Mrs. Perfect

“Hi, Tammy,” she says.

“Taylor,” I correct her, thinking she looks even more like Ali MacGraw than ever. When I was growing up, people always did a double take when they saw Mom running errands or at the grocery store. More than once when I was a little girl people approached her, asked for her autograph. No one believed her when she said she wasn’t the actress.

She nods. “Sorry.”

I look at her and then Ray, still unable to find my voice. She sees my bewilderment. She’s never shown up at my house before.

“We came to help you move,” Mom says, making it sound as though it were the most normal thing in the world. This from my mother, whom I haven’t seen in a decade or spoken to in maybe eight years.

I reach for the door, and I don’t know what I’m thinking. I don’t know if I’m going to close the door on her or I need support, but suddenly the past is huge and dark between us.

Mom deserted us. Mom left. She found herself a better life, one more suited to her liking, leaving the rest of us to whatever shit life kicked our way.

I pull the door toward me, shutting my house from her view, thinking there’s no way in hell I’ll let her through. “I don’t—”

“Nathan called me. He said he couldn’t get back, storms had closed the airport, and he was really worried about you not having help. . . .” Her voice drifts off, and she shoves a small hand in the pocket of her faded jeans.

I just look at her. Her dark hair is streaked with gray, but it’s still thick and long, hanging in dark waves past her shoulders. She’s remarkably lean for her age, and her plaid button-down shirt looks like a boy’s, stretched across her shoulders and breasts.

So this is my mom at fifty-seven. If she weren’t my mom, I’d think she looks damn good. But she is my mom, and she’s not part of my life for reasons she and I both understand.

“I’m good at packing, Taylor,” she adds quietly. “At least let me do the one thing for you I know how to do.”

“Yeah,” I say, swallowing back the bitterness. I don’t want to be bitter, not now, not anymore. The last few months have been too hard. I’ve felt as though I’ve lost everyone and everything.

But Mom came.

And that little whisper inside me makes my heart seize up. I swing open the door and step aside. “Come in. The girls will be thrilled to see you.”

“Thank you,” she says gravely, passing me.

I make eye contact with Ray as he approaches the door. I’ve met him only twice, and both times we didn’t talk. Ray looks like the actor Sam Elliott from the movie Mask. Tall, weathered, and lean, with thick gray hair that reaches almost to his shoulders and one hell of a handlebar mustache. I’m sure he has tattoos, too. I just haven’t been around him long enough to see them.

Ray nods at me. “Taylor.”

“Ray.” I can’t even fake a smile. Ray is probably my least favorite person in the universe. There’s so many things I don’t like about him that I don’t know where to begin: My mom ran off with him, he’s a professional truck driver, he’s a gambler, he’s a fighter, and he’s a convict.

And he married my mom.

While in prison.

I don’t know which bothers me more: that my mom ran off with him, that he’s a truck driver, or that he’s a convict.

But Mom and Ray are inside my house now, and I start to shut the door, but not before I see an enormous big-rig truck parked in my drive.

“You brought an eighteen-wheeler?” I mutter as I close the door.

Ray shoots a glance at me over his shoulder. “Your mom said you had a big house. I figured you’d have a lot of stuff.”

I suddenly feel like shit. “Thanks,” I say awkwardly.

He just tips his head my way.

Introducing the girls to my mom and her husband is uncomfortable, but then everything in my life is uncomfortable right now. Fortunately, the girls are less freaked out than I am. They’re definitely curious, though, even excited, and they bounce around the family room regaling Mom and Ray with anecdotes about their lives.

I break up the share-fest after about an hour, telling everyone that I’ve got to get to work. That pretty much ends the party.

Mom tackles the dining room with the tall glass-paned hutch Nathan and I bought in Ireland on our seventh-anniversary trip, visiting an enormous antique warehouse in Rathkeale, a village in the west. The mahogany wardrobe is filled with china and crystal, every shelf weighted with more dishes than we ever needed. The wardrobe is one of the things I’m leaving behind that I will miss. I wish now I’d thought to ask Monica for it.

