Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [79]
Pressing close, too close to me, she says, “Jill, now that you’re going to be part of my family, I’d like you to consider calling me ‘Mom.’ ”
I spin around. We’re now close enough that, were this a movie (and were she not my future mother-in-law), the audience would shift with anticipation in their seats, hoping that one of us might leap toward the other and burst the sexual bubble. As it was, I take a step back and nail my head into the oven door.
“Oh, Vivian, I’m, uh, I’m really . . .”
She smiles at me like a possessed Cheshire cat, and I’m suddenly reminded of Alice in Wonderland and how I bought Katie an original copy for her first birthday, knowing, of course, that she couldn’t yet read, but dripping with excitement to pass along the story of the girl who slides down the rabbit hole, all the same.
“I’m sorry,” I say in a panic, squeezing out from between Vivian’s breath and the heat of the oven, and racing for the bathroom.
I plunk on the toilet and try to gather the air that seems clotted in my lungs, try to stop my heart from nearly detonating in my chest. I run my clammy hands over my forehead and tug at the pearls around my neck. Everything feels like it’s closing in on me, and I exhale to try to will it away, but still, the claustrophobia persists.
A small voice sounds through the door.
“Aunt Jilly? You okay?”
Allie, I think. “Fine, honey. I’ll be out in a minute.” My voice is an octave too high.
“Hurry, I have something I want to show you.” Her footsteps fade as she runs with abandon down the hall.
I stand, ignoring the sudden dizziness, and splash water across my cheeks, then peer closer into the mirror.
Thanksgiving had long been my least favorite holiday, and for many years, it was all my family could do to suffer through it in stoic silence, pretending that nothing had changed, despite the absent place setting where my mother once sat. Our first Thanksgiving without her—just seven short weeks after she left—my father valiantly but ultimately fruitlessly toiled the day through in the kitchen, intent on crafting a homespun celebratory feast, as my mother had done with seeming ease for all the years I could remember. I’d stand in the kitchen door opening, my five-year-old self or seven-year-old self, and watch her move from oven to stovetop back to oven, checking on the turkey or the gravy or the stuffing, and she never once stopped moving. As if nothing were more natural, as if she couldn’t have been more content.
And then she was gone.
And try as he did, my father’s turkey was too dry, and the gravy too salty, and the yams so lumpy I just pushed them around on my plate even though they used to be my favorite. But we smiled and smiled the dinner through, even though the tears that sat just behind the cusps of our eyes said more about our misery than our grins ever did.
I stare into the mirror, now, in Vivian’s powder room, and muffle a cry. For my feet that are pressed achingly into my peep-toed heels when they’d so much rather be free. For my father who tried to shoehorn a rosy sense of familial happiness into our holidays when, surely, all he, too, wanted to do was scream. For my old self, who seemingly woke up one day as a country-club-ready, chipper-in-all-moments, shiny supermom, as if she crept in overnight like a zombie and seized my mind while leaving my body untouched. And for the me now, who, try as she might, felt hauntingly similar to that old self, the very one she was trying to outrun.
I slide down the putty-colored wall onto the cold tiled floor and focus on my mother, on how she hummed under her breath while she toiled in the kitchen, so lost in herself that sometimes she didn’t even notice me watching. And then I remember how I used to do much the same: singing to myself while folding laundry, literally whistling while I worked around the house. But none of these musical musings filled me with any joy. If anything, they masked the more honest sounds, the guttural ones that I was too fearful to let escape.
I lean against the wall and the radiator clicks on, emitting a