“I wouldn’t think of this as a homecoming. She hasn’t exactly been in school or something like that, Mother.”
“It’s a school,” she said. “Just a different kind.”
“No, it’s a punishment, or it was supposed to be. You never went there, did you?”
My question made her face ripple with tension. Her smile, which I thought was so forced that it resembled a mask, dissolved into her more familiar motherly expression of concern.
“No. I was told it wouldn’t do either of us any good, and besides, I hope that’s all coming to an end. It will do us no good to talk about it, Kaylee,” she added, with that definitiveness we had heard many times when we were told we couldn’t do something.
I used to think my mother would make a good undertaker. She could slam our dreams and aspirations shut in a coffin and bury them forever whenever she refused a request Haylee or I made that violated her main principle: Nothing different for either of you, ever.
Her smile flickered back on like a neon light. “Besides, I want you to come down to lunch now in the kitchenette and tell me all about your new school. I want to know everything, your teachers, your subjects, how you’re doing, the dorm you’re in, friends you’ve made, all of it. It will take us all night to catch up, I’m sure. Come, come.” She beckoned and started away.
I glanced back at Haylee’s new room. Actually, I was looking forward to seeing the expression on her face when she first confronted it. Then I hurried after my mother. As we descended, we heard Irene coming in with the groceries.
“Perfect timing!” Mother cried. “Look at Kaylee. Doesn’t she look like she’s grown?”
“She looks older, yes,” Irene said. “Hello, Kaylee.”
“You’ll have lunch with us and hear all about her new school,” Mother commanded.
“I look forward to that. Let me get everything together for you. Go on and relax,” she fired back at Mother with just as much authority.
“Right, right,” Mother said, surprisingly obedient. “Let’s go into the living room, Kaylee.”
I looked at Irene, who raised her eyebrows and smiled. She was obviously pleased with the progress Mother had made.
Mother sat on the settee and smiled up at me. I sat across from her. Haylee and I always sat across from her on the matching settee.
“Don’t sit so far apart from each other,” she might tell us. Or “Kaylee’s not crossing her legs like that. Why are you?”
All our lives, we were made conscious of what the other was doing. As little girls, we knew that if one of us folded her hands in her lap, the other should, too. We were keen on pleasing Mother. She took such delight in our seemingly unconscious mimicking of each other. It wasn’t much of a stretch for anyone now to imagine which one of us was the first to work at being different.
“Your father tells me you have a roommate. What is she like?”
“She’s very bright, especially in math. We get along very well. I think she’s enjoying this school.”
Mother’s eyes didn’t blink. There was a colder glint in them. “What did you tell her about our family?”
“Daddy and my therapist, Dr. Sacks, both believed it would be best for me to say that I was an only child. That way, I wouldn’t have to explain anything nasty.”
She didn’t respond. She held her cold gaze.
“It was easier for me to do what they suggested. I had to try to recuperate, Mother.”
“Exactly,” she said, smiling. It surprised me. I was anticipating her anger, even her ranting against my father and my doctor.
“You understand?”
“Of course I do, Kaylee. As should you.”
“Understand what, Mother?”
“When I tell you that your sister is coming home from her school tomorrow.” She held her smile. “I’m trying to recuperate, too,” she said.
As Mother and I went into the kitchenette for the lunch Irene prepared, I considered what she had said. In my mother’s mind, there was no such thing as forgiveness; there was only forgetting or pretending that the bad thing had not happened. She was telling me how she would survive all this.
Was she telling me to do the same?