That is what I want, but this is not the place to get it. Mom doesn’t know about my fear of public speaking. As skilled as I am at running from my fears, I am more expert at not owning up to them.
“Yeah, yes,” I say too quickly, a bit robotically. “I’m so happy that you asked. I’m really looking forward to it.” Mom doesn’t say anything for a moment and I wonder for a second if she’s about to call me on it, to say that not only am I a big fraidy cat, I am also a liar. Love thyself, I think for some reason, as I try to slow the quickening of my pulse.
In with hysteria, I think, taking a deep breath, out with love. Or, wait, is that supposed to be the other way around?
“Good,” she says, instead of “fraidy cat,” or “liar,” and then she says, “we’re looking forward to it, too.” We make small talk for a while; everything, I say, is just fine with me and everything, she says, is just fine with her. And then the topic turns to Evan.
“How’s Evan?” she asks, and the very tone of her voice reminds me that even though I have my moments when I am so convinced they are in this together, determined to chip away happily at my self-esteem, they are, in fact, not. The tone of her voice reminds me that Mom is no longer a fan of Evan, hasn’t been since I told her recently about how he criticized my hair and said I brushed it too much. I’m sure that when I told her this, there had to have been a part of her that had to hold herself back from jumping in and saying that with everything colorists are doing these days, there is no reason at all that I have to walk around with it red. But I think what won out in the end was the part of her that felt critiquing me was her domain and her domain alone, and that Evan was not invited to join the club.
“He’s fine,” I say and listen to the silence on the end of the phone. I’ve been dating for a while now, for quite a long while come to think of it. You’d think somewhere along the way I would have wrapped my head around the concept of not telling my mother bad things about my boyfriends. I haven’t. In case you have some trouble with this concept, too, let me try to help you, since clearly, I am beyond help. If you’re going to listen to anything I say, listen to this: Do not tell your mother bad things about your boyfriend. Repeat this to yourself a few times; maybe it will help: Do not tell your mother bad things about your boyfriend. Do not tell your mother bad things about your boyfriend.
Sure, getting it off your chest and all, it might make you feel better momentarily. But what happens inevitably is that you will forget all about whatever it is that upset you in the first place, and continue on in your relationship happy as a lark (or some approximation thereof, adjust as necessary). Your mother, however, if she is anything like my mother, will never forget. Once the bad information is out there, your mother will forever change her once-happy tune about your boyfriend. She will