Ray is in Jemma’s room, and he’s breaking down the bed. He’s already broken down the other two girls’ beds and carried the pieces out to his truck.

I’m struggling to disconnect the last of the stereo’s elaborate surround sound when Mom passes me, carrying more boxes to be put together, and sees me red-faced and thin-lipped with pliers and a screwdriver.

“Leave it for Ray,” she says calmly. “He’s good with things like that.”

“Okay.” Relieved, I drop the tools next to the stereo and watch her return to the dining room.

I rise and tug down my T-shirt. I’m hot and grouchy, and it’s not even noon. There’s also still mountains of house, rooms and rooms, and this will take forever. Panic builds in me, and my throat feels too tight.

I’m about to climb the stairs to head for the bedrooms where I started packing the closets earlier, but first I step into the dining room where Mom is working.

Her dark head is bent, the long hair falling on either side of her face, as she carefully wraps stemware after stemware in thick wads of packing paper before adding each piece to the box.

Mom must know I’m there behind her watching, but she doesn’t speak, she just focuses on her job.

“I thought you lived in Santa Rosa,” I say, my voice tight.

She carefully wedges the paper-wrapped flute in the box. “I do.”

I fold my arms across my chest, feeling increasingly jittery. “What time did Nathan call you?”

“Four in the afternoon.”

“It’s an eleven-hour drive, Mom, and that’s without stopping.”

“Ray drove all night.”

I stare at the back of her head, and I’m flooded with intense emotion, emotion so strong that it nearly buckles my knees. The only thing that goes through my head is I love you I love you I love you

And you left me.

You left me. And you left Cissy, too.

I want to ask her how Lawrence, her first lover, or Ray, her second, could have been more important than Cissy and me.

I want to ask her why she couldn’t have waited five years, ten years, to leave Dad, as Cissy and I would have been out of the house by then.

I want to ask her if she’s been happier with Ray than she was with us.

But I don’t. I can’t. She made her choice. We didn’t have a choice. We had no say, no power,

no voice.

No wonder I’m such a control freak now.

Gritting my teeth, I turn and climb up my elegant circular staircase to the second floor, determined to get the kids’ rooms emptied today.

I’ve managed to get only half my closet boxed when the doorbell rings. After opening up another huge wardrobe carton, I tape the bottom, slide the hanging bar into place, and head back into the closet for more clothes. I’m not going downstairs. I’m not answering the door. It’s probably one of the girls’ friends, and they can do something around here for a change.

I’m just grabbing an armful of hanging slacks, blazers, and dresses when Marta Zinsser appears in my bedroom doorway. I nearly trip over a dropped hanger in surprise. “Hi.”

“Hi.” She glances around the room, sees the disaster around me. “Having fun?”

“Not my idea of a fun Thanksgiving. What brings you here?”

She smiles, a wry, lopsided smile. “I was hoping I could have some fun, too. Pack. Lift. Work. Carry.”

I look at Marta, this disgustingly confident woman I never wanted to like because she was everything I thought I wasn’t and couldn’t ever be. I wasn’t independent, wasn’t brave, wasn’t strong, and yet I’m finding my feet and my bones and I’ve got more muscle—and gut—than I expected. Her gaze meets mine and holds. She’s not the enemy. I’m not my own enemy, either, anymore. “You’re so twisted, Marta, you’re scary.”

Her expression doesn’t change outwardly, but there’s something in her eyes, something almost like affection, and I feel a rush of warmth. Love. Hope.

It’s going to be okay.

We never make it to McCormick & Schmick’s for dinner. Marta has invited us—all of us—to her house for Thanksgiving dinner, and when she asks us, I hardly even protest. I think I just asked if she was sure.

She was sure. I accepted gratefully, and Marta went home to finish preparing Thanksgiving dinner.